I do, but the UI I use makes it a lot smaller. I find it handy, since I do a lot of sniping with a bow.


I agree. One of the reasons I hated Glenvar (sorry Quartz) was the "no icon" thing - it made it nearly impossible to find necessary triggers to advance into the castle.


No, but it can be removed via editing the xml file. Most variant UIs change it, move it, or remove it entirely.


Amen. At least give us an overview, credits, and any salient points of the mod/town, as well as noted (in)compatibilities.

I'd like to see something like in a old DOS game i like called System Shock, it had a system where you could select how much the game holds your hands on a slider. of course, modders aren't wizards.

Thanks everyone for your input.

I have come to the realization that I am going to have both reveal and not reveal and be discerning in each case. For instance the pull chain on the toilet, I will need to have this labeled as it is difficult to position the mouse over it without crosshair or the item name.

However it would be too easy to label items that are intended to be hidden. For instance some paintings swing open to reveal hidden things and some paintings are normal paintings. It would be a dead giveaway to look at the activatable one and see 'painting' especially as the normal paintings have nothing and are statics. In this case I must rely on the player realizing that there are small hinges on the openable paintings and looking for that 'tell'.

So I guess it is a case of having to do both. -_-

OH YEAH I'LL
TELL YOU SOMETHING
I THINK YOU'LL UNDERSTAND

WHEN I
SAY THAT SOMETHING
I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND!

No...just kidding.

For consistency, you have two other options here:

* Make every painting activable. Doing so usually shows a message box with the painter's signature, or maybe some other general info (like: "A Summer Dream", oil on canvas, painted 3E420 by Jacques Allenteri). Only in the case of the openable painting, it would also have a comment "There seem to be some hinges on the side ... [OPEN]" (or not, depending for example on the Intelligence of the character, or if someone told him/her that this one is an openable painting earlier).

* Make just the hinges of the openable painting activable.
i

I think this is a good idea. On the surface at least it feels like a workable compromise between holding a player's hand and requiring the player to do some work.

I'll add my yes to this type of concept.

Problem with simply leaving it to the visual "tells" is that not everything in the 3d world of Oblivion is activatable at all - even things that look like they should be: tapestries that can't be moved to look behind, etc. So, to create a space in which visuals are a good clue as to what's usable would mean making sure that everything that is usable looks usable and everything that is not usable does not. After all, that's essentially why the activate icon appears in the game - to let you know what is usable, because otherwise you wouldn't know.

gothemasticator

I'm a hardcoe game player, professional game developer, part time modder, and I think you will regret it if you don't make it user friendly. If your mod is even remotely popular, two years from now you will be fed up with people emailing you questions about how do I flush the toilet or where is ___?

So the solution is to support both. Make the mod have no names on the toilet handles, etc... for those who want it obvious. In the beginning you can make a pop up script that asks the user how they want it, obvious or let me figure it out mode. So make it hard to figure out by default, then if they choose obvious you run the command http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/SetName and rename everything in your script. You can also make tutorial pop ups that run once using a quest variable that the object accesses, so the first time you are close to an object a little message box pops up explaining how to use it, after that you set tutorial01 to 1 and it won't display again.

By the way, the above-mentioned Glenvar Castle quest "fails" not because the activator is hard to see and not displaying any UI clues, but because it fails the quest design rule "For every 'riddle' which the players must successfully solve to step forward in the quest, give them at least three different clues and methods on how to do it. Typically, they will miss the obvious one, misinterpret the straightforward one, and manage to get the awkward one by sheer chance." Repeatedly.

This doesn't apply to details added for pure verisimilitude reasons or easter eggs, of course.

This is brilliant.

gtm

Post a pic of yourself and I will get back to you.

I agree with this. Hidden items/activators are nice if you are given sensible clues for what to look for. I consider the Glenvar quest really broken in at least two places, where I bet that none found the activator completely by themselves. And having to look up a readme or the CS to find a clue is a real immersion-breaker, IMHO.

So, handholding... I know it gets a bad rep, and the Oblivion quest arrow gets the worst rep. But I've been playing through several quest mods for both Oblivion and Fallout 3, many of which eschew quest arrows and also involve hunt-and-peck for the hidden clues. In one Oblivion quest, I'm simply supposed to deliver a letter to an IC citizen. But with no quest arrow I don't know where he is. I can't ask anyone else where to find him, because there is no such dialogue. So, I found his house, but it isn't very fun to set a stake-out outside the front door, so the letter ain't getting delivered. In one Fallout 3 mod, the clues were vague enough that I had to consult walkthroughs at least three times, and in no case did I feel like a dunce when the solution was revealed. In one case, I could have figured it out if I had known that there were three clues to find. I had found two, and I there was no reason to suspect a third existed, nor any clues as to where to look for it. In another Fallout 3 mod, clues were hidden so "well" that I spent a ridiculous amount of time just moving my crosshair methodically over every inch of a house, several rooms.

In my opinion, the handholding that gets such a bad rep is actually a decent design decision that works precisely because... well, it works. It can only be done away with, I think, by the implementation of a more elegant solution, which usually involves writing more dialogue or writing more scrolls, etc. If there are three candlesticks to be found in a location, you should be told unavoidably that there are three to find. If you don't want a quest arrow, then the location of the target NPC should be available through other means: dialogue, a note on the front door.

Eh, I understand that this thread is about a location with cool stuff in it to discover, but I think the same applies. How do I get the thrill of discovering all the secrets if I can't tell when I've discovered all the secrets?

gothemasticator

Well said. I am among the players who play with the quest arrow disabled (or rather, after the last version of MMO, I have it enabled in the world map, but disabeld in HUD and local map), but it still annoys me when quests have too few clues.

Windfall is IMHO an interesting example. It is a very well developed mod, with lots of dialogue, but it partly fails in giving enough clues for the quests. It doesn't have quest markers at all, so it wouldn't help me if I enabled it, and it has many quests where I need to find one specific person. But those persons have advanced AI packages that make them possibly be elsewhere for a day or two. I can ask other NPCs about the person I need to find, but they always answer the same - where he usually is. So the net result is that while the Windfall team wanted to make a more realistic experience, it ends up reminding me that it's a (stupid) game with its limitations, when all the NPCs answer the same, pre-programmed answer instead of being able to tell me that the person I look for hasn't been at the office today, or whatever - so a (handhelding) quest arrow would've been more immersive after all.

Wow, times have certainly changed and games just don't seem to require the thinking they used to. Not that it is a bad thing....or a good thing.

I was recently playing Laura Bow to see just how the 'hand holding' differed from Oblivion and other recent games and the difference is huge. You have to search and put two and two together in order to get anywhere in those old classic games. I remember such games as the Space Quest series, Police Quest, Laura Bows, Kings Quests and even the Ultimas operated from a angle that required the player to use logic. This issue and topic has brought home the changes in how we play computer games over the past twenty years. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing, it is just different.

I think for Pell's Gate I will make plain before people download that if people want to participate in what is going on in the town it is going to require careful searching and some logic. For instance logic says that if an item has hinges on it...it moves. Locations of hidden doors and areas are......logical. There are no quest markers or hand pointers, in order to say 'rob the Gallery' the player will need to listen to what others say, find the right people with the right info, stake out and explore the Gallery, put two and two together and make a plan, otherwise it is suicide. It will not be a case of speak to this person then the quest box comes up telling what to do next. :shrug:

Yes there are many people who lack the patience to explore or decifer anything and want to simply follow the directions given and that is fine, to each their own. Yes it is risky, but I feel that the sheer amount of work gone into this town warrants more then players taking five minutes to see everything there is because it was all pointed out in the readme. There will probably be many who do not like Pell's Gate, but for the few that take the time to unravel the town's mysteries and get immersive in the affairs, the occasional humour and the distinct characters that make up the day to day hell of Pell's Gate; will thoroughly enjoy the town.

I appreciate the concern regarding abuse and have taken that onboard and decided it is most likely best to release the mod only on Oblivion's Real Estate and have a thread on the ORE forum and this forum for dealing with any issues brought up and helping where needed. That also saves me having to deal with what I just know will be a multitude of 'thumbs down' on Nexus because 'the file conflicts with another popular file', in this case Pell's Gate conflicts with Lost Spires.

Thanks again for all your inputs, it is helpful to hear everyones ideas on this and hear so many different opinions on it. I read through them all and changed some things due to very valid concerns brought up by people. The overall decision I was able to make from this thread was that while I am going to stick to no 'hand holding', I am going to ensure that things are easier to decifer and more obvious.

I, too, have been playing games for over twenty years, and I, too, have fond memories of the past reliance on the player's brain. However, it has been very interesting to me to see how 3d world first-person perspective games introduce necessary changes into game design. For instance, I am still tickled by Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines - the first 3d game by veteran rpg designers (Troika). It is amazing to me just how empty and non-interactive the world in that game feels. I believe it comes down to the change in perspective. In a 2d isometric game, a room that contains one searchable bookshelf, one openable wall safe and a half dozen static pieces of scenery with one-line text descriptions that pop up when you hover the mouse over them - a room like this feels plenty full. Take that same exact room with the same contents and same dimensions, put it into full 3d with first-person perspective, and it feels so empty and non-interactive. In spite of my own nostalgiac fondness for an older generation of games, I believe that the handholding in Oblivion and other games is not so much the result of dumbing down but of struggling with design decisions in the face of new game mechanics.

I think this sounds great. I hope my comments in this thread haven't come across as critical of your work. You do great stuff, and I'm looking forward to trying out Pell's Gate, too. In particular I'm looking forward to seeing how exactly you tackle these kinds of design challenges. I'm sure I'll be delighted.

This sounds to me like a great solution.

And, thanks to you for opening a discussion about this! Game design questions are close to my heart, and, as I've said, I'm looking forward to seeing how you tackle them.

gothemasticator

No, not really. The rule of thumb I cited, about "three clues to a riddle"? That was formulated in the 1980ties, for pen & paper RPGs, about the same time the games you mentioned came out.

The issue isn't with logical thinking; the issue here is with giving the players all the clues their characters would have even through we're operating through a restricted communication channel (spoken word and drawings in pen & paper RPGs, graphics, sound and the UI in CRPGs). For example, players in both cases can't feel it that a wall is slightly warmer than the other walls in a specific place, but their characters certainly can when standing near it. In both cases, it's good design to tell the players that the characters feel the warmth when their characters would (that is, when near that specific wall, and assuming the character is perspective enough), and bad design to withheld this information until the players let their characters "examine" that specific wall just to make the quest/riddle artificially "harder" (in truth, it isn't really any harder, just more of a guessing game).

I think it comes down to balance between the two. For instance while a player cannot feel a wall that is warm and needs to be told, they can see visual clues.

For instance hinges on the side of a painting are a blatent giveaway. If the player were aware that there was a secret passage somewhere in that room, they have all the clues they need that tells them to start searching the room. They take a look around the room and notice something different, there are hinges on that massive painting over there. Logically that must be the entrance to the secret passage. But the point is that they have to take the time to explore and click on a few potential candidates for a secret door until they hit the right one.

If they had their hand held throughout the whole thing it would go a very boring way. They would walk into the room and as soon as they look at that section of the wall they get a message notification 'Secret Door'. Where is the fun or challenge in that? that 'secret door' is not so 'secret' after all.

That is what I mean by using logic rather then requiring none at all.

One thing I noticed while playing a game from the eighties is that every activatable item was a logical one that the player would naturally look at when exploring. Like a garbage bin, a box, a desk etc. While there is definitely a difference between 2d and 3d I think basic the concept is the same 'explore location' and I can't see 3d as a valid excuse for 'dumbing down'.

That said this thread has proved that notification is necessary for everyday activatable items such as toilets, baths, sinks, lights etc. Or at the very least the player does need to be told of the existance of these.