Quest markers and mini-maps cause brain damage. (continued)

400 hours in Skyrim here.
How can I cure my brain damage?

>>386834680
Pub crawl with a dumb phone.

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>>386834606
The problem with quest markers is that they blur out the game world, which absolutely shits on level design and stops people from thinking.

This is what happens when non-game designers get involved with game design. Marketing people and suits focusing more on wrongly analyzed data and focus groups should not be involved with game design.

Boring people is far worse than challenging them.

It's not brain damage, it's more like atrophy. Brain damage is permanent, this stuff is more like resource allocation to the parts of your brain you are using vs the parts you aren't. Think the term is plasticity of the brain.

Get this sensationalist clickbait out of here.

>>386835591
>t.brainlet

>>386834948
Yeah, I've realized with quest markers, I get tunnel vision and just move in a fucking straight line. Instead of getting lost a ton and finally figuring out the world in my mind map.

>>386834948
This is absolutely right and I wish more devs would understand this. Being able to turn off quest markers entirely is a step in the right direction - but the game still has to be designed without markers in mind.

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>>386834606
>tfw always play games with the hud off unless it's something that requires it like XCOM
>tfw not a slave to a minimap or objective markers
>tfw can actually enjoy a game's environment with a clean screen instead of staring at an obnoxious radar that breaks immersion the whole time
>tfw finding my way around video game cities is helping me navigate better in real life
Feels good being right.

>>386834680
400 hours of Morrowind.

>>386836902
You'd be surprised at how many games are perfectly playable without a hud, actually. Pretty much any open world game has street signs and landmarks you could use to get around without a map, the position of the sun helps orientate you, interactable doors usually have lights above them or are distinct in some other way, many features presented by the hud are made up for by audio cues, etc. The only time I've run into an issue is in games like the newer GTAs where you have no way of knowing how much health you have left because the only indicator is the health bar, but the solution to that is pretty simple: get shot as little as possible. A more serious issue is if the crosshair gets disabled along with the hud in a third-person shooter--that one there's really no convenient way around.

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>shit games causes brain cancer
Then what gave TB anal cancer?

Surely there can be some sort of compromise. If we go back to long journal entries they're for sure going to hear a lot of complaints about the game being too hard. But if we stay with markers then the game isn't as fun.

What's the compromise?

>>386838206
Markers are a crutch that hides bad level design. The journal entry can be as simple as "go to x and do y" if the level is designed in a manner that you can navigate your way simply knowing what your destination is supposed to be.

Fuck no. Subnautica did this and for the longest time I swam around endlessly lost until I finally bothered to actually put beacons down. Navigating purely of landmarks was suffering

>>386838510
Subnautica doesnt have enough distinct landmarks, unfortunately.

>>386834606
it's okay you will instantly teleport to your quest objectives in elder scrolls 6

>>386838206

Journal entries that let you toggle the markers on and off. Something for casuals, something for people who aren't retarded.

>>386834606
I miss Morrowing log book so much. I remember reading quests like pic related and it gave you sense of a mission and that you're on a quest

>>386837953
His diet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL3ZdFepBHY

OK, from shit lying articles that EXPLICITLY MISREPRESENT the actual original research by pointing out that a reversible, short-time decrease in grey matter connectivity in the hippocampus region of the limbic system caused by heavy playing of linear action games such as Call of Duty, we got to:
>Quest markers and minimaps cause brain damage.

At this point it's not just the disgusting irresponsbility of the journalist misinforming people about research to generate traffic:

It's actually about people, including OP, just wanting to LIE AND SPREAD LIES FOR SHIT AND GIGGLES.

When you stop and really think about this shit, you'll realize how fucking pathetic this place is becoming. What the fuck is actually wrong with you people. You have made BEING WRONG AS SHIT into a actual fucking hobby, a favorite past-time, and something you really need to inflict on other people.

>>386838510
>Navigating purely of landmarks was suffering
Surface.
Check your location relative to Aurora and your base pod.
Instantly know where you are.

Jesus kids, it's not hard.
Also, none of this has fuck all to do with the research in question. You people are fucking braindamaged alright, but not due to minimaps and quest markers.

>>386839162
>that EXPLICITLY MISREPRESENT the actual original research

The title here says "Playing action video games can actually harm your brain", I don't think the Uni would misrepresent their own research.

http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2017/08/07/playing-action-video-games-can-actually-harm-your-brain/

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>>386839570
> "Playing action video games can actually harm your brain",

But that's fucking wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FktsFcooIG8

>>386839570
They would.
The actual title of the study is
"Impact of Video Games on Plasticity of the Hippocampus" for a good reason. The team even made a correction/clarification statement after this shit got misrepresented over and over.
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/08/09/542215646/video-games-may-affect-the-brain-differently-depending-on-what-you-play
Pay particular attention to these parts:
>Simone Kuhn, a professor of neural plasticity at the University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, says people who play action video games shouldn't be too concerned.
>"I would never interpret this finding as a big warning against action video games," she says.
If you actually pay attention to the study, you'd further see that the very fact that certain games can cause increase of gray matter mass in this particular region (this study, by the way, only measured neuroplastic changes of hippocampus explicitly, while not in any way reflecting changes in different parts of the brain. If you ever heard of the brain-conservation hypothesis, you'd realize why that is significant. They even mention it in the article - "while we train one part of a brain, another seems to be shrinking"), you'd notice that the change is reversible. Which means that it is in now way "Brain damage", which BY DEFINITION IS IRREVERSIBLE.

>>386839883
This "new" research seems a waste of time considering is like a remake of this, same uni, just 2 years ago
http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2015/05/21/what-impact-do-video-games-have-on-the-brain/

I think they should have taken this new data, not publish it yet, confront with the "opposition", debate, confront data, check again and see what comes out of that.

>>386839982
Ah gee, thank you very much anon, now I feel like a fool but at least I understood it more throughly.

What I don't understand is why misrepresent themselves like that? I am fairly sure the site I linked is the official one, why not include an edit of some sort? Poor PR? I am confused.

>>386839982
t. Todd

>>386834948
It's what I really liked about Morrowind, it makes you interact more with the world, first of all you will always make sure to talk to the guy giving you the quest, so you can get a as detailed as possible description on where you have to go, sometimes you will still get lost a little, but might find other neat stuff along the way. You don't have that nice sense of exploration and discovery when a quest marker points to were exactly you have to go. Also Bethesda's insistent on tons of radiant horseshit quests is also a huge cancer.

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>>386834778
Holy fuck.. talk about casual filters.

>>386834606
I think BoTW honestly has a fucking brilliant combination of these two systems.

>>386834606
Quests being more about how many the game has rather than how deep they are is why those things exist in the first place. Throw dozens of quests at once at the player and of course he isn't going to remember every detail. The quests are just padding to begin with.

>>386840193
>What I don't understand is why misrepresent themselves like that?

The site you link is a jounalistic page of the social department of University of Montreal. Their job is to attract attention, they have little or no responsibility towards the experimental psychology lab whose paper they are using for what amounts to click-bait articles.
It's a journalist trying to make himself and his Uni more visible, no doubt not consulting, or even knowing anyone on the research team. It's not in the slightest unusual. What is sad is that people don't seem to have caught up on this shit and still parrot the damn articles instead of the research papers.

What is even sadder is that cunts like OP then go and link an article which is a poor translation of a poor translation of a paper, then declare it proves something about fucking minimaps for fuck sake.

I approve of this article because it agrees with opinions I already held.

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People are already retarded.

does this apply to real life GPS too?

>>386834680
If you played 400 hours of this trash you were doomed from the start.

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serious talk
I like Morrowind, a lot, played the shit out of it back in the day and bought a 80€ Oblivion collectors edition day one because of it
but that fucking journal couldn't have been done worse, it was a fucking chore to use, and I don't mean the aimless exploration and quest finding, I always found that one of the best and most rewarding part of the game, I'm talking about the lack of any organization whatsoever, having a notebook handy was a must if you didn't want to suffer through the same pages again and again to find the tiny bit of useful information between lots of unrelated writing
and obviously in Oblivion we got monkeypaw'd with instant fast travel to every city (not even Skyrim has that) and quest markers out of the ass

>>386840640
To be honest I was a bit taken aback the first time I played that game too.

But these people are real idiots though.

>>386840776
In Morrowind it was not only the journal layout, that was a problem - some quest descriptions were poorly done and vague and not in a "go figure it out" manner, but just retarded.
That's another side to quest markers. To make a game that gives enough indirect information and hints to accomplish goals is way harder, than making a 'go here and kill that' marker. Less effort for players and game devs both.

>>386838206
>If we go back to long journal entries they're for sure going to hear a lot of complaints about the game being too hard.
And? Only shitty devs focused entirely on the money want to appeal to the lowest-common denominator, but not every game needs to be casualised. A truly hardcore game every now and then would be great, and maybe it would even get some casuals to stop being so shitty at games.

>>386840776
>not even Skyrim has that
it nearly has, all you have to do is reach one city, most likely Whiterun and then you can use the stagecoach to other cities, I never really tried, but I guess you can reach every city this way. I am with you on the Morrowind Journal, it's pretty bad, considering how much information you get.

>>386840776
Morrowind (at least in the German translation) was purposely vague sometimes, and the intstructions weren't always clear.
You can definitely do a better job a describing the location of a quest item on the map. Maybe the in-game decriptions were written by women, so that the player has to explore more.

I was playing LA Noire and it had a really cool system were your partner would tell you when to turn with a press of a button. Problem is you cant turn the mini map off and i cant take my eyes off it.
Mini maps truly are the cancer destroying games

>>386841054
It is an irreversible develpoment, questmarkers are the standard now and people have already lost interest in games that make you think in any way or form. It is all instant gratification nowadays, you won't make any money by trying to reverse this. I have friends who literally could not beat games I played as a child, because they got into games way later.

>>386837953
Usuing his anus to play games?

>>386834606
Currently playing the witcher and noticing this. Every npc talks so fucking much, i just speedclick through the dialogue and go towards the marker.

I hate doing that, but I hate listening to drawn out stories when a simple “collect 60 harpy feathers“ would've been enough.

>>386838206
What about a marker for a large area....then search?

>>386840776
Didn't they organize the journal with one of the expansions?

>>386840867
It's far from perfect, and yes, some thing needed to be searched out of the game (not that much though).
But a good example is a side 'quest' with two small caves in Cyceal, where you needed to split party and solve puzzle at the same time in two locations, while also fighting(so you needed to use pyramids and/or split party wisely) things like this are a very good design imo also rewarding not only with loot and exp, but with satisfaction of figuring out the problem.

>>386834948
I personally like having the location marked on my journal or something if there are no quest markers. It's honestly a pain if the game requires you to memorize every detail an NPC mentions about the location of a quest when you're out doing multiple things, especially if you lay off the game for any amount of time.

>>386841140
Apparently Farcry 5 will remove the minimap.

But it's ubisoft so I'm still very wary of that game.

>>386841129
Some cities (Falkreath, Dawnstar etc) don't have those. They were pain in the ass as I exclusively played Skyrim with Requiem after 1st vanilla playthrough.

>>386841390
If you want to guide the player to a large area for him to search, describe said large area on the map, and you have the same thing.

>>386840640

>wasteland 2 (Arizona only of course)

What the fuck does that mean? They only played half the game?

>>386840776
>>386841401
Yes, Tribunal added a new tab to keep track of active quests.

>>386841390
they do that in GTA sometimes and it works well.

>>386841534
>That puzzle where you have to litteraly kill your ally to send him off through the gate of the deads and teleport to him with the pyramide
Fucking genius

>>386841534
I thought Divinity did this pretty well, but the UI for your journal was ugly and cluttered. That made the journal hard to use at times.

Finally we have scientific proof that Morrowind is better than Oblivion and Skyrim.

>>386842176
what if I enjoy being brain damaged?
it helps lighten the burden of the human condition

>>386842130
DOS2 fixed the journal(and a lot of other DOS issues gameplay andstory wise). I have high hopes for it after playing alpha.

>>386834606
>source mentions action games vs 3d mario games
>nowhere are morrowind and skyrim mentioned

Saged and reported.

>>386836330
probably lost you at a big word like 'atrophy' hey? No its not an award you being retarded.

>>386837771
I mostly agree with you, however with quest/mission-based games, it's not as simple.

Sure, you can turn off quest markers in Skyim, for example, but when your quest objective is nothing more than "Talk to <guy>" or "Obtain the item from <cave>" with absolutely no directions or way to ask NPCs for directions or anything of the sort, it's literally unplayable.

And a lot of games are designed like that, because why bother writing detailed quest directions or implementing mechanics for that sort of thing when only a very very tiny of percentage of your player base will actually use them?

>>386834948
that is correct

>>386842125
Is that something they nerfed? I just threw in the pyramid by itself and it teleported

>>386843830
Possibly, or it may be another puzzle.

Map design in open-world games seems so simple and I don't understand how it's so fucked up.

Have a map, maybe a sci-fi map or a paper map depending on your game. Doesn't really matter. Add some cartography features. Let me place my own map markers. Allow NPCs to place map markers if it would make sense for them to know where something is, as well. To add some depth, give the player the ability to ask NPCs for directions if they don't know the exact location of something.

Basically, Breath of the Wild did it almost perfectly. The only thing it was missing was more detailed information in the quest journal.

Of course I know, deep down, why these mechanics are so fucked in most games. Marketing, deadlines, and publishers.

>>386840276
I miss morrowind's concept of the map being dark and filling it out as you go along. I know Oblivion and Skyrim don't add locations until you find it, but I like exploring and filling out the squares in the map until everything is filled out.

Not saying Morrowind's map is perfect (I wish certain things were at least marked by quest givers and some of the directions NPCs give are bad or incorrect), but it is a small thing that I think helps.

>>386843925
I think we are talking about the same quest. The one with the Lich I think. The first time around i killed an ally and sent him through but the second time I just threw the pyramid on the ground and used the teleporter.

>>386835591
>its only atrophying their brains, who cares?
t. literally you

Runescape best quest

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Yeah I bet hes depressed as fuck.

>>386844278
>rich people never kill themselves

>>386838206
the best way to incorporate both markers and contextual clues ala morrowind is to let the player set their own waypoints. basically, you don't have a marker until you pull open the map, locate where you wanna go, and set a waypoint down for yourself. that way, even the creation of the waypoint involves the player making decisions and thinking about the best place to put their waypoint (for example, maybe they know the quest is INSIDE a cave, but they choose to put their waypoint at the door of the cave)

>>386844278
lol my parents have more than that

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>>386844278
>Height: 6.2 feet
Every time.

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>>386844278
>height: 1.88m/6.2 feet

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>>386844743

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>>386840276
>>386844054
>whipping out the physical map the game came with, taking note of mentioned landmarks, discerning the closest point accessible via fast travel and then tracing a path with your index finger and committing it to memory before embarking on the journey

What fucking feeling.

>>386844104
Literally the same way not going to the gym atrophies your muscles.

>>386844278
Like many comedians.

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Quest markers are shit but Morrowind's journal directions should not be held up as this amazing fucking standard considering how many of them are wrong

Put some fucking love into your map and make it unique so people will remember it

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>>386834606
>minimap markers are bad and makes you stupid and written directions are great
Remember this lady? You may not know her name or where she was located. But you do remember her because of her quest to kill some mudcrabs in some bumfuck part of the map.
Except her written directions were completely fucking wrong and caused thousands of player to get lost since they were both vague and inaccurate.

>>386839570
Fucking ANYTHING harms your brain.
Your brain starts decaying the moment it hits its peak, even if it's an incredibly slow process, and the only thing you can do is delay it before dementia sets in.

>>386846040
I agree with that.

Why are we ok with turn-by-turn directions in real life but not in video games?

I'm only against shit just straight up telling you everything and pointing out the example point you need to be. A map marker showing you where the general area is shouldnt be bad.

>>386846040
>ANYTHING harms your brain
Sure, jogging or head banging isn't more harmful for your brain.
Wait... head banging was so popular... and jogging is so popular now...
And playing dumbed down video games...
Wow.

>>386834606
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEI4yS7sFEw&t=14m9s

>>386834606
The Journal system was fucking awful, don't even try to defend that shit.

>>386846384
I drive my car to get where I'm going.

I play video games to have fun.

>>386845084
todd sure does have a firm grip

>>386845908
Really? Installing Morrowind.

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>>386846384
>>386846857
I don't have a car.

who /strategy/ games here?

>>386837953
gay sex

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>>386848095

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>>386841537
Marking a bigger area/zone on your map (no arrows) with some text hints is far more preferable.

For example
>mark out the city of X on the map
>have a text saying something about meeting character Y (which is a knight) at the prancing mare inn
>you get to the city
>you walk around and see a huge pracing wooden horse outside of a house with an "inn" sign
>you go inside and by a table you notice someone in heavy armor sitting by a table alone, naturally you assume this is the knight you're suppose to meet

Isn't that far more engaging than just following an arrow?

What are some good games to cure my modern game induced brain damage

>>386849554
Thief Gold. Trust me.

>>386849554
heavily modded minecraft 1.7.10

>>386849938
>>386849946
Thanks I will look into these. Especially Thief because I actually own that game but haven't gotten around to it yet.

>>386849554
System Shock 2, Doom 1 and 2, Thief, Morrowind, Gothic 2, etc.

>>386850159
Here's some advice for Thief - play on highest difficulty first. It will make you get some extra objectives instead of just beelining for the main one. Didn't get into the game until I switched up to playing Expert only.

Strange Journey's automap is brilliant

>>386837079
>took a trip to japan
>get lost in Shinjuku
>realize I know some of these streets from yakuza
>vidya knowledge helped me out irl

>>386841131
>Morrowind (at least in the German translation) was purposely vague sometimes, and the intstructions weren't always clear.
Suddenly the world makes more sense