The "Yellow Paint" Discourse - Cus what would DSP do without the giant arrow pointing towards the exit?

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i mean, there should at least be an option in the settings for the game to highlight things like that instead of just doing it anyway. maybe aid it with some more interesting level design choices and it can help. trust me, you might not think a lot of people are dsp levels of bad at some games, but you're underestimating yourself if you wanna believe that.
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
I have bad news for you.

You are literally blind.
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AAA games are being made to be played by DSP. DSP! they outright admitted their playerbase are fucking retarded (like DSP) and the worst part is they still fail at the game because again, they DSP.
 
I'd rather just get lost and have to dust off the old monkey brain to figure the problem out. I'm playing your game cause I'm tired of my imagination and I want to experience someone else's but if you're just gonna hold my hand the entire time then I'm going to play something else.
 
In Fallout 3 (or maybe NV) theres a certain vault I cannot navigate, even with the quest arrows. I wish I remembered the name of it because it was always a nightmare to get through and I dont know why, I never had a problem with any of the other locations.

I find when games stop giving quest markers is when I really enjoy the scenery and world building. If you have the option go back and play some Bethesda games but turn off the markers and dont fast travel. I know its popular to shit on Bethesda games but stuff like Skyrim and Oblivion are so much more enjoyable when you play them like a slow dungeon crawler, and not as a GPS navigator. Fallout 76 had some pretty interesting environmental storytelling, that world was one of the best Bethesda has ever crafted and its stuck behind always online. Starfield was so disjointed it felt like a huge step back in that respect.

Ubisoft games are the biggest culprits of this yellow paint trend though, fucking ropes on every climbable cliff. I played Dead Island 2 recently and it was markers galore, which was sad because the world is well made in that game with small instanced areas you dont really need so many markers.
 
I would like there to be less "yellow paint" in games, but as devs have shown, people (playtesters at least) are fucking stupid and can't find their way out of a wet paper bag unless you're holding their hands. Unless we can get pass that particular hurdle consistently, "yellow paint" is the most reliable method to ensure people can even make it out of the tutorial zone and I can't really fault them for this mindset.

Sure it's possible to lead the player to intuit on some obstacles, for example, in the original Ratchet & Clank trilogy at least, the team realized they didn't have to lead players around the nose for anything involving the wrench because the players would always default to using the wrench if they felt stuck in a worst case scenario. But this isn't a method any dev can always rely on and again their hands are tied if Joe Schmo can only find their way out of the hallway with a giant pointing arrow when the subtle ques aren't working.
 
I've only seen this is AAA which is odd cause most AAA games are linear so it doesnt make sense to hand hold this hard, but then i remembered these games are made for everyone including retards. It's a symptom of retarded gamers and lazy devs that can't make good levels. I just played through Theif the Black Parade a mod of Theif 1 and I never got lost or confused and that game only has a map which is not always good depending on the mission. Fucking modders have a better understanding of level design. Also who is the asshole going around painting everything yellow? I want an in universe explanation.
 
Yellow paint, along with a myriad of other things is going to be a part of my list of grievances that I'll be sending a Kaczynskian fan letter to [insert game company you hate here]. But I do think I have an idea as to why games are this dumbed down and why idiots defend it:
Video games, back in the 80s, 90s, and even still the early 2000s were designed and programmed first and foremost by nerds. Not the "I like Marvel movies and funko pops and drink soy lattes" modern 'nerds'; but actual, basement dwelling, pocket-protector wearing nerds who played 1st edition Dungeons & Dragons, and 2nd edition AD&D.
When you played old school TSR-era D&D, you quickly learned that the game does not hold your hand. DMs can be brutal, and you have to think on your feet and be prepared for anything. Another thing you learned from D&D was map layout, and if you had a good DM, maps that were designed around the idea that people actually lived there. So many modern video games just create "video gamey areas", and not maps with layouts that actually make sense or were designed to feel like someone lives there, be it fantasy races or more contemporary human settings. People ITT have brought up the original Half-Life, and the reason why it's so intuitive, is that Black Mesa is a place where people go to work, it's campus is designed for humans to do their jobs, so even if you get lost, you probably know roughly what an office complex looks like and can figure out where to go next if you retrace your steps. Same with the Thief games, System Shock 2, SWAT 4, and many many old PC games that put you in the driver's seat and believed in players' intelligence that you can figure out where to go.
 
The idea behind the yellow paint is necessary because frankly games are just too visually detailed now. Noticing the things you're meant to interact with among all the clutter and detail is difficult, and I'm not a brainless retard I swear. It became very noticeable with the Witcher 3 and the Hitman WOA games for me. In those games you straight up needed the witcher-sense/instinct/detective-vision/whatever the fuck mode to know if these cluttered tables actually have anything I can pick up on them or if its just decoration. There needs to be something to visually distinguish things this way.

People mentioned Dead Space earlier and I recall the lighting helping out a lot with that one, interactable things would have an electronic glow or a holographic feature that opened as you approached it, this fitted the game world well and we were all fine with it. The yellow paint doesn't because it doesn't make sense narratively, though now that I think on it, I'm not sure what else they could have used instead? I'm fucking sick of instinct vision mechanics so I'm glad they didn't go that route...
 
Catering to people that are demonstrably less intelligent than Chris-chan was a mistake, everyone references the dipshit who couldn't get past the cuphead tutorial but I'm here to remind you about ijustine.
At a certain point no amount of yellow paint or scratched in arrows or a big sign that says "PRESS THE OTHER BUTTON" will help.
 
I'm fine with this stuff being optional. But I'm guessing it's not really the case most of the time. It can be helpful when what you are supposed to interact with isn't that obvious. But only retards don't know that you should be checking everything if you get stuck. Can't find a key, switch, item or exit? Check everything in the area you are currently stuck in. Chances are it's right in front of you and you are just having a derp moment. Every time I checked a Portal FAQ I felt like a retard and couldn't believe I missed the obvious. If you can't figure something out you are probably trying too hard to figure it out.
 
How I feel about this depends on the context of a game's visual style and gameplay. In high-speed and stylized games, having a clear visual indicator of where you need to move is beneficial because it provides important to the player. This is especially so in games where information like that is something that needs to be easily distinguishable on the fly.

In more cinematic or realistic looking games that move at a slower pace, it's lazy art direction. Especially since the player is more likely to actually notice environment details when things aren't moving quickly. Instead of having to paint or highlight the intended movement path, a competent environment developer would use different textures to help distinguish the path of the terrain.
 
CHARizard said:
In Fallout 3 (or maybe NV) theres a certain vault I cannot navigate, even with the quest arrows. I wish I remembered the name of it because it was always a nightmare to get through and I dont know why, I never had a problem with any of the other locations.
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Vault 34 pisses the hell out of me with that weird cutout through the infirmary and the water areas. The Vault you snag the Soil Stradivarius for Agatha from is also confusing simply because of the sheer size and non-linear layout unlike most Vaults.
 
I don't know when the fuck developers lost the art of making shit easy to pick out, but the best example of putting focus on stuff without making it horribly obnoxious is Resident Evil 5.
Players have a subtle black outline on the along with being way fucking brighter than the surrounding area, making it really easy to pick out your partner from other people, especially considering that the main characters use comparatively more vibrant colors than the zombies where they're all more muted greens and reds.
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(Red box just to point out the outline since it's really prominent on her legs probably due to the skin mod I have for Sheva.)

Boxes will often be more lit up than the surrounding area, making it obvious that they're a breakable prop. It also adds that your AI partner will walk up to boxes and break them, telling you that you can do the same. All of this shit is an easy pointer without making the game unbearable to look at like they later did with Resident Evil 7 + 8 and the remakes.
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I agree with pretty much everyone that this is partially the result of the pursuit of hyper realism and lack of style in videogames, but also like everyone points out, there's just some straight up retards out there that don't know shit. Even people who basically play videogames for a living can be absolute downies when it comes to figuring shit out. One of my favorite examples of this was the YouTuber M3RKMUS1C playing Titanfall 2 and got to the time travel mission on his Nerd Plays channel. He fucking struggles to comprehend the most basic of "puzzles" in an FPS game.

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Hiphopopotamus said:
Catering to people that are demonstrably less intelligent than Chris-chan was a mistake, everyone references the dipshit who couldn't get past the cuphead tutorial but I'm here to remind you about ijustine.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=fpGAqjqtGwIAt a certain point no amount of yellow paint or scratched in arrows or a big sign that says "PRESS THE OTHER BUTTON" will help.
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Point Man said:
I don't know when the fuck developers lost the art of making shit easy to pick out, but the best example of putting focus on stuff without making it horribly obnoxious is Resident Evil 5.
Players have a subtle black outline on the along with being way fucking brighter than the surrounding area, making it really easy to pick out your partner from other people, especially considering that the main characters use comparatively more vibrant colors than the zombies where they're all more muted greens and reds.
View attachment 5730347
(Red box just to point out the outline since it's really prominent on her legs probably due to the skin mod I have for Sheva.)

Boxes will often be more lit up than the surrounding area, making it obvious that they're a breakable prop. It also adds that your AI partner will walk up to boxes and break them, telling you that you can do the same. All of this shit is an easy pointer without making the game unbearable to look at like they later did with Resident Evil 7 + 8 and the remakes.
View attachment 5730354

I agree with pretty much everyone that this is partially the result of the pursuit of hyper realism and lack of style in videogames, but also like everyone points out, there's just some straight up retards out there that don't know shit. Even people who basically play videogames for a living can be absolute downies when it comes to figuring shit out. One of my favorite examples of this was the YouTuber M3RKMUS1C playing Titanfall 2 and got to the time travel mission on his Nerd Plays channel. He fucking struggles to comprehend the most basic of "puzzles" in an FPS game.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=J_TvnuoFOzc
View attachment 5730365
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I think I legitimately lost some braincells watching these, specially that IJustine one.
 
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