Edit: The Witcher 3's latest update added a toggle for the minimap and HUD. Pretty much while you’re exploring, it disappears and you can press a button for it to come back briefly Figured it was worth noting as it makes the game a lot better imo and solves some of the issues I talk about in this video. In this video, I mention the work of a great channel called Afterthoughts who has some really rad discussions on UI (among other things). Here is the link: th-cam.com/video/yGkG3VGWtls/w-d-xo.html Hope you're all well. For those who have been here awhile, you might remember me talking about this topic forever ago. While the original video means a lot to me still as it is sort of how I got my start, it isn't all that thorough and quickly became outdated, so I decided to remake it. Get excited for when I remake it again 8 years from now!
Chad-Morrowind: "go sixty half steps down the path till you find a tree, climb the tree, spot a rock the shape of a wood elf, and go the opposite direction till you find your destination "
except Morrowind does have a mini-map, it just works in tandum with the journal system. There's even a compass in the game. The difference is that it leaves it up to the player to connect the dots. But even then the general rule is that Bethesda's approach in their later games is the worst way you could design a game and this video is foolish for even praising them. Todd Howards design philosophies are some of the worst that you can follow as a developer, game designer and UI designer. Truthfully the way around needing a minimap is simple, design the game world in a way that you intuitively move through it, if the game world is designed properly there is no need for a mini-map, there is no need even for a map. We can use indicators like signage, colours and lighting to signify to the player where we think they should go as designers and where to indicate risk/reward. Minimaps and Maps in the way they work in modern games are indicative of a failure in design and communication language, if something is designed well then you don't need to revert to the developer straight up telling the player where to go. The problem is that most of the player base are dumb and companies profit from really dumb players who would rather pay for a microtransaction to try and find their way around things. Modern games are designed to expunge as much money and time wasting as possible this is why the Mini-Map in GTA is so horrendously bad, they just throw a bunch of activities onto a map and claim "That's content", really as players we don't want a checklist of shit to do, we want to organically run into things and react to it. Also diagetic maps are shit so I disagree with the video. They are mostly just gimmick designs that take longer to access than if you'd just popped up a window with that information already present. UI panels will always be faster to access information, they are also easier to implement. Ok they might not look as impressive and frankly who gives a shit about immersion. What we're talking about is the conveyance and communication of information, it doesn't have to be flashy it just has to do the basic task of conveying that information, the best way to do that is instead implement it in the game world (ie. the environment design, the level design, the flow of the player movements) and don't even have a conventional map. Remember when games shipped with the game map and you had to work it out with a pen and paper? so then how do you replicate that same approach in a game? Morrowind sort of figured it out but it was far from perfect. /Rant
@@worthasandwich morrowind is my favorite game but I can’t Imagine if I would have loved it when it first came out the guides online are almost necessary to people who came from modern games
And then you follow the directions exactly, don't find what you're looking for, and have to look up a walkthrough to find out that it is, in fact, 10 miles west of where you ended up. Been a while since I played Morrowind, but I do recall there was a quest that told me to go east when the cave was actually to the west. Fun game, but navigation was a nightmare.
The first time I played Minecraft Beta, the map item didn't exist. I was afraid of getting lost and to not be able to find my house and stuff after a long night of exploration. I built landmarks, light towers. This feeling was awesome. I tried to memorize the mountains shape, the position of lakes and deserts. Like when you first explore the neighborhood after moving in a new town.
@@IntegerOfDoomnot if you get to know your environment. You can't tell me you don't get lost irl if you get lost in Minecraft because it's the same skillset.
I honestly never noticed the compass disappeared during boss fights in elden rings and I think that says alot about how important seamless UI is. The compass was always there when I needed it and I never noticed when it was gone, such a great balance.
theres a lot more ui stuff in elden ring and it truly is the best ui ive ever seen in any game. every part of the ui disappears completely other than the compass when youre exploring, and every single part of it seamlessly transitions back in when youre using it and only then. it allows for a level of immersion that no other game has ever provided me. Botw might have been the closest though thats just for the active ui though, the stats and inventory are far from perfect but you definitely get used to them
My main gripe is the lack of spacial awareness since i get stuck in terrain or am not using headphones so cant pinpoint where the enemies are. Minimaps should be balanced to be useful but not abused.
Hiding the minimap was the best thing I did in Red Dead Redemption 2. I actually started learning the roads and the landmarks as well as just appreciating the landscape instead of staring at the map. Its satisfying to be able to go from St.Denis to Strawberry without making a wrong turn because you actually know the land. I'm glad this issue is getting some more attention
I tried to play it without the minimap all the time but in missions it's impossible to know where the very specific "objective radius" is without it. Same issue as the Witcher 3. I also found it really easy to miss random encounters when exploring because sometimes you're too far to hear it/see it, but the marker flashes in the minimap. It's a shame because other than that, the world is really satisfying to explore because all the signs are accurate and after some time you learn all the roads and landmarks instead of staring at the minimap
@@some.person If you just tap f3 then it shows up for 5 seconds, which is what I used to see where noises from random encounters were coming from. As for the missions, for me where to go just came intuitively as long as you listen to dialogue
I realized this for the first time in witcher3. I found myself realizing I had been to a place multiple times, based on the things on the mini map. Then I looked up and realized I didn't recognize my actual environment.
Yeah. I stared just pulling up the main map and stopped staring st the mini map and by the end I didn't need the mini map at all. The Witcher by far had me stright up staring more than any other game. And idk why.
I started playing Ghost of Tsushima for the first time a couple days ago and I just LOVE the world design and that there is just no need for a mini map because the developers created the game with the intention without one. The Wind showing of the way you have to go, yellow birds that show points of interest.. It just makes the world feel real, you don't have to always look at the map and so you engage more with it and in the end enjoy it more. I wish more open world game would use those kind of creativity in their designing process
I still found, after a while, that chasing birds, or foxes, or wind, wasn't all that different from following lines on a map. It's definitely superior, because when you're playing an immersive, high-resolution 3D game, you don't want to be focusing all your attention on the little 8bit game in the bottom corner. But story aside, the ultimate point playing a game is the game play. We take for granted that combat is usually a carefully crafted feedback loop of skill and reward. The more you practice, the more rewarding it becomes, and the more the game can crank up the challenge, thus renewing the skill/reward cycle. But with few exceptions, traversal requires no skill and offers little reward. It's just a task to perform between the actual game parts of the game that are a game. Games like the Witcher 3, masterpiece though it is, tend to have more tasks than challenges, more errands than puzzles. Traversal in Witcher 3 isn't designed to be a challenge, it's just a byproduct of the game setting. We complain about it because the setting is so beautiful and immersive, it seems a shame to spend more time following the dotted line than engaging the fiction of the world. It seems a shame to fast travel when we have this incredible environment to experience. But experiencing that environment is fairly passive, and certainly not designed to be a game in itself. The developers focused their efforts on other aspects, like story and environmental detail. But the very fact that we love the environment so much makes us yearn for a more game-like way to directly engage with it, to game-ify the act of traversal itself. Instead, we just get a monster encounter every other minute, which serves to slow down progress and distract from the rest of the game. Going forward, I'd like to see traversal in games like Witcher, or Ghost of Tsushima, be turned into a more directly engaging game, rewarding increased skill with faster progress, or experience, or some other reward. That's what they did with Spider-Man, and people seem to like it. I appreciate how Tsushima limited the presence of HUD clutter, but I think the next step is to create a dynamic skill/reward feedback loop for map traversal, treasure-hunting, etc. Otherwise, collecting treasures becomes a tiresome list of errands to check off, and eventually, one gets tired of petting foxes. Just kidding, one never tires of that.
In addition, minimaps make learning the layout of places way harder. I always got turned around in the cities of The Witcher 3, despite running through them hundreds of times, and always rechecking on the mini-map. Only when I turned the map off completely, I learned to navigate on my own.
@@domp2729 I disagree. When you are inclined to mostly pay attention to where the line is on your minimap you automatically pay less attention to orientational markers around you. Also research on learning suggests that you better memorise content which you had to put some effort into. If the map does not make it necessary to think about how to navigate, the path is naturally less likely to be remembered.
Idk if y’all saw but the Witcher devs listened! The next gen free update is going to include a disappearing mini map that can be activated with the press of a button, and will disappear about 7 seconds later. Love so much that they’re willing to listen to criticism while staying true to their game.
@@razbuten was there a particular reason you wanted to redo the mini map video? I'm guessing you thought the first one was too short for what your channel has become?
The “tap to bring up HUD” solution is THE solution to all these issues imo. I hate visually heavy, intrusive UI, and so being able to simply flash it up on screen for a few seconds solves all my issues. And it’s trivial to implement, it’s simply binding a HUD on\off option to a button press
I think just less intrusive would be better in my opinion, but that's just because I have some pretty major memory issues, I had to turn the HUD in Elden Ring to be always on because I would constantly forget what I had equipped and use the wrong items.
Best choice I made was turning off my mini map in RDR2, it is so cool learning the roads and reading the signs to go between towns if you need it. They put so much effort and detail in the world and without a map it helps to get lost in it. For missions I just turn on the compass so I have a general direction but am still engaging with the world around me rather than following a line.
I love how in Far Cry 2 the map was an interactable object in the game and you had to take it with your hands, switching between papers that represented areas you want to see, and it got worse if you were in the middle of a car chase or shootout so you had to adapt and look quickly, many people hate it but it's the most immersive game i've ever played, along with dishonored
There's also a mod to get rid of the arrow on the map and replace it with a dot so you need the compass for orientation Far Cry 2 has its flaws but the navigational system is a huge part of what makes it one of my favorites.
I always remember that map fondly whenever a conversation like this one happens. Far Cry 2 did it best in that aspect from all the entries in the franchise. I have very often found myself pondering why developers don't go more often with more realistic maps, especially in RPGs.
I'm glad I'm not alone in my love of far cry 2. I never really understood why far cry 3 did nothing for me, but looking back, I think it was a lot of little things, like this. Very few other games I've played gave me such a sense of freedom and exploration
@@R-e-Joyce The one I used actually went further and got rid of any kind of indication where you are on the map. Meaning you had to use the little screen on the GPS for orientation and link it to the map where all the location markers and the bigger picture were. Love that game
One thing I wish more devs would ask themselves is whether their game is about exploration/navigation or not. There are a lot of games that would probably benefit from being smaller and/or more linear while using skyboxes and set pieces to make the world look bigger. Some players just don't want to wander around looking for the next thing, and for them it'd be better to just skip that part entirely rather than strap on a bunch of HUD elements and fast travel systems. For games that are about exploration, lean into that! Make navigating the world part of the challenge, part of the experience. Gimmie landmarks, diegetic maps, audio cues, in-world directions, and then let me enjoy the puzzle of getting where I need to go. Furthermore, make the getting there fun. Incorporate platforming or hazards if you want getting there to be more of a challenge, and if not give me a vehicle, or a grappling hook, or a snowboard even! Shield-surfing was my favorite way to travel in BotW and I hope the sequel makes even better use of the mechanic. Exploration in games is supposed to be fun. If it isn't then either make it a fun part of the game or cut it if it's not necessary.
And of course "exploration" by defination means that wasting your time by running on grass since that's so much fun and waste more of your time running until you get lucky and run into something rather than saving your time and just getting there with a mini map
@@kyleward7417 I hate the games where you're searching the same area over and over again trying to find something (and hoping it didn't glitch out). It's not fun. I'm not discovering anything new the nth time I've walked past it. I just want to get the chore over with so I can get to a more engaging part of the game.
@@kyleward7417 Bud I said if you don't enjoy exploration you should have more games where it isn't mandatory. No need to disparage the entire concept for those who do enjoy running around on grass.
@@SkywardShoe I love exploration but running on grass (while waiting to get to the next anything) gets boring and I just burn-out on the game. At least Wind Waker didn’t make you push forward constantly and you could relax
"There are a lot of games that would probably benefit from being smaller and/or more linear while using skyboxes and set pieces to make the world look bigger." I'd go so far as to say most "open world" games, in fact. Look at The Witcher 3; it's a big fancy world, but if it had been carved up into regions with sky box usage? It could have actually been a bigger, more epic world. For example, look at White Orchard - because it's a small zone, it's able to depict Vizima in the distance, and they were able to create an alternate "winter" version of the map for the epilogue. If the entirety of the game had been sliced up into zones no bigger than White Orchard and Kaer Morhen, navigation wouldn't be an issue, the ILLUSION of size would make the world feel far more realistically scaled, and they would be free to do far more interesting things... like, have a version of a zone where a massive battle takes place, then have another version of the same zone days later, strewn with smoke and corpses, without having to do anything complicated with scripting that might affect the whole game world. Permanent, significant changes could have been applied to the world, without complication, if the world had been broken up into zones. In fact, Kaer Morhen is a perfect example, a perfect comparison within one game - in the biggest map, the Velen/Novigrad space? The "university" town of Oxenfurt is tiny. There's literally a mansion a few miles north that is larger than the entire town of Oxenfurt. That's how messed up the scale is; how condensed things have to be when it's all one map. But when you get to Kaer Morhen... those mountains are vast. They're realistically scaled, because they CAN be; and they CAN be, because the developer didn't need to worry about how the player was going to traverse them, or what content to put on them. Imagine a version of The Witcher 3 where every "region" in the game is a map the size of White Orchard, connected by the world map and by in-game transportation and loading points. Stitch that together, and you'd have a game world many times bigger than the one we got, but with more focus, more detail... and no mini-map required. Plus, it would have been a lot easier to develop, and a lot easier to expand with new content.
First two Gothic games handled navigation perfectly. You don’t get any map until you buy it as an item, and it’s pretty expensive in the early game. But there are signposts on every crossroads, many tall landmarks and the characters ingame give you detailed directions to reach your destination. Maximum immersion.
Yes, I believe this is one of the best solutions to navigation in rpgs that I've seen - the map also doesn't really contain any marks like npcs, quests and such other than the player mark and some red Xes that other characters place there if they know where the objective is, so you really have to figure out where to go and actually explore instead of following a set line. Also it works kind of like a real map, it takes time to open and close it like the character actually reads it. Amazing design and I hate minimaps now because of how simple and balanced it was back in the day
Ghost of Tsushima has my all time favourite navigation system with the wind guiding you, as well as having the birds and foxes to follow. It feels really immersive and gives me a lot more time to admire the absolutely beeaaautiful world. I love it
You’re still not actually looking at the environment though you’re just looking at the lines of wind and going straight, I much prefer the exploration in Hollow Knight - where you’re looking everywhere and learning the environment and getting anywhere is because you yourself mapped out and explored the area.
I love it when maps are a physical object in the game, like in Metro, Sea of Thieves or Firewatch. Another game worth mentioning here is Minecraft, where you actually have to draw the map yourself by walking around. That's a great way to familiarize players with the environment. I wish it was a bit more customizeable by allowing players to draw on maps to mark routes, write notes and so on. But nonetheless, it's a solid idea. I'd love to see more like that.
you can actually place named markers on minecraft maps by painting, renaming (on anvils), and placing banners. of course that's not something you can just do on the fly but it adds a lot of immersion
Agreed! Have you seen the map in Kingdome come: Deliverance? It's beautifully visualized, and you can actually make it so you can't see yourself on the map. I actually enjoyed using it this way, because I have to look around me for landmarks, and then identify them on the map. You really feel like an explorer
I was thinking that too with games like minecraft or gta5 where in order to use the map you have to travel. But I also noticed that I really like the use of the map in horizon: Zero dawn where you mostly use the compass and you have to pause the game to open the map at all
KCD was in my eyes the proof that it’s possible to navigate in a very natural and realistic environnement (translate : were everything looks the same) with minimalistic HUD. As you said, the most important thing is to know wether the OW is self-sufficient and exploration-driven (then no mini map is needed) or only there to store hours of questlines.
When I played Elden Ring for the first time, I didn't realize that it was possible to obtain map fragments to make the map more detailed until about 50 hours in (I was playing completely blind). So for that stretch of time, not only did the game not have a mini map, it didn't even have a map proper. I was looking closely on dark murky brown vague impressions of everything to navigate. I was so enthralled by the world design it didn't even matter that I couldn't precisely navigate to any given tiny cave or what not, I was totally immersed, if not a bit underpowered because it was really hard to find caves and upgrade stones.
There's not enough games that allow you to upgrade your map. The Legend of Zelda did it with the map and compass, Might and Magic allowed you to cast Wizard Eye with later installments letting you upgrade the spell. High Seas Trader allowed you to buy charts that marked new ports where you could trade. It always feels great when you get access to a better map.
@@Arashmickey just please don't go the Hollow Knight route of fucking you over if you want to use one of the most basic features of a map. fuck that bullshit.
elden rings world/general design really carries the whole game imo. Even when I didn't have fun with the gameplay I was still playing because I knew there's always be something new and interesting to see
@@Arashmickey In Hollow Knight you have to buy an incomplete map from an npc in each area and then you fill in where you’ve been every time you rest at a bench
Same, though I've always preferred just having an actual compass. Give me the cardinal directions, even specific headings if it makes sense for the game, and let me navigate and find things myself. It makes exploring the world and finding landmarks feel more immersive. Give me a quest that says "On the ridge two kilometers southeast of XYZ" rather than giving me a precise map marker, it adds so much more incentive to go look around the area and figure out how to approach the terrain/enemies/etc. rather than just going to a highlighted dot
I've always thought minimaps were super distracting in open world games and I feel like a lot of other people think so too, it's just not a big enough pain point to bring up =/ Like, I'd primarily just look at the minimap to go anywhere without actually taking in the world of the game. Esp in mmos or games that show collectables on the minimap, sometimes you miss a lot of cool overworld events if you're just focused on getting from A -> B without getting off path
I played God of War 2018 and Horizon Zero Dawn 100% hudless and they were amazing. In GOW, Atreus or Mimir will shout out to dodge when an enemy is about to attack from behind, so you could actually play it and take zero damage without all the crap going on onscreen.
The compass in Skyrim I feel is like the best compromise. Tells you where to go, and some nearby PoI, but once you look at it once you don't need to do so again for at least a while, so you can focus on the world without worrying about getting lost, and you have to figure out the best path yourself.
I actually thought the Skyrim compass is one of my major pain points with the game, and I go out of my way to disable it. Normally I'm fine with compasses, but Skyrim's compass is way too generous with the amount of information it gives you. Points of interest start to appear from pretty far away, and it actually makes me less observant about the world around me because I'm able to rely on the compass to tell me if there's anything worth exploring nearby, and how relatively close it is. Quest markers actually cheapen a lot of quests since it basically lets you play Follow the Icon instead of playing your role in that story. Thanks to the red dots on enemies, I instantly know exactly what direction an attacker is approaching from, often before I even realize I'm in combat. Ultimately, all the compass does is reduce my immersion in a game where immersion is kind of the main point. There are a lot of really clever locations hidden in the world which a keen eye might notice and feel rewarded for finding, but the compass just tells you it's there. You might be startled by a sudden ambush as you're ascending a mountain pass, but not with the compass letting you know exactly where that pesky archer is firing from. I've had much better experiences with the game by modding it out entirely.
Nah I hate knowing something I might want to interact with is right there while I'm omw to do something else. Gives me decision anxiety and I often discover the place for my fast travel later...then never end up going back.
Talking about Firewatch, it's map is probably my favorite implementation of any in game map i have seen. You can turn off your location marker on the map, so it just looks like a paper map. Something a fire lookout person would probably have. At first, you have to find your bearing on the map itself, to find the way to your destination. The drawn in stash box locations can help you with that. After a while, you don't even need a map anymore, and if you look at it, you instantly know where you are. Firewatch is one game, where I feel like I learned where I am in relation to anything, instead of relying on a dot on a map. Also, not having a map marker made the ending may more terrifying for me, as everything looked different and my sense of direction was thoroughly disrupted.
One of my favorite parts of the game Sea of Thieves is when you land on an island to dig up a treasure, you get a map and a compass, but the compass only shows north, and the map is a map, nothing more, only shows the island from a birds eye. Having to immerse myself into the world, looking at the environment to know where i am, and where i have to go to find the buried treasure. Why arent more games making navigating the world a part of the game? All you need to know where you are, are two landmarks and knowing where north is, that way you can triangulate yourself with your map. Ive been doing this since i grew up in the woods, all the way till now that i am in a city, if i ever get lost, i just look at the world around me, instead of burrowing my head in my phone in hope of finding my way with the irl minimap. Having more games letting you discover this would not only make the games more immersive and interesting to play, but also help us in our dayly life.
I love Sea of Thieves' approach. Check out Miasmata, a little known exploration and survival/mystery game set on an island whose central mechanic is triangulation and mapping. It's janky but really evocative with lots of diegetic stuff.
I remember using the same set up in Far Cry 2 to find diamonds. It’s a fun way to do things, but it requires that the actual terrain is unique enough for landmarks to be noticeable and make it clear which part of the map you’re on. That’s an ambitious amount of work if you’re working in the scale of an open world game
The original Mirror's Edge did a fantastic job with this. Basically there isn't even a minimap and there's no UI that directly tells you where you have to go. Instead you just have a simple button that you can tab and in doing so, your reticle automatically moves to face the direction of your objective. It doesn't put a waymarker, it doesn't provide a minimap route. It just tells you "this direction is where you should head towards" and then it's up to you to figure out how to get there. So simple and clean. Work fantastically when you're traversing city rooftops at high pace and don't have time nor mental focus to rely on maps and markers.
"Navigation is not a game mechanic everyone is interested in" *Chef's kiss*. I'm tired of people just assuming a game is "better" because it doesn't "hold your hand". I have limited gaming time, I want to get to the quest and see the story play out, not study a journal entry, road signs, talk to locals, and eventually stumble into the right house on a fluke.
When you make part 3, I think it'd be really interesting to look at the original Assassin's Creed. That was a game that was originally developed to be played without a HUD and one was added before release on the insistence of of the publisher. It's a big part of why the game's design was what it was - crowds you could blend in with were obvious, map unlock point would be the tallest building in an area, and knowing your way around a city would provide a meaningful advantage because you could scope out situations more quickly and know where to go when asked to go to a specific place. As the series went on, away from that original idea, it gradually became more and more reliant on minimaps and other kinds of nondiagetic information, and seeing it become harder and harder to immerse yourself in the world is an interesting thing.
I loved playing Odyssey, but I hated that the beautiful scenery was constantly overshadowed by bad navigation and map markers that made it pointless to try to meaningfully interact with the world. It was only after I finished the game that I realized you could toggle how much information the map showed. My experience could have been so different if they highlighted that choice at the start!
Agreed! It also helps that the terrain itself is so diverse and uniquely designed. No disrespect to Witcher 3 but a lot of its terrain is same-ish. So its much easier to lose direction while traversing. While Elden Ring and BoTW has most of the areas very uniquely designed with their own aesthetics which helps in recognizing the landmarks.
@@armaani11 Yeah Thats what I like about RDR2 and kingdom come they have allot unique handcradted locations so I was able to find Tressure in RDR2 like you have places like Hanging Dog Ranch or Black bone Forrest which stand out for the most part I know Were I am on the map. Witcher 3 if I was to try to find tressure it would be near impossible.
I liked in the Gothic games not having a mini map. The experience was overall more emersive. If I remember correctly the map you could buy did not even tell you where you are and was just some drawn picture of some general features of the region like rivers, large buildings, forests or a large monster living at a certain place instead of the exact satellite view of everything you have in a lot of games. I remember having this realisation moments of recognizing some of the map objects and thinking "Ah! Here is where I am...", "Interesting... so this road leads back to point X", or "I see... so this is what that thing from the map looks like". Another system I liked was from the game Outcast where you could ask random NPCs "where is ?" and then they pointed into some general direction, just like you would move around in real life without having a Smartphone map in your pocket. In Morrowind I also remember following road signs, taking wrong turns and then discovering some new buildings I did not see yet.
absolutely! I think the presence of a modern minimap and full interactive maps in general severely reduces the immersion as what you are 'really' doing is traversing a simple 2d space full of points that may or may not be interesting to you. All the actual stuff that fill your screen with substance and color, is worthless. Only POI are worth thinking about, is what the map teaches you. On other hand, the kind of map you talk about (i haven't played Gothic) makes you think about all that substance, mountain ranges, forest and waters, because they may become vital for your pathfinding ability, just like it would in real life. And we probably have a good brain for remembering terrain features thanks to evolution.
I actually really miss the mapping mechanics in the DS zelda games (Hourglass and Spirit Tracks), where the minimap had just enough information to keep you from getting lost but you had to annotate it with useful information you discovered, and sometimes even draw it from scratch. Unfortunately I think that might've really only been possible on the DS with its stylus, bc drawing like that would just be incredibly annoying to execute with a touch screen or mouse, so I don't know if we'll see anything like it again :(
I’m surprised that we don’t see more “make ya own map as you go” in games, so you have a rough map, and you annotate it with notes and sketches as you play. They could have a mobile app so people could draw on phones and tablets, or just use pre-made icons and symbols. I like the idea that instead of the map telling you that a certain animal is in a certain area, you simply notice a lot of that animal and jot it on the map yourself.
Technically this isn't minimaps, but drawing your own maps in Etrian Odyssey 4 is some of the most enjoyable gameplay i have ever seen. I wish some AAA devs would figure out a way how to make "drawing your map" a part of a big openworld game
Take project zomboid for example, it's so satisfying to jolt down your annotations on the map while hidden in a random bathroom while there is a horde nearby. You have markers that you can use as stamps, and you can write down texts. I guess for games without a touchscreen, that is good enough.
I played all of the original Pathologic campaigns, and traversing the town became one of the most satisfying things towards the end. The Bachelor and Haruspex campaigns mostly give you quest markers to show you where you need to go. Clara's campaign though is only half finished, and one thing that's missing are most quest markers. But the thing is at this point you don't need them anymore. You already walked through this town for 40h and know it like the back of your hand. Even better, while your objectives will always be the same after day 6, one of them is to find a specific place. The game gives you a cryptic hint that refers to a specific landmark, and at this point I knew the map so well that solving this riddle was almost never a problem. Beyond satisfying, if it didn't also require you to find people in random places that are extremely hard to find without a guide lol.
The ping system from botw is one of the best open world navigation tools that I hope more game companies will add. By being solid pillars of light all of which are different colors I could use the sheika slate to place multiple down as I’m traveling, and once I find a rest point, backtrack to the marked spots. Elden Ring tries to use this but the fact that the markers need to be placed on the map and can’t be placed in the open world makes it 20 times worse. Also because they were all the same color and even if a marker was placed underground it will still show up on your compass just makes the whole system not accomplish the same things that botw did.
When I beat hollow knight for the first time, I did it on a set of joycons which had a broken button. This, for hollow knight was the button to pull up the map. (I am now aware that you can pull it up from the menus, but I didn't know that at the time). Wandering through hollownest on memory alone was legitimately one of the most enjoyable exploration experiences I have ever had in a game.
Hollow knight also has a cool mechanic where one of your items makes the player appear on the mini map. The amount of items you can use at a given time is limited, so when exploring dangerous areas or challenging bosses, you won’t have that tool at your disposal, but you can bring it back when you’re just going from place to place that doesn’t pose any threat. I really liked that system
This a good comment, however Holow Knight was one of the most enjoyable exploration experiences ever for tons of people, even if they used the map. I know it was for me.
Once again, another instance where the minimap is a quick button press instead of always be visible. Plus, the map didn't help you see where things are until you already found them. One of the best designed games I've ever played.
@@slowbro13215 absolutely true. That map is in many ways a perfectly executed map, being a quick button press, and diegetic, along with having a dynamic cartography system, which is a weird sentence to say.
I loved ghost of Tsushima's wind feature. It was such an awesome in world way of finding your way and you could almost always subtly see it or increase it's intensity when you are a bit lost. Plus the map for times you feel very confused! I loved it
@@editorrbr2107 Skyrims cleirvoyant spell is almost entirly uselss though unless you play with the compass disabled as the compass pretty much fills the spot of overly informative minimaps
kingdom come deliverance in hardcore mode removes the minimap, the player's position icon from the main map, and it is so beautifully designed that you can play the entire game based only on the npc's directions (although the main map still has quest markers) and you must find which way is north using either landmarks or the position of the sun. Amazing experience overall
KGD is my favorite take on "hardcore." Instead of permadeath, where one cheap mistake can tarnish a dozen hours of gameplay it just makes it more *realistic.* Navigating is such a fun experience and you actually have to plan out how you're going to get from city A to city B. The need to navigate by the sun and landmarks, as you mentioned is so satisfying. When you get lost and have to work out when you are is so real feeling. And to the original video, the game does still put some quest markers on the overhead "compass" when you're REALLY close to cover the issue of precise locations.
The first time I played KCD i was on hardcore mode. I got lost in forests for days, at night. It was scary. I just kept wandering in a circle because I was missing landmarks in the dark or I thought I was at one spot on the map but I was wrong. Now, I just don't travel at night. I play as an archer that drinks because of his nightmares. Also, he sleepwalks.
Fun fact: the "Compass" you get in hardcore mode actually tells you where is north/south/west/east, the background of each of them ever so slightly different.
When I played Hardcore mode I didn't like the lack of minimap at first, but then, I actually had to start paying attention. I couldn't go across the fields blindly anymore, I had to follow the path, learn the crossings... I ended up enjoying it more that way.
Raz, you're the reason I play Breath of the Wild without the map, minimap, or fast travel. It's one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. I am always fully aware of where I am and what I'm doing. If im not, I can figure it out through landmarks and npc
@@darksentinel082 yeah, razbuten fully explained why minimaps aren't evil, then there's these kind of morrowind purist style guys who throw away every navigational tool the game gives them, get lost and frustrated and then think themselves better because they play the game the "good way"
@@kaleenar963 oh okay then sorry about that then, I think I just hate the morrowind fanbase that think they are so much better than the mainstream people while they are just arrogant af. Morrowind is great but yeah
I haven't gone fully mapless yet, but my current (third) playthrough I've been going without fast travel and it is not as tedious as I thought it might be. The game is so well designed that there will always be plenty to do in between my primary goals. So much that I would absolutely be missing out on most of it by teleporting between locations. And it's so strange for me hear what the "intended" path is. I would have never guessed as I've never come close to traveling that route. I've always had my own goals (activate all towers, find the Great Fairy Fountains, find specific resources) that the main quest was always an afterthought. Also, I've never played with a full HUD and seeing it looks very gross to me. Nearly everything, aside from health and stamina, can be monitored in a much more intuitive and less distracting way.
I played Ghost of tsushima recently and it does a fantastic job of this. When not using the map all you have is the wind to guide you. Which makes traversing the somewhat Samey landscape not overly difficult, without forcing you to look at the mini map and instead directing you to look at the world for guidance.
I think maps in Sea of Thieves are a really great example of maps being used as part of immersion. The world map can only be accessed from your ship’s cabin, whereas maps and other quest materials are held by the player and can even be shown to others.
I love that they made the map accessible only in the ship's cabin so you can only use the map at the cost of not paying attention to your surroundings. You can't control the ship and look at the map at the same time (I mean, you can but it may be costly when you're not paying attention to where you're going). Of course, that's also made to stimulate multiplayer co-op, so you can have people controlling the ship's wheel while someone can look at the map, another one can manage the sails, the cannons etc., there are many distinct functions to do. That makes everything absolutely immersive.
I love when games put maps and menus in physical places so that you can still use them but it's part of the immersion and it's not always as easy to get to.
I also happen to use the personal compass there more often compared to other games. It's a lot of fun to navigate via compass, ship's map, tresure maps and sometimes even the stars
I think one of the cleanest solutions that has been vastly overlooked, is the original Mirror's Edge waypoint system. You don't have a minimap, you don't need one. The game is focused on visual traversal of your surroundings and figuring out how to reach the place you want to get to, on your own. There is however a waypoint system for when you get completely lost/stuck - and it's very simple. At the center of your screen you have a tiny dot reticle, and tapping a button procks this reticle to aim your screen in the direction of the location you're supposed to travel to. It doesn't put a waymarker, it doesn't give you a route, it doesn't pull up a minimap to show you. It just tells you the direction with no other intrusive ui. And it's brilliant. Literally the simplest yet most optimal system I've ever used that matched its game setting so well.
Skyrim is also an excellent example of an open world not needing a mini-map. The quests almost always give verbal directions to the locations, the environment is varied enough that you can easily recognise places you've been before, and - my favourite bit - the sign posts pointing to towns and cities are actually functional for navigation. I also enjoy that locations don't start out being on your main map, they show up once you've heard or read about them, or once you've discovered them. I personally like to deactivate all my quests so it doesn't point me towards them on the compass.
Another great dietetic navigation mention is Shadow of the Colossus. In SOTC you hold your sword up which will shine light in the direction of the next colossus. You also can't use this in dark places, which I think is a cool gameplay feature.
Gothic did a great job with this. It kept its world in a smaller and more manageable package with more dense content allowing you to both learn quite quickly what is where and to get npcs to give short and precise directions without needing markers and a minimap. also, the smaller world size allowed to make unique visual indications that you could see without special senses or ui elements. many developers took the "bigger is better" approach when it comes to world building instead of the "size that fits the story" and that made it harder to design a world with unique features... and then they fill that big world with bloat.
im glad you brought up people who need minimaps to play games. i am someone that really struggles with navigating real life spaces to a point where i have to use google maps to get around even if i am just walking near my apartment. when i have to play games that either dont have maps or require extra steps to determine my location/goals i always end up feeling really frustrated and just running in circles for ages, unsure of where im supposed to be going. i love games that let me place custom markers if i want to go somewhere and use them constantly even in situations where most players wouldnt bother with them, because my brain just cant wrap itself around the directions otherwise. hollow knight is one of my all time favourite games but despite having 200+ hours in it i cant play it without the compass and maps to a point where i use mods in my randomizer runs to make sure i can always tell where im going. i will say though the biggest thing that helps me with navigation is vertical movement, especially if i can climb landmarks. breath of the wild has by far been one of the best experiences for me navigation wise because if i am lost i can just climb a building or a mountain and use that to get my bearings
Agree. As someone who gets easily disoriented in real life and video games, the amount of time I spend lost on video games is embarrassing. I reckon getting disoriented probably adds 20 hours to my game time compared to normal people who are great with directions. A simple task such as memorizing where the blacksmith is is a difficult task for me.
lol i'm right there with you. google maps is my best friend. i'm so bad with directions irl and it also is prevelant in all my gaming experiences. my friends often tease me for it which makes me feel pretty dumb but it's not really something i can change :/ that's why i'm only now starting BOTW despite having owned it since its release. the open world scared me because i know that i will feel lost and frustrated (hell i'm literally lost right now and i'm very close to looking up a guide T_T)
Being able to get a bird's eye view is something I wish games used more often. Whenever I go to a new city IRL I make it a priority to go up on the highest building (or hill) around to get a sense to navigate from. Maps just can't quite compare.
@@WritingsOfQuill I personally don't Ike that cus then you'd need to take time to climb. Depending on how well you could do it, maybe it won't take too much time but as someone that doesn't have a good sense of direction and scared to get lost I'd have to take time to climb every few minutes
I'm not sure about people having problems with judging directions and probably bad wiring in their brain can be fixed like that, but only relying on maps to walk around sure makes you dumber after a while. I challenge myself every now and again, because I certainly get dumber by always breaking out my phone. haha It's like immediately using a calculator for the most basic arithmetic. C:
I must have missed something in Breath of the Wild because I discovered Zora's Domain only after finishing the desert area and defeating the Titan there. The crazy thing is, everything in the game still works out, even if you play it in an unintended order.
@@kyleward7417 well breath of the wild does actually have story. I actually quite like the story because its told in a way that only a videogame can. I find too many games try to tell and overly cinematic story that doesn't play to the strengths and unique aspects of being a videogame.
@@snmcfadden Indeed because video games can only have one type of story, and the type of story you're talking about is exactly why video games are looked as the worse medium when it comes to storytelling, if it has cinematic cut scenes it's obviously not a real video game, it's a movie, it's not like the word "video game" has video in it and not only game, real games put their story and tell it through item discriptions
I think after doing kakariko it doesn't matter where you start because you get all four titans displayed at the same time. That's why I think Botw is so good, because everyone can play it the way they want and it's not just a clear line to follow ☺️
One of my favorite maps of all time was kingdom come deliverence. Not sure if it had a mini map, but if you are playing on a specific difficulty, you cannot see yourself on the map. It felt so immersive and it was just so much more fun to have to look at the map- look at your suroundings and try to orientate yourself. It just added so much to the expereice! An absoulty amazing game!
Yes, this 100%. Going from getting genuinely lost in the woods and having to follow a river back to civilization to being able to ride from Rattay to Uzhitz with your eyes closed is better than any level up. I played rdr2 for about 10 hours with the minimap on, stopped and realized I was staring at a red line all game, and turned off the map.
I feel like it makes a world of difference to have a mini map locked north. Mini maps that rotate are very counter intuitive for locating yourself. Which is the purpose of a map.
Totally disagree. The main map should be static, but the minimap needs to rotate with my character, otherwise its as good as useless for me. Obviously the best scenario is if we get to toggle it in the options.
Your replies gave me the realization that there's a serious split among people. I'm like you, I would vastly prefer the map to stay north oriented like in games like Morrowind. I also feel this way about Google maps and always cringed at the lack of design for this style of map reading.
Playing through Breath of the Wild the first time with the mini-ap disabled was fantastic. I actually read the signs on the road, talked to people, figured out what landmarks were in which cardinal directions, and had to engage with the environment.
when i tried this, i just followed the roads. I was surprised how the roads took me to people and places I didnt discover on my first playthru. Tho the minimap is stll helpful once you are late game and just wanna collect specific things since the hero's path is literally the best map feature to ever exist for completionist.
You totally nailed it! Some video essays can be a bit contrived, but you were succinct and offered some great examples and ideas of how to improve things
I. LOVE. THIS VIDEO. I have had this exact sentiment for years. In my later teenage years I realized that any game I played with a minimap became a "follow the icon simulator." I would constantly stare at the map and essentially lose any sense of adventure or agency in exploring myself. Breath of the Wild was an incredible game for me; right out the gate I searched the settings to turn of the minimap, found Pro mode, turned it on and never looked back. It was a wonder playing that game, because the entire time I was choosing where to go and what to explore, and I very rarely followed any sort of quest marker in the game. I would love to see more open world games in the future follow the design philosophies of BoTW because they did such an incredibly job creating a world that is easy to explore and navigate with no map guidance.
The toggle-able mini-map in RDR 2 is great, and I'm glad you brought it up. I tell everyone to play the game that way. It helps connect players to the world, and makes the game feel more adventurous and less on rails.
Yep 💯, best of both worlds. Anybody who wants it off can turn it off and everyone who wants it on can turn it on and anyone who wants it off but easily accessible can have the toggle option when they want to pop it in and out quickly
KCD on hardcore mode was the most real-to-life map I have ever seen in a game. It gave you a map, but it didn't tell you where you were on it, so you were forced to use it like a real map. You had to look for landmarks and follow the direction of travel of the sun... Getting lost in the forest genuinely felt like getting lost in the forest, I was in fact lost in the forest....
16:04 - as a developer I can assure you, the hardest part about adding a method of calling up a UI element will be to add it to the options menu for keybinding. And that's not hard once you already have that option menu for other keys. Second hardest is to ensure there's enough buttons on a keypad to perform the action, as long as the game has a button free for it it really wouldn't take up much effort at all, with minimal amount of QA time. I guess the hardest part of QA is to ensure it can't be pressed at the wrong times, like during a cutscene. But as long as there's some forethought about that, by keeping track of both if the player wants it and if the game is actively hiding it for cutscene reasons it shouldn't be difficult to avoid. The bigger the team, the more time it would take to add, but even in that case it would be a minor feature that could be managed quickly by each team member.
Why not add in an option to turn off HUD? Because calling up HUDs mid-game kills the flow of the game. I personally avoid big games without minimaps. And most games have the option to turn off HUD to appease people like him. Besides, we all know it is no coincidence this youtuber made this because of Elden Ring. He played a good game without minimap, and thought, "Hmm is this game fun because of the amazing enemies, gameplay and combat? No! It's the lack of minimaps!", amazing bias and logic. And ofc to get views backing off of the Elden Ring horse.
@@LTCloud9 Nah, it was more of a "game is fun bc enemies, gameplay, combat are fun AND the minimap not being present helps." And as he mentioned, not all games work well when HUD is off. They become clunkier bc the devs made game with the HUD in mind. It's not like he wants games to appeal to him specifically, but for games to try offering different styles of play and committing to them. And for your rant about youtuber piggybacking on popular content, just... come on. This is TH-cam, trends are important and skipping out on them is an effective way to tank your channel. Also, breath of the wild and elden ring are both games that tackle exactly what he's saying excellently. Why shouldn't he reference them?
@@WhatIsMyPorpoise For every successful game where player are forced to play with zero hud options, there are 3-4 successful games where hud options depend on the player. Take RDR2, it left it to us, the players, to decide how we want out map. Force players to play minimap less, game won't be as big a success. More Options is ALWAYS better. The entire video is an obvious trend chase. Japanese games have lots of problem. FOr some reason, they hate, like absolutely hate giving options to players. Take BotW, great game, 5/5. But those sick bastards added almost no customization option. If I want to sprint with ZR, ZL, X, etc. I should be able to. Same with LM3, it didn;'t affect me as I prefer normal axis, but good luck those used to reverse axis. Jap games have lots of problems, but it just so happens western devs have bigger ones. ALmost every major wester release is full of bugs & glitches, it's chock full of microtransaction and day one passes, unpolished and rushed out, etc. That's the actual reason western games flop. Not due to "crutches" or "design philosophy". That's pretentious talk 101. Elden ring is an amazing game, no doubt, but suppose it got released in a state similar to cyberpunk 2077, pretty sure it will tank hard. And the reverse, if cyberpunk was released bug free, that game would have been a massive hit. All that actual stuff that matter is ignored and goes on about "Design Philosophy", it cannot get more pretentious. Well, he does have to chase trends to appease fans, so not his fault, just doing his job, cant blame him for that. Both "designs" work. It's just a matter of not being a greedy fluck who releases games half baked and pump it full of day 1 dlcs and micros.
@@LTCloud9 Or maybe there are some people who actually enjoy navigation and being immersed in video games? But noooo. Obviously if they're advocating for a gaming feature you dislike they're trend chasing.
@@lilowhitney8614 Did you read? I saiD MAKE HUD elements OPTIONAL, as in, let people like you play without minimap and people like me play with it, totally upto the players. I want choice, you want to force your gameplay settings on others.
Subnautica did a phenomenal job of this. Far as I know the game not only has no minimap, but no map. You can craft a compass and you have one giant landmark to orient yourself with before you do. Really reinforces the feeling of exploring a hostile alien world and honestly I have stronger map of that place in my head than I do of Skyrim.
Never thought about it but yeah, Subnautica did feel more fun to explore. There is a mod that adds a map but at least the map only shows what you've already explored, and when I discovered that mod I already knew the map haha.
@@mario_gabriel I got that mod on my last playthrough and in my opinion it is great for one reason that would be very difficult without it - knowing where you've already explored. Sure you can drop beacons but who wants to drop beacons all over the place that aren't marking anything interesting? It's especially good on later playthroughs when you might remember exploring an area in a previous run and think you explored it this time around when you really didn't. I think it would be a better fit for the game if it were a base piece rather than a PDA function, though, like the scanner room; that way you could plan your expedition at a base and have to return or build an outpost to plan a new one.
Not really the map is very memorable without beacons I only discovered they existed just before going to the lost river and even then I only used them to mark stuff like the bulb zone portal so I don't accidentally go to the mountains again or in the blood kelp trench entrance so I don't accidentally go to the sea treaders path and dunes border again
man i had the exact opposite experience the lack of a map meant that I was never able to create a mental map of the game and was so getting completely lost so consistently by the mid game i found it to be completely unplayable. The 3 dimensional navigation of subnautica i think makes it even more difficult
What is more fun about Subnautica is that the game generally doesn't tell you what to do. Apart from a dozen points on the pods and Degazi bases, you are supposed to do your own research and investigate the way out of the planet. Moreover, almost all interfaces are physical, which makes it even more immersive.
I love how in Deep Rock Galactic, not only is the "minimap" not very detailed (showing little information besides cave shape) but you have to stop moving in order to use it. That way, you aren't constantly staring at the minimap when you should be finding your way through the cave looking for objectives and minerals (which, more often than not, don't appear on the minimap).
I’m in the middle of a Witcher 3 replay without the mini map, and the Chort mission made me flip it back on! It’s funny that was the exact example you used. Overall though, using the main map and “punishing” me with the time to bring it up made it a lot more immersive for me to really try to navigate and remember the world
Would recommend getting a mod that lets you fade the mini-map in when using witcher senses. Gives the witcher senses a greater purpose, and means that you actually get to play the game without a mini-map, but without being screwed over by quest design.
I really like when there is a compass design on the top of the screen that just gives you your tagged destination. It means you can still explore but not go in the wrong direction
I remember in Skyrim, when I had no clue that there was even a map, an NPC told me to go to Riften for a quest and then I just followed the compass and roads. I ended up facing quite strong enemies, being very low level at that point, but the absolute joy of exploration, finding seemingly random things on the way and finally reaching the destination was so immense. It's a play-through I can not forget.
Not playing with a mini map in most games is so aggravating, I'd love devs to better consider the world without a mini map I've modded em out so many times, but it just hinders the experience if I can't bring up the mini map for 2 seconds to double check where I'm going
They’re definitely useful but it does suck when I realize I’m just walking across the minimap cuz the game is just like “connect the dots from one unnamed location to another spot in the middle of a forest/warehouse/haunted spaceship you’ll never come back to”
I recently started playing horizon zero dawn, and it uses the compass system by default. It took a bit to get used to, but it definitely feels good to slowly start to learn to make my way around the world. The quests are scattered around in such a way that you'll have to move around a bit and get to know at least the main routes throughout the world.
I actually really enjoy the navigation in Skyrim. Especially at the start where your only means of fast travel is paying a carriage driver to go to a main city. Other than that the simple compass that tells you the general direction of quests/landmarks, the various roads and paths, plus the signposts that have actual information on them and directions make exploring fun when you're not spamming triangle to get up a cliff.
I like having a compass, but Skyrim had too many icons on there, that rubbed against the feeling of exploration. Modding away the icons from my compass has made the experience a lot better! I mean it's like a whole new feeling.
I have fallen in love with diagetic navigation + menus these past few years. It just ... makes sense. And it's the mark of a well thought-out and designed game now in my mind. I instantly look at any tutorial area I get dropped in and ask "could I navigate using only in-game assets and the world design?" and if the answer's no, then I know to lower my expectations for the game in question.
1000% agree - when I finished RDR2 I felt like I spent more time starting at the mini map than the actual world. On one hand it was that subconscious need to stay on track, but also bodies on the ground are hard to spot, animals certainly, and I could never remember which button was the prompt I was looking for. Going through again I've been turning it off and trying to pay attention more and it's been so much fun to actually learn the geography of everything.
My favorite map system is the Minecraft map. It only shows you places where you've already been, but it also requires a physical material to create which balances out the amount of information you gain from it. It would've worked perfectly if the Minecraft world was as detailed and interesting to explore as a triple-A game.
I've done 3 playthroughs of Elden Ring so far and NEVER noticed the compass disappearing in boss fights, and it makes sense since it is wholly unnecessary. Kudos to good UI design.
I remember playing Red Dead 2 and on my 2nd play through I decided to swap the mini-map to a compass. Completely changed how I played it. I had always played the game with my eyes glued to the bottom right of my screen, following the most optimal route possible. With the compass, I felt like I had to actually chart my own route, using my actual knowledge of the roads and routes as well as using landmarks as reference points. I wouldn’t know I was in a new area because I could see it on the map, I would notice the geography actually change. I found myself going down so many more different paths and discovering so many different places and things.
This reminds me of an excellent game I'm playing right now: Outward. It not only doesn't have a mini-map its main map is static with location names and a compass drawn on the map, so you know which direction is which on the map, also no fast travel. No player marker either, you just have to figure out where you are. In other words you have to navigate Outward like you were given a real world map and a compass (which shows at the top of your screen). Also no planting beacons down to guide you either like you can in Elden Ring and BotW. I have gotten lost a few times in Outward when I didn't take navigation seriously enough at first, but after I starting *actually* thinking and looking for paths and landmarks and using my compass to make sure I'm generally on track it's absolutely amazing.
I always liked the clairvoyance spell in skyrim that lead you to your objective with an immersive optional system that never took away from the atmosphere. It was also a good balance as you couldn’t have it up for very long forcing you to fill in the gaps yourself while being there for when you needed it most.
My favorite system is the one used in Hollow Knight. Not only is the map diagetic, its acquisition is as well. You have to stumble around blindly for a bit whenever you discover a new area, and finding "the map guy", Cornifer, is used as a release of tension, usually amplified by putting a challenge room in the way. Just like every other element of the game, the system is also subverted to great effect. You stumble haphazardly into Fog Canyon, and Cornifer is sequestered behind a giant, ominous black gate that you will have no way of traversing until much later. You're so used to his cheery humming and trail of sheets of paper, which are marvelous breadcrumbs, that finding him scared shitless near the entrances to Deepnest really does a lot for setting the ominous tone of the area. The game establishes that Cornifer will leave behind business cards after he moves on to the next area, so when you reach the Resting Grounds, you have a reason to go back to the map shop and see the new marker additions. That's another thing; the mapping supplies store forces players to prioritize what markers they'll need by making them cost precious resources to acquire. This adds wrinkles into the gameplay that just don't exist in other games. The best part of this is that if you're used to the layout of the game, you don't have to spend those resources and can instead prioritize expensive items like the Lumafly Lantern. The compass taking a resource slot to have equipped is another master stroke, because it forces newer players to get used to juggling what charms they have equipped, and allows more experienced players the ability to more easily get fun charm synergies going. The crazy thing is that the whole game is diagetic in this way, and constantly forcing players to becoming accustomed to things only to subvert them. That's game design done correctly if you ask me.
I also love that you can BUY map markers and set them down wherever. It's a really necessary tool for a metroidvania, where you'll potentially be exploring the same area at least 2-3 different occasions. Even as a verified God Gamer it's still useful when doing a casual run or a randomiser, because you get to jot down locations you need to revisit without having to remember an item or a secret that you didn't pick up before. I was using them a lot in my very first playthrough and it helped to remember bossfights I chickened out on, and mark down weird items I couldn't interact with yet.
I liked how Fable did it all the way back in like 2003 or whenever Fable 1 came out. It only appears when you hold down the button, and it creates a sort of trail of glowing breadcrumbs to lead you to the next objective. It's not in the way, and it's kind of an immersive element as your character animates to make it appear. It gets pulled into the concept that your character is a "hero", a defined supernatural kind of Human capable of learning magic and mastering combat in ways others simply can't. It also pulls you into the fairy tail aesthetic in the same way due to the afore mentioned connection to the bread crumb trail from Hansel and Gretel. It's super cool. It would have also been cool if some more difficult missions had ravens come down and consume the light orbs like the birds consuming the bread crumbs, like a "beyond this point you must navigate on your own" kind of threshold. I think it would be pretty cool to implement in a future Fable game.
I think things like the compass in Bethesda games is a nice middle ground. It helps you get around and locate new areas, but it doesnt have enough detail to be super distracting or hand holding.
I think even that compass gives too much information on nearby locations and thus severly devalues the exploration aspect. Locations are even given a type marker before you've seen it! Didn't really look at the landscape before I modded it away. After playing Elden Ring (Game of the Decade) I have a high standard for open world exploration.
@@Viljarms Then I'd say at least use a compass more like fallout 3/4, so I can at least know if I'm near something. I love Elden Ring but I don't have the time to track down so many locations.
I'm actually surprised that you haven't mentioned morrowind, as that's what they've done with directions, having your directions written out in a journal and npcs describing where to go and how to get there, great video , love the concept of it and the fact that it isn't spoken about much in the gaming community
The main issue is that there is a good chance you can't find your destination, and then you're stuck. I don't think there is a good answer to this. What did work was the fast travel options. Because you went through specific points, you would become familiar with them. You would learn how they were connected. You would learn the areas surrounding them. Before long you would know the map pretty well. In contrast, if you simply follow a quest marker you are unlikely to remember much.
Morrowind is popular, but you go back to 2005 and earlier and most games were doing stuff like this. In even earlier games like Ultima 7 you even had to write your own journal and draw your own maps. It's an art that has become un-perfected over time. I think modern games that succeed like BOTW and Outward show that it can be done and still avoid some of the pitfalls of the older methods. (Morrowind is really good at what it does though, especially quest pacing.)
@@KyriosHeptagrammaton I remember when games started having auto-maps! Instead of having to draw your own map by hand with graph paper, the game would fill one out for you as you explored! What luxury. The idea of having a map that was already filled out even if you had never explored the place yourself was considered a cheat, and might be found in the game's clue book.
I think the presence or absence of a map, if a conscious choice by a developer, is something that can shape a game. On the other hand, some players have preferences or even lack spatial awareness. I'm much more likely to buy a game if I look at it and see that the mapping systems are robust and easy to see. But I get lost easily and tend not to find that enjoyable. I always do give a nod to games where you can turn such functions on and off, though. I am aware that not everyone wants as much guidance as I would tend to. (Note: I'm legally blind.)
Absolutely, it used to be effectively a required feature that you either figure out how to memorize the map or create your own. I remember Zeliard in particular was kind of annoying because those fire levels had one way walls and air currents that would drop you off in random places and without a map, it could be virtually impossible to complete the area. Admittedly, that was kind of a cool level of puzzle solving on top of the rest of the game.
Skyrim has my favorite navigation system. The top bar is very small, and being able to change the opacity can really help fade it into your screen, increasing immersion . It keeps that exploration feel, while also giving some direction for new players. I also have 2k hours in it so I might be a bit biased
There are so many games that would benefit from something like this, I feel red dead redemption 2 could become so much more immersive if the option of a Skyrim mini map compass thingy was in it
I shit on skyrim a lot for being an oversimplified game, but the exploration in skyrim is legitimately great and one of the few reasons I still play it sometimes. Fallout 3 and oblivion are great examples of a good map, too.
@@trslim6032 True. For all the shenanigans that goes on around those games, the world/map design is always. There’s just something about those worlds that beg to be explored and unpacked
@@WastePlace Agreed. I even prefer F3 over NV when it comes to exploration. It's more open and less quest-driven. F4 is also pretty good. Even back to F1 you have the opening quest where you go to Vault 15. Which contains nothing of interest, and you're actually supposed to "accidentally" find Shady Sands and continue from there. Sure, you could argue that that's "quest-driven", but that's the _main_ quest, and not some side quest to let you explore an otherwise hidden area.
This made me think about how I play Warriors games (the two I’ve played are Hyrule Warriors and Three Hopes). I basically never look at the overworld during missions (or even navigating the hub world tbh) unless I’m fighting a specific enemy. I am solely using the mini map to navigate and it means I miss a lot of the world details. I think there’s definitely a way to avoid this, be it beacons directing you to the main mission (and I think directing characters on the map helps a bit too so that you can basically keep doing what you want). But often with how slim the timing is for some missions, the mini map is the only way to get somewhere fast enough without hitting walls or going in the wrong direction
As a person with aphantasia, I simply cannot play an open-world 3d game without a minimap. Even with minimaps, if they don't contain *all* the information necessary to complete the game, I will get lost, frustrated, and give up. I realize that as a result I'm not the target audience for these types of games, and haven't even attempted an open-world game in years. But there are a lot of people who have limited visualization that will genuinely need a minimap, despite the elements you highlight that can be improved by good game design. (and, yeah, I can't get anywhere in the real world without GPS either. fellow aphantasiac folks understand)
I'm legally blind/have low vision and have a similar problem. I will probably never find all or even most of the caves in Elden Ring because those entrances "clearly marked with lights" everyone talks about are still just too hard for me to see without considerable effort. BOTW was much easier to navigate due to its bright colors, but even still I ended up using the map a lot. Considering the fact there's >13% of the public that's legally blind alone, and others like you who have issues with navigating spaces for other reasons, I don't think not being the target audience is a valid excuse. It's not that we *just* dislike exploration, it's that we have a disability that makes it so we almost can't like exploration because of how difficult it is. Imagine you have 3 bars IRL and one has stairs. That's like saying that the bar with stairs just isn't for the person in the wheelchair because, while they could make it up the steps, it'd be more effort than it's worth and would probably require outside help. I think devs need to start thinking about accessibility more.
Speaking of Hollow Knight, I've seen people complain that wayward compass is a charm that you have to wear and waste charm notch on. It frustrates me so much that whenever people see the map without a finger pointing to their exact location, they act like a lost kid and refuse to try and understand where they are. Map is still a usable tool, and I wish more people tried to use it and learn to navigate.
yeah but what if your game world is changing all the time? then you'd only want it to focus on what is visible to the player right? thus how to do a mini-map properly! have it focus only on what the player can see at one given time. Treat it more as another perspective and then it doesn't seem like a cheating pile of garbage. A mini map is basically supposed to be a form of radar nothing more. Over time it turned into a GPS system which was just wrong.
interesting video. let me just say that i wish games could give us the option to customize mini maps more. for example: in botw, don’t you just wish you could filter out all of the korok seeds you’ve found so that you can only see pinned locations and shrines? or rather lower the opacity to not have mini maps ruin the immersion? only time can tell ig. 🤷♀️
wow, or how about eye tracking to make make minimap more opaque when you are looking at it. I think eye tracking is a great way to add new controls to the game, games are not using it so much.
@@presorchasm Imagine a world where everyone and everything is vying for your attention. For every possible second. Now imagine a world where a select few know exactly where to stand on your walk to work every second to maximize your attention. They sell this information to top buyers when they don't want your attention at any specific moment and soon all of your attention is being coordinated by these select few. You are no longer able to choose what to look at because they know exactly what you will instinctually look at no matter the time. Even worse, they know exactly when to show you a thing to make you instinctually do a thing. They want you to walk a different street, show you something to make you not want to walk down your normal street. Then they show you something else that makes you hungry for a burger. Oh look, what a coincidence you are standing right outside a burger joint. It only gets worse from there. All the while you never really notice that they are doing this to you.
@@masterlinktm I see, I can imagine that eye tracking on an augmented reality context can be rather dystopic. But I fail to see how it's the same when we apply it to video games? Since, like VR headsets or AR goggles, it does require a proprietary hardware that can be turned off at anytime.
I love the way skyrim does this. The game has alot of landmarks, signs, and different biomes (pine forest, aspen forest, flat grassland, marsh, freezing wasteland, and mountains) so you don't need to rely too heavily on a map. The directions NPCs tell in some quests is good as well. Like hadvar/rolof point out where dustman's cairn is before you have to go to it. So you have a good idea of where it is. Ive heard this feature is even better in older games as well.
For me, I love the minimap because it tells me everything I can do. In singleplayer games, I'd gladly take a checklist for a small enough region I can do, and it let's me find out on my own in that small area. I love exploring, but I also like doing everything, and finding that one small objective you missed when you don't even know what it is is very very frustrating
I totally get that. It's the ADHD side of gaming, where tasks and rewards offer that sweet, sweet hit of dopamine. So good. I get caught up in that too. But I remember playing Hellblade, which did away with maps, HUDs, health-bars, anything that wasn't diegetic. The result is very limited, but it's such a profoundly immersive experience, I found myself wishing for more games like that. No task lists, no map clearing, no dragged out slog finding every last hidden collectable, just pure character experience. I like collectables, but some games positively abuse them to pad out the content. If there are so many that finding them all becomes an endless, joyless chore, then having them all marked on a minimap to make it easier doesn't make it more fun. It makes it feel pointless. That said, I totally feel you about missing that one thing. It's annoying when you literally have to resort to a cheat site in order to find everything. I never found all the dinosaur bones in RDR2, or the stone carvings, or poor old Algernon Wasp's orchids. And that still bugs me.
@@rottensquid This is how I view collectible quests: as a chore. If a game has a bunch of collectibles, I will literally sit there and be like "Okay, if I collect ten collectibles, I can move on to the next story mission!" rinse and repeat for the next mission... and the one after that. Like I have to find some way to reward myself for collecting these because it completely kills the experience for me if I don't.
@@williamrhea-banker3005 Right, but I think what Alex is saying is that map-clearing and chore-ticking has its own appeal, which shouldn't be dismissed. The very act of scanning the mini-map for things to do, things to find, puzzles to solve, chores to tick off, appeals to her. I just think a lot of gamers complain about it because it's a little too easy for designers to pad out games with it. Like every other aspect of games, it require balance.
I think the dislike for minimaps works in single player games. I don't think that the removal of a minimap makes the game better in MMOs tho. Last time someone tried to have no minimap in their mmo people just had the map up on their second monitor. I think it depends on the game. I also think that for some people its nice in single player games.
@@cynthiahembree3957 Right. I think it's a matter of engagement. With MMOs, engagement is almost never a problem, because real people provide all the engagement you'll ever need. You don't need the game mechanics to provide challenge. But when your only engagement is with the game story and mechanics, it would be nice to not have huge lulls in engagement when all you're doing is running from one end of the map to the other looking for the next moment the game becomes a game again, and not just scenery. Also, I think immersion is more important in single player than it is in MMOs. I think engaging with real people also provides deeper immersion, and requires less illusion of realism in the game itself.
For those who like diegetic navigation Sea of Thieves is fantastic at that! You're given maps, a compass, telescope, even a watch. Nothing is presented on screen without it being the character using that tool, and there's something very satisfying about that! The character doesn't even have a world map on their person, you have to use the one on your ship for more macro-directions.
I love that Shadow of War decided to let you disable the minimap (which you can ALMOST play the game without), but in doing so you lost access to HUD elements which tracked your health/arrows. Truly incredible UI design
a game that did really well in terms of exploration and mini maps, is Subnautica it's fairly easy to navigate everything as many areas are simply linearly connected to each other, which means as you progress with your gear/equipment you'll also progress further away from the original shallow waters I just love Subnautica and I love bringing it up wherever I can 😎
they could do with fixing the prawn bug that corrupts your entire save 5 minutes after you build it, the ps5's stupid "sync" thing didnt help either as i accidentally overwrote my last working save and didnt have the heart to do it again especially as i just spent about 4 hours painstakingly rearranging my base as theres no way to move lockers with stuff in it(that im aware of)
I had to look up an online map to find the one thing I was missing to build a depth model. Turns out I missed a wreck. It would have been nice to have a sketched map based on what you’ve already explored or something similar to the way points you can put down (make them more abundant or not cost any materials?). I ended up with a corrupt save 30 hours into my first playthrough on PS4 so after about six months later when it had been patched somewhat I didn’t build much (so it didn’t lag out) and used an online map to get back to the point of progression I was at before. Great game I won’t deny but exploration to find very specific things in the big wrecks (unlike the pods that get a radio-based marker to travel to) and the bugs kinda dragged it down a bit. On PS4, it’s a buggy and laggy mess.
Genshin impact is another one of those they only mark out shops and quest objectives while having moculi and chests to encourage exploration. Plus the have clear worn paths to every area in the world or a puzzle you can solve to take you to a far off area. If you never want to use a minimap you don't have to
Subnautica is truly worthy of such devotion. :) It helps that subnautica's map is deceptively small, a good deal of size/scale of the map comes from maps height and because of this you essentially have levitation/flight enabled for the whole game thus seeing all the points of interest from higher vantage points.
Firewatch and Shenmue II have great map design, in firewatch you open up a map on one hand and a compass on another and you’ll use landmarks to orient and navigate, Shenmue II while dated has map stands on the street which has street names and all the shops you can use buy a map which will give you a small mini map, but the majority of your navigation will be by checking the map stands and after a little while you’ll remember the layout of the areas so well you’ll naturally want to explore and easily find your way back, all while never breaking immersion.
When you brought up having different types of maps for different situations, I immediately thought of Wind Waker. The compass while you're sailing really helps with immersion, and its such a great contrast from the dungeon maps, which serve a completely different purpose. It's funny how I never realized growing up how special of a balance these Zelda games created by making memorable intuitive layouts and landmarks, and on top of that the map systems serve their functions so well to highlight that design and help the player without being a crutch. I think in general Nintendo is really good at creating intuitive gameplay mechanics that just make sense, and it's something I realize that I take for granted as I experience more non-Nintento titles that just recreate the same flawed systems over and over.
Compass HUDs have always been my preference whenever possible. You get the same info as a lot of minimaps, without the handholding of a birds eye view. You still have to be creative about your local navigation, while still making you creatively solve the puzzle of geography.
I think for some games, it would be really cool if the player has to do their own cartography if they want a map. This would of course be optional, but it's also the only way to unlock a minimal or a map at all.
One of my favorite things about how I play Skyrim in VR is having to buy physical maps that I hold in my actual hand and don't tell me where I am on them, I have to figure out where I am on the map based on my surroundings and signposts, plus my also-physical compass which only points north. Not fast-traveling means that every time I leave the comfort of one city, I've got to be prepared to survive and get lost a bunch just trying to get where I need to go. Traveling at night is also scarier because I can't actually see my map without a light source. I really like having to work for navigation in a game like that!
One of the few good additions in the recent assassins creed games is a pathfinding difficulty setting. On the higest difficulty it will give you descriptions in the quest log and will only reveal a waypoint once you are close to it, to avoid having people search every house in a city.
I know Ubisoft is an easy punching bag, but I've loved playing through GR Breakpoint because it addresses a lot of these problems. It has landmark-based navigation, intuitive discovery for objectives, and can turn off almost all the HUD while leaving a compass. Plus, it has difficulty sliders for each and every element. I can turn down enemy detection to account for my lack of map markers / HUD, while making the health and ammo systems more realistic.
I never noticed that the compass in ER disappeared when you enter a boss fight... But I'm not even surprised, Fromsoftware is amazing and one of the few companies that still goes above and beyond with their games after all these years. Their standards still high.
They still decided to include intrusive text boxes that explain basic things to you during the first hour of the game which is very much unlike them to do…
@@mahfuzannan8270 "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO USE ONE OF YOUR 14 CRIMSON FLASKS TO REVIVE TORRENT? I KNOW THE ANSWER IS YES 100% OF THE TIME BUT I WILL CONTINUE TO ASK." That One text box when you try and summon Dead torrent and by default answers no
This video is outstanding. One of my favorite feelings in games is being lost, but not directionless, meaning I have a vague sense of where to go (think Outer Wilds' "there's more to explore here" prompts), but there's still mystery. Minimaps make this impossible.
For a more casual gamer like myself, playing and completing games is kinda becoming a luxury mainly because of time (spare time). Having minimap to "rush" through a game is really helpful. The option to turn off the minimap is great for people who like to immerse in the game and have the time to do so, which I am not.
You seem to have FOMO issue and the games you want to play are so long that you feel the need to rush them to go through your selection. Casual or not, gamers can totally be more selective instead of consuming games like appetizers.
@@PainterVierax I see what you're saying, but when you're limited spare time means you come back to games like 1 or 2 times per month for an average of 3/4 hours at a time, I find that immersion is incredibly difficult regardless simply because you're not frequently in the game. So voluntarily choosing not to use certain tools that make your life easier, like minimaps, makes the whole process tedious and a huge drag sometimes
@@PP-sh6ki with that very small amount of time available, those AAA videogames using minimaps are so long to complete even rushing them that you'll forget the story and the controls. That's why I play shorter games or games with short runs instead.
I’m curious if you’ve ever tried the game Outward. One of its actual selling points is the complete lack of mini-map or even any markers at all. In fact, while it has a map screen, it doesn’t actually show your location on that screen, so you have to use the map in conjunction with landmarks to even know where exactly you are. The result is that it forced the devs to make a game that can be navigated without these common tools, and I think that makes for better game worlds personally. It was quite ballsy of the devs to go that route in a modern game, but I’d like to see more games try it as it can be very immersive and make the world so much more memorable. Sadly I doubt any AAA games would be brave enough to do that and risk lowering their broad appeal.
People in general had no trouble there was no mini-map in Subnautica. The best the game can do, is throw a compass at you, when you find the schematic for it that is :) So can't see why other games couldn't as well.
I like Helldivers 2's minimap where it shows you where the primary objectives are, areas where some type of enemy base is, shows a ping of where enemies are around you, keeps track of locations once they are discovered, and certain things can cause it to show more or less information. To see all this information, you have to sacrifice your ability to do anything that uses your character's arms. Which includes being able to fight.
On my third playthrough of the Witcher 3, I turned the minimap off, and it made the game so much more fun. I actually had to follow the roads instead of blindly following the line, the twisting streets of Novigrad actually became easier to navigate, and I finally noticed that the Golden Sturgeon is the only yellow building on the waterfront.
the only problem as he said, is that the game is not designed to be played without a minimap, and the fact that the full map doesn't open instantly make it very frustrating, specially if you are bad at navigating. but the friendlyHUD mod fix it, it lets you toggle to only show the minimap when you hold M like RDR2, and give you floating 3D icons that only show up when you use the witcher sense. its perfect, and I really hope CDPR learn from them and use it for their next witcher game.
I've NEVER found a way to be comfortable in Novigrad. There are areas that make sense, like "the ocean is west", and areas I recognize, but the rest is still a maze. But I hate cities anyway, so that might just be a "me" problem.
I played the entirety of BOTW without the mini map on and it really showed just how incredible the level & sound design were. There was never any frustration trying to find things and it felt like it added a HUGE amount of enjoyment as it was such a fun feeling when I’d catch a glimpse of something interesting in the horizon and think “ooh lets go explore that!”. I was actually quite shocked how much immersion it added. It connected you to the task and gave you a sense of achievement as following a mini map feels like getting given an answer instead of working it out for yourself. I know it’s harder for more realistic games as the devs for zelda can make drastic terrain changes to make it easier to navigate but, as is pointed out in the video, it can still be done to a lesser degree i.e RDR2.
I was amazed at how well BOTW worked without the minimap, and it made for a whole new second playthrough when I found that setting. The signs at forks in the road are actually useful! When folks give you quests they actually tell you how to get to whatever they need, and the world gives you the info to navigate to there! It honestly set my standard for that sort of thing.
Not sure if you've ever seen the game but check out Miasmata. They make you use Cartography like triangulation to build your map as you go. You need to pick spots to get your bearings and then it fills out the map details once you can pinpoint your location. Sounds like a great alternative, keeping the players engaged in the world.
Level design is what could help most with solving this issue. I think that the more memorable a game’s landscape is, the less they need to rely on checking a map or compass, because over time they’ll just naturally become familiar with the world. This is why I would love for more games to adopt a metroidvania style of game world, in which the game world is broken up into a series of branching paths that connect to one another. It’s a comprise between “open world” and “linear corridor” design that is, in my opinion, built to suit the more story-focused style of open world game, where players generally just want to get to the next part of the quest. Less space and more strict level layouts ensure that it’s easier for players to get around, and developers are able to put more time into making those levels distinct and memorable enough that navigation tools aren’t as necessary. Plus, metroidvania games also tend to follow the same principle of unique areas that you mentioned about Elden Ring & BotW.
my problem with metroidvania games worlds is you spend alot of time being told this is a game world by the world "you'll need something to get up high" "youll need a stronger blade to cut the door down" it makes expoloring offeten end with oh i need jump boots to do this bit and it makes exploring not very fun because evey (not every but lots of ) parth is shut off befor you find the cool thing and then when you do come back with you rocket boot and better blade 3 to get in that room there is notting cool in there its just a pack of buttles or helth
Level that can be navigated by ease of recognition are so often the most memorable and nostalgic. It also works for question, not just navigation - the cave with the Chort in Witcher 3 is a perfect example: The locations where the Chort bait has to be spread could be so easily marked by a particular type of tree or a ring of mushrooms or something.
Edit: The Witcher 3's latest update added a toggle for the minimap and HUD. Pretty much while you’re exploring, it disappears and you can press a button for it to come back briefly Figured it was worth noting as it makes the game a lot better imo and solves some of the issues I talk about in this video.
In this video, I mention the work of a great channel called Afterthoughts who has some really rad discussions on UI (among other things). Here is the link: th-cam.com/video/yGkG3VGWtls/w-d-xo.html
Hope you're all well. For those who have been here awhile, you might remember me talking about this topic forever ago. While the original video means a lot to me still as it is sort of how I got my start, it isn't all that thorough and quickly became outdated, so I decided to remake it. Get excited for when I remake it again 8 years from now!
stop mentioning botw everywhere jesus
no lol
@@razbuten too bad.
@@tachytack he didn't mention outer wilds in this video, and you still complain smh
LMAO remake it in 4 years.
Also, I still disagree.
The problem is clearly that we need MEGA-maps with the gameplay happening in the corner.
The overlay maps like in Diablo II ✊
You mean like a Paradox game? lol
@@Zoe_A_MacDonald that's why I can't stop playing stellaris...
Open World, the Open World Game went even further and removed everything but the minimap.
Fullscreen map, game in a fixed resolution window in the corner. Perfection.
Chad-Morrowind: "go sixty half steps down the path till you find a tree, climb the tree, spot a rock the shape of a wood elf, and go the opposite direction till you find your destination "
Yeah and me trying to find a mine for 3 hours, I found it! but was done... for a simple can you go there and get something for me...
I almost threw out my copy when trying to find the cave of the incarnate.
except Morrowind does have a mini-map, it just works in tandum with the journal system. There's even a compass in the game. The difference is that it leaves it up to the player to connect the dots. But even then the general rule is that Bethesda's approach in their later games is the worst way you could design a game and this video is foolish for even praising them. Todd Howards design philosophies are some of the worst that you can follow as a developer, game designer and UI designer.
Truthfully the way around needing a minimap is simple, design the game world in a way that you intuitively move through it, if the game world is designed properly there is no need for a mini-map, there is no need even for a map. We can use indicators like signage, colours and lighting to signify to the player where we think they should go as designers and where to indicate risk/reward. Minimaps and Maps in the way they work in modern games are indicative of a failure in design and communication language, if something is designed well then you don't need to revert to the developer straight up telling the player where to go.
The problem is that most of the player base are dumb and companies profit from really dumb players who would rather pay for a microtransaction to try and find their way around things. Modern games are designed to expunge as much money and time wasting as possible this is why the Mini-Map in GTA is so horrendously bad, they just throw a bunch of activities onto a map and claim "That's content", really as players we don't want a checklist of shit to do, we want to organically run into things and react to it.
Also diagetic maps are shit so I disagree with the video. They are mostly just gimmick designs that take longer to access than if you'd just popped up a window with that information already present. UI panels will always be faster to access information, they are also easier to implement. Ok they might not look as impressive and frankly who gives a shit about immersion. What we're talking about is the conveyance and communication of information, it doesn't have to be flashy it just has to do the basic task of conveying that information, the best way to do that is instead implement it in the game world (ie. the environment design, the level design, the flow of the player movements) and don't even have a conventional map. Remember when games shipped with the game map and you had to work it out with a pen and paper? so then how do you replicate that same approach in a game? Morrowind sort of figured it out but it was far from perfect. /Rant
@@worthasandwich morrowind is my favorite game but I can’t Imagine if I would have loved it when it first came out the guides online are almost necessary to people who came from modern games
And then you follow the directions exactly, don't find what you're looking for, and have to look up a walkthrough to find out that it is, in fact, 10 miles west of where you ended up. Been a while since I played Morrowind, but I do recall there was a quest that told me to go east when the cave was actually to the west. Fun game, but navigation was a nightmare.
The first time I played Minecraft Beta, the map item didn't exist. I was afraid of getting lost and to not be able to find my house and stuff after a long night of exploration. I built landmarks, light towers. This feeling was awesome. I tried to memorize the mountains shape, the position of lakes and deserts. Like when you first explore the neighborhood after moving in a new town.
exactly! I oriented myself by looking at the position of the sun and building towers made of blocks to find my way back home! An awesome feeling
Ah, yes, the old paulsoaresjr-style beacons, long before the Beacon item ever existed.
getting lost is so easy, building pillers and pillers as I travel long distance building new home but looking back at my creation is awesome.
@@IntegerOfDoomnot if you get to know your environment. You can't tell me you don't get lost irl if you get lost in Minecraft because it's the same skillset.
And yet many question why obelisks were built in ancient times.
I honestly never noticed the compass disappeared during boss fights in elden rings and I think that says alot about how important seamless UI is. The compass was always there when I needed it and I never noticed when it was gone, such a great balance.
I noticed it because one time it disappeared while I was looping for my runes and I thought my runes despawned lol
theres a lot more ui stuff in elden ring and it truly is the best ui ive ever seen in any game. every part of the ui disappears completely other than the compass when youre exploring, and every single part of it seamlessly transitions back in when youre using it and only then. it allows for a level of immersion that no other game has ever provided me. Botw might have been the closest though
thats just for the active ui though, the stats and inventory are far from perfect but you definitely get used to them
@@cameronmacdonald4872bro calls souls runes 😂
@@based-ys9um in past games by the same company it was called souls you’re correct but in this most recent game they are called runes. Hope this helps
My main gripe is the lack of spacial awareness since i get stuck in terrain or am not using headphones so cant pinpoint where the enemies are. Minimaps should be balanced to be useful but not abused.
Hiding the minimap was the best thing I did in Red Dead Redemption 2. I actually started learning the roads and the landmarks as well as just appreciating the landscape instead of staring at the map. Its satisfying to be able to go from St.Denis to Strawberry without making a wrong turn because you actually know the land. I'm glad this issue is getting some more attention
Same I played it with the minmap off on my first run
I tried to play it without the minimap all the time but in missions it's impossible to know where the very specific "objective radius" is without it. Same issue as the Witcher 3. I also found it really easy to miss random encounters when exploring because sometimes you're too far to hear it/see it, but the marker flashes in the minimap. It's a shame because other than that, the world is really satisfying to explore because all the signs are accurate and after some time you learn all the roads and landmarks instead of staring at the minimap
@@some.person If you just tap f3 then it shows up for 5 seconds, which is what I used to see where noises from random encounters were coming from. As for the missions, for me where to go just came intuitively as long as you listen to dialogue
I don't have that kind patience
It was playable without it? O.o Most games these days be like NOPE
I realized this for the first time in witcher3. I found myself realizing I had been to a place multiple times, based on the things on the mini map. Then I looked up and realized I didn't recognize my actual environment.
yeah me too. I look at the mini map and I'm on the icon then I look up realizing I kept wandering around it
Yeah. I stared just pulling up the main map and stopped staring st the mini map and by the end I didn't need the mini map at all. The Witcher by far had me stright up staring more than any other game. And idk why.
That's such a stupid thing to complain about.
@@TheScrubmuffin69 oh yes let's just ignore bad game design and never talk about it.
@@devinaschenbrenner2683literat not the games fault, you just refuse to look at the majority of your scream
I started playing Ghost of Tsushima for the first time a couple days ago and I just LOVE the world design and that there is just no need for a mini map because the developers created the game with the intention without one. The Wind showing of the way you have to go, yellow birds that show points of interest..
It just makes the world feel real, you don't have to always look at the map and so you engage more with it and in the end enjoy it more. I wish more open world game would use those kind of creativity in their designing process
I want it on PC so bad 😭
@@TheButterAnvil it’s a pretty mediocre story, and the open world is super empty, but I love the combat and atmosphere are both very good.
@@heman2379 I totally don't agree. I found it to be a very complex story about the conflict between social order and morality.
I still found, after a while, that chasing birds, or foxes, or wind, wasn't all that different from following lines on a map. It's definitely superior, because when you're playing an immersive, high-resolution 3D game, you don't want to be focusing all your attention on the little 8bit game in the bottom corner. But story aside, the ultimate point playing a game is the game play. We take for granted that combat is usually a carefully crafted feedback loop of skill and reward. The more you practice, the more rewarding it becomes, and the more the game can crank up the challenge, thus renewing the skill/reward cycle. But with few exceptions, traversal requires no skill and offers little reward. It's just a task to perform between the actual game parts of the game that are a game. Games like the Witcher 3, masterpiece though it is, tend to have more tasks than challenges, more errands than puzzles. Traversal in Witcher 3 isn't designed to be a challenge, it's just a byproduct of the game setting. We complain about it because the setting is so beautiful and immersive, it seems a shame to spend more time following the dotted line than engaging the fiction of the world. It seems a shame to fast travel when we have this incredible environment to experience. But experiencing that environment is fairly passive, and certainly not designed to be a game in itself. The developers focused their efforts on other aspects, like story and environmental detail. But the very fact that we love the environment so much makes us yearn for a more game-like way to directly engage with it, to game-ify the act of traversal itself. Instead, we just get a monster encounter every other minute, which serves to slow down progress and distract from the rest of the game.
Going forward, I'd like to see traversal in games like Witcher, or Ghost of Tsushima, be turned into a more directly engaging game, rewarding increased skill with faster progress, or experience, or some other reward. That's what they did with Spider-Man, and people seem to like it. I appreciate how Tsushima limited the presence of HUD clutter, but I think the next step is to create a dynamic skill/reward feedback loop for map traversal, treasure-hunting, etc. Otherwise, collecting treasures becomes a tiresome list of errands to check off, and eventually, one gets tired of petting foxes.
Just kidding, one never tires of that.
Ghost of tsushima's wind mechanic is so simple but yet so brilliant. I hope more games will do that same kind of seamless guidance in the future
In addition, minimaps make learning the layout of places way harder. I always got turned around in the cities of The Witcher 3, despite running through them hundreds of times, and always rechecking on the mini-map. Only when I turned the map off completely, I learned to navigate on my own.
Yuppp
That’s a you problem, not the fault of minimaps.
@@domp2729 I disagree. When you are inclined to mostly pay attention to where the line is on your minimap you automatically pay less attention to orientational markers around you. Also research on learning suggests that you better memorise content which you had to put some effort into. If the map does not make it necessary to think about how to navigate, the path is naturally less likely to be remembered.
Not the mini maps fault when the player is too stupid to look at 80% of the screen rather than the rest.
@@kyleward7417 honesty this is like how people can be irl being dependent on Google maps to get around and not memorize their surroundings
Idk if y’all saw but the Witcher devs listened! The next gen free update is going to include a disappearing mini map that can be activated with the press of a button, and will disappear about 7 seconds later. Love so much that they’re willing to listen to criticism while staying true to their game.
Was really happy to see this addition. Such a small thing that makes the game a lot more enjoyable.
Great of them!
@@razbuten I think you always had this option with mods.
@@robosergTVnot for console players
Ah yes, the sequel to “Mini-Maps Are Stupid.”
That video is almost 8 years old. Learning that made me feel ancient lol
@@razbuten so uhhhh. Can we call you a boomer already or too soon?
@@batatanna You can't age into being a boomer. Boomers were boomers when they were teenagers.
@@razbuten was there a particular reason you wanted to redo the mini map video? I'm guessing you thought the first one was too short for what your channel has become?
oh ok, we DID already go over this topic and I'm not crazy XD
The “tap to bring up HUD” solution is THE solution to all these issues imo. I hate visually heavy, intrusive UI, and so being able to simply flash it up on screen for a few seconds solves all my issues. And it’s trivial to implement, it’s simply binding a HUD on\off option to a button press
This 💯💯💯, that's how I get around it in most games. Just have the HUD turning on and off when you need it.
Far cry 2 had it figured out
Another potential solution is Tobii eye tracker. If a game has it implemented hud element appear only when looking it them
That's why "Friendly HUD" is one of the best Witcher 3 mods
I think just less intrusive would be better in my opinion,
but that's just because I have some pretty major memory issues, I had to turn the HUD in Elden Ring to be always on because I would constantly forget what I had equipped and use the wrong items.
Best choice I made was turning off my mini map in RDR2, it is so cool learning the roads and reading the signs to go between towns if you need it. They put so much effort and detail in the world and without a map it helps to get lost in it. For missions I just turn on the compass so I have a general direction but am still engaging with the world around me rather than following a line.
Cool ! I started doing at recently. Its awesome
I love how in Far Cry 2 the map was an interactable object in the game and you had to take it with your hands, switching between papers that represented areas you want to see, and it got worse if you were in the middle of a car chase or shootout so you had to adapt and look quickly, many people hate it but it's the most immersive game i've ever played, along with dishonored
Much love brother. Far cry 2 is my goat, and its map system and total lack of hud is a huge factor in that
There's also a mod to get rid of the arrow on the map and replace it with a dot so you need the compass for orientation
Far Cry 2 has its flaws but the navigational system is a huge part of what makes it one of my favorites.
I always remember that map fondly whenever a conversation like this one happens. Far Cry 2 did it best in that aspect from all the entries in the franchise. I have very often found myself pondering why developers don't go more often with more realistic maps, especially in RPGs.
I'm glad I'm not alone in my love of far cry 2. I never really understood why far cry 3 did nothing for me, but looking back, I think it was a lot of little things, like this. Very few other games I've played gave me such a sense of freedom and exploration
@@R-e-Joyce The one I used actually went further and got rid of any kind of indication where you are on the map. Meaning you had to use the little screen on the GPS for orientation and link it to the map where all the location markers and the bigger picture were. Love that game
One thing I wish more devs would ask themselves is whether their game is about exploration/navigation or not. There are a lot of games that would probably benefit from being smaller and/or more linear while using skyboxes and set pieces to make the world look bigger. Some players just don't want to wander around looking for the next thing, and for them it'd be better to just skip that part entirely rather than strap on a bunch of HUD elements and fast travel systems.
For games that are about exploration, lean into that! Make navigating the world part of the challenge, part of the experience. Gimmie landmarks, diegetic maps, audio cues, in-world directions, and then let me enjoy the puzzle of getting where I need to go. Furthermore, make the getting there fun. Incorporate platforming or hazards if you want getting there to be more of a challenge, and if not give me a vehicle, or a grappling hook, or a snowboard even! Shield-surfing was my favorite way to travel in BotW and I hope the sequel makes even better use of the mechanic.
Exploration in games is supposed to be fun. If it isn't then either make it a fun part of the game or cut it if it's not necessary.
And of course "exploration" by defination means that wasting your time by running on grass since that's so much fun and waste more of your time running until you get lucky and run into something rather than saving your time and just getting there with a mini map
@@kyleward7417 I hate the games where you're searching the same area over and over again trying to find something (and hoping it didn't glitch out).
It's not fun. I'm not discovering anything new the nth time I've walked past it. I just want to get the chore over with so I can get to a more engaging part of the game.
@@kyleward7417 Bud I said if you don't enjoy exploration you should have more games where it isn't mandatory. No need to disparage the entire concept for those who do enjoy running around on grass.
@@SkywardShoe I love exploration but running on grass (while waiting to get to the next anything) gets boring and I just burn-out on the game. At least Wind Waker didn’t make you push forward constantly and you could relax
"There are a lot of games that would probably benefit from being smaller and/or more linear while using skyboxes and set pieces to make the world look bigger."
I'd go so far as to say most "open world" games, in fact. Look at The Witcher 3; it's a big fancy world, but if it had been carved up into regions with sky box usage? It could have actually been a bigger, more epic world. For example, look at White Orchard - because it's a small zone, it's able to depict Vizima in the distance, and they were able to create an alternate "winter" version of the map for the epilogue.
If the entirety of the game had been sliced up into zones no bigger than White Orchard and Kaer Morhen, navigation wouldn't be an issue, the ILLUSION of size would make the world feel far more realistically scaled, and they would be free to do far more interesting things... like, have a version of a zone where a massive battle takes place, then have another version of the same zone days later, strewn with smoke and corpses, without having to do anything complicated with scripting that might affect the whole game world.
Permanent, significant changes could have been applied to the world, without complication, if the world had been broken up into zones.
In fact, Kaer Morhen is a perfect example, a perfect comparison within one game - in the biggest map, the Velen/Novigrad space? The "university" town of Oxenfurt is tiny. There's literally a mansion a few miles north that is larger than the entire town of Oxenfurt. That's how messed up the scale is; how condensed things have to be when it's all one map.
But when you get to Kaer Morhen... those mountains are vast. They're realistically scaled, because they CAN be; and they CAN be, because the developer didn't need to worry about how the player was going to traverse them, or what content to put on them.
Imagine a version of The Witcher 3 where every "region" in the game is a map the size of White Orchard, connected by the world map and by in-game transportation and loading points. Stitch that together, and you'd have a game world many times bigger than the one we got, but with more focus, more detail... and no mini-map required. Plus, it would have been a lot easier to develop, and a lot easier to expand with new content.
First two Gothic games handled navigation perfectly. You don’t get any map until you buy it as an item, and it’s pretty expensive in the early game. But there are signposts on every crossroads, many tall landmarks and the characters ingame give you detailed directions to reach your destination. Maximum immersion.
Yes, I believe this is one of the best solutions to navigation in rpgs that I've seen - the map also doesn't really contain any marks like npcs, quests and such other than the player mark and some red Xes that other characters place there if they know where the objective is, so you really have to figure out where to go and actually explore instead of following a set line. Also it works kind of like a real map, it takes time to open and close it like the character actually reads it. Amazing design and I hate minimaps now because of how simple and balanced it was back in the day
And I still know the ways from the Old Camp to major other areas by heart today.
Ghost of Tsushima has my all time favourite navigation system with the wind guiding you, as well as having the birds and foxes to follow. It feels really immersive and gives me a lot more time to admire the absolutely beeaaautiful world. I love it
I was pretty surprised that GoT wasnt mentioned, as it solves most of the issues brought up in this video.
@@McBonesJones It was mentioned actually, 16:46
You’re still not actually looking at the environment though you’re just looking at the lines of wind and going straight, I much prefer the exploration in Hollow Knight - where you’re looking everywhere and learning the environment and getting anywhere is because you yourself mapped out and explored the area.
I love it when maps are a physical object in the game, like in Metro, Sea of Thieves or Firewatch.
Another game worth mentioning here is Minecraft, where you actually have to draw the map yourself by walking around. That's a great way to familiarize players with the environment.
I wish it was a bit more customizeable by allowing players to draw on maps to mark routes, write notes and so on. But nonetheless, it's a solid idea. I'd love to see more like that.
you can actually place named markers on minecraft maps by painting, renaming (on anvils), and placing banners. of course that's not something you can just do on the fly but it adds a lot of immersion
Agreed! Have you seen the map in Kingdome come: Deliverance? It's beautifully visualized, and you can actually make it so you can't see yourself on the map. I actually enjoyed using it this way, because I have to look around me for landmarks, and then identify them on the map. You really feel like an explorer
I was thinking that too with games like minecraft or gta5 where in order to use the map you have to travel.
But I also noticed that I really like the use of the map in horizon: Zero dawn where you mostly use the compass and you have to pause the game to open the map at all
I think that’s what he meant by ‘diegetic’ in this video, though I thought that only related to sound by definition.
also in Far Cry 2
KCD was in my eyes the proof that it’s possible to navigate in a very natural and realistic environnement (translate : were everything looks the same) with minimalistic HUD.
As you said, the most important thing is to know wether the OW is self-sufficient and exploration-driven (then no mini map is needed) or only there to store hours of questlines.
When I played Elden Ring for the first time, I didn't realize that it was possible to obtain map fragments to make the map more detailed until about 50 hours in (I was playing completely blind). So for that stretch of time, not only did the game not have a mini map, it didn't even have a map proper. I was looking closely on dark murky brown vague impressions of everything to navigate. I was so enthralled by the world design it didn't even matter that I couldn't precisely navigate to any given tiny cave or what not, I was totally immersed, if not a bit underpowered because it was really hard to find caves and upgrade stones.
There's not enough games that allow you to upgrade your map. The Legend of Zelda did it with the map and compass, Might and Magic allowed you to cast Wizard Eye with later installments letting you upgrade the spell. High Seas Trader allowed you to buy charts that marked new ports where you could trade. It always feels great when you get access to a better map.
@@Arashmickey just please don't go the Hollow Knight route of fucking you over if you want to use one of the most basic features of a map. fuck that bullshit.
elden rings world/general design really carries the whole game imo. Even when I didn't have fun with the gameplay I was still playing because I knew there's always be something new and interesting to see
@@Arashmickey In Hollow Knight you have to buy an incomplete map from an npc in each area and then you fill in where you’ve been every time you rest at a bench
@@rickimaru915 Yes! That's a very satisfying mechanic.
I never hear people saying this, but I agree 100%. If I can mod out a mini-map in a game, I almost always will.
Yo, wasn't expecting to see you here. Have we beat a sunshine chaos mod yet?
Same, though I've always preferred just having an actual compass. Give me the cardinal directions, even specific headings if it makes sense for the game, and let me navigate and find things myself. It makes exploring the world and finding landmarks feel more immersive. Give me a quest that says "On the ridge two kilometers southeast of XYZ" rather than giving me a precise map marker, it adds so much more incentive to go look around the area and figure out how to approach the terrain/enemies/etc. rather than just going to a highlighted dot
I've always thought minimaps were super distracting in open world games and I feel like a lot of other people think so too, it's just not a big enough pain point to bring up =/
Like, I'd primarily just look at the minimap to go anywhere without actually taking in the world of the game. Esp in mmos or games that show collectables on the minimap, sometimes you miss a lot of cool overworld events if you're just focused on getting from A -> B without getting off path
Yooo! The great PBG is a fan of Raz?? That's awesome!
I played God of War 2018 and Horizon Zero Dawn 100% hudless and they were amazing. In GOW, Atreus or Mimir will shout out to dodge when an enemy is about to attack from behind, so you could actually play it and take zero damage without all the crap going on onscreen.
The compass in Skyrim I feel is like the best compromise. Tells you where to go, and some nearby PoI, but once you look at it once you don't need to do so again for at least a while, so you can focus on the world without worrying about getting lost, and you have to figure out the best path yourself.
Which is a major reason why I love Skyrim.
I actually thought the Skyrim compass is one of my major pain points with the game, and I go out of my way to disable it. Normally I'm fine with compasses, but Skyrim's compass is way too generous with the amount of information it gives you. Points of interest start to appear from pretty far away, and it actually makes me less observant about the world around me because I'm able to rely on the compass to tell me if there's anything worth exploring nearby, and how relatively close it is. Quest markers actually cheapen a lot of quests since it basically lets you play Follow the Icon instead of playing your role in that story. Thanks to the red dots on enemies, I instantly know exactly what direction an attacker is approaching from, often before I even realize I'm in combat.
Ultimately, all the compass does is reduce my immersion in a game where immersion is kind of the main point. There are a lot of really clever locations hidden in the world which a keen eye might notice and feel rewarded for finding, but the compass just tells you it's there. You might be startled by a sudden ambush as you're ascending a mountain pass, but not with the compass letting you know exactly where that pesky archer is firing from. I've had much better experiences with the game by modding it out entirely.
@@MaskedMammal basically, skyrim compass is a redesigned overtly full of information minimap
I was thinking the same thing. And when navigating, reading the signposts actually do lead you to the labelled destination.
Nah I hate knowing something I might want to interact with is right there while I'm omw to do something else. Gives me decision anxiety and I often discover the place for my fast travel later...then never end up going back.
Talking about Firewatch, it's map is probably my favorite implementation of any in game map i have seen. You can turn off your location marker on the map, so it just looks like a paper map. Something a fire lookout person would probably have. At first, you have to find your bearing on the map itself, to find the way to your destination. The drawn in stash box locations can help you with that. After a while, you don't even need a map anymore, and if you look at it, you instantly know where you are. Firewatch is one game, where I feel like I learned where I am in relation to anything, instead of relying on a dot on a map. Also, not having a map marker made the ending may more terrifying for me, as everything looked different and my sense of direction was thoroughly disrupted.
The map mechanic made the game more enjoyable for me
One of my favorite parts of the game Sea of Thieves is when you land on an island to dig up a treasure, you get a map and a compass, but the compass only shows north, and the map is a map, nothing more, only shows the island from a birds eye. Having to immerse myself into the world, looking at the environment to know where i am, and where i have to go to find the buried treasure.
Why arent more games making navigating the world a part of the game? All you need to know where you are, are two landmarks and knowing where north is, that way you can triangulate yourself with your map. Ive been doing this since i grew up in the woods, all the way till now that i am in a city, if i ever get lost, i just look at the world around me, instead of burrowing my head in my phone in hope of finding my way with the irl minimap.
Having more games letting you discover this would not only make the games more immersive and interesting to play, but also help us in our dayly life.
I love Sea of Thieves' approach. Check out Miasmata, a little known exploration and survival/mystery game set on an island whose central mechanic is triangulation and mapping. It's janky but really evocative with lots of diegetic stuff.
I remember using the same set up in Far Cry 2 to find diamonds. It’s a fun way to do things, but it requires that the actual terrain is unique enough for landmarks to be noticeable and make it clear which part of the map you’re on. That’s an ambitious amount of work if you’re working in the scale of an open world game
The original Mirror's Edge did a fantastic job with this. Basically there isn't even a minimap and there's no UI that directly tells you where you have to go. Instead you just have a simple button that you can tab and in doing so, your reticle automatically moves to face the direction of your objective. It doesn't put a waymarker, it doesn't provide a minimap route. It just tells you "this direction is where you should head towards" and then it's up to you to figure out how to get there. So simple and clean. Work fantastically when you're traversing city rooftops at high pace and don't have time nor mental focus to rely on maps and markers.
I love the way Sea of Thieves handles it's maps except for when you get lost looking for ship wrecks😂
"Navigation is not a game mechanic everyone is interested in" *Chef's kiss*. I'm tired of people just assuming a game is "better" because it doesn't "hold your hand". I have limited gaming time, I want to get to the quest and see the story play out, not study a journal entry, road signs, talk to locals, and eventually stumble into the right house on a fluke.
this is what linear games was made for, but they don't make those anymore so I get you
When you make part 3, I think it'd be really interesting to look at the original Assassin's Creed. That was a game that was originally developed to be played without a HUD and one was added before release on the insistence of of the publisher. It's a big part of why the game's design was what it was - crowds you could blend in with were obvious, map unlock point would be the tallest building in an area, and knowing your way around a city would provide a meaningful advantage because you could scope out situations more quickly and know where to go when asked to go to a specific place. As the series went on, away from that original idea, it gradually became more and more reliant on minimaps and other kinds of nondiagetic information, and seeing it become harder and harder to immerse yourself in the world is an interesting thing.
I loved playing Odyssey, but I hated that the beautiful scenery was constantly overshadowed by bad navigation and map markers that made it pointless to try to meaningfully interact with the world. It was only after I finished the game that I realized you could toggle how much information the map showed. My experience could have been so different if they highlighted that choice at the start!
That explains a lot. I always use the mini-map in some games, but that one felt really immersive
I was also thinking about AC1, it's sad that they had to add hud to it
@@joeyharrington1863 They do that, though? At the very start of the game, you are asked which option you want.
Never thought about the fact Elden Ring doesn't have a mini-map and it actually makes you pay much more attention to the the game itself.
Agreed! It also helps that the terrain itself is so diverse and uniquely designed. No disrespect to Witcher 3 but a lot of its terrain is same-ish. So its much easier to lose direction while traversing. While Elden Ring and BoTW has most of the areas very uniquely designed with their own aesthetics which helps in recognizing the landmarks.
@@armaani11 Yeah Thats what I like about RDR2 and kingdom come they have allot unique handcradted locations so I was able to find Tressure in RDR2 like you have places like Hanging Dog Ranch or Black bone Forrest which stand out for the most part I know Were I am on the map. Witcher 3 if I was to try to find tressure it would be near impossible.
I liked in the Gothic games not having a mini map. The experience was overall more emersive. If I remember correctly the map you could buy did not even tell you where you are and was just some drawn picture of some general features of the region like rivers, large buildings, forests or a large monster living at a certain place instead of the exact satellite view of everything you have in a lot of games. I remember having this realisation moments of recognizing some of the map objects and thinking "Ah! Here is where I am...", "Interesting... so this road leads back to point X", or "I see... so this is what that thing from the map looks like". Another system I liked was from the game Outcast where you could ask random NPCs "where is ?" and then they pointed into some general direction, just like you would move around in real life without having a Smartphone map in your pocket. In Morrowind I also remember following road signs, taking wrong turns and then discovering some new buildings I did not see yet.
absolutely! I think the presence of a modern minimap and full interactive maps in general severely reduces the immersion as what you are 'really' doing is traversing a simple 2d space full of points that may or may not be interesting to you. All the actual stuff that fill your screen with substance and color, is worthless. Only POI are worth thinking about, is what the map teaches you.
On other hand, the kind of map you talk about (i haven't played Gothic) makes you think about all that substance, mountain ranges, forest and waters, because they may become vital for your pathfinding ability, just like it would in real life. And we probably have a good brain for remembering terrain features thanks to evolution.
I actually really miss the mapping mechanics in the DS zelda games (Hourglass and Spirit Tracks), where the minimap had just enough information to keep you from getting lost but you had to annotate it with useful information you discovered, and sometimes even draw it from scratch. Unfortunately I think that might've really only been possible on the DS with its stylus, bc drawing like that would just be incredibly annoying to execute with a touch screen or mouse, so I don't know if we'll see anything like it again :(
i used to love writing notes and doodling on the maps! it really made me feel like an adventurer as a kid lol
I’m surprised that we don’t see more “make ya own map as you go” in games, so you have a rough map, and you annotate it with notes and sketches as you play. They could have a mobile app so people could draw on phones and tablets, or just use pre-made icons and symbols.
I like the idea that instead of the map telling you that a certain animal is in a certain area, you simply notice a lot of that animal and jot it on the map yourself.
Technically this isn't minimaps, but drawing your own maps in Etrian Odyssey 4 is some of the most enjoyable gameplay i have ever seen. I wish some AAA devs would figure out a way how to make "drawing your map" a part of a big openworld game
Man i loved the maps man
Take project zomboid for example, it's so satisfying to jolt down your annotations on the map while hidden in a random bathroom while there is a horde nearby. You have markers that you can use as stamps, and you can write down texts. I guess for games without a touchscreen, that is good enough.
I played all of the original Pathologic campaigns, and traversing the town became one of the most satisfying things towards the end. The Bachelor and Haruspex campaigns mostly give you quest markers to show you where you need to go. Clara's campaign though is only half finished, and one thing that's missing are most quest markers. But the thing is at this point you don't need them anymore. You already walked through this town for 40h and know it like the back of your hand. Even better, while your objectives will always be the same after day 6, one of them is to find a specific place. The game gives you a cryptic hint that refers to a specific landmark, and at this point I knew the map so well that solving this riddle was almost never a problem. Beyond satisfying, if it didn't also require you to find people in random places that are extremely hard to find without a guide lol.
Oooooh, a wild pathologic encounter
The ping system from botw is one of the best open world navigation tools that I hope more game companies will add. By being solid pillars of light all of which are different colors I could use the sheika slate to place multiple down as I’m traveling, and once I find a rest point, backtrack to the marked spots. Elden Ring tries to use this but the fact that the markers need to be placed on the map and can’t be placed in the open world makes it 20 times worse. Also because they were all the same color and even if a marker was placed underground it will still show up on your compass just makes the whole system not accomplish the same things that botw did.
I spent like 2 days trying to find one of my markers in Elden Ring just to realize it was placed underground. It was mildly frustrating.
@@williamrhea-banker3005 skyrim suffers from this too. it doesnt make it better that the actual map is covered in clouds and the roads arent visible.
Elden ring's top tier diverse world design makes it much more easier to navigate through
When I beat hollow knight for the first time, I did it on a set of joycons which had a broken button. This, for hollow knight was the button to pull up the map. (I am now aware that you can pull it up from the menus, but I didn't know that at the time). Wandering through hollownest on memory alone was legitimately one of the most enjoyable exploration experiences I have ever had in a game.
Hollow knight also has a cool mechanic where one of your items makes the player appear on the mini map. The amount of items you can use at a given time is limited, so when exploring dangerous areas or challenging bosses, you won’t have that tool at your disposal, but you can bring it back when you’re just going from place to place that doesn’t pose any threat. I really liked that system
This a good comment, however Holow Knight was one of the most enjoyable exploration experiences ever for tons of people, even if they used the map. I know it was for me.
Once again, another instance where the minimap is a quick button press instead of always be visible. Plus, the map didn't help you see where things are until you already found them. One of the best designed games I've ever played.
@@slowbro13215 absolutely true. That map is in many ways a perfectly executed map, being a quick button press, and diegetic, along with having a dynamic cartography system, which is a weird sentence to say.
@@slowbro13215 Hollow knight doesn't have a mini map, it's not on your screen during normal gameplay, only when you pull it up
I loved ghost of Tsushima's wind feature. It was such an awesome in world way of finding your way and you could almost always subtly see it or increase it's intensity when you are a bit lost. Plus the map for times you feel very confused! I loved it
Yeah, it’s a interesting spin on the Skyrim clairvoyant spell
@@editorrbr2107 Skyrims cleirvoyant spell is almost entirly uselss though unless you play with the compass disabled as the compass pretty much fills the spot of overly informative minimaps
kingdom come deliverance in hardcore mode removes the minimap, the player's position icon from the main map, and it is so beautifully designed that you can play the entire game based only on the npc's directions (although the main map still has quest markers) and you must find which way is north using either landmarks or the position of the sun. Amazing experience overall
Yeah, you can legitimately get lost in the woods and starve to death. Finally figuring out where you are is so rewarding.
KGD is my favorite take on "hardcore." Instead of permadeath, where one cheap mistake can tarnish a dozen hours of gameplay it just makes it more *realistic.* Navigating is such a fun experience and you actually have to plan out how you're going to get from city A to city B. The need to navigate by the sun and landmarks, as you mentioned is so satisfying. When you get lost and have to work out when you are is so real feeling. And to the original video, the game does still put some quest markers on the overhead "compass" when you're REALLY close to cover the issue of precise locations.
The first time I played KCD i was on hardcore mode. I got lost in forests for days, at night. It was scary. I just kept wandering in a circle because I was missing landmarks in the dark or I thought I was at one spot on the map but I was wrong. Now, I just don't travel at night. I play as an archer that drinks because of his nightmares. Also, he sleepwalks.
Fun fact: the "Compass" you get in hardcore mode actually tells you where is north/south/west/east, the background of each of them ever so slightly different.
When I played Hardcore mode I didn't like the lack of minimap at first, but then, I actually had to start paying attention. I couldn't go across the fields blindly anymore, I had to follow the path, learn the crossings... I ended up enjoying it more that way.
Raz, you're the reason I play Breath of the Wild without the map, minimap, or fast travel.
It's one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. I am always fully aware of where I am and what I'm doing. If im not, I can figure it out through landmarks and npc
That sounds like the most miserable experience I would ever have playing that game.
@@darksentinel082 yeah, razbuten fully explained why minimaps aren't evil, then there's these kind of morrowind purist style guys who throw away every navigational tool the game gives them, get lost and frustrated and then think themselves better because they play the game the "good way"
Ignore those other guys, I also played Botw mapless and it was a great experience. That game works very well without a map.
@@kaleenar963 oh okay then sorry about that then, I think I just hate the morrowind fanbase that think they are so much better than the mainstream people while they are just arrogant af. Morrowind is great but yeah
I haven't gone fully mapless yet, but my current (third) playthrough I've been going without fast travel and it is not as tedious as I thought it might be. The game is so well designed that there will always be plenty to do in between my primary goals. So much that I would absolutely be missing out on most of it by teleporting between locations. And it's so strange for me hear what the "intended" path is. I would have never guessed as I've never come close to traveling that route. I've always had my own goals (activate all towers, find the Great Fairy Fountains, find specific resources) that the main quest was always an afterthought.
Also, I've never played with a full HUD and seeing it looks very gross to me. Nearly everything, aside from health and stamina, can be monitored in a much more intuitive and less distracting way.
I played Ghost of tsushima recently and it does a fantastic job of this. When not using the map all you have is the wind to guide you. Which makes traversing the somewhat Samey landscape not overly difficult, without forcing you to look at the mini map and instead directing you to look at the world for guidance.
I think maps in Sea of Thieves are a really great example of maps being used as part of immersion. The world map can only be accessed from your ship’s cabin, whereas maps and other quest materials are held by the player and can even be shown to others.
I love that they made the map accessible only in the ship's cabin so you can only use the map at the cost of not paying attention to your surroundings. You can't control the ship and look at the map at the same time (I mean, you can but it may be costly when you're not paying attention to where you're going). Of course, that's also made to stimulate multiplayer co-op, so you can have people controlling the ship's wheel while someone can look at the map, another one can manage the sails, the cannons etc., there are many distinct functions to do. That makes everything absolutely immersive.
I love when games put maps and menus in physical places so that you can still use them but it's part of the immersion and it's not always as easy to get to.
I also happen to use the personal compass there more often compared to other games. It's a lot of fun to navigate via compass, ship's map, tresure maps and sometimes even the stars
I think one of the cleanest solutions that has been vastly overlooked, is the original Mirror's Edge waypoint system.
You don't have a minimap, you don't need one. The game is focused on visual traversal of your surroundings and figuring out how to reach the place you want to get to, on your own.
There is however a waypoint system for when you get completely lost/stuck - and it's very simple. At the center of your screen you have a tiny dot reticle, and tapping a button procks this reticle to aim your screen in the direction of the location you're supposed to travel to. It doesn't put a waymarker, it doesn't give you a route, it doesn't pull up a minimap to show you. It just tells you the direction with no other intrusive ui. And it's brilliant. Literally the simplest yet most optimal system I've ever used that matched its game setting so well.
Skyrim is also an excellent example of an open world not needing a mini-map. The quests almost always give verbal directions to the locations, the environment is varied enough that you can easily recognise places you've been before, and - my favourite bit - the sign posts pointing to towns and cities are actually functional for navigation. I also enjoy that locations don't start out being on your main map, they show up once you've heard or read about them, or once you've discovered them. I personally like to deactivate all my quests so it doesn't point me towards them on the compass.
As someone whose favorite component of videogames is exploration/discovery, I agree. I vastly prefer compasses as a substitute.
Like assassins creed?
Another great dietetic navigation mention is Shadow of the Colossus. In SOTC you hold your sword up which will shine light in the direction of the next colossus. You also can't use this in dark places, which I think is a cool gameplay feature.
Unless you unlocked the sword of the Sun in the time trials 💪🏿💪🏿
Gothic did a great job with this. It kept its world in a smaller and more manageable package with more dense content allowing you to both learn quite quickly what is where and to get npcs to give short and precise directions without needing markers and a minimap. also, the smaller world size allowed to make unique visual indications that you could see without special senses or ui elements. many developers took the "bigger is better" approach when it comes to world building instead of the "size that fits the story" and that made it harder to design a world with unique features... and then they fill that big world with bloat.
im glad you brought up people who need minimaps to play games. i am someone that really struggles with navigating real life spaces to a point where i have to use google maps to get around even if i am just walking near my apartment. when i have to play games that either dont have maps or require extra steps to determine my location/goals i always end up feeling really frustrated and just running in circles for ages, unsure of where im supposed to be going. i love games that let me place custom markers if i want to go somewhere and use them constantly even in situations where most players wouldnt bother with them, because my brain just cant wrap itself around the directions otherwise. hollow knight is one of my all time favourite games but despite having 200+ hours in it i cant play it without the compass and maps to a point where i use mods in my randomizer runs to make sure i can always tell where im going.
i will say though the biggest thing that helps me with navigation is vertical movement, especially if i can climb landmarks. breath of the wild has by far been one of the best experiences for me navigation wise because if i am lost i can just climb a building or a mountain and use that to get my bearings
Agree. As someone who gets easily disoriented in real life and video games, the amount of time I spend lost on video games is embarrassing. I reckon getting disoriented probably adds 20 hours to my game time compared to normal people who are great with directions. A simple task such as memorizing where the blacksmith is is a difficult task for me.
lol i'm right there with you. google maps is my best friend. i'm so bad with directions irl and it also is prevelant in all my gaming experiences. my friends often tease me for it which makes me feel pretty dumb but it's not really something i can change :/
that's why i'm only now starting BOTW despite having owned it since its release. the open world scared me because i know that i will feel lost and frustrated
(hell i'm literally lost right now and i'm very close to looking up a guide T_T)
Being able to get a bird's eye view is something I wish games used more often. Whenever I go to a new city IRL I make it a priority to go up on the highest building (or hill) around to get a sense to navigate from. Maps just can't quite compare.
@@WritingsOfQuill I personally don't Ike that cus then you'd need to take time to climb. Depending on how well you could do it, maybe it won't take too much time but as someone that doesn't have a good sense of direction and scared to get lost I'd have to take time to climb every few minutes
I'm not sure about people having problems with judging directions and probably bad wiring in their brain can be fixed like that, but only relying on maps to walk around sure makes you dumber after a while.
I challenge myself every now and again, because I certainly get dumber by always breaking out my phone. haha It's like immediately using a calculator for the most basic arithmetic. C:
I must have missed something in Breath of the Wild because I discovered Zora's Domain only after finishing the desert area and defeating the Titan there. The crazy thing is, everything in the game still works out, even if you play it in an unintended order.
Of course it does, a game with no story to tell doesn't have to worry about in what order the story should be in.
@@kyleward7417 well breath of the wild does actually have story. I actually quite like the story because its told in a way that only a videogame can. I find too many games try to tell and overly cinematic story that doesn't play to the strengths and unique aspects of being a videogame.
@@snmcfadden Indeed because video games can only have one type of story, and the type of story you're talking about is exactly why video games are looked as the worse medium when it comes to storytelling, if it has cinematic cut scenes it's obviously not a real video game, it's a movie, it's not like the word "video game" has video in it and not only game, real games put their story and tell it through item discriptions
@@kyleward7417 I didn't say that at all.
I think after doing kakariko it doesn't matter where you start because you get all four titans displayed at the same time. That's why I think Botw is so good, because everyone can play it the way they want and it's not just a clear line to follow ☺️
One of my favorite maps of all time was kingdom come deliverence. Not sure if it had a mini map, but if you are playing on a specific difficulty, you cannot see yourself on the map. It felt so immersive and it was just so much more fun to have to look at the map- look at your suroundings and try to orientate yourself. It just added so much to the expereice! An absoulty amazing game!
Yes, this 100%. Going from getting genuinely lost in the woods and having to follow a river back to civilization to being able to ride from Rattay to Uzhitz with your eyes closed is better than any level up.
I played rdr2 for about 10 hours with the minimap on, stopped and realized I was staring at a red line all game, and turned off the map.
I feel like it makes a world of difference to have a mini map locked north. Mini maps that rotate are very counter intuitive for locating yourself. Which is the purpose of a map.
No my internal map rotates as well so i i find it really handy if it rotates with me
i find it _very_ off putting if a minimap isnt facing the direction i am too
making it harder is the point
Totally disagree. The main map should be static, but the minimap needs to rotate with my character, otherwise its as good as useless for me. Obviously the best scenario is if we get to toggle it in the options.
Your replies gave me the realization that there's a serious split among people. I'm like you, I would vastly prefer the map to stay north oriented like in games like Morrowind. I also feel this way about Google maps and always cringed at the lack of design for this style of map reading.
Playing through Breath of the Wild the first time with the mini-ap disabled was fantastic. I actually read the signs on the road, talked to people, figured out what landmarks were in which cardinal directions, and had to engage with the environment.
when i tried this, i just followed the roads. I was surprised how the roads took me to people and places I didnt discover on my first playthru. Tho the minimap is stll helpful once you are late game and just wanna collect specific things since the hero's path is literally the best map feature to ever exist for completionist.
You totally nailed it! Some video essays can be a bit contrived, but you were succinct and offered some great examples and ideas of how to improve things
I. LOVE. THIS VIDEO.
I have had this exact sentiment for years. In my later teenage years I realized that any game I played with a minimap became a "follow the icon simulator." I would constantly stare at the map and essentially lose any sense of adventure or agency in exploring myself.
Breath of the Wild was an incredible game for me; right out the gate I searched the settings to turn of the minimap, found Pro mode, turned it on and never looked back. It was a wonder playing that game, because the entire time I was choosing where to go and what to explore, and I very rarely followed any sort of quest marker in the game. I would love to see more open world games in the future follow the design philosophies of BoTW because they did such an incredibly job creating a world that is easy to explore and navigate with no map guidance.
The toggle-able mini-map in RDR 2 is great, and I'm glad you brought it up. I tell everyone to play the game that way. It helps connect players to the world, and makes the game feel more adventurous and less on rails.
Yep 💯, best of both worlds. Anybody who wants it off can turn it off and everyone who wants it on can turn it on and anyone who wants it off but easily accessible can have the toggle option when they want to pop it in and out quickly
KCD on hardcore mode was the most real-to-life map I have ever seen in a game. It gave you a map, but it didn't tell you where you were on it, so you were forced to use it like a real map. You had to look for landmarks and follow the direction of travel of the sun... Getting lost in the forest genuinely felt like getting lost in the forest, I was in fact lost in the forest....
I was too, at night, more than once, getting sleepy. Oh boy that was interesting :P.
16:04 - as a developer I can assure you, the hardest part about adding a method of calling up a UI element will be to add it to the options menu for keybinding. And that's not hard once you already have that option menu for other keys. Second hardest is to ensure there's enough buttons on a keypad to perform the action, as long as the game has a button free for it it really wouldn't take up much effort at all, with minimal amount of QA time.
I guess the hardest part of QA is to ensure it can't be pressed at the wrong times, like during a cutscene. But as long as there's some forethought about that, by keeping track of both if the player wants it and if the game is actively hiding it for cutscene reasons it shouldn't be difficult to avoid.
The bigger the team, the more time it would take to add, but even in that case it would be a minor feature that could be managed quickly by each team member.
Why not add in an option to turn off HUD? Because calling up HUDs mid-game kills the flow of the game. I personally avoid big games without minimaps. And most games have the option to turn off HUD to appease people like him.
Besides, we all know it is no coincidence this youtuber made this because of Elden Ring. He played a good game without minimap, and thought, "Hmm is this game fun because of the amazing enemies, gameplay and combat? No! It's the lack of minimaps!", amazing bias and logic. And ofc to get views backing off of the Elden Ring horse.
@@LTCloud9 Nah, it was more of a "game is fun bc enemies, gameplay, combat are fun AND the minimap not being present helps."
And as he mentioned, not all games work well when HUD is off. They become clunkier bc the devs made game with the HUD in mind. It's not like he wants games to appeal to him specifically, but for games to try offering different styles of play and committing to them.
And for your rant about youtuber piggybacking on popular content, just... come on. This is TH-cam, trends are important and skipping out on them is an effective way to tank your channel. Also, breath of the wild and elden ring are both games that tackle exactly what he's saying excellently. Why shouldn't he reference them?
@@WhatIsMyPorpoise For every successful game where player are forced to play with zero hud options, there are 3-4 successful games where hud options depend on the player.
Take RDR2, it left it to us, the players, to decide how we want out map. Force players to play minimap less, game won't be as big a success. More Options is ALWAYS better.
The entire video is an obvious trend chase. Japanese games have lots of problem. FOr some reason, they hate, like absolutely hate giving options to players. Take BotW, great game, 5/5. But those sick bastards added almost no customization option. If I want to sprint with ZR, ZL, X, etc. I should be able to. Same with LM3, it didn;'t affect me as I prefer normal axis, but good luck those used to reverse axis. Jap games have lots of problems, but it just so happens western devs have bigger ones.
ALmost every major wester release is full of bugs & glitches, it's chock full of microtransaction and day one passes, unpolished and rushed out, etc. That's the actual reason western games flop. Not due to "crutches" or "design philosophy". That's pretentious talk 101. Elden ring is an amazing game, no doubt, but suppose it got released in a state similar to cyberpunk 2077, pretty sure it will tank hard. And the reverse, if cyberpunk was released bug free, that game would have been a massive hit.
All that actual stuff that matter is ignored and goes on about "Design Philosophy", it cannot get more pretentious. Well, he does have to chase trends to appease fans, so not his fault, just doing his job, cant blame him for that.
Both "designs" work. It's just a matter of not being a greedy fluck who releases games half baked and pump it full of day 1 dlcs and micros.
@@LTCloud9 Or maybe there are some people who actually enjoy navigation and being immersed in video games? But noooo. Obviously if they're advocating for a gaming feature you dislike they're trend chasing.
@@lilowhitney8614 Did you read? I saiD MAKE HUD elements OPTIONAL, as in, let people like you play without minimap and people like me play with it, totally upto the players.
I want choice, you want to force your gameplay settings on others.
Subnautica did a phenomenal job of this. Far as I know the game not only has no minimap, but no map. You can craft a compass and you have one giant landmark to orient yourself with before you do. Really reinforces the feeling of exploring a hostile alien world and honestly I have stronger map of that place in my head than I do of Skyrim.
Never thought about it but yeah, Subnautica did feel more fun to explore. There is a mod that adds a map but at least the map only shows what you've already explored, and when I discovered that mod I already knew the map haha.
@@mario_gabriel I got that mod on my last playthrough and in my opinion it is great for one reason that would be very difficult without it - knowing where you've already explored. Sure you can drop beacons but who wants to drop beacons all over the place that aren't marking anything interesting? It's especially good on later playthroughs when you might remember exploring an area in a previous run and think you explored it this time around when you really didn't. I think it would be a better fit for the game if it were a base piece rather than a PDA function, though, like the scanner room; that way you could plan your expedition at a base and have to return or build an outpost to plan a new one.
Not really the map is very memorable without beacons I only discovered they existed just before going to the lost river and even then I only used them to mark stuff like the bulb zone portal so I don't accidentally go to the mountains again or in the blood kelp trench entrance so I don't accidentally go to the sea treaders path and dunes border again
man i had the exact opposite experience the lack of a map meant that I was never able to create a mental map of the game and was so getting completely lost so consistently by the mid game i found it to be completely unplayable. The 3 dimensional navigation of subnautica i think makes it even more difficult
What is more fun about Subnautica is that the game generally doesn't tell you what to do. Apart from a dozen points on the pods and Degazi bases, you are supposed to do your own research and investigate the way out of the planet. Moreover, almost all interfaces are physical, which makes it even more immersive.
I love how in Deep Rock Galactic, not only is the "minimap" not very detailed (showing little information besides cave shape) but you have to stop moving in order to use it. That way, you aren't constantly staring at the minimap when you should be finding your way through the cave looking for objectives and minerals (which, more often than not, don't appear on the minimap).
I’m in the middle of a Witcher 3 replay without the mini map, and the Chort mission made me flip it back on! It’s funny that was the exact example you used. Overall though, using the main map and “punishing” me with the time to bring it up made it a lot more immersive for me to really try to navigate and remember the world
Would recommend getting a mod that lets you fade the mini-map in when using witcher senses. Gives the witcher senses a greater purpose, and means that you actually get to play the game without a mini-map, but without being screwed over by quest design.
@@NicholasBrakespear This is the way to go if ur playing with PC
I really like when there is a compass design on the top of the screen that just gives you your tagged destination. It means you can still explore but not go in the wrong direction
I remember in Skyrim, when I had no clue that there was even a map, an NPC told me to go to Riften for a quest and then I just followed the compass and roads.
I ended up facing quite strong enemies, being very low level at that point, but the absolute joy of exploration, finding seemingly random things on the way and finally reaching the destination was so immense. It's a play-through I can not forget.
Not playing with a mini map in most games is so aggravating, I'd love devs to better consider the world without a mini map
I've modded em out so many times, but it just hinders the experience if I can't bring up the mini map for 2 seconds to double check where I'm going
They’re definitely useful but it does suck when I realize I’m just walking across the minimap cuz the game is just like “connect the dots from one unnamed location to another spot in the middle of a forest/warehouse/haunted spaceship you’ll never come back to”
I recently started playing horizon zero dawn, and it uses the compass system by default. It took a bit to get used to, but it definitely feels good to slowly start to learn to make my way around the world. The quests are scattered around in such a way that you'll have to move around a bit and get to know at least the main routes throughout the world.
I actually really enjoy the navigation in Skyrim. Especially at the start where your only means of fast travel is paying a carriage driver to go to a main city. Other than that the simple compass that tells you the general direction of quests/landmarks, the various roads and paths, plus the signposts that have actual information on them and directions make exploring fun when you're not spamming triangle to get up a cliff.
I like having a compass, but Skyrim had too many icons on there, that rubbed against the feeling of exploration.
Modding away the icons from my compass has made the experience a lot better! I mean it's like a whole new feeling.
I have fallen in love with diagetic navigation + menus these past few years. It just ... makes sense. And it's the mark of a well thought-out and designed game now in my mind.
I instantly look at any tutorial area I get dropped in and ask "could I navigate using only in-game assets and the world design?" and if the answer's no, then I know to lower my expectations for the game in question.
1000% agree - when I finished RDR2 I felt like I spent more time starting at the mini map than the actual world. On one hand it was that subconscious need to stay on track, but also bodies on the ground are hard to spot, animals certainly, and I could never remember which button was the prompt I was looking for.
Going through again I've been turning it off and trying to pay attention more and it's been so much fun to actually learn the geography of everything.
My favorite map system is the Minecraft map. It only shows you places where you've already been, but it also requires a physical material to create which balances out the amount of information you gain from it. It would've worked perfectly if the Minecraft world was as detailed and interesting to explore as a triple-A game.
I've done 3 playthroughs of Elden Ring so far and NEVER noticed the compass disappearing in boss fights, and it makes sense since it is wholly unnecessary. Kudos to good UI design.
I remember playing Red Dead 2 and on my 2nd play through I decided to swap the mini-map to a compass. Completely changed how I played it. I had always played the game with my eyes glued to the bottom right of my screen, following the most optimal route possible. With the compass, I felt like I had to actually chart my own route, using my actual knowledge of the roads and routes as well as using landmarks as reference points. I wouldn’t know I was in a new area because I could see it on the map, I would notice the geography actually change. I found myself going down so many more different paths and discovering so many different places and things.
It’s impossible to do missions without the mini map when you have to move to specific places that you can only see on the mini map
This reminds me of an excellent game I'm playing right now: Outward. It not only doesn't have a mini-map its main map is static with location names and a compass drawn on the map, so you know which direction is which on the map, also no fast travel. No player marker either, you just have to figure out where you are. In other words you have to navigate Outward like you were given a real world map and a compass (which shows at the top of your screen). Also no planting beacons down to guide you either like you can in Elden Ring and BotW. I have gotten lost a few times in Outward when I didn't take navigation seriously enough at first, but after I starting *actually* thinking and looking for paths and landmarks and using my compass to make sure I'm generally on track it's absolutely amazing.
I always liked the clairvoyance spell in skyrim that lead you to your objective with an immersive optional system that never took away from the atmosphere. It was also a good balance as you couldn’t have it up for very long forcing you to fill in the gaps yourself while being there for when you needed it most.
My favorite system is the one used in Hollow Knight. Not only is the map diagetic, its acquisition is as well. You have to stumble around blindly for a bit whenever you discover a new area, and finding "the map guy", Cornifer, is used as a release of tension, usually amplified by putting a challenge room in the way. Just like every other element of the game, the system is also subverted to great effect. You stumble haphazardly into Fog Canyon, and Cornifer is sequestered behind a giant, ominous black gate that you will have no way of traversing until much later. You're so used to his cheery humming and trail of sheets of paper, which are marvelous breadcrumbs, that finding him scared shitless near the entrances to Deepnest really does a lot for setting the ominous tone of the area. The game establishes that Cornifer will leave behind business cards after he moves on to the next area, so when you reach the Resting Grounds, you have a reason to go back to the map shop and see the new marker additions. That's another thing; the mapping supplies store forces players to prioritize what markers they'll need by making them cost precious resources to acquire. This adds wrinkles into the gameplay that just don't exist in other games. The best part of this is that if you're used to the layout of the game, you don't have to spend those resources and can instead prioritize expensive items like the Lumafly Lantern. The compass taking a resource slot to have equipped is another master stroke, because it forces newer players to get used to juggling what charms they have equipped, and allows more experienced players the ability to more easily get fun charm synergies going. The crazy thing is that the whole game is diagetic in this way, and constantly forcing players to becoming accustomed to things only to subvert them. That's game design done correctly if you ask me.
I also love that you can BUY map markers and set them down wherever. It's a really necessary tool for a metroidvania, where you'll potentially be exploring the same area at least 2-3 different occasions. Even as a verified God Gamer it's still useful when doing a casual run or a randomiser, because you get to jot down locations you need to revisit without having to remember an item or a secret that you didn't pick up before. I was using them a lot in my very first playthrough and it helped to remember bossfights I chickened out on, and mark down weird items I couldn't interact with yet.
100% agree hollow knights map system is by far the best I’ve experienced in any game I’ve played
That's.. not what that word means haha
I liked how Fable did it all the way back in like 2003 or whenever Fable 1 came out. It only appears when you hold down the button, and it creates a sort of trail of glowing breadcrumbs to lead you to the next objective. It's not in the way, and it's kind of an immersive element as your character animates to make it appear. It gets pulled into the concept that your character is a "hero", a defined supernatural kind of Human capable of learning magic and mastering combat in ways others simply can't. It also pulls you into the fairy tail aesthetic in the same way due to the afore mentioned connection to the bread crumb trail from Hansel and Gretel. It's super cool.
It would have also been cool if some more difficult missions had ravens come down and consume the light orbs like the birds consuming the bread crumbs, like a "beyond this point you must navigate on your own" kind of threshold. I think it would be pretty cool to implement in a future Fable game.
I think things like the compass in Bethesda games is a nice middle ground. It helps you get around and locate new areas, but it doesnt have enough detail to be super distracting or hand holding.
I agree, but I personally like the hardcore HUD of KC:D more. You have a compass, a (proper) map and you gotta navigate the world yourself with that.
I think even that compass gives too much information on nearby locations and thus severly devalues the exploration aspect. Locations are even given a type marker before you've seen it! Didn't really look at the landscape before I modded it away.
After playing Elden Ring (Game of the Decade) I have a high standard for open world exploration.
@@Viljarms Then I'd say at least use a compass more like fallout 3/4, so I can at least know if I'm near something. I love Elden Ring but I don't have the time to track down so many locations.
The skyrim compass is one of the worst offenders of this giving way too many locations markers way too far away
I'm actually surprised that you haven't mentioned morrowind, as that's what they've done with directions, having your directions written out in a journal and npcs describing where to go and how to get there, great video , love the concept of it and the fact that it isn't spoken about much in the gaming community
The main issue is that there is a good chance you can't find your destination, and then you're stuck. I don't think there is a good answer to this.
What did work was the fast travel options. Because you went through specific points, you would become familiar with them. You would learn how they were connected. You would learn the areas surrounding them. Before long you would know the map pretty well. In contrast, if you simply follow a quest marker you are unlikely to remember much.
Morrowind is popular, but you go back to 2005 and earlier and most games were doing stuff like this. In even earlier games like Ultima 7 you even had to write your own journal and draw your own maps. It's an art that has become un-perfected over time. I think modern games that succeed like BOTW and Outward show that it can be done and still avoid some of the pitfalls of the older methods.
(Morrowind is really good at what it does though, especially quest pacing.)
@@KyriosHeptagrammaton I remember when games started having auto-maps! Instead of having to draw your own map by hand with graph paper, the game would fill one out for you as you explored! What luxury.
The idea of having a map that was already filled out even if you had never explored the place yourself was considered a cheat, and might be found in the game's clue book.
@@googiegress Auto mapping is something I think that was a good idea. Colossal cave adventure took a mess of a notebook to complete haha
@@KyriosHeptagrammaton Ah but with an auto-map it would have been trivial.
I think the presence or absence of a map, if a conscious choice by a developer, is something that can shape a game. On the other hand, some players have preferences or even lack spatial awareness. I'm much more likely to buy a game if I look at it and see that the mapping systems are robust and easy to see. But I get lost easily and tend not to find that enjoyable. I always do give a nod to games where you can turn such functions on and off, though. I am aware that not everyone wants as much guidance as I would tend to. (Note: I'm legally blind.)
Absolutely, it used to be effectively a required feature that you either figure out how to memorize the map or create your own. I remember Zeliard in particular was kind of annoying because those fire levels had one way walls and air currents that would drop you off in random places and without a map, it could be virtually impossible to complete the area. Admittedly, that was kind of a cool level of puzzle solving on top of the rest of the game.
Skyrim has my favorite navigation system. The top bar is very small, and being able to change the opacity can really help fade it into your screen, increasing immersion . It keeps that exploration feel, while also giving some direction for new players. I also have 2k hours in it so I might be a bit biased
I agree 100%
There are so many games that would benefit from something like this, I feel red dead redemption 2 could become so much more immersive if the option of a Skyrim mini map compass thingy was in it
I shit on skyrim a lot for being an oversimplified game, but the exploration in skyrim is legitimately great and one of the few reasons I still play it sometimes. Fallout 3 and oblivion are great examples of a good map, too.
@@trslim6032 True. For all the shenanigans that goes on around those games, the world/map design is always. There’s just something about those worlds that beg to be explored and unpacked
@@WastePlace Agreed. I even prefer F3 over NV when it comes to exploration. It's more open and less quest-driven. F4 is also pretty good. Even back to F1 you have the opening quest where you go to Vault 15. Which contains nothing of interest, and you're actually supposed to "accidentally" find Shady Sands and continue from there. Sure, you could argue that that's "quest-driven", but that's the _main_ quest, and not some side quest to let you explore an otherwise hidden area.
This made me think about how I play Warriors games (the two I’ve played are Hyrule Warriors and Three Hopes). I basically never look at the overworld during missions (or even navigating the hub world tbh) unless I’m fighting a specific enemy. I am solely using the mini map to navigate and it means I miss a lot of the world details. I think there’s definitely a way to avoid this, be it beacons directing you to the main mission (and I think directing characters on the map helps a bit too so that you can basically keep doing what you want). But often with how slim the timing is for some missions, the mini map is the only way to get somewhere fast enough without hitting walls or going in the wrong direction
As a person with aphantasia, I simply cannot play an open-world 3d game without a minimap. Even with minimaps, if they don't contain *all* the information necessary to complete the game, I will get lost, frustrated, and give up.
I realize that as a result I'm not the target audience for these types of games, and haven't even attempted an open-world game in years. But there are a lot of people who have limited visualization that will genuinely need a minimap, despite the elements you highlight that can be improved by good game design.
(and, yeah, I can't get anywhere in the real world without GPS either. fellow aphantasiac folks understand)
I'm legally blind/have low vision and have a similar problem. I will probably never find all or even most of the caves in Elden Ring because those entrances "clearly marked with lights" everyone talks about are still just too hard for me to see without considerable effort.
BOTW was much easier to navigate due to its bright colors, but even still I ended up using the map a lot.
Considering the fact there's >13% of the public that's legally blind alone, and others like you who have issues with navigating spaces for other reasons, I don't think not being the target audience is a valid excuse. It's not that we *just* dislike exploration, it's that we have a disability that makes it so we almost can't like exploration because of how difficult it is.
Imagine you have 3 bars IRL and one has stairs. That's like saying that the bar with stairs just isn't for the person in the wheelchair because, while they could make it up the steps, it'd be more effort than it's worth and would probably require outside help. I think devs need to start thinking about accessibility more.
I think only way to put minimap in game is to only show parts where you went, like Hollow Knight or Star wars Jedi fallen order
Speaking of Hollow Knight, I've seen people complain that wayward compass is a charm that you have to wear and waste charm notch on.
It frustrates me so much that whenever people see the map without a finger pointing to their exact location, they act like a lost kid and refuse to try and understand where they are.
Map is still a usable tool, and I wish more people tried to use it and learn to navigate.
that just a map not a mini map
@@limonlx7182 Yes! Wayward compass is such a waste of a charm notch. Just learn to read maps!
yeah but what if your game world is changing all the time? then you'd only want it to focus on what is visible to the player right? thus how to do a mini-map properly! have it focus only on what the player can see at one given time. Treat it more as another perspective and then it doesn't seem like a cheating pile of garbage. A mini map is basically supposed to be a form of radar nothing more. Over time it turned into a GPS system which was just wrong.
@@mrcyberpunk then they should do it like dead cells
interesting video.
let me just say that i wish games could give us the option to customize mini maps more. for example: in botw, don’t you just wish you could filter out all of the korok seeds you’ve found so that you can only see pinned locations and shrines? or rather lower the opacity to not have mini maps ruin the immersion? only time can tell ig. 🤷♀️
wow, or how about eye tracking to make make minimap more opaque when you are looking at it. I think eye tracking is a great way to add new controls to the game, games are not using it so much.
@@deepakprajapati2635 Eye tracking is an EXTREMELY dangerous element to add to any game for any reason.
@@masterlinktm how so?
@@presorchasm Imagine a world where everyone and everything is vying for your attention. For every possible second.
Now imagine a world where a select few know exactly where to stand on your walk to work every second to maximize your attention.
They sell this information to top buyers when they don't want your attention at any specific moment and soon all of your attention is being coordinated by these select few. You are no longer able to choose what to look at because they know exactly what you will instinctually look at no matter the time.
Even worse, they know exactly when to show you a thing to make you instinctually do a thing. They want you to walk a different street, show you something to make you not want to walk down your normal street. Then they show you something else that makes you hungry for a burger. Oh look, what a coincidence you are standing right outside a burger joint.
It only gets worse from there. All the while you never really notice that they are doing this to you.
@@masterlinktm I see, I can imagine that eye tracking on an augmented reality context can be rather dystopic. But I fail to see how it's the same when we apply it to video games? Since, like VR headsets or AR goggles, it does require a proprietary hardware that can be turned off at anytime.
I love the way skyrim does this. The game has alot of landmarks, signs, and different biomes (pine forest, aspen forest, flat grassland, marsh, freezing wasteland, and mountains) so you don't need to rely too heavily on a map.
The directions NPCs tell in some quests is good as well. Like hadvar/rolof point out where dustman's cairn is before you have to go to it. So you have a good idea of where it is.
Ive heard this feature is even better in older games as well.
For me, I love the minimap because it tells me everything I can do.
In singleplayer games, I'd gladly take a checklist for a small enough region I can do, and it let's me find out on my own in that small area. I love exploring, but I also like doing everything, and finding that one small objective you missed when you don't even know what it is is very very frustrating
I totally get that. It's the ADHD side of gaming, where tasks and rewards offer that sweet, sweet hit of dopamine. So good. I get caught up in that too.
But I remember playing Hellblade, which did away with maps, HUDs, health-bars, anything that wasn't diegetic. The result is very limited, but it's such a profoundly immersive experience, I found myself wishing for more games like that. No task lists, no map clearing, no dragged out slog finding every last hidden collectable, just pure character experience.
I like collectables, but some games positively abuse them to pad out the content. If there are so many that finding them all becomes an endless, joyless chore, then having them all marked on a minimap to make it easier doesn't make it more fun. It makes it feel pointless.
That said, I totally feel you about missing that one thing. It's annoying when you literally have to resort to a cheat site in order to find everything. I never found all the dinosaur bones in RDR2, or the stone carvings, or poor old Algernon Wasp's orchids. And that still bugs me.
@@rottensquid This is how I view collectible quests: as a chore. If a game has a bunch of collectibles, I will literally sit there and be like "Okay, if I collect ten collectibles, I can move on to the next story mission!" rinse and repeat for the next mission... and the one after that. Like I have to find some way to reward myself for collecting these because it completely kills the experience for me if I don't.
@@williamrhea-banker3005 Right, but I think what Alex is saying is that map-clearing and chore-ticking has its own appeal, which shouldn't be dismissed. The very act of scanning the mini-map for things to do, things to find, puzzles to solve, chores to tick off, appeals to her. I just think a lot of gamers complain about it because it's a little too easy for designers to pad out games with it. Like every other aspect of games, it require balance.
I think the dislike for minimaps works in single player games. I don't think that the removal of a minimap makes the game better in MMOs tho. Last time someone tried to have no minimap in their mmo people just had the map up on their second monitor. I think it depends on the game. I also think that for some people its nice in single player games.
@@cynthiahembree3957 Right. I think it's a matter of engagement. With MMOs, engagement is almost never a problem, because real people provide all the engagement you'll ever need. You don't need the game mechanics to provide challenge. But when your only engagement is with the game story and mechanics, it would be nice to not have huge lulls in engagement when all you're doing is running from one end of the map to the other looking for the next moment the game becomes a game again, and not just scenery.
Also, I think immersion is more important in single player than it is in MMOs. I think engaging with real people also provides deeper immersion, and requires less illusion of realism in the game itself.
For those who like diegetic navigation Sea of Thieves is fantastic at that! You're given maps, a compass, telescope, even a watch. Nothing is presented on screen without it being the character using that tool, and there's something very satisfying about that! The character doesn't even have a world map on their person, you have to use the one on your ship for more macro-directions.
I always liked the use of a basic compass and a large map you can pull out to get your bearings. Keeps the screen clean and encourages exploration.
I love that Shadow of War decided to let you disable the minimap (which you can ALMOST play the game without), but in doing so you lost access to HUD elements which tracked your health/arrows. Truly incredible UI design
a game that did really well in terms of exploration and mini maps, is Subnautica
it's fairly easy to navigate everything as many areas are simply linearly connected to each other, which means as you progress with your gear/equipment you'll also progress further away from the original shallow waters
I just love Subnautica and I love bringing it up wherever I can 😎
they could do with fixing the prawn bug that corrupts your entire save 5 minutes after you build it, the ps5's stupid "sync" thing didnt help either as i accidentally overwrote my last working save and didnt have the heart to do it again especially as i just spent about 4 hours painstakingly rearranging my base as theres no way to move lockers with stuff in it(that im aware of)
I had to look up an online map to find the one thing I was missing to build a depth model. Turns out I missed a wreck. It would have been nice to have a sketched map based on what you’ve already explored or something similar to the way points you can put down (make them more abundant or not cost any materials?). I ended up with a corrupt save 30 hours into my first playthrough on PS4 so after about six months later when it had been patched somewhat I didn’t build much (so it didn’t lag out) and used an online map to get back to the point of progression I was at before. Great game I won’t deny but exploration to find very specific things in the big wrecks (unlike the pods that get a radio-based marker to travel to) and the bugs kinda dragged it down a bit. On PS4, it’s a buggy and laggy mess.
Genshin impact is another one of those they only mark out shops and quest objectives while having moculi and chests to encourage exploration. Plus the have clear worn paths to every area in the world or a puzzle you can solve to take you to a far off area. If you never want to use a minimap you don't have to
@@mylesfrost335 Why don't you go complain to the devs about it instead of ranting at a complete stranger on an unrelated TH-cam video?
Subnautica is truly worthy of such devotion. :)
It helps that subnautica's map is deceptively small, a good deal of size/scale of the map comes from maps height and because of this you essentially have levitation/flight enabled for the whole game thus seeing all the points of interest from higher vantage points.
Firewatch and Shenmue II have great map design, in firewatch you open up a map on one hand and a compass on another and you’ll use landmarks to orient and navigate, Shenmue II while dated has map stands on the street which has street names and all the shops you can use buy a map which will give you a small mini map, but the majority of your navigation will be by checking the map stands and after a little while you’ll remember the layout of the areas so well you’ll naturally want to explore and easily find your way back, all while never breaking immersion.
When you brought up having different types of maps for different situations, I immediately thought of Wind Waker. The compass while you're sailing really helps with immersion, and its such a great contrast from the dungeon maps, which serve a completely different purpose. It's funny how I never realized growing up how special of a balance these Zelda games created by making memorable intuitive layouts and landmarks, and on top of that the map systems serve their functions so well to highlight that design and help the player without being a crutch.
I think in general Nintendo is really good at creating intuitive gameplay mechanics that just make sense, and it's something I realize that I take for granted as I experience more non-Nintento titles that just recreate the same flawed systems over and over.
Compass HUDs have always been my preference whenever possible. You get the same info as a lot of minimaps, without the handholding of a birds eye view. You still have to be creative about your local navigation, while still making you creatively solve the puzzle of geography.
(2:00) _"can be the difference between winning and losing"_
The most used line for every feature in every game
And yet it's genuinely more true for the example given (mini-maps in MOBAs).
I think for some games, it would be really cool if the player has to do their own cartography if they want a map. This would of course be optional, but it's also the only way to unlock a minimal or a map at all.
One of my favorite things about how I play Skyrim in VR is having to buy physical maps that I hold in my actual hand and don't tell me where I am on them, I have to figure out where I am on the map based on my surroundings and signposts, plus my also-physical compass which only points north. Not fast-traveling means that every time I leave the comfort of one city, I've got to be prepared to survive and get lost a bunch just trying to get where I need to go. Traveling at night is also scarier because I can't actually see my map without a light source. I really like having to work for navigation in a game like that!
One of the few good additions in the recent assassins creed games is a pathfinding difficulty setting. On the higest difficulty it will give you descriptions in the quest log and will only reveal a waypoint once you are close to it, to avoid having people search every house in a city.
I know Ubisoft is an easy punching bag, but I've loved playing through GR Breakpoint because it addresses a lot of these problems. It has landmark-based navigation, intuitive discovery for objectives, and can turn off almost all the HUD while leaving a compass. Plus, it has difficulty sliders for each and every element. I can turn down enemy detection to account for my lack of map markers / HUD, while making the health and ammo systems more realistic.
This comment actually made me consider giving it a try.
I never noticed that the compass in ER disappeared when you enter a boss fight... But I'm not even surprised, Fromsoftware is amazing and one of the few companies that still goes above and beyond with their games after all these years. Their standards still high.
They still decided to include intrusive text boxes that explain basic things to you during the first hour of the game which is very much unlike them to do…
Man, I've been playing for 300 hours by now (still my first playthrough - need to uncover all that lore!) and I never even noticed! haha
@@lightbrand_ you can turn off that
@@mahfuzannan8270 "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO USE ONE OF YOUR 14 CRIMSON FLASKS TO REVIVE TORRENT? I KNOW THE ANSWER IS YES 100% OF THE TIME BUT I WILL CONTINUE TO ASK." That One text box when you try and summon Dead torrent and by default answers no
@@Mystic-Midnight that's annoying tho ngl,but hey it is a tiny inconvenience
This video is outstanding. One of my favorite feelings in games is being lost, but not directionless, meaning I have a vague sense of where to go (think Outer Wilds' "there's more to explore here" prompts), but there's still mystery. Minimaps make this impossible.
One other game I loved that didn't have a minimap was Subnautica. It does a great job of providing landmarks despite, well, not having a lot of land.
For a more casual gamer like myself, playing and completing games is kinda becoming a luxury mainly because of time (spare time). Having minimap to "rush" through a game is really helpful. The option to turn off the minimap is great for people who like to immerse in the game and have the time to do so, which I am not.
You seem to have FOMO issue and the games you want to play are so long that you feel the need to rush them to go through your selection. Casual or not, gamers can totally be more selective instead of consuming games like appetizers.
@@PainterVierax oh ok
@@PainterVierax I see what you're saying, but when you're limited spare time means you come back to games like 1 or 2 times per month for an average of 3/4 hours at a time, I find that immersion is incredibly difficult regardless simply because you're not frequently in the game.
So voluntarily choosing not to use certain tools that make your life easier, like minimaps, makes the whole process tedious and a huge drag sometimes
@@PP-sh6ki with that very small amount of time available, those AAA videogames using minimaps are so long to complete even rushing them that you'll forget the story and the controls. That's why I play shorter games or games with short runs instead.
The issue you ape, is that by designing games around having a minimap, they can become almost unplayable without one.
I’m curious if you’ve ever tried the game Outward. One of its actual selling points is the complete lack of mini-map or even any markers at all. In fact, while it has a map screen, it doesn’t actually show your location on that screen, so you have to use the map in conjunction with landmarks to even know where exactly you are. The result is that it forced the devs to make a game that can be navigated without these common tools, and I think that makes for better game worlds personally. It was quite ballsy of the devs to go that route in a modern game, but I’d like to see more games try it as it can be very immersive and make the world so much more memorable. Sadly I doubt any AAA games would be brave enough to do that and risk lowering their broad appeal.
People in general had no trouble there was no mini-map in Subnautica. The best the game can do, is throw a compass at you, when you find the schematic for it that is :) So can't see why other games couldn't as well.
That sound fucking awful
@@chromosomedcollector Pickled herring also sounds awful, until you try it :)
@@abaddon1371 fair enough
@@abaddon1371 sorry but travelling and navigation in that game IS time wasting and awful. Don't even mention the underground design. ..
I like Helldivers 2's minimap where it shows you where the primary objectives are, areas where some type of enemy base is, shows a ping of where enemies are around you, keeps track of locations once they are discovered, and certain things can cause it to show more or less information.
To see all this information, you have to sacrifice your ability to do anything that uses your character's arms. Which includes being able to fight.
On my third playthrough of the Witcher 3, I turned the minimap off, and it made the game so much more fun. I actually had to follow the roads instead of blindly following the line, the twisting streets of Novigrad actually became easier to navigate, and I finally noticed that the Golden Sturgeon is the only yellow building on the waterfront.
the only problem as he said, is that the game is not designed to be played without a minimap, and the fact that the full map doesn't open instantly make it very frustrating, specially if you are bad at navigating. but the friendlyHUD mod fix it, it lets you toggle to only show the minimap when you hold M like RDR2, and give you floating 3D icons that only show up when you use the witcher sense. its perfect, and I really hope CDPR learn from them and use it for their next witcher game.
I've NEVER found a way to be comfortable in Novigrad. There are areas that make sense, like "the ocean is west", and areas I recognize, but the rest is still a maze. But I hate cities anyway, so that might just be a "me" problem.
I played the entirety of BOTW without the mini map on and it really showed just how incredible the level & sound design were. There was never any frustration trying to find things and it felt like it added a HUGE amount of enjoyment as it was such a fun feeling when I’d catch a glimpse of something interesting in the horizon and think “ooh lets go explore that!”.
I was actually quite shocked how much immersion it added. It connected you to the task and gave you a sense of achievement as following a mini map feels like getting given an answer instead of working it out for yourself.
I know it’s harder for more realistic games as the devs for zelda can make drastic terrain changes to make it easier to navigate but, as is pointed out in the video, it can still be done to a lesser degree i.e RDR2.
I was amazed at how well BOTW worked without the minimap, and it made for a whole new second playthrough when I found that setting. The signs at forks in the road are actually useful! When folks give you quests they actually tell you how to get to whatever they need, and the world gives you the info to navigate to there! It honestly set my standard for that sort of thing.
Not sure if you've ever seen the game but check out Miasmata. They make you use Cartography like triangulation to build your map as you go. You need to pick spots to get your bearings and then it fills out the map details once you can pinpoint your location. Sounds like a great alternative, keeping the players engaged in the world.
Level design is what could help most with solving this issue. I think that the more memorable a game’s landscape is, the less they need to rely on checking a map or compass, because over time they’ll just naturally become familiar with the world.
This is why I would love for more games to adopt a metroidvania style of game world, in which the game world is broken up into a series of branching paths that connect to one another. It’s a comprise between “open world” and “linear corridor” design that is, in my opinion, built to suit the more story-focused style of open world game, where players generally just want to get to the next part of the quest. Less space and more strict level layouts ensure that it’s easier for players to get around, and developers are able to put more time into making those levels distinct and memorable enough that navigation tools aren’t as necessary. Plus, metroidvania games also tend to follow the same principle of unique areas that you mentioned about Elden Ring & BotW.
my problem with metroidvania games worlds is you spend alot of time being told this is a game world by the world "you'll need something to get up high" "youll need a stronger blade to cut the door down"
it makes expoloring offeten end with oh i need jump boots to do this bit and it makes exploring not very fun because evey (not every but lots of ) parth is shut off befor you find the cool thing and then when you do come back with you rocket boot and better blade 3 to get in that room there is notting cool in there its just a pack of buttles or helth
Level that can be navigated by ease of recognition are so often the most memorable and nostalgic. It also works for question, not just navigation - the cave with the Chort in Witcher 3 is a perfect example: The locations where the Chort bait has to be spread could be so easily marked by a particular type of tree or a ring of mushrooms or something.
Stalker does that. The zone is seperated into sections and each section is unique looking from the rest