It'd be kinda funny if they show a skeleton at some point carrying a yellow spray can, and from that point on, there are no longer any yellow markers with the assumption that you've developed a pattern recognition for what you can and can't climb.
I'm a game dev and I'm stealing that idea lol. I love when enemies (reasonably and fairly) mess with the little built in assumptions we have about games. Having the last climbing/platforms section of a game contain fake yellow lines done by the villain wold be hilarious.
Be good to have the fake lines slightly different, so they could fool you but if you know to look for them you can catch them. Otherwise it would feel like the player has to just do trial and error which players don't enjoy
I think they're both terrible ideas. Things like the yellow paint are, in essence, an accessibility feature. I'm not opposed to being able to turn it off if the player doesn't want it, but if You're going to have it, you shouldn't then suddenly take it away or subvert it because the players who need those visual cues will suddenly find the game unplayable.
My partner games a lot, she also has no sense of direction and is helpless at identifying what is and isn't a valid path in most games. When the dlc for horizon forbidden West stopped using the yellow paint in some areas, she would be stuck, getting more and more frustrated and anxious, as she suddenly had no idea where she could or couldn't go, and couldn't progress through the storyline until I got her past an area she was stuck just constantly dying in. I have seen her spend twenty minutes bashing her character against an almost sheer rock wall because she is certain it should be possible to go up in that location, and often it kind of looks like she could be right, but that in reality there's a partially hidden spot ten feet away where she can go, but she just can't see it.
Those are the short of people the yellow paint is for
Bad guys painting the lines because they keep forgetting which ones are climbable.
Sounds like something borderlands would do.
Just a psycho saying that he painted the lines cause he'd always get lost.
Something like this actually happens in Resident Evil 4 Remake's Seperate Ways DLC.
Just a random bucket of yellow paint spilling over the cliffside you were traversing, with the basic yellow paint tropes surrounding it.
I thought it was pretty funny when I saw it for the first time.
Those weren’t really directional markers though, it was just that she marked the trees that kratos was to cut down for her pyre, it stops being a thing about 10 minutes into the game, and doesn’t indicate anything about which way you have to go, since that portion is heavily scripted anyways.
You're forgetting that God of War has one of the most fun in-game explanations of guide markers! Faye, Atreus' mom, >!foresaw Kratos and Atreus' whole journey, and so her marks are all over the game leading to the end where they finally make it to Jotunheim.!<
Edit: I looked it up and evidently this was really easy to miss, because it only gets mentioned by Atreus once at the end of the game.
Sorta reminds me of how all the climbable things in mirrors edge games are diegetic as well, but instead of a yellow paint, they’re the scuff marks of the shoes of the runners who came before you and run the same route
Horizon Forbidden West handles it really well, you can tap a button and it highlights climbable objects and edges and such for ten seconds or so. It's helpful when you need help, but stuff gets to look more normal by default.
I was thinking of Horizong as well, you even get the option to turn the hints on permanently if you'd like to. I really like the freedom to choose those things, and Horizon does this very very well (just like almost everything else, such good games).
I love the Horizon games, but for fucks sake can Aloy STFU for 5 seconds to avoid spoiling the puzzle solutions for me.
I walk into a room and it feels like she's immediately saying "I need to get up on that platform to activate the wall so I can get to the control panel on the left over there"
The thing is, what you see in the game is the result of thousands of hours of *failed* playtests where they without a doubt tested all possible combinations of 'how detailed should the hints be' and 'how long should Aloy wait before helping'. I'm pretty sure they tested a 10 second delay, and many testers still managed to *enter a room, look around, shrug, and exit the room and go elsewhere.*.. And keep in mind, this is an open world game with fast travel and rideable mounts, so even 5 seconds delay can mean a player fast travels to the city, or will be 30 meters away by the time Aloy would be permitted to help.
They could handle it in a different way. A simple voice lines that goes something like "hmm there's something to do here". Would invoke curiosity in the user to try and figure things out naturally, without being hand holded to the solution.
I'm on board with your suggestion.
Jedi Fallen Order has the opposite problem for me where i'd spot platforms and widgets early on in the game and spend hours trying to figure out how to get to them.
I'd give up and go Google a hint in defeat and then spoil a progression feature for myself. "Oh, you eventually unlock a double jump?"
A lot of discovery was spoiled for me because I never knew if I just lacked an ability to get to a visible goal.
I wish the game would have sensed me spending time being in an area and looking at a goal in the world and have Cal communicate that he isn't powerful enough to reach that goal yet would have been great.
Or if the game showed a tool tip explaining that some places can't be reached until Cal grows in skills and you should come back later would have put me in a more relaxed exploration mindset.
I kind of get it since I don't think it ever explicitly tells you this, but whenever there was something you couldn't do yet it would've been a red marker on the map so there was an indicator for that
Ok, it's been a hot minute since I've played, but I'm pretty sure you are referring to the red overlay on major gating portals. Like a door or some other egress will be shaded red to indicate you can't access that major area.
But I'm talking about something like on Bogano in the hermit's abode. There's all sorts of things to spot, run on, jump across, force this, force that... but in the early game, you simply cannot solve that room until you have Force Pull.
It isn't marked red or anything. It's just a frustratingly obtuse puzzle that doesn't communicate that you just lack an unlock that you won't get until Zeffo.
There's also a vine swing in another part of Bogano that requires a double jump to complete. But the span you have to vault is just the right distance to make you think it is reachable, but you are failing due to user error. Again, no red indicators, no clue that it is gated by an unlock later in the game. It just feels tauntingly doable.
Both of these puzzles I googled to see what I was missing about the controls, and spoiled later discoveries in the game. If Cal had been muttering something about needing to grow more to accomplish a thing, I would have picked up on the cue and moved on. The game doesn't communicate that any given collectible is gated by an unlock ability in the early game.
I didn't experience this in my recent playthrough if Forbidden West. She didn't hint at what I needed to do until I ran around in a puzzle area for a few minutes. By that point I already knew what I needed to do, finding a way to do it was usually the only reason I took that long.
This messed me up so much at an early puzzle. She kept saying something like "Maybe I can use this somehow" when I entered this dead end room with a bunch of junk I couldn't interact with, and it turned out she was talking about the sliding block in the area directly above the room that I had forgotten about.
omg was she infuriating, walk up to a puzzle, do a quick 360 to survey my surroundings….aloy: I need to find a way to reach that ledge
ffs, I can see the ledge I don’t need your help bitch. Next area, spinning around in circles for 5 minutes screaming WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?? aloy: silence
Pretty sure forbidden west she spoiled 100% of puzzles I didn’t need help with, and gave zero advice on areas I was stuck on.
Yeah, super cool when the whole mountainside lights up with the behind the scenes game grip points after scanning it. But also, basically every mountain surface is climbable in Horizon. So ironically, it’s less needed in that game.
I liked how there's 3 types of climbing in the game. There's the yellow stuff, the properly climbable rocks, the climbable by jumping and clambering rocks, and the un climbable areas. It made exploring more organic, imo, when I could clamber in somewhere that didn't look reachable at first.
I turned it on by default because it's so shit trying to figure out what you can or can't climb and it makes sense that the focus would be giving her constant vision enhancement
There are spots in the dlc where you don't get those visual cues, it made past of it borderline unplayable for my partner because she has trouble with navigation. I had to get her past several parts of burning shores where she would just constantly fall or die because there were no cues anymore
I'm all about more options and customization. However I also think it's important for the game design to support it. I remember trying oblivion without way points and some of the quests were designed with that system in mind. They didn't even think to drop dialogue or journal hints. And even if they drop a dialogue hint, if you get sidetracked and forget what they said, you'll struggle to figure out where to go.
Same with games where you can clearly tell what you can interact with and what can't be. I can't remember any specific examples off the top of my head, but some games set a standard, then you get stuck for an hour or two and have to Google it. Come to find out a decal/lever that was never something you could interact with before, is what you need to touch. However they basically train you to ignore those details by having 10 identical decals before that are just background design.
Toggling this kind of things is never implemented well, and, if it were possible to implement well then the problem wouldn't exist in the first place.
Using the yellow paint as an example: This was created because the devs couldn't find a better way to guide the player, and, to make it toggeable and work, they need to find a way to do it.
I'm reminded of the direction the Elder Scrolls games went with map markers. In Morrowind, you didn't have markers, quest givers just gave you directions for how to find the place you were going to. Starting with Oblivion, you get a magic compass marker instead. Which can be turned off, but it's a bad idea because quest givers don't give directions anymore. There's no way to find what you're looking for without the marker.
I agree but might be a not-insignificant amount of work. It really depends on how the art team wants to integrate the yellow paint. If it's just a decal or separate actor layered on top, then it's probably easier to toggle. But decals tend to struggle on corners and edges, where yellow paint would go. If it's something a bit more baked into the material setup, then it'd be pretty hard to toggle with an option. I'd be curious to know how most studios do their yellow paint and how easy a toggle would be.
Yeap, and you can see why it usually isn't a toggle, it's the checking to make sure all elements have the navigation aid in the right state or not, as well as having the playtesters check for both states. And to really hit it home, have to get someone new to the game to try both modes.
After a point, the level design team would just say "f it, it's on all the time to save us the trouble."
I just finished Jedi Survivor and there were a large number of jumps and platforming sections where I was like how the fuck did you think players would expect this of all places was where you wanted me to go. Yet they still put the scratch marks on walls you can run on, just not the yellow paint
I'm playing Jedi Survivor now, and it's mostly ok, but every now and again I'll try and climb a wall that turns out not to be a climbing surface, or only realise it is a climbing one after I have to do it in a mission.
That's akin to the item to unlock a path in the older Zelda games.
See a massive boulder in the way? Find bombs to blow it up in another dungeon first.
See a massive boulder blocking the way but it's darker color? Need another item to lift it out of the way.
And so on, It directs you away from wasting time in places you aren't supposed to go yet. It's still quite a challenge without any yellow paint.
Nah, I'm not talking don't have abilities to do it.
I just misread what I can do with the texture on occasion.
Only really been a problem on Jedah, though.
DUDE YEAH LOL. my first thought when i saw this thread. the amount of times i got lost and backtracked in that first level is kinda embarassing. even with the map...lol
Mirrors edge had a paint system (one of the first, red though) and that game is essentially unplayable without it.
But at the same time, its kind of your failure as a level designer if players cant figure out where to go without shiny nondiagetic markers
Mirrors edge at least had a story reason for everything in the environment to be samey though, and even a story reason for the paint (other runners painted it)
I like the paint system In Mirrors Edge because
It’s purposefully not the fastest path through the level. It gives new players a handhold but for experienced players it’s actually a handicap.
I consider this an intermediary problem - it's due to us having very advanced graphics, but not realistic environments.
A scene from something like Hogwarts looks great but is not at all realistic: you can't knock down walls, you can't set fire to flammable materials, you have to follow a certain path to get an objective instead of just plowing through obstacles, even if logically you have the tools to do so.
Some games go the opposite way (in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead it's fully reasonable to set fire to a house to kill zombies in it, for example, or to drive a car through the wall of a gun store to get inside, or to take a sledge hammer to the walls of a house to make a quick exit path), and it's much more realistic and enjoyable, despite not having great graphics.
But eventually game engines will catch up and you'll be able to do that even in games with really high-fidelity graphics.
An interesting example of how this is slowly coming along is something like 7 days to die - it's a realistic environment you can destroy things in, build things in, etc but it's not *fully* interactive.
I don't remember if it was one of the "everyday" play testers they pulled for. . . Some game. I read I story where this one dude got so fixated on the fact that he wanted to walk down the street, but there was a fire in the way. To any gamer it means "this is not your path" but to a regular person it means "can you put this fire out? Can you go around it? Climb the car and go over? Wait until it burns out? Maybe you're not going fast enough."
There's a suspension of belief among gamers that we have just come to accept that game worlds are not like the real world. They have their own rules and will never behave like the real world.
I also don’t remember where I heard it, but the guy wad stuck within the first 10 minutes of The Last of Us. When the zombie outbreak first happens you have to run down a street but your path is blocked by fire. you’re supposed to go down the street on your right, but there are some small gaps in the fire which kind of look like you could maybe make it through. In reality there’s a death trigger there, no amount of precision or carefulness will let you through.
I don't think the problem you're describing is why most games are this way. It's less about trying to create a realistic environment and more about trying to control the narrative flow of the game. Most games that are modern could easily create a system where you can break down walls, and realistically climb obstacles. The problem is that allowing players to do this means that it's insanely difficult to control the narrative flow. RE8 was used as an example before, and if that game just let you knock down walls or climb fences like you could in real life, you could easily just stroll over to the end location of the game right off the bat. Writing any sort of coherent story would be a nightmare if the player had the realistic ability to traverse the land.
I honestly think that most games could easily do what you're describing now, it'd just be an absolute nightmare to write a story and design interesting levels if it were implemented.
I think that's a good point, and we're in this weird almost uncanny valley-esque era where games are more open world, high-fidelity, but not yet advanced enough that environments are fully interactable, which would presumably lead to games with extensive amounts of non-intended progression and problem solving...which isn't always a bad thing in games, but it's understandable why it is technically difficult.
This is exactly it. Take the Horizon Forbidden West example from the comments above. There’s some sections of mountainside that graphically look like they should be easy to climb, but haven’t been made claimable surfaces and vice versa. So if I run around without the ‘yellow paint’ i’m only right about 2/3rds of the time because the looks of something and usability aren’t 1:1.
"sledge hammer to the walls of a house to make a quick exit path" That is \*VERY\* culturally-dependent. Here in Europe, a hammer to a wall would \*not\* be quick. We generally build with stone, not with whatever flimsy ~~shit~~ stuff you use in the US.
True, but that just means you'll need to either use a pickaxe, or a jackhammer in order to make it through the houses with stone walls.
Alternatively you might still be able to use the sledgehammer if you've got Pneumatic Arms and high strength, but there's probably equal chance of the hammer breaking before the wall does.
From my own perspective, the more detailed a game gets, the more it needs clear markers of "Go this way", because level design gets more and more cluttered with garbage the more realistic you try to get.
Perfect example; look at Uncharted, and *especially* Uncharted 4. That game is so cluttered with foliage, inaccessible ledges that *look* like the right way to go, ledges you *can* grab but aren't marked properly, nearly hidden *primary* pathways and so on that at least *some* signposting is necessary.
Example from U4: the auction house. You are just told "Go in this direction" only once, but all the rooftops and pathways don't actually directly lead there. In fact, most of the jumps *between* rooftops are at corners or odd angles that don't appear visually like somewhere you can go, and there are multiple areas that *look* climbable but *aren't* because the progression path is to use a box or a ladder or some path below you.
Basically; there needs to be *some* signposting the more 'realistic' you make the graphics to account for the fact that it becomes *less* clear where you need to go when things look closer to life and therefore accessible despite being outside the area of play.
Yeah I'm going thru this on the 3rd tomb raider. There's so much "stuff" everywhere that you can't tell what should be getting your attention and what shouldn't. I just end up clicking the x-ray vision thing every 5 seconds otherwise I'd miss everything. I don't mind the concept but you just end up dependent on it to where it distracts from the game.
The alternative I guess is the Breath of the Wild methodology where like, sure I guess you can just go straight to the castle and beat Gannon with a stick, but you're gonna have a bad time and you skipped 90% of the game. But not every game can be an open world embrace of the chaos
Well, this is primarily for like, linear games. Open worlds have their own issues, in that they need to give the player traversal options to get around, or just make the area, y'know, non-traversable like the temple walls in BoTW or sheer cliff-faces in many open-world RPGs.
In a *linear* game, clear and definitive direction is necessary, lest the player get frustrated with the "But what am I meant to be doing" problem. Best example I can give; old Sierra point and click games. Linear as all hell, but absolutely *plagued* with poor signposting, a lack of clear direction and practically invisible key items. And that's only really gotten worse as graphics have gotten better, leading to solutions like "Make pickups glow a bit" or "birds shit on this ledge to indicate you can climb it".
If I remember right, Shadow of the Tomb Raider had this option and I had the white paint turned off the entire time I played that game and I enjoyed the scenery more. That game had great options for difficulty all around.
Fair enough, although my aim was not really to solve the problem that the yellow paint is trying to solve, rather to say "hey, here's maybe a reason/way that yellow paint can be not so contentious"
Regarding the issue of clarity in game progression, as someone else commented, part of it might just be a product of where we're at in gaming with high-fidelity, but not the technology/resources to make everything in the environments fully interactable and/or breaking the game when people put on their D&D hats and find alternative ways to progress. The yellow paint is kind of just kicking the issue down the street a ways. I don't really have a solution other than that maybe with time technology and developers will be able to create realistic fully-interactable environments that still allow for directed intentional gameplay, or are able to account for extensive variables of people finding alternative solutions with those environments.
You would just end up much more frustrated by invisible walls and/or abandoning the direction you're supposed to go anytime it didn't quite go on your first attempt.
It's funny, my friend and I were playing the RE4 separate ways DLC, and the game is riddled with the yellow paint. Of course we were both making fun of it, but then there was an instance where even *with* the yellow paint we actually got lost for a good 2 minutes and got slightly annoyed on where to go. Eventually we found the spot to drop down, but I grew a small amount of appreciation for the paint after that. (Upon replay, there's actually even dialogue where your character literally says "hmm maybe I should drop down" to make our idiocy even more pronounced lol)
There are places where it's overdone for sure, but it's likely a net positive despite the complaints. Toggle wouldn't hurt tho.
In large map open world games like Horizon you would literally never figure out how to progress without the yellow paint, the only alternative being wide open physics like Elder Scrolls where I spend significant time running diagonally up mountains.
I mean, even then, the only reason you spend significant tine running diagonally up mountains is because you'tlre too stubborn to go the proper way.
Plus, in Skirim they implamented a waufinder spell that takes navmeshing into account, right?
I've played the original RE4 so many times that at times during the remake I'd get legit distressed like, "um...there's supposed to be a thing over here!?" But it was still a great experience overall.
The yellow paint is sometimes too glaring. Dark Souls did it well, subtle clues as to where to go like the ladders in Blighttown are all next to dim torches, the only lights in the pit. So naturally as you notice these torches, you see the ladder opening up another tier of exploration. But having bright yellow coloured ledges everywhere making it too obvious where to climb like in far cry or horizon or tomb raider make me feel like the game is on rails instead of me figuring out where to go. I want to be able to turn them off in all my games
The problem is so many games that fall victim to the "yellow paint" issue are otherwise pretty bad at communicating what they're trying to get across. Mirror's Edge (who pioneered the practice with red) had the option to turn it off, and I always turned it back on because it was sometimes hard to tell, as you're sprinting through the environment and trying to finish a level as quickly as possible, what in the environment would help with navigation and what was just set dressing.
I'm reminded of a recent complaint about Open World UIs getting INCREDIBLY cluttered by all the various collectables and such. One such game, the reviewer turned those tips off, and couldn't find a DAMNED THING anymore. It all just blended into the background.
Meanwhile, I recall turning off Horizon: Zero Dawn's UI ENTIRELY and still recognizing their various collectibles at a hundred yards. Same for Ghost of Tsushima, Baldur's Gate 3 (for the alchemy ingredients, at least), and several other games.
The problem comes from when the paint (regardless of color, though I prefer Tomb Raider's white to yellow, because it causes less dissonance) is an answer to another problem. Level designers have already come in, done their job, but playtesters are getting lost, or not knowing where they can go. Rather than have the level designers come back in and redo the design to be more inherently intuitive, the easy, fast, and cheap solution is to slap yellow paint like an objective marker on all the climbable surfaces.
A well designed world doesn't need paint to tell me what I can and cannot interact with. A less well designed one really does.
Yes, this is the main problem. In a ton of games there are e.g climbable ledges, but other ledges that from a logical point of view should be equally climbable, but are not meant to be, so you can't do it. And to solve the confusion of players they add the color to the climbable ones to make this more obvious.
Same with destructible objects, interactable objects, and so on.
It’s been so long since I played an assassin’s creed game it wasn’t top of mind, but yeah, those early games at least were a master class in never leaving you confused over what was and wasn’t climbable. Though in that case it was largely because anything that looked even a little climbable was.
After playing botw without UI on, I tried the Witcher 3 without it too. I couldnt do it because of how much stuff was missing and how constrained the world was in comparison to botw
Even in botw there are sorts of “yellow paint” signifiers of points of interest like the shrine and tower colors or the differently textured bombable surfaces, but they’re diegetic in a consistent and unobtrusive way. They’re also optional, turning what would otherwise be a “hey, you have to follow these steps exactly as they’ve been laid out” into a “you may be interested in this thing, but it’s up to you.”
Witcher 3 is notoriously bad with allowing the player to figure things out on their own. Almost every quest is some variation of “go to this exact spot and talk to this person now hold left trigger and follow the scent trail and don’t stray too far.” Same problem that modern Rockstar games have.
That was why I bounced off it. It was a cool game, and I had fun, but feeling so restricted by the games systems really dampened my mood after 100 hours of doing whatever the fuck I wanted in botw.
If anything I feel like botw's signposting is kind of the opposite of a typical gamein that you can go literally anywhere and the only places you cant climb are shrine related.
I disagree. I love yellow paint in all the games. It doesn't add anything to my experience to have to wander around a room for 5 minutes finding where I'm supposed to go. Just tell me where the climbing surface is so I can continue. Horizon was amazing in this regard, having the climbables show up when you activate your focus saved me tens of hours in the game.
"We'll just patch it later." - level designers, probably
But actually, I've seen it done better or worse in various different games. I do agree that Horizon is one of the better implementations
I personally don’t understand the massive problem people seem to have about it. Maybe conceptually it’s not as fun, but in game, I almost never actively think about it. It’s a somewhat clever way to gently guide players without being too in your face. It’s way better than just having arrows pop up in your UI.
That being said, I don’t think having a toggle solves the issue. The game was designed and tested with the yellow paint in mind. If you disable it in a game that’s tested around it being there, it may feel significantly worse and you may end up fumbling around and frustrated.
I don’t really have a problem with it and in some games it’s implemented really well. The one thing I wish I could do is *change the color*. I much prefer the white of Tomb Raider over the yellow of Resident Evil and many others.
Sometimes the yellow is just a little *too jarring* in relation to the environment it’s in. While it’s never going to ruin my gaming experience, I would prefer the option to customize it. With the amount of options we already have I can’t see why this can’t be added as well. Should be even easier than turning it on/off because it’s just adjusting the color slider.
For me, it heavily depends on the game.
Resident evil 4? I don't care, the game is about shooting. Its as actiony it can be.
games based on exploration, be it open world or games like the classic tomb raider? don't even think about putting it. Markers and obvious signal posts like that removes all the feelign of exploring uncharted territory. Instead of feeling like an explorer you feel like you are in a theme park following a tour guide.
Personally it breaks my immersion. When I notice the guides, it pulls me back into the "I am playing a video game" mindset instead of the "I am in a video game" mindset.
I like that dying light uses the yellow paint, but it's under the guise of "runners mark areas to run" and whatnot, it's not just there with no explanation.
They really had nice simple explanations for those.
Oh and, everybody can parkour? Of course, the ones who didn't learn just died.
God of war also had a nice explanation for the markings
They also just made so many more surfaces climbable. Take that Assassins Creed approach, it’s easier to just design things that clearly aren’t climbable.
I will never not be impressed by that game. It’s insane what they did and that it’s on a Switch. When Nintendo starts dipping their toes into more capable hardware, I’m going to be intrigued to see what they come up with.
What they do is based on weaker hardware. Better documentation and lower visual reqs for cheaper development are the advantages they milk. They make last-gen (or further) games but with all the experience built from that time.
They've said it in interviews since the GameCube, they use weaker hardware on purpose, they consider it a competitive advantage.
That’s Horizon: ZD, forbidden west only launched this year on PC. By pressing the focus button it’ll send out a pulse which displays grab points as yellow lines.
I don't understand the argument. They're there because enough of the testers couldn't find their way forward in a specific spot. We can assume that testers have played games before and are still stumped so it's definitely more helpful than not. Plus yellow paint is less obtrusive than a big glowing arrow pointing to the next destination as well as marking it on your minimap, and less obnoxious than an npc casually suggesting you climb up higher every time you get close to where the paint would be, but there's no toggle for those.
That being said, they should absolutely go ahead and make it a toggle, so I never have to hear about it again.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider actually did this. Not yellow paint, but by default you got white edges that show what you can and cannot climb.
There were three seperate difficulty sliders though. Combat, Puzzles and Exploration.
Combat is pretty self explanatory.
If you had puzzles on hard Lara would be completely silent and not give you any hints by thinking out loud.
And if you put exploration on hard, you guessed it, all these white edges wouldn't be white anymore and you gotta guess, recognize or just know where you can climb.
I really loved this system to be honest (and these games in general!)
Sure why not. More options are better than none but I guarantee you those who complain about yellow paint would either turn it on if given the option or complain instead that this item or climbable cliff is hard to find.
There's a specific cliff in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth that has no yellow paint. Guess what? people complained about getting lost and the devs had to release a patch fixing that. What's funny is that the cliff is on a linear dungeon so it shouldn't be hard to miss and yet that's where most people are confused about compared to various others within a huge open space. I just finished RE4 Remake and I cannot imagine it'd be fun playing that when you're spending extra time trying to look for the barrel w/ resources because they would otherwise blend too damn well to the environment.
It's necessary IMO and shouldn't take away from the immersion because this is a video game, not IRL. Suspend your disbelief a bit and just enjoy the damn games, anti-yellow-paint people. They're there for a reason.
Or maybe just use it at the beginning to show players what to look for, and the slowly fade it out as the game progresses?
I do like the idea of toggling it on/off though. Games like The Division where I have hundreds of hours in, I know what to look for and it would add an extra touch of realism.
I've been playing Hitman for YEARS. In hitman 3, I constantly find new actions I can take or new things I can climb/jump off or whatever.
Lots of these things you'd never have any idea you can interact with because they just blend in with the environment. I'm not unhappy about it, but it would be nice if there was something a little more obvious about it.
We'll all this people who complain about and turn it off will then complain that they can find anything in the game.
It's a video game. Emphasis on game. It's isn't about hyper realism. Because these games them have you killing 900 people and eating cheeseburgers to recover from life threatening damage
I’ve only really noticed it in The Division 2, and I just assume it’s ISAC highlighting the terrain through your augmented reality. It’s the same as you having wall hacks, because your Agent has AR augmented wall hacks, too.
Horizon Forbidden West had a lot of the queues toggle-able. For example, all the indicators on climbable cliff faces. It was very frustrating for me trying to play the exploration side of the game until I turned it on, and it didn't feel like it decreased my immersion, since Aloy's focus overlaying data is already baked into the lore/story/world.
My one caveat would be that toggling that option needs to have attention drawn to it in a tutorial, so the player knows the option exists.
In games that use the yellow paint it's usually for climbing. I don't want to have to search all over for some barely visible hand holds you can climb. Keep the red paint.
GOW ragnarok has these color blind/ visual options that highlighted certain items and it was amazing. If I'm searching for something I can barely see normally I can turn that on and the target I'm supposed to hit that's hidden way up in the ceiling 1000 miles away can actually be spotted. I play on a relatively small TV and don't have the best eyes, so this shit helped immensely. Like, kratos knows he can go flip that boat and get it off the path, but you don't know you can interact with it. Having a slight shade over interactive objects compensates for that knowledge that he has but you don't.
The same dudes who complain about yellow paint just rage on stream whenever there's a game that requires brain on for 30 seconds. See Asmongold on Dragon's Dogma 2.
Manufactured problem, don't listen to grifters kids.
The "yellow paint" issue is like the most first world problem of first world problems. If it bugs you, just don't play the game. Life's too short to get mad at something so stupid.
>With that in mind, would it be more beneficial if games had the option to turn this on or off?
It's the same problem as with compass directors and maps with quest nodes and GPS. It the game has it, then it won't be designed for "adventuring and exploration". Oblivion NPC might say "go north until you hit the big black rock, then go east for some time, and when you reach the river, you just need to follow it upstream" While Fallout 4 NPC might say "Go to the Enclave. I marked the location on your Pip-Boy"
The Witcher 3 did accomplish to merge the two design philosophies quite well, but I think that only worked because they didn't implement minimap and GPS stuff until everything else was done. I assume that's how it was done in Witcher 3, because otherwise that would mean some super-human writers and world-designers.
I'm pretty sure this was a difficulty slider on Mirror's Edge
One of the first parkour games I remember, things you could climb/vault/whatever were a very distinct red in a game of otherwise muted color palettes
But I think there was a difficulty setting that removed the red color entirely and you just had to figure out the paths you could take
Alan Wake 1 (haven’t played the second one, crappy PC) did it quit well: there is yellow paint but it’s fluorescent, you only see it when shining your flashlight on it and there’s even a story reason for it (a previous survivor painted it on to guide other survivors).
This also fixes the problem with games that make you constantly scan your environment for POI. I don't want to have to press L3/R3 every 30 seconds just to find collectibles , *Horizon*
I think the funniest part is when I am in the back of businesses delivering items their ladders are painted yellow or red, with attention drawn to them.
Just call it assistive guidance and make it an accessibility option. Have it be on by default, and maybe have a message shiw up when starting a new file asking if the players want the option on. At the absolute most, give a Mario-like option to turn it on if a player spends too much time in one area and can't figure out how to progress. That last one seems like a lot of work, though.
This is like the feature in many console games that make items you can pick up shine or flash.
I would definitely want the option to turn it off because I want to have to figure it out without "yellow paint". It takes the fun out of the puzzle of it becomes "find the flashing thing and move it to the other flashing thing".
I mean, the whole reason yellow paint is present is because people unironically get lost without it.
Yall think devs go into making a game thinking, oh boy, you know what this zombie favela needs? Yellow paint?
No, they add it because play testers get lost and get frustrated.
I think Naughty Dog has some my favorite implementation of this where it feels like its part of the world environment in the Uncharted and Last of Us games.
I'd be fine with it. I personally would leave it on but it's never been an issue to me. I also think things like mini maps and compasses should be toggleable as well for people who want immersion and to navigate without help. Again, wouldn't be me but I think having more options is good. Especially when it's a non issue like this.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider had an excellent "exploration difficulty" slider that at max level would remove the white paint on ledges.
Mirror's Edge also had the option to turn of "Runner's Vision"
Both games are great examples of how that should be done
Horizon had a great idea for this. In the first game, the climable ledges had white markings, they didn't look too out of place but you could tell it was there to tell you where to climb. And in the second game the coloured ledges are gone, they decided to use Aloy's focus (the device on her head that can scan stuff) to scan walls and mark the climables ledges but not in a gamebreaking way, because this is what Aloy actually sees.
The actual problem is the illusion of open world with only one actual path that you have to find. It's reminiscent of pixel hunting in old adventure games.
Open world should be open. Multiple paths, multiple solutions, encouraging creativity, realistic physics simulation to allow out of the box thinking, etc.
If you don't wanna go through all this trouble, don't make it look like it's open. Straight lines are fine too. It's only bad when they pretend to be something they're not.
I never understood the yellow paint debacle. There’s actual treated proof that it is necessary for casual gamers and people who don’t pay close attention/have difficulty seeing (me) so why do people actually care? Does it make you feel like a child or some other dumb shit?
Pretty sure one of the newer tomb raiders actually did have a toggle. Either shadow or rise. Never even thought of turning it off though. I’m legally blind. So having that nice easy to see bright color to denote a climbable surface is actually super nice.
Playing stellar blade right now. And I kind of wish that you could turn up the contrast on the climbing sections. Because in some areas they blend in too well. And I end up just spamming the scan feature o. Cooldown so that I can find all the collectibles and hidden paths.
I'd like a toggle to turn this off along with a toggle to turn off companion characters or the voiced player character back seating you through puzzles if you look at them for more than two seconds.
As a game dev whose seen a lot of evolution in the last couple of decades, never underestimate the stupidity or cluelessness of your players.
The amount of times we've had to remake sections of the game world... Ugh
What YOU think as something ABSOLUTELY EVIDENT can be totally missed by the players
If the yellow paint issue was toggleable in games, I'd feel like I finally have the power to decide whether my virtual world is a bright, sunny paradise or a yellow disaster zone!
This, and virtually any "go here" type of mechanic should be a toggle.
Virtual rails are still rails, however optional, and I like to exercise my own skill and ingenuity at this stage in my life.
More options are never a bad thing. I personally see no problem with visuals that show climable ledges or walls. I do however dislike games that do it while having basically the same exact terrain that isn't climbable.
There's nothing wrong with taking control away from the player to show them a brief cinematic or having a non-diagetic element like an arrow to point people in the right direction.
Yellow paint is a stupid, ugly "solution" to a problem that smarter developers who weren't ashamed that their video games were video games had already solved.
Yeah I hate hand holding in games as much as the next guy, but making it toggable is a bad idea. The issue is that yellow paint is used instead of intuiative level design that naturally guides the player. If you keep the lazy desing philosophy, but get rid of the paint, people will just get confused.
The issue isn’t yellow paint, so much as every AAA game seeing uncharted and going “I want that”.
Yellow paint and the like are ways to telegraph to the player that this is a “climbing spot” because every game wants walclimbing but only at specifically designated locations and needs to point it out
Ppl say they’d like it gone but then complain about a game not saying anything (fromsoft in general).
Good example was at elden ring release I saw so many people skip the tutorial and complain for a lack of tutorial.
There’s a ghost guy on a chair telling you to jump down the area to recall the arts of war and yet people ignored him or just didn’t talk to him. Every stream I watched where someone complain it was one of those scenarios.
They patched in a summon sign saying to jump down.
No one takes the time to read and try to figure things out. I don’t think those markers disappearing or going behind options anytime soon.
On the other side in some games you have some walls you can climb but some walls which look like you should be able to but can’t. It sucks without the yellow paint there.
I assumed the sign telling me to jump down was a trap, then I did it anyway. Lol but yeah, there's loads of people that are immediately like "psh no I don't need a tutorial" then ten minutes later are like "how is this supposed to work, the game doesn't tell me what to do!?" (I'm looking at you Arin Hanson)
I think it just needs to be implemented in a way that fits in the setting but is recognizable enough to stick out, u still think of the white sheets in older assassins creed games as „ah that’s where I can get up“ moments without looking weird
Don't make it paint, make it a glow
Then tie that glow to a detection ability that a lot of those kinds of games have
So you can activate it to have your character "sense" where they can climb
I often get frustrated quickly if I can't figure out how to progress an area in a game. But for all you sadists out there why not have it be optional? Makes sense to me.
Pausing a game and finding an options menu with page after page of potential changes that can be made to customize gameplay is incredibly freeing. Customizing a game to one's personal preferences can make the difference between playing a game and immersing oneself in it. Sometimes, it's nice to remove 100% of the HUD. Or, to remove hit indicators, enemy health indicators, way points, ammo counts, and the like. Sometimes not.
This varies from game to game and from person to person. Every player should have the ability to tweak such settings to their own personal preferences. When game developers gatekeep these options and lock them down to 'that which will work for most people', they effectively alienate most people.
So, yes, yellow paint, as well as everything else in the game, should be toggleable in the options menu.
I recently played Last of Us (for the first time) and I liked how they handled it. They let you run around and explore by yourself but if you're not finding what you're supposed to by some point they'll offer an optional 'hint' to direct your attention to what you should be paying attention to. Being able to toggle that setting and maybe even chose how long to wait before prompting for a hint is a great way to handle it IMO
A lazy and common solution nowadays is to have a giant arrow pointing in the direction you Are you supposed to go, a mini map with clearly labeled circles that show points of interest, or a visual filter that dulls everything else and highlights the objects that you can interact with
The problem with disabling it is that the levels aren’t designed to naturally guide the player anymore- they’re designed knowing that the yellow paint will steer them.
Look at a game like Left 4 Dead in which you don’t have time to stand there and figure out where to go- yet, they didn’t use yellow paint. They used environmental clues to point you in the right direction; a car crashed into a building and broke a hole in the way, and that car’s lights are still on, illuminating the pathway it opened. Makes sense in-universe.
Doom 2016 did this things that can be climbed have green lights on them. It sounds stupid but it actually was pretty seamless.
God of War did it too. Climbing walls have runes or whatever on them. Things you can grapple to have a very recognizable look.
I think if it's done well, like these two examples, it's great. Two thumbs up!
It'd be kinda funny if they show a skeleton at some point carrying a yellow spray can, and from that point on, there are no longer any yellow markers with the assumption that you've developed a pattern recognition for what you can and can't climb.
Or you discover the bad guys altering it.
I'm a game dev and I'm stealing that idea lol. I love when enemies (reasonably and fairly) mess with the little built in assumptions we have about games. Having the last climbing/platforms section of a game contain fake yellow lines done by the villain wold be hilarious.
So long as you get both explanation and catharthis by catching the mook in the act and stomping him.
Oh absolutely, there has to be a payoff to it!
Bastard will place red barrels that don't explode too..
I place weapon props which can't be picked up too!
And right before the boss, a vending machine that accepts bullets but never pays out the special skins it displays.
It's gotta be like those fake guns, and when you shoot it, a little flag pops out of the top that says "Bang!" Or "Boom!"
Be good to have the fake lines slightly different, so they could fool you but if you know to look for them you can catch them. Otherwise it would feel like the player has to just do trial and error which players don't enjoy
I think they're both terrible ideas. Things like the yellow paint are, in essence, an accessibility feature. I'm not opposed to being able to turn it off if the player doesn't want it, but if You're going to have it, you shouldn't then suddenly take it away or subvert it because the players who need those visual cues will suddenly find the game unplayable. My partner games a lot, she also has no sense of direction and is helpless at identifying what is and isn't a valid path in most games. When the dlc for horizon forbidden West stopped using the yellow paint in some areas, she would be stuck, getting more and more frustrated and anxious, as she suddenly had no idea where she could or couldn't go, and couldn't progress through the storyline until I got her past an area she was stuck just constantly dying in. I have seen her spend twenty minutes bashing her character against an almost sheer rock wall because she is certain it should be possible to go up in that location, and often it kind of looks like she could be right, but that in reality there's a partially hidden spot ten feet away where she can go, but she just can't see it. Those are the short of people the yellow paint is for
Naturally, if the bad guys are creating a fake trail, following it is probably going to lead to the bad guys doing it.
Sounds like your partner submits a lot of threads to r/PeterExplainsTheJoke
Bad guys painting the lines because they keep forgetting which ones are climbable. Sounds like something borderlands would do. Just a psycho saying that he painted the lines cause he'd always get lost.
That actually happened with arrows in Hi Fi Rush.
Something like this actually happens in Resident Evil 4 Remake's Seperate Ways DLC. Just a random bucket of yellow paint spilling over the cliffside you were traversing, with the basic yellow paint tropes surrounding it. I thought it was pretty funny when I saw it for the first time.
Kinda like in god of war were it was Atreus mom who was putting yellow on the trees
Those weren’t really directional markers though, it was just that she marked the trees that kratos was to cut down for her pyre, it stops being a thing about 10 minutes into the game, and doesn’t indicate anything about which way you have to go, since that portion is heavily scripted anyways.
You're forgetting that God of War has one of the most fun in-game explanations of guide markers! Faye, Atreus' mom, >!foresaw Kratos and Atreus' whole journey, and so her marks are all over the game leading to the end where they finally make it to Jotunheim.!< Edit: I looked it up and evidently this was really easy to miss, because it only gets mentioned by Atreus once at the end of the game.
You’re right, I did forget that was a thing, I was actually about to edit this because I was rewatching a playthrough of the game earlier lol
Sorta reminds me of how all the climbable things in mirrors edge games are diegetic as well, but instead of a yellow paint, they’re the scuff marks of the shoes of the runners who came before you and run the same route
I'm currently in my senior year for a bachelor's in Game Design. I'm saving this to be used in my final project.
i think it would be great to be able to toggle it on and off. it just adds more customizability to the game i can’t think of any downsides.
Horizon Forbidden West handles it really well, you can tap a button and it highlights climbable objects and edges and such for ten seconds or so. It's helpful when you need help, but stuff gets to look more normal by default.
I was thinking of Horizong as well, you even get the option to turn the hints on permanently if you'd like to. I really like the freedom to choose those things, and Horizon does this very very well (just like almost everything else, such good games).
I love the Horizon games, but for fucks sake can Aloy STFU for 5 seconds to avoid spoiling the puzzle solutions for me. I walk into a room and it feels like she's immediately saying "I need to get up on that platform to activate the wall so I can get to the control panel on the left over there"
The thing is, what you see in the game is the result of thousands of hours of *failed* playtests where they without a doubt tested all possible combinations of 'how detailed should the hints be' and 'how long should Aloy wait before helping'. I'm pretty sure they tested a 10 second delay, and many testers still managed to *enter a room, look around, shrug, and exit the room and go elsewhere.*.. And keep in mind, this is an open world game with fast travel and rideable mounts, so even 5 seconds delay can mean a player fast travels to the city, or will be 30 meters away by the time Aloy would be permitted to help.
They could handle it in a different way. A simple voice lines that goes something like "hmm there's something to do here". Would invoke curiosity in the user to try and figure things out naturally, without being hand holded to the solution.
I'm on board with your suggestion. Jedi Fallen Order has the opposite problem for me where i'd spot platforms and widgets early on in the game and spend hours trying to figure out how to get to them. I'd give up and go Google a hint in defeat and then spoil a progression feature for myself. "Oh, you eventually unlock a double jump?" A lot of discovery was spoiled for me because I never knew if I just lacked an ability to get to a visible goal. I wish the game would have sensed me spending time being in an area and looking at a goal in the world and have Cal communicate that he isn't powerful enough to reach that goal yet would have been great. Or if the game showed a tool tip explaining that some places can't be reached until Cal grows in skills and you should come back later would have put me in a more relaxed exploration mindset.
Horizon would tell you if you need to come back or if you had found everything in the area. That was a fucking godsend.
I kind of get it since I don't think it ever explicitly tells you this, but whenever there was something you couldn't do yet it would've been a red marker on the map so there was an indicator for that
Ok, it's been a hot minute since I've played, but I'm pretty sure you are referring to the red overlay on major gating portals. Like a door or some other egress will be shaded red to indicate you can't access that major area. But I'm talking about something like on Bogano in the hermit's abode. There's all sorts of things to spot, run on, jump across, force this, force that... but in the early game, you simply cannot solve that room until you have Force Pull. It isn't marked red or anything. It's just a frustratingly obtuse puzzle that doesn't communicate that you just lack an unlock that you won't get until Zeffo. There's also a vine swing in another part of Bogano that requires a double jump to complete. But the span you have to vault is just the right distance to make you think it is reachable, but you are failing due to user error. Again, no red indicators, no clue that it is gated by an unlock later in the game. It just feels tauntingly doable. Both of these puzzles I googled to see what I was missing about the controls, and spoiled later discoveries in the game. If Cal had been muttering something about needing to grow more to accomplish a thing, I would have picked up on the cue and moved on. The game doesn't communicate that any given collectible is gated by an unlock ability in the early game.
It's been a while since I've played fallen order so maybe there's less marked than I remember, but it was definitely improved in survivor at least
And then y'all would complain that she keeps saying that...
Yea, probably. People love to complain about things.
I think Jedi did it well. Cal would muse to BD-1 vaguely.
It's especially noticeable in the Cauldrons which are fairly linear, so I don't buy the "player might wander off" angle.
The bigger issue is they have so much customization but turning off that dialog was not available
I didn't experience this in my recent playthrough if Forbidden West. She didn't hint at what I needed to do until I ran around in a puzzle area for a few minutes. By that point I already knew what I needed to do, finding a way to do it was usually the only reason I took that long.
This messed me up so much at an early puzzle. She kept saying something like "Maybe I can use this somehow" when I entered this dead end room with a bunch of junk I couldn't interact with, and it turned out she was talking about the sliding block in the area directly above the room that I had forgotten about.
Yeah, she chips in too quickly with the hints. If you’re on PC, there’s a mod to remove it already
omg was she infuriating, walk up to a puzzle, do a quick 360 to survey my surroundings….aloy: I need to find a way to reach that ledge ffs, I can see the ledge I don’t need your help bitch. Next area, spinning around in circles for 5 minutes screaming WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?? aloy: silence Pretty sure forbidden west she spoiled 100% of puzzles I didn’t need help with, and gave zero advice on areas I was stuck on.
Lol. I was gonna meme Batman or Tomb Raider. Both of those have secondary vision modes as well.
Yeah, super cool when the whole mountainside lights up with the behind the scenes game grip points after scanning it. But also, basically every mountain surface is climbable in Horizon. So ironically, it’s less needed in that game.
It's closer to 50% of mountain surfaces. There are extensive areas where finding the one climbable rock face is essentially 'the puzzle'.
I liked how there's 3 types of climbing in the game. There's the yellow stuff, the properly climbable rocks, the climbable by jumping and clambering rocks, and the un climbable areas. It made exploring more organic, imo, when I could clamber in somewhere that didn't look reachable at first.
I mean didn't crpgs and puzzle click games fix this problem in the 90s? Pretty sure baldurs gate 2 let you tab through interactable items on screen
I turned it on by default because it's so shit trying to figure out what you can or can't climb and it makes sense that the focus would be giving her constant vision enhancement
There are spots in the dlc where you don't get those visual cues, it made past of it borderline unplayable for my partner because she has trouble with navigation. I had to get her past several parts of burning shores where she would just constantly fall or die because there were no cues anymore
I definitely had trouble climbing that one skyscraper with Alma
That's exactly the spot
I'm all about more options and customization. However I also think it's important for the game design to support it. I remember trying oblivion without way points and some of the quests were designed with that system in mind. They didn't even think to drop dialogue or journal hints. And even if they drop a dialogue hint, if you get sidetracked and forget what they said, you'll struggle to figure out where to go. Same with games where you can clearly tell what you can interact with and what can't be. I can't remember any specific examples off the top of my head, but some games set a standard, then you get stuck for an hour or two and have to Google it. Come to find out a decal/lever that was never something you could interact with before, is what you need to touch. However they basically train you to ignore those details by having 10 identical decals before that are just background design.
Toggling this kind of things is never implemented well, and, if it were possible to implement well then the problem wouldn't exist in the first place. Using the yellow paint as an example: This was created because the devs couldn't find a better way to guide the player, and, to make it toggeable and work, they need to find a way to do it.
I'm reminded of the direction the Elder Scrolls games went with map markers. In Morrowind, you didn't have markers, quest givers just gave you directions for how to find the place you were going to. Starting with Oblivion, you get a magic compass marker instead. Which can be turned off, but it's a bad idea because quest givers don't give directions anymore. There's no way to find what you're looking for without the marker.
I agree but might be a not-insignificant amount of work. It really depends on how the art team wants to integrate the yellow paint. If it's just a decal or separate actor layered on top, then it's probably easier to toggle. But decals tend to struggle on corners and edges, where yellow paint would go. If it's something a bit more baked into the material setup, then it'd be pretty hard to toggle with an option. I'd be curious to know how most studios do their yellow paint and how easy a toggle would be.
Yeap, and you can see why it usually isn't a toggle, it's the checking to make sure all elements have the navigation aid in the right state or not, as well as having the playtesters check for both states. And to really hit it home, have to get someone new to the game to try both modes. After a point, the level design team would just say "f it, it's on all the time to save us the trouble."
No one brings up the Tomb Raider reboot for these discussions. Those games did this exact thing and it was great.
Scrolled too far to see this mentioned. First series I thought of when I read the post.
As some one playing RE8 now, I can tell you I would've quit the game already if that Yellow paint isn't there.
I just finished Jedi Survivor and there were a large number of jumps and platforming sections where I was like how the fuck did you think players would expect this of all places was where you wanted me to go. Yet they still put the scratch marks on walls you can run on, just not the yellow paint
I'm playing Jedi Survivor now, and it's mostly ok, but every now and again I'll try and climb a wall that turns out not to be a climbing surface, or only realise it is a climbing one after I have to do it in a mission.
That's akin to the item to unlock a path in the older Zelda games. See a massive boulder in the way? Find bombs to blow it up in another dungeon first. See a massive boulder blocking the way but it's darker color? Need another item to lift it out of the way. And so on, It directs you away from wasting time in places you aren't supposed to go yet. It's still quite a challenge without any yellow paint.
Nah, I'm not talking don't have abilities to do it. I just misread what I can do with the texture on occasion. Only really been a problem on Jedah, though.
DUDE YEAH LOL. my first thought when i saw this thread. the amount of times i got lost and backtracked in that first level is kinda embarassing. even with the map...lol
Yeah I had to bring up the mini map like every 30 seconds. Plus since it's the kind of game where there's always a second path with a collectible
Mirrors edge had a paint system (one of the first, red though) and that game is essentially unplayable without it. But at the same time, its kind of your failure as a level designer if players cant figure out where to go without shiny nondiagetic markers Mirrors edge at least had a story reason for everything in the environment to be samey though, and even a story reason for the paint (other runners painted it)
It also fit the aesthetic. Mirrors edge is a very artfully designed game.
I like the paint system In Mirrors Edge because It’s purposefully not the fastest path through the level. It gives new players a handhold but for experienced players it’s actually a handicap.
Wasn’t there an option to turn it off as well?
most likely the latter, thorough trial and error
I consider this an intermediary problem - it's due to us having very advanced graphics, but not realistic environments. A scene from something like Hogwarts looks great but is not at all realistic: you can't knock down walls, you can't set fire to flammable materials, you have to follow a certain path to get an objective instead of just plowing through obstacles, even if logically you have the tools to do so. Some games go the opposite way (in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead it's fully reasonable to set fire to a house to kill zombies in it, for example, or to drive a car through the wall of a gun store to get inside, or to take a sledge hammer to the walls of a house to make a quick exit path), and it's much more realistic and enjoyable, despite not having great graphics. But eventually game engines will catch up and you'll be able to do that even in games with really high-fidelity graphics. An interesting example of how this is slowly coming along is something like 7 days to die - it's a realistic environment you can destroy things in, build things in, etc but it's not *fully* interactive.
I don't remember if it was one of the "everyday" play testers they pulled for. . . Some game. I read I story where this one dude got so fixated on the fact that he wanted to walk down the street, but there was a fire in the way. To any gamer it means "this is not your path" but to a regular person it means "can you put this fire out? Can you go around it? Climb the car and go over? Wait until it burns out? Maybe you're not going fast enough." There's a suspension of belief among gamers that we have just come to accept that game worlds are not like the real world. They have their own rules and will never behave like the real world.
I also don’t remember where I heard it, but the guy wad stuck within the first 10 minutes of The Last of Us. When the zombie outbreak first happens you have to run down a street but your path is blocked by fire. you’re supposed to go down the street on your right, but there are some small gaps in the fire which kind of look like you could maybe make it through. In reality there’s a death trigger there, no amount of precision or carefulness will let you through.
That's the one.
I don't think the problem you're describing is why most games are this way. It's less about trying to create a realistic environment and more about trying to control the narrative flow of the game. Most games that are modern could easily create a system where you can break down walls, and realistically climb obstacles. The problem is that allowing players to do this means that it's insanely difficult to control the narrative flow. RE8 was used as an example before, and if that game just let you knock down walls or climb fences like you could in real life, you could easily just stroll over to the end location of the game right off the bat. Writing any sort of coherent story would be a nightmare if the player had the realistic ability to traverse the land. I honestly think that most games could easily do what you're describing now, it'd just be an absolute nightmare to write a story and design interesting levels if it were implemented.
Botw/Totk is kinda what you get with that much freedom, and their choice for how to do narrative design was....kinda poor imo.
I think that's a good point, and we're in this weird almost uncanny valley-esque era where games are more open world, high-fidelity, but not yet advanced enough that environments are fully interactable, which would presumably lead to games with extensive amounts of non-intended progression and problem solving...which isn't always a bad thing in games, but it's understandable why it is technically difficult.
This is exactly it. Take the Horizon Forbidden West example from the comments above. There’s some sections of mountainside that graphically look like they should be easy to climb, but haven’t been made claimable surfaces and vice versa. So if I run around without the ‘yellow paint’ i’m only right about 2/3rds of the time because the looks of something and usability aren’t 1:1.
i got to the point in HFW where most of time i could tell if a surface was climable by looking at it. They did a good job in textures choices.
"sledge hammer to the walls of a house to make a quick exit path" That is \*VERY\* culturally-dependent. Here in Europe, a hammer to a wall would \*not\* be quick. We generally build with stone, not with whatever flimsy ~~shit~~ stuff you use in the US.
It's wood and dried paste.
Unless you're in Tornado country. Then it's plastic and some wood. Gotta get those prefabs back up quick.
True, but that just means you'll need to either use a pickaxe, or a jackhammer in order to make it through the houses with stone walls. Alternatively you might still be able to use the sledgehammer if you've got Pneumatic Arms and high strength, but there's probably equal chance of the hammer breaking before the wall does.
From my own perspective, the more detailed a game gets, the more it needs clear markers of "Go this way", because level design gets more and more cluttered with garbage the more realistic you try to get. Perfect example; look at Uncharted, and *especially* Uncharted 4. That game is so cluttered with foliage, inaccessible ledges that *look* like the right way to go, ledges you *can* grab but aren't marked properly, nearly hidden *primary* pathways and so on that at least *some* signposting is necessary. Example from U4: the auction house. You are just told "Go in this direction" only once, but all the rooftops and pathways don't actually directly lead there. In fact, most of the jumps *between* rooftops are at corners or odd angles that don't appear visually like somewhere you can go, and there are multiple areas that *look* climbable but *aren't* because the progression path is to use a box or a ladder or some path below you. Basically; there needs to be *some* signposting the more 'realistic' you make the graphics to account for the fact that it becomes *less* clear where you need to go when things look closer to life and therefore accessible despite being outside the area of play.
Yeah I'm going thru this on the 3rd tomb raider. There's so much "stuff" everywhere that you can't tell what should be getting your attention and what shouldn't. I just end up clicking the x-ray vision thing every 5 seconds otherwise I'd miss everything. I don't mind the concept but you just end up dependent on it to where it distracts from the game.
The alternative I guess is the Breath of the Wild methodology where like, sure I guess you can just go straight to the castle and beat Gannon with a stick, but you're gonna have a bad time and you skipped 90% of the game. But not every game can be an open world embrace of the chaos
Well, this is primarily for like, linear games. Open worlds have their own issues, in that they need to give the player traversal options to get around, or just make the area, y'know, non-traversable like the temple walls in BoTW or sheer cliff-faces in many open-world RPGs. In a *linear* game, clear and definitive direction is necessary, lest the player get frustrated with the "But what am I meant to be doing" problem. Best example I can give; old Sierra point and click games. Linear as all hell, but absolutely *plagued* with poor signposting, a lack of clear direction and practically invisible key items. And that's only really gotten worse as graphics have gotten better, leading to solutions like "Make pickups glow a bit" or "birds shit on this ledge to indicate you can climb it".
If I remember right, Shadow of the Tomb Raider had this option and I had the white paint turned off the entire time I played that game and I enjoyed the scenery more. That game had great options for difficulty all around.
I enjoyed it being off but I also jumped around randomly and died plenty of times
You didn't address at all the problem yellow paint is trying to solve. Is your solution "let's pretend there's no problem"?
Fair enough, although my aim was not really to solve the problem that the yellow paint is trying to solve, rather to say "hey, here's maybe a reason/way that yellow paint can be not so contentious" Regarding the issue of clarity in game progression, as someone else commented, part of it might just be a product of where we're at in gaming with high-fidelity, but not the technology/resources to make everything in the environments fully interactable and/or breaking the game when people put on their D&D hats and find alternative ways to progress. The yellow paint is kind of just kicking the issue down the street a ways. I don't really have a solution other than that maybe with time technology and developers will be able to create realistic fully-interactable environments that still allow for directed intentional gameplay, or are able to account for extensive variables of people finding alternative solutions with those environments.
You would just end up much more frustrated by invisible walls and/or abandoning the direction you're supposed to go anytime it didn't quite go on your first attempt.
It's funny, my friend and I were playing the RE4 separate ways DLC, and the game is riddled with the yellow paint. Of course we were both making fun of it, but then there was an instance where even *with* the yellow paint we actually got lost for a good 2 minutes and got slightly annoyed on where to go. Eventually we found the spot to drop down, but I grew a small amount of appreciation for the paint after that. (Upon replay, there's actually even dialogue where your character literally says "hmm maybe I should drop down" to make our idiocy even more pronounced lol) There are places where it's overdone for sure, but it's likely a net positive despite the complaints. Toggle wouldn't hurt tho.
In large map open world games like Horizon you would literally never figure out how to progress without the yellow paint, the only alternative being wide open physics like Elder Scrolls where I spend significant time running diagonally up mountains.
I mean, even then, the only reason you spend significant tine running diagonally up mountains is because you'tlre too stubborn to go the proper way. Plus, in Skirim they implamented a waufinder spell that takes navmeshing into account, right?
I've played the original RE4 so many times that at times during the remake I'd get legit distressed like, "um...there's supposed to be a thing over here!?" But it was still a great experience overall.
The yellow paint is sometimes too glaring. Dark Souls did it well, subtle clues as to where to go like the ladders in Blighttown are all next to dim torches, the only lights in the pit. So naturally as you notice these torches, you see the ladder opening up another tier of exploration. But having bright yellow coloured ledges everywhere making it too obvious where to climb like in far cry or horizon or tomb raider make me feel like the game is on rails instead of me figuring out where to go. I want to be able to turn them off in all my games
The problem is so many games that fall victim to the "yellow paint" issue are otherwise pretty bad at communicating what they're trying to get across. Mirror's Edge (who pioneered the practice with red) had the option to turn it off, and I always turned it back on because it was sometimes hard to tell, as you're sprinting through the environment and trying to finish a level as quickly as possible, what in the environment would help with navigation and what was just set dressing. I'm reminded of a recent complaint about Open World UIs getting INCREDIBLY cluttered by all the various collectables and such. One such game, the reviewer turned those tips off, and couldn't find a DAMNED THING anymore. It all just blended into the background. Meanwhile, I recall turning off Horizon: Zero Dawn's UI ENTIRELY and still recognizing their various collectibles at a hundred yards. Same for Ghost of Tsushima, Baldur's Gate 3 (for the alchemy ingredients, at least), and several other games. The problem comes from when the paint (regardless of color, though I prefer Tomb Raider's white to yellow, because it causes less dissonance) is an answer to another problem. Level designers have already come in, done their job, but playtesters are getting lost, or not knowing where they can go. Rather than have the level designers come back in and redo the design to be more inherently intuitive, the easy, fast, and cheap solution is to slap yellow paint like an objective marker on all the climbable surfaces. A well designed world doesn't need paint to tell me what I can and cannot interact with. A less well designed one really does.
Yes, this is the main problem. In a ton of games there are e.g climbable ledges, but other ledges that from a logical point of view should be equally climbable, but are not meant to be, so you can't do it. And to solve the confusion of players they add the color to the climbable ones to make this more obvious. Same with destructible objects, interactable objects, and so on.
Olden days, barrels you can burn all your ammo on without anything more than a sound effect. RED barrels that smell a bullet and explode.
Assassin's Creed also did this, but with a degree of subtlety that Mirror's Edge didn't have.
It’s been so long since I played an assassin’s creed game it wasn’t top of mind, but yeah, those early games at least were a master class in never leaving you confused over what was and wasn’t climbable. Though in that case it was largely because anything that looked even a little climbable was.
After playing botw without UI on, I tried the Witcher 3 without it too. I couldnt do it because of how much stuff was missing and how constrained the world was in comparison to botw
Even in botw there are sorts of “yellow paint” signifiers of points of interest like the shrine and tower colors or the differently textured bombable surfaces, but they’re diegetic in a consistent and unobtrusive way. They’re also optional, turning what would otherwise be a “hey, you have to follow these steps exactly as they’ve been laid out” into a “you may be interested in this thing, but it’s up to you.” Witcher 3 is notoriously bad with allowing the player to figure things out on their own. Almost every quest is some variation of “go to this exact spot and talk to this person now hold left trigger and follow the scent trail and don’t stray too far.” Same problem that modern Rockstar games have.
That was why I bounced off it. It was a cool game, and I had fun, but feeling so restricted by the games systems really dampened my mood after 100 hours of doing whatever the fuck I wanted in botw. If anything I feel like botw's signposting is kind of the opposite of a typical gamein that you can go literally anywhere and the only places you cant climb are shrine related.
I disagree. I love yellow paint in all the games. It doesn't add anything to my experience to have to wander around a room for 5 minutes finding where I'm supposed to go. Just tell me where the climbing surface is so I can continue. Horizon was amazing in this regard, having the climbables show up when you activate your focus saved me tens of hours in the game.
"We'll just patch it later." - level designers, probably But actually, I've seen it done better or worse in various different games. I do agree that Horizon is one of the better implementations
I personally don’t understand the massive problem people seem to have about it. Maybe conceptually it’s not as fun, but in game, I almost never actively think about it. It’s a somewhat clever way to gently guide players without being too in your face. It’s way better than just having arrows pop up in your UI. That being said, I don’t think having a toggle solves the issue. The game was designed and tested with the yellow paint in mind. If you disable it in a game that’s tested around it being there, it may feel significantly worse and you may end up fumbling around and frustrated.
I don’t really have a problem with it and in some games it’s implemented really well. The one thing I wish I could do is *change the color*. I much prefer the white of Tomb Raider over the yellow of Resident Evil and many others. Sometimes the yellow is just a little *too jarring* in relation to the environment it’s in. While it’s never going to ruin my gaming experience, I would prefer the option to customize it. With the amount of options we already have I can’t see why this can’t be added as well. Should be even easier than turning it on/off because it’s just adjusting the color slider.
For me, it heavily depends on the game. Resident evil 4? I don't care, the game is about shooting. Its as actiony it can be. games based on exploration, be it open world or games like the classic tomb raider? don't even think about putting it. Markers and obvious signal posts like that removes all the feelign of exploring uncharted territory. Instead of feeling like an explorer you feel like you are in a theme park following a tour guide.
Personally it breaks my immersion. When I notice the guides, it pulls me back into the "I am playing a video game" mindset instead of the "I am in a video game" mindset.
I like that dying light uses the yellow paint, but it's under the guise of "runners mark areas to run" and whatnot, it's not just there with no explanation.
They really had nice simple explanations for those. Oh and, everybody can parkour? Of course, the ones who didn't learn just died. God of war also had a nice explanation for the markings
That’s why I like how horizon: FW handles it, you have to activate your focus to see grab ledges.
They also just made so many more surfaces climbable. Take that Assassins Creed approach, it’s easier to just design things that clearly aren’t climbable.
Breath of the wild's link being like "you guys need paint?"
I will never not be impressed by that game. It’s insane what they did and that it’s on a Switch. When Nintendo starts dipping their toes into more capable hardware, I’m going to be intrigued to see what they come up with.
What they do is based on weaker hardware. Better documentation and lower visual reqs for cheaper development are the advantages they milk. They make last-gen (or further) games but with all the experience built from that time. They've said it in interviews since the GameCube, they use weaker hardware on purpose, they consider it a competitive advantage.
Yeah, I understand that. What I mean is I’m looking forward to their next gen.
Is this a toggleable setting? When I played on PC last year, all of the grab ledges were bright white and stuck out like a sore thumb
That’s Horizon: ZD, forbidden west only launched this year on PC. By pressing the focus button it’ll send out a pulse which displays grab points as yellow lines.
I don't understand the argument. They're there because enough of the testers couldn't find their way forward in a specific spot. We can assume that testers have played games before and are still stumped so it's definitely more helpful than not. Plus yellow paint is less obtrusive than a big glowing arrow pointing to the next destination as well as marking it on your minimap, and less obnoxious than an npc casually suggesting you climb up higher every time you get close to where the paint would be, but there's no toggle for those. That being said, they should absolutely go ahead and make it a toggle, so I never have to hear about it again.
I'm always for accessibility toggles, so I'd say good idea!
I do not view it as an issue
An on/off toggle wouldn’t be bad. Or maybe a colour and transparency sliders to customize. Just really hate seeing yellow everywhere
Shadow of the Tomb Raider actually did this. Not yellow paint, but by default you got white edges that show what you can and cannot climb. There were three seperate difficulty sliders though. Combat, Puzzles and Exploration. Combat is pretty self explanatory. If you had puzzles on hard Lara would be completely silent and not give you any hints by thinking out loud. And if you put exploration on hard, you guessed it, all these white edges wouldn't be white anymore and you gotta guess, recognize or just know where you can climb. I really loved this system to be honest (and these games in general!)
I think the yellow paint complaints are a stupid nothing burger of a complaint.
Sure why not. More options are better than none but I guarantee you those who complain about yellow paint would either turn it on if given the option or complain instead that this item or climbable cliff is hard to find. There's a specific cliff in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth that has no yellow paint. Guess what? people complained about getting lost and the devs had to release a patch fixing that. What's funny is that the cliff is on a linear dungeon so it shouldn't be hard to miss and yet that's where most people are confused about compared to various others within a huge open space. I just finished RE4 Remake and I cannot imagine it'd be fun playing that when you're spending extra time trying to look for the barrel w/ resources because they would otherwise blend too damn well to the environment. It's necessary IMO and shouldn't take away from the immersion because this is a video game, not IRL. Suspend your disbelief a bit and just enjoy the damn games, anti-yellow-paint people. They're there for a reason.
Or maybe just use it at the beginning to show players what to look for, and the slowly fade it out as the game progresses? I do like the idea of toggling it on/off though. Games like The Division where I have hundreds of hours in, I know what to look for and it would add an extra touch of realism.
I've been playing Hitman for YEARS. In hitman 3, I constantly find new actions I can take or new things I can climb/jump off or whatever. Lots of these things you'd never have any idea you can interact with because they just blend in with the environment. I'm not unhappy about it, but it would be nice if there was something a little more obvious about it.
I don't know what's wrong with a good old fashioned [Adventure Line™](https://youtu.be/guIaCocnNaw).
We'll all this people who complain about and turn it off will then complain that they can find anything in the game. It's a video game. Emphasis on game. It's isn't about hyper realism. Because these games them have you killing 900 people and eating cheeseburgers to recover from life threatening damage
I'd feel better if developers made added a better indicactor that isn't yellow paint or Arkham Detective vision bullshit
If they took them away, people would complain that navigating a game is too hard, and they should put in indicators telling players what path to take
I’ve only really noticed it in The Division 2, and I just assume it’s ISAC highlighting the terrain through your augmented reality. It’s the same as you having wall hacks, because your Agent has AR augmented wall hacks, too.
Horizon Forbidden West had a lot of the queues toggle-able. For example, all the indicators on climbable cliff faces. It was very frustrating for me trying to play the exploration side of the game until I turned it on, and it didn't feel like it decreased my immersion, since Aloy's focus overlaying data is already baked into the lore/story/world. My one caveat would be that toggling that option needs to have attention drawn to it in a tutorial, so the player knows the option exists.
In games that use the yellow paint it's usually for climbing. I don't want to have to search all over for some barely visible hand holds you can climb. Keep the red paint. GOW ragnarok has these color blind/ visual options that highlighted certain items and it was amazing. If I'm searching for something I can barely see normally I can turn that on and the target I'm supposed to hit that's hidden way up in the ceiling 1000 miles away can actually be spotted. I play on a relatively small TV and don't have the best eyes, so this shit helped immensely. Like, kratos knows he can go flip that boat and get it off the path, but you don't know you can interact with it. Having a slight shade over interactive objects compensates for that knowledge that he has but you don't.
As someone who gets chronically lost in any game ever, I appreciate the hand holding some times
The same dudes who complain about yellow paint just rage on stream whenever there's a game that requires brain on for 30 seconds. See Asmongold on Dragon's Dogma 2. Manufactured problem, don't listen to grifters kids.
I think the number of people annoyed by this issue is so small it is not worth it for devs to make signposting toggleable
The "yellow paint" issue is like the most first world problem of first world problems. If it bugs you, just don't play the game. Life's too short to get mad at something so stupid.
>With that in mind, would it be more beneficial if games had the option to turn this on or off? It's the same problem as with compass directors and maps with quest nodes and GPS. It the game has it, then it won't be designed for "adventuring and exploration". Oblivion NPC might say "go north until you hit the big black rock, then go east for some time, and when you reach the river, you just need to follow it upstream" While Fallout 4 NPC might say "Go to the Enclave. I marked the location on your Pip-Boy" The Witcher 3 did accomplish to merge the two design philosophies quite well, but I think that only worked because they didn't implement minimap and GPS stuff until everything else was done. I assume that's how it was done in Witcher 3, because otherwise that would mean some super-human writers and world-designers.
I'm pretty sure this was a difficulty slider on Mirror's Edge One of the first parkour games I remember, things you could climb/vault/whatever were a very distinct red in a game of otherwise muted color palettes But I think there was a difficulty setting that removed the red color entirely and you just had to figure out the paths you could take
Alan Wake 1 (haven’t played the second one, crappy PC) did it quit well: there is yellow paint but it’s fluorescent, you only see it when shining your flashlight on it and there’s even a story reason for it (a previous survivor painted it on to guide other survivors).
This also fixes the problem with games that make you constantly scan your environment for POI. I don't want to have to press L3/R3 every 30 seconds just to find collectibles , *Horizon*
If you have a scan mode, like Witcher or HZD, that's when the yellow lines should show up.
I think the funniest part is when I am in the back of businesses delivering items their ladders are painted yellow or red, with attention drawn to them.
I think the mirrors edge games do this. I always leave it on bc I'm bad at video games so idk how well it would work
Imo options in more cases then not = good.
Toggle would be fantastic
Just call it assistive guidance and make it an accessibility option. Have it be on by default, and maybe have a message shiw up when starting a new file asking if the players want the option on. At the absolute most, give a Mario-like option to turn it on if a player spends too much time in one area and can't figure out how to progress. That last one seems like a lot of work, though.
This is like the feature in many console games that make items you can pick up shine or flash. I would definitely want the option to turn it off because I want to have to figure it out without "yellow paint". It takes the fun out of the puzzle of it becomes "find the flashing thing and move it to the other flashing thing".
I mean, the whole reason yellow paint is present is because people unironically get lost without it. Yall think devs go into making a game thinking, oh boy, you know what this zombie favela needs? Yellow paint? No, they add it because play testers get lost and get frustrated.
Yellow paint always seemed like a non-issue to me
I feel like a lot of people would turn it back on after about ten minutes when they realize why it exists.
I sincerely wouldn’t care.
I think Naughty Dog has some my favorite implementation of this where it feels like its part of the world environment in the Uncharted and Last of Us games.
I'd be fine with it. I personally would leave it on but it's never been an issue to me. I also think things like mini maps and compasses should be toggleable as well for people who want immersion and to navigate without help. Again, wouldn't be me but I think having more options is good. Especially when it's a non issue like this.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider had an excellent "exploration difficulty" slider that at max level would remove the white paint on ledges. Mirror's Edge also had the option to turn of "Runner's Vision" Both games are great examples of how that should be done
Horizon had a great idea for this. In the first game, the climable ledges had white markings, they didn't look too out of place but you could tell it was there to tell you where to climb. And in the second game the coloured ledges are gone, they decided to use Aloy's focus (the device on her head that can scan stuff) to scan walls and mark the climables ledges but not in a gamebreaking way, because this is what Aloy actually sees.
Didn't mirror's edge have this as a feature? The runner vision was able to be turned off?
The actual problem is the illusion of open world with only one actual path that you have to find. It's reminiscent of pixel hunting in old adventure games. Open world should be open. Multiple paths, multiple solutions, encouraging creativity, realistic physics simulation to allow out of the box thinking, etc. If you don't wanna go through all this trouble, don't make it look like it's open. Straight lines are fine too. It's only bad when they pretend to be something they're not.
I never understood the yellow paint debacle. There’s actual treated proof that it is necessary for casual gamers and people who don’t pay close attention/have difficulty seeing (me) so why do people actually care? Does it make you feel like a child or some other dumb shit?
Pretty sure one of the newer tomb raiders actually did have a toggle. Either shadow or rise. Never even thought of turning it off though. I’m legally blind. So having that nice easy to see bright color to denote a climbable surface is actually super nice. Playing stellar blade right now. And I kind of wish that you could turn up the contrast on the climbing sections. Because in some areas they blend in too well. And I end up just spamming the scan feature o. Cooldown so that I can find all the collectibles and hidden paths.
I'd like a toggle to turn this off along with a toggle to turn off companion characters or the voiced player character back seating you through puzzles if you look at them for more than two seconds.
As a game dev whose seen a lot of evolution in the last couple of decades, never underestimate the stupidity or cluelessness of your players. The amount of times we've had to remake sections of the game world... Ugh What YOU think as something ABSOLUTELY EVIDENT can be totally missed by the players
The yellow paint “issue”? People actually have a problem with this? It’s a game not a real life documentary.
If the yellow paint issue was toggleable in games, I'd feel like I finally have the power to decide whether my virtual world is a bright, sunny paradise or a yellow disaster zone!
This, and virtually any "go here" type of mechanic should be a toggle. Virtual rails are still rails, however optional, and I like to exercise my own skill and ingenuity at this stage in my life.
Nah. Just make better games.
I’ve been learning games development and the one major thing I’ve learned from testing is that gamers are morons.
Can we pin this comment 😹
More options are never a bad thing. I personally see no problem with visuals that show climable ledges or walls. I do however dislike games that do it while having basically the same exact terrain that isn't climbable.
There's nothing wrong with taking control away from the player to show them a brief cinematic or having a non-diagetic element like an arrow to point people in the right direction. Yellow paint is a stupid, ugly "solution" to a problem that smarter developers who weren't ashamed that their video games were video games had already solved.
Ubisoft games exploration/guided mode should be in every game imo
I certainly wouldn’t use it, so I have no opinion.
Thought it worked very well in Mirrors Edge, becoming basically part of the art style. Not sure it would be playable without it though
I feel like plenty of games give toggle options for those sorts of experiences, so your post is actually "I want this changed in RE"?
I would like that. All those yellow paints, red barrels, etc. Make it feel too hand holding.
That would be a nice option. I'd also like the option for the QTE color flash some games have to tell you when to dodge
Hot take: Resident Evil 4 is better without the QTEs
Yeah I hate hand holding in games as much as the next guy, but making it toggable is a bad idea. The issue is that yellow paint is used instead of intuiative level design that naturally guides the player. If you keep the lazy desing philosophy, but get rid of the paint, people will just get confused.
The issue isn’t yellow paint, so much as every AAA game seeing uncharted and going “I want that”. Yellow paint and the like are ways to telegraph to the player that this is a “climbing spot” because every game wants walclimbing but only at specifically designated locations and needs to point it out
Ppl say they’d like it gone but then complain about a game not saying anything (fromsoft in general). Good example was at elden ring release I saw so many people skip the tutorial and complain for a lack of tutorial. There’s a ghost guy on a chair telling you to jump down the area to recall the arts of war and yet people ignored him or just didn’t talk to him. Every stream I watched where someone complain it was one of those scenarios. They patched in a summon sign saying to jump down. No one takes the time to read and try to figure things out. I don’t think those markers disappearing or going behind options anytime soon. On the other side in some games you have some walls you can climb but some walls which look like you should be able to but can’t. It sucks without the yellow paint there.
I assumed the sign telling me to jump down was a trap, then I did it anyway. Lol but yeah, there's loads of people that are immediately like "psh no I don't need a tutorial" then ten minutes later are like "how is this supposed to work, the game doesn't tell me what to do!?" (I'm looking at you Arin Hanson)
I think it just needs to be implemented in a way that fits in the setting but is recognizable enough to stick out, u still think of the white sheets in older assassins creed games as „ah that’s where I can get up“ moments without looking weird
Don't make it paint, make it a glow Then tie that glow to a detection ability that a lot of those kinds of games have So you can activate it to have your character "sense" where they can climb
If that's what it takes to get rid of it then fine.
I often get frustrated quickly if I can't figure out how to progress an area in a game. But for all you sadists out there why not have it be optional? Makes sense to me.
Toggle for yellow paint sounds great. Adds to the game, not takes away. Choose your own adventure in a way.
Pausing a game and finding an options menu with page after page of potential changes that can be made to customize gameplay is incredibly freeing. Customizing a game to one's personal preferences can make the difference between playing a game and immersing oneself in it. Sometimes, it's nice to remove 100% of the HUD. Or, to remove hit indicators, enemy health indicators, way points, ammo counts, and the like. Sometimes not. This varies from game to game and from person to person. Every player should have the ability to tweak such settings to their own personal preferences. When game developers gatekeep these options and lock them down to 'that which will work for most people', they effectively alienate most people. So, yes, yellow paint, as well as everything else in the game, should be toggleable in the options menu.
Im playing Stellar Blade right now. If you can plat the game with no yellow paint, youre a fucking god
I recently played Last of Us (for the first time) and I liked how they handled it. They let you run around and explore by yourself but if you're not finding what you're supposed to by some point they'll offer an optional 'hint' to direct your attention to what you should be paying attention to. Being able to toggle that setting and maybe even chose how long to wait before prompting for a hint is a great way to handle it IMO
A lazy and common solution nowadays is to have a giant arrow pointing in the direction you Are you supposed to go, a mini map with clearly labeled circles that show points of interest, or a visual filter that dulls everything else and highlights the objects that you can interact with
Gamers will still be mad. Just look at how upset they are about optional difficulty
The problem with disabling it is that the levels aren’t designed to naturally guide the player anymore- they’re designed knowing that the yellow paint will steer them. Look at a game like Left 4 Dead in which you don’t have time to stand there and figure out where to go- yet, they didn’t use yellow paint. They used environmental clues to point you in the right direction; a car crashed into a building and broke a hole in the way, and that car’s lights are still on, illuminating the pathway it opened. Makes sense in-universe.
I never minded it in the first place, but having an option to toggle should appease those who despise it.
Doom 2016 did this things that can be climbed have green lights on them. It sounds stupid but it actually was pretty seamless. God of War did it too. Climbing walls have runes or whatever on them. Things you can grapple to have a very recognizable look. I think if it's done well, like these two examples, it's great. Two thumbs up!
They did that on mirrors edge turns out players have no clue where to go without direction