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If mandatory: meh
Accessability feature for players with impaired vision: great bloody UXt, your local UI/UX guy
I actually love this in videogames. It’s a really cool way to interact with the environment and literally see the world through a different lense with a level of control that no other medium of storytelling can achieve.
Maybe this dude should go watch a movie if he doesn’t want to interact with things.
Just make it a toggle to highlight shit. On and off.
I used to play games that permanently highlighted interactive objects. I am playing a game, I don’t need realism.
I remember the first time I sent out a ping in the voxel-based action-adventure game Outcast (1999). I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.
There are good and bad implementations, but going to have to disagree with op on the whole.
Counterpoint:
P I N G
Unpopular opinion maybe, but I LOVE that shit!
Honestly if I could do this in real life for an object I’m looking for, and have the object ping and light up and flash and shit, I would love it.
If you don’t like it, don’t press that button
As I’m getting older, I’m definitely starting to appreciate that I just can’t see shit. If the game’s going for an ultra-realistic environment, then there’s just so much more visual clutter that I need help picking things out.
In my opinion, it’s just an accessibility feature. Those are always nicer to have than to not. But if you’re a purist, or you don’t have any problem finding things, then I’d also hope you’d be able to disable it.
💯 Playing through Red Dead Redemption 2 and there is so much detail and it’s beautiful.
…but then when I’m trying to pick out herbs and plants and it’s all so beautifully rendered I don’t know what plants and flowers can be harvested and which are just there to be pretty. Dead Eye is a lifesaver for that.
That desaturated-with-highlighted-items vision is a design choice that does solve a problem even in realistic worlds – even if it’s just to show players something the character can see but is hard for the player to spot.
If you look at old games, the reason they didn’t need this was because they couldn’t have nearly as many props in a scene. I like to use classic WoW as an example. It didn’t have any kind of highlighting for objects to interact with, but you didn’t need it because there just weren’t that many objects period.
Highlighting interactables, whether it be through a pulse like the meme, or just based on proximity, is a compromise in modern games to make things playable while also having dense, prop-filled environments. The infamous white or yellow paint for climbing surfaces is another example.
I doubt many designers love these solutions, but they’re currently the best we’ve got. It’s not an easy problem to solve, but I hope a more immersive solution comes along someday. In the meantime, having it is better than not, I totally agree with you.
You actively choose not to use it but if you didn’t know about such a mechanic, sometimes you might end up like this.
Recently started a replay of the PS5 BioShock collection (1&2). In 1 the items shimmer to let you know they’re there to interact with, in 2 that setting is off/disabled by default and you don’t realize it until you go digging through the settings after wondering where all the stuff is/went because you sit 15ft/3m from your TV. Utterly frustrating dev choice on normal mode play defaults.
The problem is that games are designed for it to be used. I hated using Witcher senses in Dying Light 2, but good look finding lootables without it. It’s a cop out solution.
Like in Hogwarts Legacy? Or your Witcher senses in TW3? Oddly I’ve only noticed it really with AAA games
That’s because it’s the easy way out for those studios. Can’t design the macguffins so they’re interesting to find no sir. They’ve got to be well hidden, but that makes it too difficult for the player and we can’t have that! Better implement the Macguffin Highlighter Pulse™ to lead them right to it!
What I never wanna see again is a game having me hold a button instead of pressing it, for literally anything
Topical example would be apace marine 2
Toggle sprint, hold zoom, please and thank you
