Same. When I play a game I’m looking for brain stimulation, a new experience, a sense of adventure. AAA games almost always disappoint but indie games almost always deliver.

as an ex-Nintendo fan i can tell you that they never had the paint problem

I remember playing Resident Evil 4 Remake for the first time recently and thinking "oh damn, that is such a cool and diegetic way of marking what I can interact with and what I can't". Then it popped up again in the FF7 Rebirth demo and legit thought "hey, they're copying RE4R!" Then this video hit my feed, and... yeah. Wow. I mean, I like the paint. The paint's cool. Don't want to overuse the paint, though. It's like anything good. Still don't want too much at once.

Same here. I didn't even know games even used yellow paint for this. But I agree with the criticism. Using yellow paint when it makes no canonical sense for the paint to be there is a horrible idea. Look at Assassin's Creed 2. There's no yellow paint there. There are loose bricks that show you where you can climb. There are birds and bird poop that show you where you can jump off of a building safely. No ridiculous yellow paint that would break immersion.

Also just learned about it from this... yeah, "AAA" really stands for how the players are screaming because of the $60+ they spent on corporate waste.

hahahaah I missed that XD

This video is shockingly complacent, and I'm surprised to see it come from Arlo, who is normally very logical. These sorts of mechanics (while well meaning, when it comes to the disabled and intellectually stunted) is a net negative for the new generations, in terms of problem-solving, logical thinking, and navigation skills. At the very minimum, developers should include the option to disable them.

Get on it.

I read the comment and coincidentally heard it at the same time.

@@shefalichow7917no the video makes it clear that modern graphics with overcomplicated and gritty textures make things less readable, and that's a real problem for the author off there piece. Git gud at textual analysis. Also, these are games. For fun. Films are also for fun and good films exist despite or because easy movies exist. So I think our soul will survive.

Definitely not you my man. Some cars have automatic headlights that get brighter at night but what you may see is a car behind you flickering their lights a bit. It's not even them doing it it's just the computer system. It's very annoying and I wouldn't be surprised if it has contributed to accidents.

It’s the LED lights getting brighter and more blue

Definitely. It’s getting harder and harder to tell if someone has their brights on or if their lights are just so blinding naturally. The fact they’re so blue doesn’t help. Also the person who mentioned auto headlights has a point. My mom’s car has them and she has no control over when it turns on brights. I really wish she’d just use the non-auto settings cause I’m just imagining the incoming cars getting blinded for a second before the proximity sensor kicks in and turns the brights off.

Also trucks. Having blinding, searing light at exactly eye level is hell. This is why I avoid driving.

@@YogiTheBearMan isn't that halogen? or is that also LED? either way it sucks haha

sly cooper got magical blue aura's tho to show interactables

@@gadetrongames4523 yeah, but that's explained in a lore friendly way. I'm talking about the climbable stuff

I agree with shape language being better overall, but that also likely works best with a highly stylized game world. The yellow paint only really became a talking point when games shifted fully into realistic visual design. I'm imagining that rock wall in FF7R without that (admittedly silly looking) yellow paint and wondering how a first time would even know that it's climbable. It all just looks like HD rock.

@@josueayala1249 great point! Was talking with my mentor about this, and he brought up that maybe games should ask if you want "visual assist" on or off. With it off, no more yellow paint. Also, we talked about lazy yellow paint as well. Yellow paint works well if it matches the colors or vibe of the scenery. Yellow paint should work with the environment, not against it. That's what the main issue is.

​@@josueayala1249at that point they should ask themself this: does climbing that wall add anything valuable to the experience? If the answer is no then remove it, if it's yes try changing it to something more naturally obvious like a dirt path that leading to it with something intriging on top and make sure that the player had to learn they could climb rock wall before that

now i'm wondering why *every* game doesn't give you a massive vacuum

Eh, LM would've been unlikely to have this specific problem anyway because, like pretty much all Nintendo games, it has a very cartoony look. The problem of visual overwhelm really only presents itself in games with a somewhat realistic artstyle and high visual fidelity.

​@@Christopher-md7tf idk, have you played lm? It uses a pretty 1 tone colour palette to match with the spooky atmosphere, meaning its susceptible to the same issues as other realistically 1 tone games regarding visual clarity. Personally I think theres nothing wrong with a little icon popping up on an intractable object when you get near it, but I'm just 1 person.

you can have this issue in every art style, it stems not from having certain looks, but from having clutter that looks identical to interactive objects

@@Christopher-md7tf well if where talking about the envirioment then i find the game to be quite "realistic". Luigi's Mansion 3 doesn't suffer the "too much detail" issue because: 1) it's primairly indoors 2) there aren't that many objects to begin with

Yeah that was my first thought. Game design needs to focus again on good gameplay elements rather than photo realism. There used to be really clever ways to design a world that just so happened to funnel you in a certain direction. I think the art has been lost

It’s funny people insult the switch for not having the extreme realistic graphics that the other current consoles have but it also doesn’t have this issue

Hard to hate the Switch for having bAd GrApHiCs when they’re therefore so readable that there’s no need for yellow paint.

Realism in games is so overrated. It seems like it rarely is there with a clear design reason.

@@digishade7583 The switch players I know are mostly just mad at how clunky it is to play games with your other console friends let alone a friend on a pc ngl, they don’t have a problem with how their graphics look so much as the overall low performance/incredibly low storage space; One game essentially takes up all their storage space. My buddy cant even have minecraft on his switch with overwatch installed 😭🙏

It also accumulates in the handholds that are favored so more accessible/useful paths and holds get more and more clearly indicated over time

That's what I thought of, too, when the lore excuse of the yellow paint came up.

Perfect, just include the fact adventurers use yellow chalk as part of the lore and hey presto! Slightly less annoying signposting!

Maybe if you're playing a rock climbing game and not an adventure game.

@@Zetact_ Got it, blood markings it is!

super elegant solution, I love this. I have both those games and but havne't played, yet, but have heard nothing but good things for them - this is another reason why!

I mean, it is well done, don't get me wrong. But uh... you ever wonder why they can't count to 3?

@@thedarter not having a third game doesn’t mean the first two were bad. You’re just trying to divert from the fact that this point is on point.

@@digishade7583 i never said the first two were bad, they were fantastic. I'm saying that the sheer amount of time and effort required to reach that level of perfection is exactly why Valve takes so damn long to get anything done. Comparing Portal, a game that got unparalleled levels of testing and redesigning, to a game that did not get either of those things is an incredibly unfair comparison.

most of the game is made of sterile rooms so that isnt really a problem in portal

It's really easy to be overwhelmed by all the visual excess. I feel like Cranky Kong complaining that the bananas have too many colors.

Why _are_ they doing this, anyway? They have to make the games more expensive to turn a profit, and the games can only be played on a $3,000 PC. It seems like the worst business decision possible.

@@sempersolus5511 Marketing and shareholders, mostly. That said, it's funny when you get a situation like Bravely Default where the small budget game outprofits the mainline Final Fantasy game, in this case FF13-3, that came out around the same time.

​@sempersolus5511 Only? Most of these games are also playable on $500 consoles, last time I checked.

100% Look at Mirror's Edge. That's at least as heavy-handed with its signposting. But its bright red signposting contrasting the mostly white environments feels like part of its deliberate, designed, aesthetic, while... Smearing everything interactable with yellow or white paint feels tacked on after the fact - 'oh shoot no one can see where to go due to all this clutter'. And the result is that I love looking at Mirror's Edge screenshots and videos, and find modern games with yellow paint pretty darn ugly. Design the art direction with readability in mind, rather than pursuing realism and then trying to tack on readability to that.

Our eyes detect wavelengths between green and yellow the strongest, it is effectively the brightest color to us.

​@@elio7610the most common colorblindness is red & green. There's a reason they are rarely used unless you can avoid the red & green together.

@@meikahidenori Rarely used? Since when?

​@@elio7610 when have you ever seen red or green to mark a climbable surface?

@@McBehrer I thought they meant in general, not just for that specficic use. There is at least one example that was even shown in the video, Mirror's Edge used red (was made over a decade ago, though).

it should be prioritized in the design documents across the board for games that need it. most optional accessibility options are already in there, this should be the next big leap

I'm no game developer, so maybe it's more difficult than that, but they could make the paint a shader and just add an option to turn it off.

This is a great idea. I personally don't mind the paint. Tbh I never even noticed it until this video but for those that don't want it, it would be great to have the option to turn off.

@@matt92hun that would work but making it a shader isn't really necessary, you're still describing the solution of putting it into a category that you can easily interact with through code.

Tbh everything is a lot easier if you plan for it, but the tricky thing is there's so many damn little things, there's always going to be something you didn't think of from the outset or didn't think would be a big deal. Especially something like this where again, how many people really care?

Exactly this. There should be less noise, as you call it, instead of adding immersion-breaking paint (or use some kind of pattern that would make canonical sense, like loose bricks and bird poop in Assassin's Creed 2).

A very easy solution for RE with crates and barrels, is just to put them in your way in the beginning of the game so you HAVE to break them. If you then make those drop something, the player learns that they can break creates and barrel to get items. No yellow paint needed, except for people with visual impairment but that's another topic.

This is a really great insight, thanks for sharing. I've never heard of SNR but it is a fascinating concept to consider. It's a tricky tightrope to walk!

And we've all been that person playing, too (though some might be too proud to admit it)

DarkSydePhil He's so good at missing the obvious that Santa Monica Studio used his God of War playthrough as an example of players missing the obvious in a talk about how to prevent that from happening That's a real thing that happened

Gamegrumps

Example being Game Grumps (no offense to them though)

​​@@batofdestiny7801 I mean that's just the Let's play curse. You ask any streamer or Let's Player they'll likely tell you that it's very hard to parse information on the screen at times when you are also trying to be entertaining to others. Heck I would even go so far as to arguee that it's not just Lelt's Playing. This happens all the time with friends who watch each other play games. The one not playing spots the "obvious" thing in the middle of the room right away and the one playing is still searching five minutes later. It's the difference between watching and playing.

I can even hear the music!

*Tm

Come Stanley, let’s find the story!

i find that very funny because the Adventure Line(TM) actually fits AND makes sense in the game. Meanwhile most instances of paint just look out of place

No. A phone does not equals a hud for the world at all. Maybe it'll be like this when Argumented reality is commonplace, but until then, it does not apply. If you're looking at your phone you're not looking at the world around you and vice versa.

@@A11V1R15 And there are HUD elements in games that block the viewing of the world. For example, inventory menus or stat screens, which can block off the world. But, unlike those, you can still keep interacting with your surroundings when using your phone, so it's more akin to a pop up HUD that is not always present. So, your counterargument isn't really a counterargument at all. There are plenty of HUD examples that do not require constant presence of themselves in the game world

@@bigshrekhorner But HUD (Heads Up Display) is the kind that doesn't obstruct your view, and phones are nowhere near a pop-up element, since when you look at your phone, you lose focus on your surroundings, so it's not like it gives you the usual minimap in the corner of your vision

Theyr all so boring

@@Alex_BarbosaI play video games to turn my brain off and escape from the world. Having a game being super realistic makes that harder for me. That’s why I love Nintendo games, all of the bright colors just make me happy.

This, the example of Tomb Raider looks so much more natural than in many of the other examples. Yellow is fairly uncommon in nature while white is all over the place and can be seen as lichen or bird poop in many cases.

yes, let's grab the ledge on the exact place the ancient poop piled up 😁

Climbing chalk for better grip is the easy explanation

@@roar104 In the ancient ruins untouched by man for generations? Maybe if it's a ruin held by generic dudes with guns, but it's very circumstantial.

@@matthewleconey9813 I assumed it was bird poop or just edge erosion.

Same

Agreed. Most of these games don't revolve around climbing anyway. Climbing is just a minor downtime activity with simple for you to do in between the more intense combat sections of the game. I don't want to spend a lot of time stuck in a game over a minor mechanic like that. So slather on the paint so I can get back to the part of the game I really came here to play. If some developer actually makes a game all about climbing, navigating the environment, all that is actually the main challenge of the game? Then sure, no yellow paint unless it's some kind of extra easy mode or accessibility option.

This is what I was thinking. In BotW and TotK, the vast majority of surfaces are climbable, and the only non-climbable surfaces are usually made of the same identifiable materials (mainly shrine walls). When climbable/interactive objects are the exception, then it makes sense to visually indicate such. I much prefer the method of designing environments around making interactive parts naturally convey their interactivity (such as protruding ledges among sheer walls), but in the case that it is too difficult to effectively do that, then we can live with paint. At least in the case of games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, I believe that the yellow ropes and ledges are marked as such because they are used by other hunters in-world, so it would make sense for them to stand out, like trail blazes. So even if you have to resort to literally highlighting interactive geometry, there are ways of making it both diegetic and sensible.

Not to sound harsh but if your game needs yellow painting for players to advance, maybe the game is just bad designed.

​​@@birdbig6852yeah. Look at assassin's creed. It is always obvious what can and can't be climbed. What can be grabbed, what can allow the player to swing, all without spelling it out for everyone.

Exactly there's a way to do it

Yup, it worked reallg well there, without *at all* breaking immersion, imo. Colour, lightning, texture and shape can all be used to show what's what in a single image. Part of the issue with the yellow paint that it's a very simplisgic solution that gets repetitive and stands out *too* much? When playing a game with yellow paint, are you still even looking for boxes to loot and ledges to climb, or are you simply fixated on finding yellow things?

When it is _literally_ one of the core pillars of the game, like it’s like one of the selling points, it’s easier to dedicate a lot of time to making this work. When climbing is a small aspect of a wider game with several different modes of interaction and context, it’s a lot harder to make a universal indicator that something is climbable

@@iMasterchris I feel like the question then should be “why are we using development time and resources to add filler?” Cause the climbing is almost never fun or challenging, it just takes longer than using a ladder.

Change that name.

If they have to be in the game, they also have to fit to the environment. Having the same stupid yellow paint throughout the game in completely different environments completely demolishes immersion if there is no logical reason why someone would paint those areas within the game world.

take the paint off the first rocks he shows in ff7 rebirth and they still stick out like a sore thumb

I agree. I made the mistake of playing Sonic Unleashed earlier today. All the grabble platforms and shimmy-able ledges in that game are yellow. I'm fine with that. But then the game took control away so the camera could zoom in on some yellow ledges and the helper character could say "Hey do you think you could get across that?" UGH. Of course I can, you obnoxious little snot. It's yellow. Shut up and stop taking control of the game away.

​@@tguit-fiddler5692I haven't played FF7 Rebirth yet (Probably will once it goes on sale for like 30 bucks), but I feel the exact same way with ladders in games. I mean, if I can climb EVERY ladder in the game it makes little since to have yellow paint on the ladders to mark them since they always stick out anyway because, like stairs and doors, they are devices of egress that we're comonly trained to look for in games. Heck, Mario bros. 2 taught us WAY back in NES era and they didn't need to paint them yellow... just red. And heck, even the Arcade hit Donkey Kong taught us to use ladders and they didn't need to be red.

For BotW, it also helps that you can climb pretty much anything, so there's no need to indicate climbable stuff. Non-climbable things were rare, and almost always found in shrines.

I was just about to say, Arin from Game Grump is a good case study of someone who struggles with in-game clues. He can even miss literal HUD elements telling him what to do. But it's not like he's dumb or anything, he's a smart guy, but he kind of tunnel visions and doesn't absorb everything on the screen at an instant. Nothing wrong with that, it's just how he sees things. He's a perfect example of why obvious clues like 'yellow paint' can be useful.

@@lued123 Yea, but even if that weren’t the case, climbable vines and such in Zelda usually stand out.

@@notgeneralsnaz The quintessential example was in Zelda Wind Waker, where he’s ragging on the game for not making it clear how to put down objects, while the HUD is literally telling him to press ZR to drop it.

I made a comment elsewhere, but this can also be a tunable setting. “How comfortable/new am I navigating in video games” or “how long should I be stuck before hints start to be revealed”. Players should be required to configure this and a few other settings before entering a game. The “yellow paint” could come in as an interpolated effect over time.

​@@willmungas8964 The problem with tunable settings is that they only work if the user is honest and accurate about their own skill level. People choose to skip tutorials and then complain about not knowing how to play the game all the time.

In Silent Hill 2-3 and Super Mario 3D World (just the examples that come to mind) your player character will turn their head towards interactive objects. That's kind of similar! The former also has infrequent fixed camera angles to highlight objects as well, of course.

This right here. Pure excellence.

A few games have that as a toggle where you can "Focus" and it highlights people, targets, objectives, interactable objects, etc.

I agree. It can be done tastefully.

Yeah, give hints without holding our hand.

The reason I am not bothered by the yellow paint in FF 7 Rebirth (specifically the demo), is that is a 40 second traversal section in a 2-2.5 hours experience that only happen once and never again. This game is an RPG that while it encourages traveling an open word, the vertical sections are less prevalent than the horizontal ones (unlike other titles like Sekiro, Assassin's Creed or Mirror's Edge). Are there smarter ways to indicate the player where to go? Yes. But for a minimal section that only happens a couple of times, I am ok with the devs using the yellow paint as indicator.

I find that I like these things better when there's a good story reason given for them- i.e. God of War 2018 had yellow paint, but it was specifically stated that their path was predicted and marked beforehand by the deceased mother. There's a story reason for someone to be guiding you that you, the player, never get to meet. Ingenious!

Why are you everywhere

For example, you could put a literal signpost that says “climb here!” next to a ledge. That would be pretty immersive, I think

@@Gloomdrake This reads as a joke, but unironically this would be preferable to yellow paint in a lot of games. You can mentally justify a literal signpost by thinking someone has been there before and put a marker so they don't get lost, but you can't justify the idea that someone took the time to slather yellow paint on every outcrop in a path up a random ledge.

Yes! This exactly!

I don't think immersion-breaking sign posting is bad. I just think unoriginal design is bad. Take Sly 2 or the entire franchies. Those were blue sparkly bits that only appear when you get close up. Those were kinda in your face and blatant indicators. Mirrors edge, the stuff you could interact with was fully red. If you could climb a pipe, the pipe itself was ALL red. Color is a good way to make an indicator. However, color is also a form of stylization. And stylization is 90% of identity. It worked for those games because it became part of their identity. So Color = Stylization = Identity, that means if you copy the stylization of what everyone else does EXACTLY. . . that means your IDENTITY is that of a hollow, souless copy-cat. If you do the exact same thing but make it a different color that most other people don't do, atleast that would be something. Rage/Rage 2 does the pant splatter thing. . . but they use PINK, and they use that as part of their branding. Because of that, it acts as part of the games identity in a way that DOESNT come off as souless. That's what even so much as just changing the color does to help give a game it's own identity. Give. Your games. Their own identity. That's all I ask.

The red in mirrors edge works too as there's no green to have it clash with. Red & green together are something that alot of colourblind people have issues with and making sure that red stands out is just brilliant design from that perspective but it doesn't work for every game.

Its not impossible. There was actually a time where games had much MUCH more significant environmental traversal and didn't have a single whiff of yellow spraypaint anywhere. The level was actually designed in a way to be a puzzle itself. The idea that we cant have someone be confused for a single minute in one area is ridiculous. Its quite literally a "Dumbing down" And as with most things in the modern era, making people engage less with something with their brains has a net negative long term effect. Yellow paint IS lazy game design. I dont care if a dev with 20yrs of experience disagrees. Thats just a fact. Just like multiple choice questions on an academic test is a lazy way to grade and teach information to students.

@@117johnpar Thing is, this was already discussed in the video. An Art Director would LOVE to agree with you, but we're NOT "back in the day" anymore. Things are quite literally not balck and white as they used to be anymore (they're yellow too lol), but jokes aside, what long-time gamers like us fail to understand, or even acknowledge, is that when we were younger, we DID struggle with the simplest of navigation or puzzles. I remember games I couldn't complete AT ALL as a kid because I got stuck not knowing where to go. Quite literally "gamer instinct" wasn't ingrained into my brain yet, and "common sense" wasn't actually common sense to me. When I return to those same games years down the line after having a whole bunch of other games under my belt, it dawns on me that the part I was stuck on as a kid was actually *ridiculously* simple, and was barely even a breeze to get through. Days of actual struggle and not having access to video walkthroughs on the internet back in those days, until I decided to finally give up and wait until my birthday or something so I could play the next game I wanted... all of that trivialised as an adult who now knows what "common sense" as a gamer looks like. The fact of the matter is that in today's environment, FAR more people are playing videogames now than when you or me were getting into them. Gaming as a whole is still THE youngest medium, and thus people of all ages even today are STILL just starting their journey with their "very first platformer" or their "very first shooter", or their very first videogame in general. 90% of those people WILL be struggling to find that "common sense" that you and me see so clearly. If you're going to tell me now that you actually "never struggled with simple navigation" when you first started playing videogames, I'm sorry but you are actually the exception, not the acception. I urge you to watch the KZfaq series "gaming for a non-gamer". It's an interesting social experiment because straight away the subject already struggles with something that's absolutely come natural to us: Moving the character. So yeah, I apologise but "having someone be confused for a single minute" is hugely understating it. Something that takes you 1 minute to clear, is something that becomes near impossible for someone else to clear when they have different experiences to you. There's also the matter that all games are different and that the same approach will not work for all of them, but that's a whole new bag of worms for a discussion in itself. I hope that explanation helps you understand a bit better, but not every videogame is developed for *your* "common sense".

Player: "hm, maybe I can use th--" NPC: "Hey, maybe you can use that box?"

@@TheFrostedfirefly Every game doesn't have to be. But when every game is developed to be little more than a daycare. Its no longer fun for the same reasons it used to be. Its mindless. In the literal sense. I dont need any "help understanding a bit better". I very distinctly remember the days when I was a kid and got stuck for months on a single level of a game. I didn't beat HALO 1 til after I beat 2 for the simple fact I got lost in 343 guilty spark. A level thats still relatively confusing today after having played through it a couple hundred times. This experience is fundamentally missing from modern games. The modern God of War games are a great example. The sum of the experience was that I watched a 10 hour movie. I dont remember any distinct part, or level, or puzzle. I remember environments but more for their extravagance and story context than for the actual engagement I had with the actual gameplay. Its lazy game design. Its not just "yellow paint" the whole controversy around it is because the yellow paint is a symptom of a greater issue. Which is a fundamental lack of compelling and engaging design structures.

This is why games should have multiple options when you start up, they could literally have you pick between “I want lots of guidance” and “I don’t want much guidance”

I think for those cases, yellow paint becomes more of a suggestion than a "This is interactable, use it or die" thing. In Borderlands 3 for example, at least the limited amount that I played. There are sometimes yellow splotches on things you can vault up and "climb", however you can vault up any surface realistically. The splotches are only there to say "Hey, maybe you should go up here for a strategic advantage" Bam, best of both worlds. You can keep an eye out for similar situations without the paint, and maybe you can reapply those strategies in future battles, or find a hidden crate for goodies.

This reminds me a bit of people saying things like 'if you use spirit ashes or 'op' weapons in Elden Ring you didn't REALLY beat the game." As if somehow your experience is less valid because you used all the tools the game makes available to you. Maybe, actually, the game just isn't as hard as you want it to be without artificially making it more difficult by restricting your options and you should accept that.

Ohhh, an argument against tryharders and edgelords of "muh skills" in gaming, very nice and clean. I don't even like the paint and I rather prefer when devs adapt the "proper way" to see cues through the game's atmosphere and general vibe (or at least give the turn off option), but this sounds consistent. Yellow may be the most common color for people to detect but it's true that in some circumstances it feels very very out of place. Red pipes in Mirror's Edge like shown in the video, for example, get used to the eye of the beholder by being recognized as part of the overall game visual style

I kind of see where you're coming from, but, like, of course it's going to seem simple if you're given the answer. It's not exactly a good argument. If the challenge of a game is supposed to come from your ability to navigate, explore, and solve puzzles, then having big proverbial flashing signs to tell people where their destinations, points of interest, and puzzle solutions are located doesn't mean the challenge isn't there. It means the devs were either afraid to give you the full challenge and thought it was too much for the average person, or just wouldn't be enjoyable even if it was reasonable to solve. Now, this of course begs the question of whether or not those are, in fact, intended to be the sources of challenge for any given game in question, and while I would argue that in most cases they _are_ to some degree, ultimately it's going to boil down to a case-by-case basis.

I think that's reading way too much into it tbh.

@@MalzraAirwynnElden Ring difficulty varies wildly, it’s hard to curate a difficulty curve for such an open game. Stomping bosses with summons often ruins the experience. If you didn’t engage with the boss, the experience can be rather hollow. There are absolutely bosses who are designed around having a summon tho. In actuality people should do what they want while understanding the different perspectives

They literally use the exact same HUD element on the painted cliffs as well, making the paint feel even more out of place than it already was

Exactly this. Maybe we wouldn't have to say "those old techniques don't work with modern lighting and environments" if devs were allowed to experiment and commit to a real artstyle

I like having a line of games that are pushing the photo realism boundary and I’ll accept the yellow paint with it, so long as it doesn’t become the default. I like having a wide range of games from the pixel games up the shit brown shooter. Variety and choice is great, so long as we keep it. Something for every body and every mood.

Or maybe it wasn't so necessary before because it was obvious that the freaking object with more polygons and better textures compared to the rest of the environment is the one that you need to interact with...

I mean back in the day the exploding barrels were red. It's always been a thing. It just sticks out like an eye sore when it gets more realistic.

This exactly. Cluttered worlds and simple systems don't match well. You want 2-3 interactive things? Cool, maybe don't put 100 pointless things in the scene then. Oh you need those because it makes things look realistic and that's the actual goal? Cool, but maybe your game design is clashing with itself.

Yarlo?

What?

​@@Gloomdrakethat's pirate Arlo

…petition, anyone?

Arllow

If you've ever had to guide a friend who is new to gaming through a game, you would not complain about obvious signposting. The yellow paint still isn't enough. You'd be lucky if they don't somehow lose you when they were looking right at you, even though you purposefully picked the ugliest, most obvious color for your character and literally just went in a straight line, AND have multiple indicators pointing to your location.

No gameplay either, those games are literally 75% cutscenes

My favorite part of the Mirror's Edge example is that it is diagetic. To the point that Runner territory is predominantly Red, and corporate territory is Blue. You immediately know you're in a hostile environment if you are surrounded by blue obstacles.

That’s kinda what the argument is against. That it shouldn’t be yellow paint, should be something that makes sense within the environment to lead the player there

And I also noticed that in the tomb raider game there were birds near the ledge you needed to go and that kinda made me think that it was purposefully placed to show direction.

Moss or plant life covering it up is a bad idea. If it's a commonly used path, it would not be covered by plants or moss because people using it would erode that away.

@@mjc0961same thing with paint. Who goes and paints specific areas for people to climb? A lot of games have you climbing areas that are not usually paths people use. So moss and other greenery would be just fine.

When it comes to sign posting, you actually DONT want it to have verity. If your new to games, and you play a game with yellow paint or yellow indicators, it easily shapes your brain into "yellow equals interact." If that changes to moss, or if there are a verity of things in one game, it'll confuse the hell out of them. Same if you play a game once that has yellow paint, and every other game you play is sign posted with something else. Generally speaking, having an easily identifiable color makes it easier for a new gamer to understand what it happening. Often for people who have bad eyes, something like moss or extra plant life can blur together, and also be very very confusing. So it's better if the sign posting is either really obvious (like ledges ect) or it is easily identified (like a bright color)

Same, it was weird to see yellow paint on rocks in FF7R, a magical world The rocks could have glowed blue instead, or be very natural and use a moss green coloring

@@Bryanneo1 You could even just have in someone in universe say let the mako guide you. They did manage to give some more diegetic explanations for some of it in the previous game so I am sure they could figure something out at least for most of it. But personally I think it should have at least some of the pixel hunting experience as far as I know I think you can turn it off or at least tone it down.

You Sir are a master of words, this is everything I’ve wanted to say in 3 short sentences instead of a paragraph. I commend you.

Yeah, you have paint maybe in the first chapter or two of the game so the player knows what surfaces/visual indicators to look for so later on you can remove the paint to not have latter areas blotched. Or you only make paint required for specific interactions, calling attention to these when introducing the new interaction and leaving the player to recognize them later on.

@@Bryanneo1 Same, in the case of FF7R the yellow paint looks ridiculous.

I'm the same, I only own a Switch, so I haven't played every game that this video used footage for, so I feel you. But I loved this video, would love to see Arlo do more like this on game design!

they both sound wack

See that just sounds like a design issue. I'd compare it too Assassin's Creed. Both series feature climbing very heavily, but Assassin's Creed doesn't use big splotches of in your face color and it's always easy to know what you can climb.

People keep saying make it moss or something natural, but what you're all overlooking is that the point is to make it not blend in. If you make it blend in, a lot of players won't notice it and get stuck. We arrived here due to playtesting, data collection showing when and where people stop playing games, and let's plays and live streaming showing players getting stuck in real time. Don't blame developers, they're doing this because a lot of people need this.

​@@mjc0961You can make something that's natural (like moss) still stand out by exaggerating the amount/intensity/brightness (of moss in this case). The idea's to make the reason that that's there realistic, like moss on a rock is more realistic then random paint. And games can easily silently tutorialize early on that 'mossy edges = climbable' by having an early section full of them. Again, using moss as an example. There are many ways you make something look natural while also obviously interactable. Like barrels with red tops = explosion. Put an early tutorial text if you need to and players will keep it in mind.

@@mjc0961 I think XC3 did it alright - all the climbable things were either ladders or strands of ivy, but the ivy was vivid purple and obvious from far away, suspicious by but it was only ever used where you needed to climb, but it fit with the world I think there's ways to get right in the middle. Paint where it makes sense in the world, vivid natural colours where it makes sense in the world, and corridors leading to a climbable object where neither work - if you go down what looks like a dead end with a rocky wall at the end, I would think most people would assume they could climb it

@@mjc0961 Okay but all you have to do is have one little blurb that says, "Ledges with moss can be mounted." A happy middle ground would be having a option that you can toggle called "Guidance" or something. Turned on it becomes yellow paint. Turned off it becomes moss or something. The reason I don't want yellow paint is because I respect people's intelligence. The only people who wouldn't be able to see something so simple are people on the level of that cuphead journalist who couldn't double jump and dash to save his life during the freaking tutorial.

@@duskyer then you have to be sure your moss stands out in every game environment, and to never put moss somewhere that might confuse a player. and then if you have it optional but off by default, you have to hammer in to your players that there's an option for visual hints in the hope that when someone inevitably gets stuck they remember to go into the UI to turn it on.

I'm guessing the sheer abundance of games, especially free ones in the mobile space, also contributes to that. If the game you're playing is a bit too frustrating, you can easily just download one of the ten million others.

This is a great insight, thanks for sharing!

Right?

The gaps hat look like you can fit through crouching T.T

This would seem like the simplest and most obvious solution. Not sure why this isn't more of a thing when games are made.

I disagree, I would very much prefer a somewhat nonsensical in-game indicator as opposed to some distracting HUD element. Sure, both can ruin immersion, but what's going to ruin it harder? A box that probably shouldn't be painted yellow, or a big, annoying arrow that exists solely to hold your hand? I'm picking the box, at least with the box I can make up some silly reason why it's painted yellow to keep it entertaining. There's not nearly as much fun to be had with HUD elements. Now, I do think there are better solutions than yellow paint literally everywhere, but if a game asks me in the menu if I want paint or HUD elements, I'm taking paint.

​@@thedarterboth are bad, but I find the yellow paint much worse. I can internalize that some dumb arrow isn't part of the world but yellow paint just makes it look worse and feel far more artificial as it's actually in the world. It makes those games that aim for hyper realism look less realistic then older games or games with a more cartoony art style

The problem is that doesn't work when you are doing a realistic environment. Just making something a different highlight can be easily missed.

correct me if im wrong, but isnt it implied that heisenburg paints everything in resident evil village to manipulate and guide the main character? i thought that was funny and cool

@@uwuppa also the case in Alan Wake, someone who's afraid of the darkness leaves notes and clues everywhere with invisible yellow paint that can only be seen with flashlights to guide anyone else who's dealing with the dark. as long as there's a lore reason, yellow paint is 100% fine imo

Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls has a bunch of kids running around painting things on the instruction of someone who's trying to help you get through

in god of war, fay, marks out the whole journey with paint beforehand, knowing the prophesy and how her own death will set everything off.

that's disingenuous, there are often reasons. In the Horizon games, the paint is left by other members of the Nora tribe (and others) to mark safe places to climb, as people often do IRL in climbing areas.

Sure game developers COULD use all this extra processing power to give the player the freedom to interact with each and every little thing in the gameworld, but then we wouldn’t have realistic horse genitals. I know which I’d personally choose, but I’m not a game developer who clearly knows better than me…

I feel like this is the actual reason for the yellow paint in FF7R. There's probably not a whole lot of places you can actually climb, so they want to make sure you know when you can.

@@MungkaeX you ironically chose one of the most interactive and well detailed games out there for the horse reference...

@@jesusbarrera6916 Also one built upon the backs of 100+ hour work week forced crunch and toxic work culture that traumatized multiple developers. But I’m sure their families can take solace knowing their loved ones trauma and exploitation lead to a “good” cause.

It's just a texure, too. Nobody can tell me that an option to swap a couple of textures is too much work to implement, when you have the option to switch between graphics and performance mode on the fly.

@@ItsZorroDoodthose two very different things.

@@ItsZorroDood It depends how early it's implemented. Do the work up front and it would be pretty easy, late implementation would required redoing literally every single instance of yellow paint. That being said it is something devs should be thinking about early in design, the same type of work is already standard for all the other accessibility settings.

could be an interesting concept, but idk how effective it'd be for communicating that something is interactable. personally my gut reaction when playing games is "controller rumble = i am actively taking damage", but that could just be me.

What if the rumble was in a heartbeat pattern.

I think in part, that is how Nintendo does first party games, but also they are still on a console that is built around less than 1080p most of the time. when we get the switch2 with 4k, Hopefully, Nintendo may fall into the same trap as ps5/xbox games have.

​@@edwxx20001 Resolution has nothing to do with the actual graphical fidelity in the game. Nintendo has never focused on making realistic looking games, and I doubt they are changing that in the near future.

Maybe visual clutter is why i like slower games now. Baulders gate 3 and turn based combat has become my go to. Borderlands 3 was way too much for me.

​@@edwxx20001I don't think even a bazillion k Mario platformer will have environments this cluttered. Even more "realistic" environments in Mario games like New Donk City are still very simple and easy to read by the nature of the art direction, regardless of image resolution.

@@BahuschBahuschmario, being a platformer tends to be better at this then the real problem of "action shooters". nintendo rarely does action shooters, off the top of my head its just the M-Prime series and they do tend to have a cluttered ui, but no paint. nintendo being behind in processing power, fidelity, and ram absolutely influences how they make games. This is not a bad thing, the fact they are not on the bleeding edge can help them to avoid the problems with current gen games when they come to the same level of fidelity. less nintendo based paint, unless its squid ink.

Alot of those games were brighter and had obvious shapes to interactables. That's not the case anymore in photorealistic games and making an object glow doesn't make them stand out enough.

Games in the PS1 and PS2 era also used to be much smaller in the player space so these indicators weren't as needed since there was often only 2-3 ways to go. With how open most games are not only can you approach things from every possible direction but you can run into things like flickering lights that exist for decoration. By taking something not commonly used, yellow paint, you remove the risk of repeating features.

^^Both of your replies would be much more effective if Elden Ring didn’t sell over 20 million copies while never using yellow paint. Like, imagine a site of grace in the Lands Between just surrounded by arrows created with yellow paint… or a giant yellow splotch of paint on all of the ladders, elevators, and levers in the game. FromSoft didn’t do that though, they highlighted those interact-able objects uniquely and creatively because they’re smarter than “throw yellow paint on it”. Face it, yellow paint isn’t necessary, it’s cheap and lazy.

Because it's such an incredibly small niche that games shouldn't be built for them by default.

@@sanjicook08 It’s often seen as a small thing, but I would argue it’s much bigger than people realize. Accessibility benefits everyone, not just disabled people. But we’re often the first to get screwed over by the lack of accessibility.

the red also has in world contextualisation as something FAITH sees, acting as a manifestation of her instincts, instead of simply being objects being literally physically red for no in world explainable reason.

If I remember right, there was also settings for more or less “runner’s vision” hints. And not everything was sign posted, just the most basic path through a level. If you ignored the signs and went other directions, you’d often find more exciting or faster routes across the rooftops.

@@BasilLecher yeah, I used the classic mode runner vision in catalyst, and unlike the default, it's reasonable.

When I played catalyst, I liked the more subtle signposting too, the layers of scuffed shoeprints where you should be climbing up a wall, indicating plenty of other runners had done the same UNTIL the last mission. You're breaking into the big corporate HQ, hopping around wreckage, running where no one's ever ran before and - what's that? Shoe scuffs telling you where to go? Took me right out of it

The reason I am not bothered by the yellow paint in FF 7 Rebirth (specifically the demo), is that is a 40 second traversal section in a 2-2.5 hours experience that only happen once and never again. This game is an RPG that while it encourages traveling an open word, the vertical sections are less prevalent than the horizontal ones (unlike other titles like Sekiro, Assassin's Creed or Mirror's Edge). Are there smarter ways to indicate the player where to go? Yes. But for a minimal section that only happens a couple of times, I am ok with the devs using the yellow paint as indicator.

It should be a setting you can toggle imo

I@@kanoy7817 I can get down with that

It is so diegetic that since the game doesn't call attention to it you can completely miss it meaning it fails at its intended purpose and fails the narrative. The more diegetic something is the less likely a person is to notice. Sure it is diegetic, but now it fails at its purpose unless you already know or over analyze things.