this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
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As a game dev some of you, including streamers, are so fucking stupid it hurts. Yellow paint guys just give in to the temptation.
Except when they're stupid too. In the tutorial area of Horizon: Zero Dawn they have you climb a wall. The handholds are marked with white and yellow.
Except it's evening in game and the color grading effect makes everything a shade of orange. The colors aren't distinguishable and the shapes of handholds are still new. Took me two hours to figure it out. I knew I had to climb the wall, but where to do it and where to go on the wall was a mystery.
No offense but I don't think this is a dev problem, seeing how so many people went through it no problem and it took you two hours.
Poor color/contrast can be an accessibility issue. It's why some games come with colorblind modes that adjust light and color hues, to provide an option for players who have difficulty with that.
Both horizon games have excellent colorblind modes and a button that highlights climbable points with high contrast. The paint is only visible without using this mode in the very first tutorial areas or on long/time-limited climbing segments. The game tries very hard to cater to a wide audience, and people still bandwagon on it relentlessly.
Or perhaps devs could instead make sure their other efforts don't hide things? Especially in the tutorials?
I just watched playthroughs of the game, including the tutorials, and the only thing I have to say is "how did you get stuck on it for two hours". This is like the cuphead journalist level. Each interactable / climbable stands out in annoyingly bright orange paint. No portion of the day hides it - even the orange hue you describe. Like how?
Because everything around it was also orange. My not colorblind partner had a hard time with it too. It wasn't a required part, so perhaps you watched one that didn't go there.
You didn't turn on the appropriate colorblind mode (which you are prompted to do during your new game setup). Both Zero Dawn and Forbidden West do this, I recently replayed ZD in preparation for FD and just started FD after holiday. This one's on you boss
I would stop arguing with them now, the only thing worse than arguing with an idiot is arguing with a stubborn and wrong idiot.
We did, actually, and it didn't help.
Hey guys, I found one of those stupid gamers! ☝️😅
(someone sticks their neck out
immediately gets chopped)
Well done.
Don't make games for stupid people, please. They are ruining it for the rest of us.
Common saying over here: "money does need to be taken away from the idiots"
Is that a common mantra of the gaming industry? Sounds fucking exploitative. Which studio are you with? I'd like to boycott. ✔️
Its common mantra in every industry that interacts with customers.
Not with the product I am working on at a large company... But tell yourself that, I'm sure it's a big enabler. 👍👍
I can see where that shit comes from though.
Half the games these days are so fucking cluttered you need shit like that and "detective vision" or whatever to even distinguish the interactable objects from the scenery. The later Tomb Raider reboots are the fucking worst for this.
I mean, sure, but there's a limit. If you provide the yellow indicators, don't pause the game. If you don't provide any indicators, you need a longer tutorial phase. But don't be on the nose like in this post. It's obnoxious to the immersion.
It is, but I'm struggling to think of many games that do all those things like that, and certainly not past an initial tutorial.
Far worse is the puzzle part of every action game that gives you the goddamn solution before you've even had ten seconds to think about it. God of War Ragnarok is by far the worst offender for this in recent memory. You couldn't turn it off at all.
I'm not saying there are any either 😅 Just that games shouldn't. 👍
Oh yeah, that's gotta suck for sure.
It would be cool to have an adaptive game, that notices the player looks around and walks, dont have to explain that, but maybe I need to... no they picked up the can no need to explain that. Oh, seems like they don't know they need to throw the cable into the puddle to close the circuit to open the door, my time to explain sth.
Nintendo are masters at this IMO. Of all people.
Do they really have tutorials in the classical sense? They start dead simple and add stuff gradually, almost like the entire game is a little bit of tutorial to the point where people make up their own challenges.
That too, yeah. They have both tutorial-ish stuff that'll pop up if you fail too many times, as well as full on interrupting shit. In one game they actually did not do this very well, namely The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Fi interrupts the flow every time you get to a new area, my god. You're given an aerial flyover of the area and you're all excited to start digging into it, and then she flies up and starts rambling, unskippably...
But yes, as you mentioned, they are masters at starting off easy and gradually increasing your knowledge and skill.
That was the one where you swing the sword with the wiimote right? Maybe they were worried there, people would be confused.
You swing the sword using the Wiimote in Twilight Princess as well, but Fi interrupting all the time in Skyward Sword is not in regards to control mechanics, at least after a short while. She's just reiterating what the characters are saying, that you've already either deduced yourself, and/or that the characters have explicitly said. It's like yeah alright, I know you're trying to establish that Fi is some kind of divine computer living inside the master sword and everything, but you don't have to keep reminding me everywhere I go.
Hmm sounds like you were pretty annoyed by this :D
Did you play far cry blood dragon? The protagonist complains about how the tutorial is boring.
I wasn't the only one 😅 Let's players on YouTube had the same feeling. I'm actually playing through it for the first time now on the Switch. The controls are pretty good there. They were infamous on the Wii/Wii U. And when I watched a let's play of Skyward Sword I didn't think Fi was so annoying. But when actually playing, gosh, you just wanna get on with the game, because it's actually fun, so I don't want to be interrupted all the time.
Haha, that's awesome. I did not; that's pretty funny.
I'm sure it's a difficult balance as a developer.
It's easy for someone who has played many games to underestimate how much is new to someone who has not played as many games.
Oh yeah, I bet it is. I guess experience and play-testing are key here.
Always true
They ain't fish hunting Jeff, they hunting' WHALES
I'm also a game dev, and I prefer clever level design over the yellow paint.
Had a pretty big streamer in a vr game rip off the headset in anger after being stuck in area eith a pipe that could easily fit a human who slightly crouched. Also there was a sign there with a button on the controller and crouching human next to it.
There also was a tooltip that says "you can crouch in real life or use a button to save your knees."