Feedback:User/Guild Wars 3 perhaps/Magic Motion Sensor Rest in Peace

Come with me back to a time long ago; a time when you had just installed Guild Wars – Prophecies. You’ve created your first character and have taken the quest “The Prize Moa Bird” in the Catacombs beneath Sardelac Sanitarium. You near the end of the quest. You stand at the top of the stairs looking down onto the unholy scene of the sacrificed corpse of the Moa Bird. You can not see any enemies. You slowly descend the stairs, your pulse quickening, your palms getting sweaty. Your rational mind is telling you, “It’s only a game”, yet here you are with a sense of growing dread as you cautiously make your way into the crypt, senses heightened. Suddenly the Crypt Fiend materializes before you! You panic, hit the wrong skill button, hands shaking, coming under attack – counter – heal – flee – return – fight – and triumph!

I don’t know about you, but everyone I know who has played that quest has described a scenario similar to the one above. It’s visceral, they’re on overload, jumpy, anxious. In other words, the game elicited an emotional and physiological response from the players unlike any other quest or mission throughout the game. Granted, the novelty of it being your first “major” test against a tough enemy may play into it. But I think it’s something more. What was different about that portion of the quest as compared to anything you had done up until that point? The answer; you couldn’t see the enemy on your magic motion sensor. That was the key to why that quest was so visceral; the UNKNOWN.

Why, oh why in a game world who’s technology is the equivalent of ~16th century Europe do they have motion sensors that would make the United States special forces drool with envy? When are game designers going to take to heart Alfred Hitchcock’s immortal words:


 * “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”

It’s all about building tension, not giving away or revealing your intentions, and letting the player’s imagination run wild at all of the possibilities of what might happen versus simply laying it all out there, showing everything up front, and not maintaining that element of surprise.

When you do the former, you psychologically and emotionally engage the player in the game because now their mind is having to calculate multiple possibilities. Furthermore, since the player can’t know exactly what to expect, but only guess at it, this permits the element of doubt over a course of action to enter into the equation and fear or anxiety over the possible consequences of that course of action should it fail.

In the latter case – where everything is revealed to the player (e.g. seeing all of your enemies as little red dots on the magic motion sensor) – there’s no engagement of the player emotionally. Yes, the player still has to come up with a strategy for dealing with the enemies they see on the radar. But in this scenario, there’s no emotional investment in the action or the outcome. It just devolves into, “I see 10 dots on my screen and I have to kill those 10 dots to get to where I’m going.” The player may or may not succeed but since they know what has to be done to accomplish this task, there’s no anticipation, no building of tension, no calculated risk. As long as they’re patient and keep tweaking their build, they’re guaranteed to kill those 10 dots eventually. How boring.

Yes, the game must be kept balanced so that it doesn’t become too frustrating. Challenges should be surmountable for the game to be enjoyable. But that doesn’t mean you have to eliminate the element of surprise or the building of tension. These aspects of good game play come from NOT knowing everything about the game environment or by NOT being guaranteed success by simply following a wiki script of “bring skills A, B, and C, pull enemy X, kill it, pull enemy Y, interrupt it, run past enemy Z, and grab the loot / complete the quest”.

Eliminating the magic motion sensor would go a long way towards helping heighten the tension and suspense within the game and lead – in my opinion – to a more engaging game experience. This is not the same as recommending that the mini map be deleted. There’s nothing wrong with having a map of your progress through an area. But having every enemy revealed on that map as a little red dot is killing the potential for that particular element of surprise in the game.

And in answer to the counter of, “What about pop-up enemies; they certainly add to the suspense and you don’t see them as red dots until after they pop-up.”: I agree that pop-ups are a surprise; the first time they pop-up. After that – since they always pop-up in the same location, same enemies, and same numbers – there’s no more surprise; you always know where they’re going to be even if they aren’t revealed on the magic motion sensor. Or worse yet, you read about them in advance on a wiki and there’s not even the element of surprise the first time around. If you’re going to make pop-ups, at least make them random; have them pop-up in different locations, different enemies, different numbers.

Also, suggesting that one simply turn off the radar in the "Options" dialog box does not address the issue. If by default the game is built around using the magic motion sensor as a tool for playing the game, then anyone who turns it off is being penalized/crippled. My suggestion speaks instead to eliminating the reliance on the magic motion sensor altogether in an effort to capture a greater sense of immersion in the game and attention to the details of the game world. By eliminating the God's eye view from above through the use of the magic motion sensor, players will be more "in" the game pyschologically/emotionally.

I'll use the example of the FPS Battlefield 2. In that game there are two options; normal mode and hardcore mode. In normal mode, you have a map of the game world, a radar that reveals enemy locations as the ubiquitous little red dot (LRD), and also little red triangles that appear above an enemy's head in the main game window. In hardcore mode, all of those contrivances are eliminated; your view of the battlefield is only what you can see in the main game window. If you see an enemy, it's because you actually see the enemy; not because it shows up as a LRD. Hardcore mode is a whole different game and - in my opinion - a much more immersive game. You have to actually search out your targets, looking through your scope for subtle signs of motion or listening carefully for the sounds of footsteps, gunfire, or rustling vegetation. The experience induces a heightened sense of awareness of what's happening in the game as it engages more of your senses and requires more attention to detail as compared to simply looking at a mini-radar screen for a LRD to shoot at.

If you just absolutely have to have red dots on a magic motion sensor because you fear doing otherwise will lead to frustration and confusion, then at least strike a compromise between the blanket excuse of “game balancing / playability” and surprise / tension. Only reveal enemies on the magic motion sensor that the player can actually see by line-of-sight in the main game window. If that enemy then moves out of visual range or behind an obstacle that obstructs them from player view, their red dot then disappears from the magic motion sensor.

My alternate suggestion to the compromise I just proposed above goes like this:

I accept that players should be able to sense the presence of an enemy based on various clues to their location. But I reject the implementation of this game mechanic by giving them omnipotent powers of clairvoyance through the contrivance of the magic motion sensor. Do the following instead:

1. Currently, enemies only appear in the main game window when they are within a certain range from a player; otherwise they fade from view the further away they are until they’re so far away they become invisible. As it stands right now, this range is the same for all players. How about instead you add the ability for players to see monsters at varying ranges. For example, there could be skills that allow players to see enemies at greater ranges than the default.

2. The longer a player plays a particular character, the more acute that character’s senses become so that they automatically begin to see monsters at greater ranges than a character who’s only recently been created. You can also add greater detail to an enemy at varying distances. A new character will not see as much detail of an enemy at a given range as a more seasoned character.

3. Have the increased sensory awareness mentioned in #2 be dependent on familiarity. A character who has been primarily adventuring in wooded areas will see monsters in that environment at greater ranges and in more detail at those ranges than a character new to that area. However, that same character taken out of the woods and placed in a desert will not have as acute perception of enemies in the new environment until enough time has elapsed for them to become accustomed to the tell-tale signs of desert-dwelling hostiles.

This can even be made “real” in a visual sense. For example, let’s say a burrowing monster in the desert can be detected – by someone accustomed to the desert environment – by a subtle but distinctive pattern in the sand. For the character not yet accustomed to desert-dwelling monsters, that pattern will either not show up at all on their screen or will be very blurry and of low detail. Conversely, a character who has been adventuring in that desert environment for some time now will see that mark on the sand plain as day on their screen and know that beneath the sand lies a monster waiting to ambush them. As characters become increasingly accustomed to an environment, such tell-tale signs will become increasingly more obvious (increasing detail) on the player’s screen. Coming under attack by that burrowing monster – and surviving the attack – may even rapidly improve the character’s perception of the tell-tale signs for detecting that monster’s presence.

You can even make this race dependent. For example, a Norn character will start the game with a heightened ability for detecting monsters in snow covered areas, an Asura will be more adept at seeing subterranean enemies or monsters in low-light conditions, etc. This isn’t to say that all other races are then permanently at a disadvantage under those conditions. A human adventuring in the frozen North will eventually become as perceptive as a Norn, a Charr spelunking in dungeons will eventually see monsters in those conditions as easily as an Asura, etc. I just mean initially each race will have a perceptual advantage in their native environment.

4. Make sound in the game directional. If an unseen enemy steps on a twig screen right, have the sound of the snapping twig issue from the right speaker, giving a clue to its location. If it’s a large, heavy enemy – but still out of sight – the thudding of its footsteps may reveal its presence.

5. Allow fog and atmospheric attenuation to play into enemy detection. Currently, monsters at range vary only in their opacity. Instead, change not only their alpha channel but also have the atmosphere obscure enemies at range. The further they are from a character, not only should they become more transparent but they should also begin to fade in saturation and their color palette should begin to match the average of the background environment and surrounding atmosphere. This way, at a distance, the monster appears as a vague, barely perceptible shadow that is nearly the same color and saturation as the surrounding atmosphere rather than simply a more transparent version of its fully rendered state.

Conversely, a character adept at perceiving a monster in a particular environment will see that monster revealed in greater detail and/or more saturation as compared to a character who is not as perceptive.

6. Have motion factor into the ability to detect an enemy. Maybe the character can’t see a monster directly or in full detail but is able to see the movement of the branches of a tree or bush, shifting of sand, or dust kicked up by an enemy’s passage. Also, not just motion but other signs can point to the presence of an enemy; tracks, discarded items, broken foliage, etc. Much like the footsteps of characters in GW1 which fade away after a few seconds, these tell-tale signs would be temporary and fade after a set time as well. Combined with some good AI, imagine the possibilities as players – attempting to track a monster – come to a stream where the prints just…end. Where is the monster now and who is tracking whom?

7. Sixth sense. As a character becomes increasingly more attuned to a particular environment, they will become increasingly more aware of when something “just isn’t right”. The enemy lurking in the shadows may still not be within visual range, but the character senses that there’s “something” out there. From a game mechanics standpoint, this can be accomplished by making an area of the player’s screen in which monsters may be lurking become the focus of a little greater detail, sharpness, or color shift. I’m not suggesting it be something radical like the tree the monster is hiding behind suddenly gets highlighted and outlined in a blazing red color. Something more subtle and keeping “in character” with the game. Some kind of shift in the screen such that – if the player is paying attention to the game window – they will detect it.

Anyway, that’s my two cents and then some. I just want to capture that feeling I had when I first played “The Prized Moa Bird” quest; but throughout the entire Guild Wars world. These are some of my suggestions for accomplishing that.

Thanks for reading.