Thread by @rittzler

a lot of AAA games will have their primary system (usually combat), while features like exploration and puzzles are reduced to texture

they serve to pad things out & pace the game but are not allowed to be difficult/interesting as they're not the important part-

https://twitter.com/DaveOshry/status/1755469586999505137

-it's usually skin deep but technically offers a lot of variety that, ideally, obscures the feeling of doing nothing of importance/busywork while giving you downtime, but not actually letting you fail or give you choices unlike the "real" part of the game.

obviously im not fond-

of this practice, but it's a real problem to have. it was very common that something like platforming would serve as the the secondary gameplay type that was supposed to be downtime, but it was nice in that it was still "real". you still had full control of what was going on and-

while often easy it still could have consequences and making it hard was a lever the developers could pull if they wanted to.

but i think a lot of us have dealt with games that focused on something else and just have really stiff/bad platforming controls, and it does suck to be-

gated by the thing that you didn't come here for and isn't even good. or had to play a poorly balanced turret section or shmup part that drags on for too long, etc.

so instead of making meaningful other gameplay types that might upset someone who wasn't even here for it, it's -

reduced to being simple time wasters that literally anyone(and i do mean anyone) can get through. they don't trust everyone to get through these sections without theme park signposting because they don't even care about the gameplay here, and they don't seriously expect you-

to either. just hold forward and see the sights, and move on to the next encounter or story beat.

visual fidelity is then another wrinkle in the fold, along with stuff like video gamey platforming probably just being too "goofy", and the more real issue of having to account for-

a players ability to jump on top of almost any geometry they want. it's easy to see why this is so common nowadays...

though it's an incredibly uninteresting solution

i think it's shown that even simple systems, when real, can still be very satisfying to play in. eg-

elden ring has an extremely simple traversal system- it's literally just a small jump and fall damage, but it's entirely consistent. it takes a backseat, but serves as a good base for the rest of the game to do it's magic. exploration in that game feels pretty engaging without-

having to be particularly complex OR overly signposted.

(do note here i'm saying exploration is good- not necessarily traversal itself, that's a different problem though certainly tied to it)

i dunno, i guess i kind of got away from the initial topic. the yellow paint issue-

does still arise from a complete lack of confidence in the players to do anything that isn't the core system that can be tutorialized to hell and back, but i think it's interesting to think about how we get to games having these tertiary systems to begin with.

it's something -

i've definitely thought about going forward in planning my own future games- how to design to accommodate for and balance multiple systems to systems to be good, have real depth, and elevate each other. it's tough!

pseudo was made to have the lowest scope combat possible to-

indeed serve more as texture for the the exploration, but it still had the capacity to be expanded depending on the encounter/enemy design(like bosses).

but going forward, for some projects i'd definitely like to try to have my cake and eat it too there! combat and platforming-

that are both in depth but also compliment each other and don't feel like you're playing 2 entirely separate games.

granted, i would also like to make games that just focus soley on one of those aspects, as well as others....but eh

threads long enough as is lmao

...alright i have one more bout on this topic, i didn't really cover it in regards to the players perspective.

i think it's totally justified to be annoyed at the yellow paint signposting(although it definitely gets blown out of proportion)

nobody likes to feel the hand of the-

designer, especially not for games that are supposed to be more "immersive."

but it's doubly bad because as opposed to just a tutorial popup- this is the hand of designer trying *very poorly* to masquerade as being inherent to the world, to the point that it becomes ridiculous-

there's a divide between things that are abstractions in games and things that are literal. cloud is literally swinging a massive sword around, and is literally using magic, and the game puts in the work to explain those things! but things like the pause and atb menu's are clear-

abstractions that are there to you know, make the game a game.

i can suspend my disbelief to buy into the idea that cloud has decided he only wants to jump this gap at this spot, or has decided the only way up this specific cliff face is to climb it.

i can believe that rubble-

has fallen a certain way, light is shining on a specific object, moss is happens to be growing on rocks along edges, or that some guy before me in portal wanted to leave a note of guidance behind because he hates glados and wants the next person to have an easier time

i could-

even buy that someone on the route up to the mako reactor decided he would try and demark a good path to take when climbing. but when its everywhere, all throughout the world, and the only time my character decides it's acceptable to climb? the game is asking me to either take-

this face value, or directly acknowledge the hand of the designer inelegantly interfering with the literal game world while also asking me to ignore it. which, you know, doesn't feel great.

the only thing that would explain this is if there was some kind of fae-

that has a hyperfixation for finding solid handholds on rough structures and painting them yellow, and that my character has been locked into a pact where they agree to only climb on those specific surfaces, lest they face the consequences...

where is the climbing fairy, huh videogames?

integrating this kind of stuff into games just requires a little more care put into the context, and it does genuinely matter. people generally praised runners vision for mirrors edge, even though it was mostly as egregious, but it was contextualized as being specifically what-

faith was seeing, fit within the aesthetic of the world, and was even something you could turn off. it also helps that it didnt tell you exactly what to do with an object, just that it would be relevant.

i scarcely hear anybody talk bad about the scan visor for metroid prime-

even though it practically tells you what to do and what the relevant objects in a room are in most scenarios, but the work is put in to both have it make perfect sense it the literal game world, and is a legitimate mechanic, one that you yourself have to opt in to every time-

you can even put yourself in danger for doing so, since scanning takes real time and puts your offensive capabilities at rest while you do it.

signposting is all throughout games, but the trying to make it feel natural does take some real effort-

people want to be as invested in your game world as they can, and it sucks to be taken out of it with such a small detail, and that very same detail has also gotten quite common, exacerbating the issue.