You’re not doing criticism bud, you’re stating preferences. Criticism implies a need for improvement. Plenty of stuff about these games can be criticized but people are literally just complaining that the game isn’t the way they like it.
I was going to say there are plenty of games that hold your hand the whole way through and point you from A to B.
I don't know. Maybe? Maybe something to keep tabs of important information? Or maybe not, maybe that's not something that necessarily needs a log? Like, maybe only keep track of clear requests or clear instructions? I'm curious now, give me more information. What happens in this particular quest? Are you already heading to a locale where they end up showing up? I mean, the locale where they end up appearing again, do you have another reason to be there or is it all completely random?
I mean, in my opinion, a lot of criticism ultimately boils down to preferences, so I'm not sure why there's a need for a distinction here. You can also look at it from the other way: a lot of people are complaining about people making suggestions because the game is already the way they like it. No one wants to consider anything at face value or consider anyone's perspective. I get it, you like what you like. I'm only suggesting there are ways to make everyone happy. I don't know why making other people happy would make other people so unhappy if it doesn't affect their own experience in any way.
It’s not random but it’s more like happenstance. You come across these people. Sometimes they want you to do shit for them. Sometimes they just want to talk. At best you’ll get an item, sometimes they’ll disappear and reappear later. Not every npc is a quest giver. sometimes they’ll give you an object and will vaguely tell you who to give it to. But the thing is if you just do the quest it can kill someone and entire other quest lines could be locked off. It’s a weirdly intervowen web of tasks and encounters. Ive been working in Interface design for a decade and I wouldn’t even know where to start. I saw someone here post some sort of visual log of their experiences in elden ring and that would be fucking sick to do. Kinda like illustration your journey, Dialoge and all.
I love how John Linneman from Digital Foundry is all like “yet people love FF14 and that has a truck ton of UI”, as if the HUD isn’t designed around the game. like yeah I can turn the HUD off in assassins creed but then I’d just be FUCKING CONFUSED.
zero open world games have looked like this in the last ten years. Shame you haven’t gotten to play any of them
What I’m trying to say is, unlike in AC, quests are not how you progress the game game in Soulslikes. It’s more like Metroid where you kinda just have to figure out where you have to or can go.
I feel like this has to be something other games have encountered with their quest logs before though. Like, is there another game with a quest log that has quests that get locked if you complete other quests? If so, how do they go about doing it? The main issue I could see is someone blindly following their log and not realizing they're locking themselves out of particular quests by doing so, but they'd have that issue anyway with or without a log. All the log would do is help them keep track of information they've obtained. Is it possible to start a questline before triggering the event that locks you out of the rest of it? Like, that's the only real issue I can see, and maybe it would be represented in the quest log by just crossing out or erasing any information you can no longer use once it becomes impossible to follow through on?
Yes lol you can fuck yourself over and the game doesn’t even acknowledge it. It’s wild, wild stuff. Absolutely stupid hahaha My buddy who I play coop with gets heated about missing quests sooo much.
ive played essentially all of them. maybe try not being so upset over a picture that some random dude made on twitter.
Exactly it makes no sense how adamant people are about changing an entire studios design philosophy that they don’t even really care about! And like I said it’s my first from game so I’m not a fan boy but it’s very easy to see why it was designed how it is!! And the way it was designed is brilliant! The only complaint I agree with is the lack of a pause button. Other than that I see a bunch of people who aren’t even playing the game throw around a bunch of nonsensical game design ideas that wouldn’t work
I hated the original Metroid. Loved everything from Super onward, because they introduced a map (and also made areas far more distinct). I'm not sure if this example can be applied to our current discussion or not.
Honestly the only thing about that picture that’s inaccurate is the size of the elements. also it’s very telling who this constructive criticism is coming from. I don’t mean new players, I get it, this game is pretty stupid. but like literally people that worked on BF2042 are whining about Elden Ring like they don’t kinda suck at their job lol Get a quest log to fix your game dummy
I’ve played a lot and many do, although it’s obvious this is an over the top caricature of what the typical open world UI looks like. That said I don’t think it’s a bad thing, both design styles have their place, I have no real problems with ubisofts open world style when it’s done well, as I think it was in Valhalla, but elden rings minimalist low information layout works for the type of game it is
It’s extremely common in RPG’s in the Witcher 3 there are certain points where if you pass them without doing certain quests you’ll get a whole bunch of quest failed notifications for things that will no longer be possible after that point. Dragon age games are largely the same way as well
looks fairly similar to the elden ring ux. a few more contextual action things but then again elden ring does the whole giant "here is a popup showing the item you got mid combat press y to dismiss it" so doesn't have too much room to complain there
Anyone complaining about Elden Ring should go and play any of the previous titles and you will instantly be grateful of the things they have added.
this is the pic in the OP of the twitter thread I posted btw, basically making fun of the dude saying no one cares about “good UX”