Neon Glowing Doors ? (Dev) Replied

Taking a close look at the gameplay footage for the first time I noticed one thing;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jWgCjaqh8tw#!

Neon Glowing Doors!!!!!

These are for the mindless, please, give us some bit? of exploration, some bit of 'that opens? cool', not 'oh i can see from a mile away that opens', even if you can only see the neon glowing door within 5/10 tiles of the door it still ruins immersion. The second I see a glowing door (excepting it being some type of magical spell or magical door), the immersion is immediately broken for me, a neon glowing door says this...

Gee golly, look over here! (goofy's voice) i think this here door may open! hint hint!

It really dumbs down the gameplay experience and makes me feel like this game was designed for little ones with no sense of exploration. When only magical things glow you know 'that's magical', or perhaps, 'that's some type of steampunk device', but when everything you can use/open/touch glows it's no different than an npc with a giant question mark over their heads, the point is it breaks immersion, and is the symbolic way of the game telling you what to do, as opposed to finding out what opens from trial and error.

 

Expanding this slightly (I agree regarding the doors), I hope they don't do something where all "usable" items get a giant halo around them or something. It takes away an element of discovery (and the resulting satisfaction.

Furthermore I also really hope they don't do something where when you accept a quest, you basically get a giant quest marker that you literally follow all the way to the goal(s). That kind of thing is pretty... mindless (and one thing I dislike about Skyrim).

It encourages the sort of gameplay where you accept the quest without bothering to listen to what the NPC says because the marker is doing the talking for you, rather than paying attention to the directions the NPC is giving you - which may be intentionally ambiguous or cryptic.

 

I agree with both of you.

I especially want to stress Ashlynn_Ler's point that no halos should exist around "usable" items. Lord knows how many hours I spent click on items in Ultima Online just to have nothing happen but there was nothing like the exploration and the satisfaction when a big bag of flour would get spilled on the floor

In the extreme case that people insist on having halos to learn items quickly instead of needing to manually map all of the pixels that can be activated maybe there is the ability to practice/learn how to use an item after you use it once that will go into a target view but only during this 'practice' mode to alleviate the need for people to do this manually and then post it somewhere outside of the world which we all know will be eventually done by some nerd with too much time of their hands.

 

We will have to little-to-none of the "usable items glow" in our final game (I myself am striving for "none"). My personal feeling here, and it is shared by others in development, is that there is a level of early exploration that happens when these things are called out (as Razimus stated so well).

And no, Ashlynn_Ler, we will not have quest markers - I feel exactly as you do about the lack of mindfulness required in that situation.

 

Awesome.

Quest markers and glowy clicky doodads are pointless and turn the game into a mindless race to get things done and max out.

Glad to hear that stuff isn't being planned.

I'd be ok with certain things being glowy, like enemies you're fighting (so you know what you're targetting), and maybe loot that has fallen (incase you're fighting in tall grass, or knee deep water or something).

Basically, for things that your character obviously should know about, but you yourself may not quite spot since you're staring at a screen. I'd know there's a sword by my feet in tall grass, for example.

 

I'm with Arkhan. Loot drops and current target are acceptable call-outs in the game but nothing related to story, quest, or path forward should ever be highlighted.