Quest markers tell you exactly where you need to go, so you go there, and you have no trouble finding the location.
Now, if you don’t have quest markers, then you can easily get sidetracked and start doing something else, which is actually how adventure works.
On the problem of not knowing the location at all, the npc should have hints in the dialog that tell you where the quest is, which would also have the added benefit of players actually wanting to read the dialog rather than ignore it.
Please don’t get it wrong, inconvenience does NOT mean making the game unplayable, it means adding another kind of difficulty that, when done right, can add so much adventure to a game.
When you make a game convenient, you are left with the only other difficulty, which is grinding.
I sort of agree with your post. For things like sailing to a faraway island, I would agree with you, since it puts value on a certain island. However, for things like restricting information (nighttime being really dark with no map to help you), I would say no, because that just encourages people to go on the game’s wiki to find a map to use.
Also, the sky islands in Arcane Adventures had a pretty poorly designed method to get there—you literally stood on a “sea cannon” for a few minutes. Sure, you could buy the Sky Skates—which are located on the sky islands—the place you were trying to get to in the first place. At least with sailing, you can go off course a little and then resume sailing, but for the sea cannon, you basically can’t get off of it, or else you might miss the launch and get stuck doing nothing for a few more minutes.
it’s cool and immersive the first time around, but after that you’re stuck up looking up maps so you can find which way to go to get to the correct island
a cool concept, only that you had to open up your inventory in AA that took about 3 minutes to load because of how laggy and messy the inventories were in that game. and unequipping an item reloads your inventory so even more waiting, and then equipping the sky skates which means EVEN MORE waiting. yeah, no…
sure but you’re trying to chase down some trashtalker kid and beat his ass it gets unneccesarily annoying
I still maintain my point that these parts of the game would sometimes make the game more memorable.
If you strip away all of the annoying moments in the game, what you end up with is a game that contains less emotion overall. At least when you feel anger towards a game you are feeling something.
When I say that inconvenience can be a good thing, don’t jump to the conclusion that it applies to everything. More often than not, a problem in a game is still just a problem.
For example, your inventory taking minutes to load is not the type of inconvenience that you want in a game, because there is nothing good about it.
A good type of inconvenience is a something that has a high possibility of making the game more fun.
Also, try to remember that this is just a discussion, not a suggestion. So before you write a reply that is blended with your feelings of anger, think about what might be best for the game objectively.
But anger makes a discussion more memorable, and memorable is always a good thing!
I get that you’re not trying to say that all inconveniences are a good thing, but I disagree that the inconvieniences you’re using as examples are a net positive.
To expand on the example in my first post, a few years back (1.7.10?) Mystcraft was a popular addition to minecraft modpacks. Long story short, you could create random dimensions, and exploring them would let you make non-random useful dimensions. Crucially, dying in a Mystcraft dimension doesn’t send you back to the overworld. You respawn in that dimension - if you lose the items you need to get back, you’re stuck there forever.
When I was exploring random dimensions to make a useful one, I stumbled into a dimension with a ton of mobs and floating islands over the void. I died almost immediately, and lost one of the items I needed to get back.
Over the next few hours, I was able to make myself a safe island, stabilise my food situation, and use all the materials available to me to recreate the item I needed to get back. I was ultimately saved by the completely undocumented fact that Botania’s petal apocatheries will fill themselves with water if left in the rain.
It’s probably my most memorable modded experience, but it’s not the most fun one. It makes for a good story because I can say “over the next few hours”, but in reality I spent 5 to 7 hours farming wood, slowly claiming chunks of mob-infested islands with stone tools and no armour, and browsing through NEI to find some way to make ink and water. Not to mention that 99% of these stories don’t have a happy ending - most people aren’t saved by flavour interactions added on a whim. Like 99% of “I got stranded in AA” stories, they end with “and so I reset and wasted 15 minutes of my life”.
Mystcraft fell out of fashion pretty fast when other mods offered the same thing with less “inconvenience”. Things that make for good stories aren’t necessarily fun, and hoping the stars align to make your “inconvieniences” into stories isn’t a good way of making your game memorable.
I’m sure people will look back on WoM and miss the walking. They’ll say things like:
“In AO you just stay in the same place until you level up, I remember having to explore places and look for quests in WoM.”
“In AO I can just go to a town whenever I want things - I remember having to work hard to find an alchemist that wasn’t asleep or dead.”
“In AO I don’t feel scared of the grand navy, I remember the 10 minute jail sentences.”
WoM is filled with “inconvieniences”. The difference is that they don’t feel like “inconvieninces” yet, because we don’t have the years/months of nostalgia to rose-tint them
I can understand both the night time and sky island seperation but I can’t understand the boat glitch. The boat glitch was a glitch for a reason and 99% of the time it’s just an annoyance, personally my only memories of it are hardly good and all of them consisting of getting killed by something and having to rejoin because my boat will not respawn. This can be EXTREMELY frustrating in the event of something like a ghost ship spawning.