» Sun Jul 17, 2011 6:47 pm
I voted no. Getting directions is way way cooler than getting a GPS point.
Also, a toggle option doesn't help. It's the worst of both worlds unless the whole game is designed around the assumption that markers will be turned off (which is NOT what most players would choose, so ...)
Falmer's post (#80 in this thread) is my favorite. A great example of how immersive description can be and what a lost opportunity it is to use the GPS instead. Really, both of those situations will take a thoughtful player about the same amount of time! It's not a matter of how much time a player has to invest; it's about how much effort the devs can put into making descriptions that can be followed by an averagely stupid gamer. It doesn't have to be hard to be immersive!
To spin 180° for a moment, I also completely agree with Gizmo that GPS markers are a good thing for places your character has already been (maybe with a margin of error built in for a route you've only traveled once or twice). Even if I, the player, don't remember the way back to town, my character probably does. They can feel the air getting colder, they can feel the shift of the tides, they know instinctively that the air is a little thicker over the town ... sense of direction is not something that can be adequately conveyed in any video game. If you've been there, your character should be able to find their way back, even if to you it just looks like a bunch of pixelated trees that all look the same, you know?
Lastly, the very existence of the Clairvoyance spell gives me high hopes that quest markers won't be heavy-handed. If they were, there would be no reason for Clairvoyance to exist.