Anon goes up the yellow stairs

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Pumpkin_Sushi@reddit

The wild part is redditors will tear your throat out if you suggest this isnt needed

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Overdoing anything makes a game bad. Old school games had sparkles over the treasure chest to let you know you could touch it, new games have yellow ladders. It’s really not that big a deal. But the excessive AAA voice gets annoying but I’ve only seen it in videos parodying this

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Pumpkin_Sushi@reddit

I think a ladder is in itself conspicuous enough, the yellow feels like overkill. Light sparkles is probably as far as the handholding should go (if that), or the game just kinda sucks at communicative art design.

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hfcRedd@reddit

I feel like two big contributors to this problem are better graphics and higher visual fidelity. Identifying a ladder in a game from 15 years ago is easy because the ladder was the only thing in the stylized scene. Nowadays it can be hard to see a ladder in a hyper realistic highly detailed scene.

You have to pull attention to the objects of interest in some way or it can become impossible to tell them apart for other esthetic scene pieces. Yellow paint is a cheap and easy fix, which is probably why it's so common. You can also use light and shadows to redirect focus, but not every scene or setting allows for that to happen.

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breadmaker8@reddit

I think tomb raider?, they made everything blend in with it's surroundings by default, but there was a button you could press that activates 'heightened senses' or whatever that highlights all the interactable objects. A good medium for players on all parts of the spectrum.

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Pumpkin_Sushi@reddit

Detective Mode was popularised by Batman and for a while there EVERY game had it. I found it to be peak lazy design imo. Again, its environmental designers phoning their jobs in. Still at least that's optional and not always around like the yellow paint is.

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F-Lambda@reddit

this is a good method. or (in addition to this, as an alternate option) having the option for interactables to highlight on mouseover.

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madjohnvane@reddit

Yeah, this is exactly it. The interactive stuff often doesn’t have the baked lighting info so it stands out like crazy. These days it genuinely can be hard to tell because everything looks so good.

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thebestdogeevr@reddit

I agree. When so many objects that aren't interactable are present, it can be difficult to determine what you can interact with

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Ozuge@reddit

That or there are so many interactable items but they're kind of pointless so you miss out on actually unique items. This is the RDR2 problem.

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SuperSocialMan@reddit

The original RE4 had fullbright enabled on the breakable crates lol.

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PenguinBomb@reddit

God of War: Ragnarok was atrocious with this kind of stuff.

Atreus: "Think that lever over there will open the door." 20 seconds later "Hmm, I think that lever can help us."

I believe they patched this, though.

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swimmerboy5817@reddit

Make it optional at the very least. Like I get some people want to just turn their brains off when they play a game and like having hints and guides, but some people actually enjoy trying to solve the puzzles and figure it out. Have it off by default, but allow an option to turn it on if you get stuck.

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breadmaker8@reddit

I think tomb raider?, they made everything blend in with it's surroundings by default, but there was a button you could press that activates 'heightened senses' or whatever that highlights all the interactable objects. A good medium for players on all parts of the spectrum.

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hagamablabla@reddit

More games need System Shock 1 difficulty settings. It had separate difficulty for both kinds of combat, puzzles, and whether you have a timer.

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StaryWolf@reddit

Do you believe game devs are spending hours putting these in if there wasn't any actual benefit.

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AbortionBulld0zer@reddit

Games could take thousands of hours to make, but still majority of them have some baffling design and balancing decisions. There is a lot of shit which makes the games progressively worse for the sake of being worse.

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Pumpkin_Sushi@reddit

I think they assume players are stupid and would sacrifice art direction to as many "half playing while on phone" gamers, yes

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Clyde-MacTavish@reddit

I don't think it's needed and would prefer it without, but I do at least get the need. Games are so visually detailed and environments have appropriate clutter, so it can be difficult to differentiate what items are interactable at least. Some games do it better than others.

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RealityMalady@reddit

I'm always reminded of that one part of the dev commentary in Portal 2 where they said they had to add a hint, because for some reason a lot of the playtesters couldn't cross a gap. Completely forgetting they were holding a portal gun and just trying to jump.

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Atiklyar@reddit

Thus reminds me of my first playthrough of BG3. I admitted to people that I couldn't find the path to the northern part of Act 1, so I had missed Karlach and the burning building.

Queue people giving me shit for not realizing I could jump across the broken bridge. Coming from BG1/2 and NWN, at no point did the idea of jumping ever occur to me when it apparently did to everyone else unprompted.

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cagnusdei@reddit

Realizing I could jump across gaps was honestly such a revelation to me that I felt embarrassed I hadn't thought of it sooner.

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sharplyon@reddit

i also never realised you could jump there. I'm very used to terrain like that meaning "you cant go there yet" or something.

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Fire2xdxd@reddit

Coming from Divinity Original Sin, I probably wouldn't have understood jumping in BG3 if I hadn't been instructed by a friend

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Esava@reddit

So when did you watch the first speedrun of someone using gale to jump across the entire map in like 3 leaps? And how did that make you feel?

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Atiklyar@reddit

Honestly, the way people play BG3 in general boggles my mind. Vomiting a hundred explosive barrels from camp to kill a boss, stuffing Gale's body in a box to use the damage aura to kill people, and the like? I'm just baffled at how these interactions are even thought of by the 5E players that, in all my time DMing, can't seem to remember what a single one of their own abilities does.

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LtHoneybun@reddit

Meanwhile my thing is using up all the water bottles. I've never seen or heard about anyone else throwing the waters you find.

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mang87@reddit

It's very easy to break the combat in BG3. I didn't even bother with any of the creative ways to do it, I just stealth cheesed the entire game. Simply aggro the enemies with one character, and leave the rest of the party far away in stealth. The enemies are now frozen in place and you can move the rest of your party freely as long as they remain in stealth, and you just position them and sneak attack everyone. No fight lasted more than 2 rounds, even boss fights.

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Legend13CNS@reddit

As a player of both BG3 and 5E, for me it's 100% because I don't want to negotiate with the DM on the validity of the crazy ideas/interactions or the rolls necessary to pull them off. Whereas in the game a lot of stuff can be done for "free" outside combat and the game won't get irritated at me for using trial and error to do something silly.

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Barkinsons@reddit

Honestly I love watching speedruns but it's such a different way of how I play games. I think the exploits are fun to watch but I'd never use it for myself

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LtHoneybun@reddit

My favorite dev commentary was the Doom devs reacting to a speedrun. It devolved into who is to blame for putting a trash can in a level.

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Dominator616@reddit

I use a few for more tedious tasks like in OoT using the side step as young Link to go across the map faster or if I'm feeling like it more tech ones like the auto attack glitch because I'm an autistic son of a gun who loves techs like that lol

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WaxMaxtDu@reddit

Ok spoiler tag maybe?

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Sbotkin@reddit

It's literally the first hour of the game after the prologue.

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WaxMaxtDu@reddit

That’s one of the best hours usually

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_cdk@reddit

try playing it then

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WaxMaxtDu@reddit

I would really love to but for now I can’t afford the game and computer to play it

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_cdk@reddit

fair. it's not even much of a spoiler, the building and character are both in the trailers

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gman8686@reddit

You've had enough fucking time, and it's like maybe a 1/3 to 1/2 way into Act 1.

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Roadkillgoblin_2@reddit

I had a similar thing when I played Half Life after completing Half Life 2 (plus EP1 and EP2)-I spent easily at least an hour trying to get across the sewer-like area with a collapsed bridge on each side, because the doors wouldn’t open when I pressed E, and had a texture similar to that of the un-openable doors in the newer Source Engine

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ArundelvalEstar@reddit

Playing through that era of valve games with the dev commentary really changed my perspective on tutorialization. The amount of dev's speech bubbles that were just "why won't players look up!?" Was kind of a thing of performance art beauty

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Bootlegs@reddit

Ooh I remember in Portal 1 when they said players never look up, so it's a bad idea to put a lot of important stuff in the roof.

That stuck with me and often I've thought about it in other games such a WoW. I'd played a particular dungeon (Utgarde Keep) hundreds of times and you pass through a stables with dragons in it. Then I remembered the portal thing and looked up, I thought there was a ceiling all this time, but it was actually open to the sky.

Kindof baffled me and I started tilting my camera up in many more raids and dungeons. So many of them were way different than what I thought. Ignis the Furnace Master's room was open to the sky as well with a volcano on top. Thought there was a regular old ceiling there before I looked.

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headedbranch225@reddit

I kept forgetting about having portals during my playthrough too

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PhantomCruze@reddit

Meanwhile in portal 1, they had to make the laser that the hovering platforms rode on lethal, because those playtesters parkoured across it

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BrazilBazil@reddit

„Snake. The Russians refer to what you’re looking at now as „stairs”. You can stand in front of stairs and press the Action Key to climb them automatically. An operative was deployed just before you to mark all structures you can interact with with yellow paint and tape. If you have any trouble, contact me at 111.1.”

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Treshimek@reddit

And yet still there will be players of high IQ that will miss every clue about where to go.

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chetizii@reddit

That's me. At complete random, I will ignore obvious information, find a new glitch, somehow get softlocked, backtrack 3 chapters, learn the game's movement techs to go out of bounds (convinced that was where I was meant to go), then look at a walkthrough on Youtube and question my existence.

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mang87@reddit

I've lost count how many times I believed that I encountered some terrible bug in a game, only to google the issue and immediately realise I've got the deductive skills of a baked potato.

The most recent one was Palworld, and it was the dreaded "can't buy from the Bounty vendor bug" and the first result was from a reddit post about it, and the top comment: "is your inventory full?"

I had 200+ hours in the game by that point. Never occurred to me that you need inventory space if you're going to buy something.

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Fire2xdxd@reddit

Sometimes the simplest answer eludes us when we're used to looking for convoluted ones.

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thanksfor-allthefish@reddit

yeah, I'm ok with that. I want games that I can't finish on autopilot, like watching a movie. I want to pause a bit and dislodge my brain into actually thinking a bit and realize that yeah, I have to play with at least a bit of thinking.

Old school FPS did this with the sometimes maze-like levels, you would be focused only on how to shoot and strafe but after all the enemies were done, you had to go back and find where the hell that yellow key was at.

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NottheSeaofNames@reddit

But anon, how else will the IGN reviewer know how to progress the plot?

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leedler@reddit

They’ll still fuck it up somehow and give it a 6

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C_umputer@reddit

Don't think I've seen them go below 7, and even that is rare, even garbage gets 8

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Fire2xdxd@reddit

IGN is just a paid shill. Game from big studio? Automatic 7/10 minimum. Small indie game? 6/10.

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MosterChief@reddit

i’m assuming they’re referring to IGNs recent review of Mouse: P.I. for hire.

They gave the game a 6/10 and their reasoning was basically “too whimsical and too many cheese jokes” despite praising the gameplay

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C_umputer@reddit

I didn't know about that game, not really in my taste, but I'm sure someone will enjoy it. What I was referring about IGN was how pretty much any big game review channels are useless, since they usually have no idea what they're talking about.

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Happy_Ocelot_4945@reddit

Ngl I got lost af when playing the Ubisoft Avatar(blue aliens) video game. Its one of the few games in existence to use the full color spectrum

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TopolCZ@reddit

The colours gave me headache. They also used the yellow highlighter, but it wasn't really noticeable cause the world was so colourful

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ThatsNotBadAtAll@reddit

Full of the exaggerated swagger of a yellow stair

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Res_Novae17@reddit

I read this in the voice of the Disco Elysium narrator.

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JessHorserage@reddit

No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.

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Overdrive1221@reddit

Kill then, kill then now!

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Xenochu86@reddit

Sounds like the kind of game they'd give a 10

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W1D0WM4K3R@reddit

Stairs look too much like cheese.

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Markorver@reddit

Stair Climber: The Game(tm) has too many steps, also why is the character climbing the steps instead of going down? It's full of ludonarrative dissonance

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Evignity@reddit

My mums a doctor who handled children, she often had to determine their level of intellect-development as to alarm if there are any problems.

Puzzles that literal 6y mentally handicapped people can do are showing up in games nowdays, and it blows my fucking mind. Have people really turned this fucking stupid?

She once mentioned how aghast she was when parents proudly told her how good their kids were at X and Y mobile-games, she couldn't tell them but she knew that even the MOST mentally handicapped can even play such games.

Is that where we are at? I get inclusiveness but jesus christ just learn to google the solution if it's so fucking hard or you can't be arsed. Stop lowering the bar for the rest of us

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Gmandlno@reddit

You say that, but then games don’t explicitly state these things five times, people skip a tutorial by not reading it, and nearly ragequit out of confusion.

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Gary_FucKing@reddit

I could forgive this dumb shit if they actually let me turn it off. Leave accessibility options in the game, idgaf if someone needs it that’s fine, but I, and plenty others, are fine with getting stuck in a room for an hour before I finally look at the stairs. It’s called playing the fucking game.

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PieStealingJames@reddit

"stairs huh? I bet I could use these to get to higher ground"

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spookymemeformat@reddit

Lmao this got me 🤣🤣😭😭😭

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JamesBonaparte@reddit

https://youtu.be/jGzGAEECN6E?is=Q0dxZLRvbBTXNLju

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AIRA_XD@reddit

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r_ocD@reddit

I don't think we have to climb the ladder

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Scottish_Whiskey@reddit

I’m really lost… where’s the ladder?

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porfito@reddit

"And find the Resident Evil" is pure gold

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catgirl_liker@reddit

PRESS [ENTER] TO SKIP THE PUZZLE

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Thecatman175@reddit

Literally quit god of war because it was so bad with this

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TraumaPerformer@reddit

tutorial voice kicks in

”I see you’re having trouble, M. Turn to face the stairs using the right stick until you see the yellow stairs, and then point the left stick forward to move in the direction to climb the stairs.”

pop up: “The difficulty can be changed to autoplay at any time without disabling achievements.”

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2836382929@reddit

“Press L3 + R3 to activate Plumber’s Vision”

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bellymeat@reddit

the stanley parable method of guiding the player really is underrated. just cue the omnipresent voice after a set amount of time.

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DDGBuilder@reddit

"Hold A + LT + R3 to climb stairs*

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RenhamRedAxe@reddit

I tried to keep my game having mininal tooltips to not be invasive, players be like, but I dont get it how to play 😭😭 too confusing!! ... Added some tooltips.. 😥 its too hard how do I do things!?... So I ended up adding tooltips for everything and I will be eben adding npcs to explain stuff.

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gzej@reddit

Hey don't be so harsh on the game devs, they were just thinking about the game journalists in advance

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Adorable-Act-3858@reddit

Anon tries to climbs up the stairs

collision breaks and anon walks through them instead

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Killerkendolls@reddit

The fact that feet actually landing on stairs rarely even happens, sounds like we need to go back to good old ramps.

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EuenovAyabayya@reddit

What's behind the green door tho?

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Timely-Ad-1085@reddit

And some of you will still manage to get stuck.

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Francone79@reddit

Ever played the Stanley Parable?

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Jumper2002@reddit

This is the problem with game trying to be too realistic, its harder to tell whats supposed to be something important or whats just some piece of set dressing. In older video games it was easier to tell the difference because interactables were distinct from the background or environment

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GodNoob666@reddit

And then when you go up the stairs you instantly die and get a tooltip reading “don’t believe everything you’re told.”

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TSiQ1618@reddit

don't worry, even tricky puzzle games like this will be easy soon enough. Pretty soon Ai will just play the games for us so we can do more productive work

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Medical_String_3501@reddit

Honestly the only example I can think of something this bad is in GoW, where you fail a puzzle once to get a feel of how to complete it and are immediately told how to solve it.

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ElementofPower@reddit

"You should try climbin' those stairs, brother!"

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starberryslay@reddit

I'm actually quite a decent puzzle solver but Atreus needs to shut the fuck up sometimes bro. Idk if I'm secretly handicapped but it felt like was saying shit like 3 seconds into the puzzle I didn't even have to time to begin to think about it

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starberryslay@reddit

focus, M

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splittingheirs@reddit

> Screen fades and highlights stairs
> "Use stairs to progress"
> Walk away
> Game company onsells ingame user data to Data broker
> Brokerage AI inspects and collates the data and sell it to my insurance provider
> Phone pings with message
> "Your package premiums have been increased by 17% due to rebellious tendencies"

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rhen_var@reddit

You joke but that’s the future we’re headed for

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The_harbinger2020@reddit

Y'all should play Tunic if you want a game that doesnt hold your hand at all.

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PenguinBomb@reddit

This is my least favorite part of new games and Japanese produced games are the worst offender because they'll give you the same tutorial 3 times in a row but present in a different way.

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choreographite@reddit

The real problem is when tutorials/tooltips/voice tips interrupt gameplay. Keep them unobtrusive, don’t dim the screen, and keep a help menu available for those who want it. I’m tired of being taught how to move the camera for the millionth fucking time.

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GrisFross@reddit

Death stranding 1 sadly. You get explained the same mechanics like 10 times, and 50 hours in it will tell you that you can pick things up in ur hands or something

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thebestdogeevr@reddit

Honestly, I don't care to waste time wandering around a little area just trying to figure out which rock is climbable to get me where I need to go, or to play I Spy looking for the dull rusted ladder that blends in with everything else that may or may not even be in this area.

If I want to figure that out I'd play Death Stranding

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