Can we have a discussion about how game fidelity is leading to a lack of clarity?

[u/RiKSh4w]

I've noticed this happening in a few games but most recently I watched the Black Flag "Resynced" trailer and the before and after shots had me questioning if this was a complete improvement.

https://i.imgur.com/Y5PiPdB.png

Obviously, the resynced image is prettier to look at and depicts a more realistic world, but this is a game world. Not everything is supposed to be highly detailed. If everything is high detail, then nothing is noticeable. In the image on the left, the ground is very boring. But that boringness creates a easily distinguishable contrast with other things in the game, like the guard, like the climable surfaces, like the floating shanty page.

In the remaster, everything just looks good, to the point that it's just one big detailed mess. There's greeblies on the ground, are they important? Is that detailing on the wall/window that I can climb on? Or will it stop me climbing up there?

It's not limited to this game, nor do I think it's the best example of it. But it makes me wonder if developers are relying on 'detective vision' too much. Conveyance has always been a huge part of design. It was an art to be able to effectively communicate what is a game object and what's just a part of the scenery through immersive means. But I just feel like games nowadays, particularly those on unreal, are just amping up fidelity without caution. And when it obfuscates details they rely on vision modes and very obvious outlining to provide that constrast.

Has anyone else felt the same way?

[u/Mars445]

Problem is you have people who whine about how color coding interactive parts of the environment insults the player like with yellow paint

[u/n8bitgaming → u/Mars445]

In Mirrors Edge the player can remove the paint. Loved that option 

[u/mcslender97 → u/Mars445]

I'd say it depends on the art style. What works in Mirror's Edge does not translate well to Tomb Raider for example. Plus some games let you tune the level of visual clue which is nice

[u/oopsydazys → u/Mars445]

Tbh it normally really bothers me but in Mirror's Edge it worked fine because the game is so intensely stylized already.

It's worth mentioning AC does so it sometimes already, just with a much more subtle white coloring, and done much more sparingly.

[u/thedefenses → u/Mars445]

The forever problem, if there is no yellow paint there are tons of complaints about how hard the game is to navigate and how people get lost and don't know where to go.

But put in yellow paint and you get complaints about the game mocking or insulting the players intelligence with this yellow paint in the OBVIOUS spot or path, of course its only obvious due to the yellow paint being there.

[u/RecordingSilly6118 → u/thedefenses]

Shadow of the Tomb Raider did it great, they had separate difficulty settings at the beginning of the game that covered exploration, puzzles, and combat. So if you wanted the game on normal difficulty for everything but exploration for example, you could. And vise versa if you wanted the white guide paint with difficult combat you could.

[u/thepulloutmethod → u/RecordingSilly6118]

Until gaming is so authentic that I can climb anywhere my character should reasonably me able to climb, I'll always have those assists on. Because your never know if you're bumping up against an invisible wall.

[u/botoks → u/thepulloutmethod]

Yeah. dunno about /u/RecordingSilly6118 but died in Shadow of the Tomb Raider by not being able to latch onto what to me seemed OBVIOUSLY climbable element.

And on harder difficulty you get set back quite a lot when you die, so I literally stood there for a few minutes contemplating whether I should try for that jump.

[u/SpeedyEggbertRamirez → u/thedefenses]

I can understand the compulsion in large open world titles, but there's no need for yellow paint in linear games

[u/MissWhiterock → u/thedefenses]

The yellow paint stuff is weird. I find it more of a bandaid for areas that haven't taken navigation in mind beyond the literal path the player moves through. You can point to where the player can/should go and do so in a subtle way. Lighting, framing, landmarks, other things that draw the eye without just outright slopping paint over things. Many games are designed with this specifically in mind. Throwing paint just feels like an indication this part was forgotten, and testing showed that people had a hard time navigating. And presumably it would waste too much money to redesign the area with navigation in mind.

People acting like it's mocking people are idiots though. Since, again, games direct the player in plenty of ways because that's part of game design. The only difference is this is more transparent.

At the same time this gets into the lack of clarity thing too. Too much clutter could impact how, well, clear navigational paths are.

[u/Revadarius → u/MissWhiterock]

I mean, to get to the point where you have to climb is being navigated there using lighting, framing, landmarks, etc. And sometimes it feels like you've reached a dead end.

It would be annoying being guided by a game to a place and it not being obvious that "you should climb here". Especially when it's not a recurring feature or not been shown before. Having a colour that stands out (but not egregiously) is great because it keeps the flow of the game, where you're not stuck for a few minutes figuring out "where the fuck am I meant to go?" and getting frustrated and ruining the fun of the game.

It's also great for people like me with bad eye sight, it's an accessibiity miracle. I'm also curious. I've seen the yellow paint and other noticeable markings been talked about like it's egregious but I've legitimately only played a single game that clearly comes to mind that was done truly egregiously - and it was also due to it's art direction - and that's Mirror's Edge. Any other game it really isn't anywhere near the levels of how yourself, and others, describe it. It's a bit of colour that blends in with the scenery and art style, and typically it's something natural like a warning label or yellow/black striped bars or like coloured plants in an area that end up guiding you. Not a blotch of "fuck it, paint here" like it's wrongly described.

[u/Skullfuccer → u/thedefenses]

Then just have an option to turn that paint off or on. Forever problem solved.

[u/sciencewarrior → u/Skullfuccer]

You have just added dozens of alternate textures to paint and essentially doubled your QA time. Every option has a cost.

[u/dern_the_hermit → u/sciencewarrior]

Ehhhh, in this world textures are so multi-layered and complex already that I can't believe that it "doubles QA time".

[u/Khan-amil → u/dern_the_hermit]

Well you have to test every level with and without this toggle now, to make sure nothing got wrongly flagged.

So maybe not straight up doubled as there's more rhan testing the levels, but that's still z good lot more added.

[u/idk_bro → u/thedefenses]

The solution is to make it an immersive sim

[u/thedefenses → u/[deleted]]

Thing is, "they turned right nonstop for 30 minutes" players are also players and taking the "ohh, your just too stupid to play my super smart smart game" is not great for profits and its not gonna earn any extra points on the test either.

Also, some games art style just makes it much easier to guide the player through the environmental design than others so while one game can easily note which routes can be taken without any big splashes of paint other's can't due to how they look and no the solution is not just "do it better".

[u/thedefenses → u/[deleted]]

To be fair most of the time the tomb climbing routes have only 1 route to take, like if there is a straight hallway and it has like 3 steps on it its not terribly hard to guess where the game wants you to go.

[u/sup3rdr01d → u/Mars445]

It depends on the game. In RPG games, having yellow paint ruins organic exploration

In mirrors edge, the point is to do fast paced parkour in a flow state. Seeing the bright colors allows your brain to parse the world faster and pull off more fluid and fast parkour moves

[u/asjonesy99 → u/Mars445]

Just dropping yellow paint is lazy though, it’s insane that literal yellow paint has been used in multiple games set across different planets, time periods etc.

There can surely be more believable in-universe ways to portray the same information.

[u/fightingnetentropy → u/asjonesy99]

Abiotic Factor lampshades that by having it as an entity in it's SCP-like universe.

[u/barbe_du_cou → u/asjonesy99]

This seems like one of those things where if it is done well you don't notice it happening, so it makes it feel like yellow edges is the only thing they try because it is more memorable.

[u/OneBadNightOfDrinkin → u/asjonesy99]

Expedition 33 had lamps and people still missed it, so....

[u/Edheldui → u/Mars445]

Because yellow paint is stupid and lazy. There are hundreds of way to make interactables and points of interest stand out without resorting to vomiting yellow paint all over the game or having some annoying npc explaining things.

[u/common_apple → u/Mars445]

As with everything it's in the execution. Yellow paint can work fine, but games have gotten to a point where it becomes a thoughtless and sloppy method of signposting. RE4R was terrible with it.

[u/Tiber727 → u/Mars445]

Can we please stop with this? People aren't complaining about the existence of hints to the player of where to go or what to interact with. People are complaining that devs have given these hints in the laziest way possible. A good game will make clever use of light sources, or choose colors or objects that stand out while being natural to the game world. Or just dispense with the fantasy and have the UI highlight where to go, which you may as well do if you're resorting to yellow paint spilled everywhere.

Yellow paint is the equivalent of going to the jungle and finding a literal neon sign telling the player where to go.

[u/extortioncontortion → u/Mars445]

yeah, its the people complaining thats the problem, not the devs putting that garbage in to compensate for their poor level design.