Current Events > How do you feel about minimaps in open-world games?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Assassin's Creed Origins doesn't have one, and I don't think one's needed, really. but it got me thinking about the ways in which games point players in the right direction and how much of that help is useful vs. having players explore and find their own ways through the world.

What do you think?
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I mean, they can be helpful
But once you learn your way around you can usually turn them off
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im cool with minimaps.

what really gets me though is when you have a map of the overworld in some open world game and it's littered with 200 different icons for different events and shit that you can trigger. that pretty much kills my interest in the game, i find it overwhelming
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Don't see a problem with them. They don't break immersion as much as quest markers and glowy trails.

I like when you have a compass with little markers on it.
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I spend more of my time traveling by watching my mini-map rather than looking at the world. Especially if the quest marker is displayed right on the map.
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Open world games without them suck.
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A minimap is fine (although the option to turn it off is good to have). I just don't like when they show you exactly where to go (and have you looking at it more often than not). I prefer the Morrowind approach where you have to take in the world around you, explore, and follow directions.

Also, just turning the minimap doesn't give you the full experience in games that don't take that approach, since they aren't designed specifically for that.

I turn them off if Im really into the game and feeli like exploring
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green butter posted...

what really gets me though is when you have a map of the overworld in some open world game and it's littered with 200 different icons for different events and shit that you can trigger. that pretty much kills my interest in the game, i find it overwhelming

yeah this really bugs me as well

a map with just a general layout of the terrain and the most major landmarks with a little dot showing where you are is good enough. I want my map to help me tell where I am without getting myself confused, not tell m where every single thing in the game is
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Bump
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Meh. The bigger problem in open world games is fast travel. Specifically the kind where you teleport basically anywhere from anywhere. It kinda defeats the purpose of having an open world game when you don't have to actually explore it.

Far Cry 2 was the only one I played that got this right. Fast travel is restricted to bus stations located in each grid square of the map, and can only take you to other bus stations. So basically you only use it when you have to go clear the fuck across the map and you still need to travel manually if you're going after most things.
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I think Skyrim did it decent. Just a compass with a marker on it.

The Fable game with the dog, I think it was 2, had a great idea. Their idea was to make the dog be the marker. Basically the dog would somewhat lead the way to a destination, the character would follow the dog. This was the original idea, but they ended up scrapping it for glowing trails instead.
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Nomadic View posted...

I think Skyrim did it decent. Just a compass with a marker on it.

Skyrim is one of the worst examples of quest markers impacting gameplay. Nearly every single quest relies on that arrow to the point where they rarely bother actually telling you where to go. If you turned the compass off, the game would be nearly unplayable.
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I tried it out in a variety of games over about a year. Some games give you enough information in the environment to tell you where to go, but most are built around a map/mini-map/compass system and will be either unplayable or extremely tedious without it.

Assassin's Creed 1 was a good example of doing it right. You could walk around the cities and tell which NPCs you needed to talk to. They'd even describe landmarks in the city you needed to go to or tell you tips about the targets.

Even though Assassin's Creed II made the series more fun, they really dialed back the immersion. NPCs just stood around silently waiting for you to find them on the map.

Skyrim is one of the worst examples of quest markers impacting gameplay. Nearly every single quest relies on that arrow to the point where they rarely bother actually telling you where to go. If you turned the compass off, the game would be nearly unplayable.

The things people dislike in video games never cease to baffle me.
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Games with no fast travel suuuuck. I hate having to go 50000000000 meters by horse
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DevsBro posted...

Skyrim is one of the worst examples of quest markers impacting gameplay. Nearly every single quest relies on that arrow to the point where they rarely bother actually telling you where to go. If you turned the compass off, the game would be nearly unplayable.

The things people dislike in video games never cease to baffle me.

So you... like that Skyrim quests expect you to follow the compass rather than giving you an actual quest?

You do you man, lmao
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I think it's needed for games like GTA or anything in a condensed city. Not sure how you can avoid it.

Breath of the Wild doesn't really need one since the world has a lot of visual markers in the overworld that you can follow. You can easily learn the layout of villagers and NPC's too. I remember this style being compared to how Disneyland is designed. You don't need a map in that park because you can always look for the landmarks. That is probably the ideal model for an open world game but I don't think it would fit most of them.
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DevsBro posted...

Skyrim is one of the worst examples of quest markers impacting gameplay. Nearly every single quest relies on that arrow to the point where they rarely bother actually telling you where to go. If you turned the compass off, the game would be nearly unplayable.

The things people dislike in video games never cease to baffle me.

At that point you're not engaging with the world and exploring. You're staring at a maker and following it. That's how I see it anyways.
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giantblimpN7 posted...

DevsBro posted...

Skyrim is one of the worst examples of quest markers impacting gameplay. Nearly every single quest relies on that arrow to the point where they rarely bother actually telling you where to go. If you turned the compass off, the game would be nearly unplayable.

The things people dislike in video games never cease to baffle me.

At that point you're not engaging with the world and exploring. You're staring at a maker and following it. That's how I see it anyways.

Lol engaging with the world
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Stallion_Prime posted...

giantblimpN7 posted...

DevsBro posted...

Skyrim is one of the worst examples of quest markers impacting gameplay. Nearly every single quest relies on that arrow to the point where they rarely bother actually telling you where to go. If you turned the compass off, the game would be nearly unplayable.

The things people dislike in video games never cease to baffle me.

At that point you're not engaging with the world and exploring. You're staring at a maker and following it. That's how I see it anyways.

Lol engaging with the world

If you don't want to engage in the world, why go into it in the first place?
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To beat the game
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They are necessary. At least must have a compass.

Can't even replay Kingdom Hearts because of the lack of map, so this goes beyond open world RPGs.
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Games should be designed from the ground up without mini maps. Were basically being taught to stare down our radar rather than really observe the game world, or pay attention to directions.

I dont want a dev to lead me toward something that they decide is interesting. I want to stumble onto it through my own exploration.

It adds more replayability and is more engaging when you have to actually think for yourself.
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At that point you're not engaging with the world and exploring. You're staring at a maker and following it. That's how I see it anyways.

Sure, in an ideal world.

In the real world, no compass marker results in hours of "UGH WHERE THE HELL IS IT" considering you can't ask the NPC to clarify.
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DevsBro posted...

At that point you're not engaging with the world and exploring. You're staring at a maker and following it. That's how I see it anyways.

Sure, in an ideal world.

In the real world, no compass marker results in hours of "UGH WHERE THE HELL IS IT" considering you can't ask the NPC to clarify.

The Witcher 3 does it.
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The compass marker itself is fine. If you want to use it to finish the quest, that's cool. But every quest in the game should act as if there is no quest marker when it it is giving you the information for the quest. You shouldn't have to use the compass marker if the game has decent writing.
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DevsBro posted...

Sure, in an ideal world.

In the real world, no compass marker results in hours of "UGH WHERE THE HELL IS IT" considering you can't ask the NPC to clarify.

It's not that difficult to allow a player to ask NPCs where to go. Morrowind does it fairly successfully. In fact, NPCs in Morrowind sometimes mark the rough location of important places on your map. It's not as if you're left to just wander around (except in one or two instances where the directions are wrong, which are fixed with mods at least).

There are various ways of directing players without having them blindly following a quest arrow. I can appreciate that some would rather do that, but I'd personally have a more organic system.

I mean you can ask

But when you can't find it despite their clues, you can't go "so this tree you mentioned, is it the one with the split halfway up or..?"
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I'm okay with 'em, but may want to eventually shrink/remove 'em.
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if the game's big enough it's imperative there's some sort of thought out guidance system that moves players towards a chosen objective at all times.

sorry i don't feel like getting my extra "money's worth" of entertainment by blindly wandering around for several hours in a game where the scripted activities alone are designed to already last dozens of hours.
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Maps are fine, it's the instant travel and compass markers. Try going back and playing Morrowind where you had neither. If you wanted to find a quest objective, you had to read the written directions in your journal and go exploring. While there was fast travel, you had to learn the transportation networks to make effective use of them.
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r4X0r posted...

Try going back and playing Morrowind where you had neither.

this is the crux tbh.

try going back in time when only 1-2 gaming platforms existed with limited gaming libraries that gave devs the luxury of people spending hours in single player games potentially not getting anywhere but still feeling entertained.

by the time i got into morrowind way back when it still felt too late because of the already obsolete design imo.
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For games like Elder Scrolls, the minimal the better. I think a static map and a compass is about perfect, with very subtle markers for your active quest.

When I was playing Oblivion I got this map mod that looked like this and made sure to disallow fast travel until you found a location. It also cleared the map of all markers until you found them for the first time.

https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/101/images/31273-1-1271945283.jpg

It just really tied in the feeling like I was really in that game. I liked it.
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On the HUD, no. In fact, any game with shit all over the screen is a poorly designed one.

Wish more games would go the route of Far Cry 2, which had literally no standard HUD at all. Helped incredibly with the open world immersion.
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AsucaHayashi posted...

if the game's big enough it's imperative there's some sort of thought out guidance system that moves players towards a chosen objective at all times.

sorry i don't feel like getting my extra "money's worth" of entertainment by blindly wandering around for several hours in a game where the scripted activities alone are designed to already last dozens of hours.

The guidance system is called directions. If you cant follow them, well...
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I liked how the fallout series did it. Small compass at the corner of the map. I don't mind mini maps though it's never bothered me.
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Depends on the game. Witcher 3 I got a mod to only show the UI when I want it.

ThePrinceFish posted...

Skyrim is one of the worst examples of quest markers impacting gameplay. Nearly every single quest relies on that arrow to the point where they rarely bother actually telling you where to go. If you turned the compass off, the game would be nearly unplayable.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32695
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