Navigational Design in Rise Of The Tomb Raider - A bachelor thesis survey - Developers

My name is Lucas and I am in my last year of studying game art and 3D animation in Frankfurt. I am currently working on my bachelor thesis if navigational aids like a compass or a map within your HUD are always necessary or if game designers should rely more on the level design of the world itself guiding the player subconsciously. The survival instinct Lara can use in Rise Of The Tomb Raider is a great example that both solutions can be combined with a simple feature. A user interface that can be turned on and off whenever necessary. Because this is a rather personal opinion I decided to make a survey on it, trying to get as many different results on it as possible. I hope you dont mind answering these very quick and simple questions. You can find more information on the survey itself by clicking on the link below. If you have not played the newer Tomb Raider games, don't worry, these questions are optional for those who have never played one. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/175h...eHmC__Ko0/edit Thanks for helping me out. It means alot to me! Feel free to ask me any questions or giving feedback. My email: crestone95@yahoo.de Thanks once again, Luc

Link doesn't work.

Thank you so much. No wonder people are not participating. Much appreciated. Should work now.

Yeah, link is bork. Possibly not shared? Personally though, I hated the Survival Instincts feature. I think as a tool to simply show you what objects you can interact with during a puzzle, it served its purpose fine. However it was also the primary way of making sure you didn't miss any collectables, and as a result you end up spamming it constantly in order to find the game's insane number of them. In addition, you had to be standing still for the effect to stay on screen, as moving made it deactivate. The visual effect was also kinda OTT, and in my opinion far more intrusive and immersion-breaking than just having a Minimap/Compass or some kind of subtle always-on object highlighting.

Thanks for your response. I totally agree with you, which is exactly why I am writing this thesis. Imo game designers still haven't found the perfect way to guide their players without ruining the immersion. When I play a game like Assassins Creed or Uncharted or whatever I like to pretend to be in their shoes - if that makes sense. I dont want to have a minimap or some secret super vision that tells me where to look, etc. Then again I am totally fine with Ezio's Eagle Vision or Geralts Witcher sense because they explained, how and why he can use it. Game designers should do this far more often. I don't think they ever explained why Lara could see items like that. Just because she is a explorer, doesnt make her a "superhero". Then again it's far more immersive than a floating map where you can look and know exactly where to go. It's a really tough subject. I would love to have more customizable options. An option where you can decide how you want to be guided etc. If you don't check the options in ROTTR you would never have known that you could turn the feature of entirely, so it should be more accessible aswell.

They have. Half Life 1 & 2 are your answer. These games feature no minimap, compass, instinct or whatever. Just really good level design and a very clear set of rules the gameplay follows. Any artificial way to guide the playe is ultimately just a remedy for poor level/game design. Of course, less experienced developers, who dont have acces to beta testers and deep analytics during development, should use it to improve a game, but big developers have absolutely no excuse to use these silly systems. Tomb raider, hitman absolution, even witcher 3 to an extent, use these clunky systems that absolutely break the games flow and rythm.

Thanks for your response! Older games tend to be less reliant on these kind of features. I heard that Half Life has great level design and I will look more into it now. Yes and I totally agree. Everytime I see a map or a compass I just feel like the developers got lazy or dont want to put the time and effort in to get a better result. Sadly enough people still buy the game even if it has clunky navigational tools or weird/overpowered features. Games have become more and more casual and I think that is the ultimate goal for alot of devs. To make it accessible for the biggest audience possible to get the most money out of it.

The increased use of navigational aids I think has more to do with the type of gaming being made. Highly linear games can easily use the environment to steer players in the right direction. I'd go so far as to say that type of design is outright impossible in an open world game like watchdogs 2. Something like Tomb Raider is in a clunky middle ground. Somewhere between open and linear. I'd replace the survival instinct with a more subtle effect (glowing outlines that show up on approach, audio cues) and change from thirdperon to firstperson. Although this might just be me being biased from playing first person shooters with keyboard and mouse so much. For a less dramatic change they could've had the instinct button do what I said above, increase the intensity of the outlines of objects and introduce audio cues. The current method completely mutes out the world and I think it's a shame since the game itself looks beautiful and they have this feature that wants to hide this temporarily.

I don't think you could really do an open-world game without a map. Even games where the map is made less prevalent (Far Cry 2) suffer a lot from it generally.

I disagree. Far cry 2 is a great example of things done the right way. While the game has its shortcomings, its map and diamond search system are rough diamonds in themselves. Also, most games mentioned in the OP are no less linear than half life 2 ( ie the tomb raider reboot). Obviously open world games require a different approach.

For most modern AAA titles, I think the 'friction' caused by maps as restrictive as FC2 are bad design. Don't get me wrong, I loved FC2, the rough diamond mechanic is perfect, and the paper map feels thematically perfect. However, I think it's a far cry from a better implementation. Part of that has to do with the fact that FC2 has un-climbable mountains, if it was fully open like FC3 or FC4, it would be less an issue (ironically, those games went with the pause-screen full map option). First let's look at the map interface: https://s.gvid.me/s/2018/01/25/RIb124.png In terms of improving the FC2 map system, the first thing that needs to be done is GPS-style routes, and better player location indication (the player arrow is fuckhuge), then we need to streamline the system. Currently you have two map displays, one that stays static, and one that follows your view - the issue with the second GPS display is that not only is it small, it also has literal screen static making reading it a hassle to look at. Streamlining this would be getting rid of the paper map, and only having a larger GPS display - the player could then zoom in and out using either scroll or mouse clicks. The GPS would also have a highlighted 'route' to selected objectives, and display possible objectives at the edges of the screen (A la GTA V). This would solve the problem of getting lost in the minimalistic 'clutter ', and make finding your next objective much easier. The GPS would still be "in-world" and not pause, but it wouldn't be a literal paper map that has godlike properties like the current one. Secondly, I'd add the ability to pull up the GPS in the corner of the screen, where your character literally pulls the GPS out, and holds onto it in their off-hand, this would allow the player to navigate during sneaking sessions where they might run into combat, but also not allow them a full mini-map (since reloading, larger 2h weapons, etc, would have the player put the GPS away). If you're not comfortable with having GPS-style routes, then either intersections should at least have little karats showing the direction to the objective (FC2 already does this in 3D space with the road signs) - or a Alien:Isolation style indicator on the GPS of the direction their objective is in (similar to how the rough diamond system works currently)

Thanks for all the awesome comments guys The fact that everybody has a different opinion proves how difficult it is to find the "correct" way to handle this.