'Bad game design' thread revisited: The continued use of minimaps.

I've been thinking about the lack of minimaps in Bethesda games recently and how I appreciate that as a design choice. Exploration is the greatest strength of those games and having lots of things marked on a minimap would undermine that.

I saw this 2+ year old thread from @sweep talking about his then beef with minimaps and I thought it would be interesting to show how prevalent they still are. This doesn't mean that they are bad or lazy in these games, it's just interesting to see.

They have recently featured in major releases like Hitman, Final Fantasy XV, The Witcher 3, Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1, Mafia 3, seemingly all Ubisoft games, and Shadow of Mordor.

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Some big games from the last couple of years have haven't had them, which indicates that developers are at least thinking about if it's right for their game. DOOM, Metal Gear Solid V, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Fallout 4, Overwatch and Dark Souls III all go without them.

Looking forward, Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a minimap. For some reason I didn't think that series had them but looking back I guess a lot of them did. Maybe they could be toggled off. Horizon Zero Dawn looks like there isn't a minimap and it's instead using a compass and floating icons.

One interesting case is Mass Effect. To my understanding, there was a minimap in Mass Effect 1. In Mass Effect 2 it only appeared when you went to switch weapons. In Mass Effect 3 they took it out completely. I don't think Mass effect 3 even has a compass.

I'm not sure what that says about the changing level design through the Mass Effect series. It seems like Andromeda does at least have a compass though.

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Did you guys have a problem with minimaps two years ago? How do you feel about them now? And would you like to see less of them in the future?

Minimaps are generally good, only game that doesn't really need them is Dark Souls; but Nioh has a minimap and no one seems to have a problem with that aspect (quite handy, actually). GTA style minimaps are terrible but in almost every other situation they work fine. That said the Red Faction: Guerrilla/Saint's Row style of waypoints needs to be in almost every game.

I was just thinking the other day that when I play Hitman I spend half the time watching the mini map for white dots rather than watching where I'm going in the game proper. I think mini maps can definitely be more damaging to certain games and genres, with stealth being arguably the biggest victim.

I generally do not need, nor want a mini-map. The addition of a mini-map encourages the developer to design their game around it, which means you'll be looking at the damn mini-map while you really shouldn't (GTA is a good example of it. I probably have not seen what half of that city, which they spend countless hours making extremely detailed, looks like. Because the game is too insistent on you looking at its mini-map).

That said, there are some games that greatly benefit from a mini-map. I installed a mod which adds a mini-map to Don't Starve and I would almost call it crucial to your enjoyment of the game.

@nnickers: Thats very true, but the game would be even more difficult without it.

I don't like it when a game doesn't have a minimap. Ever. It helps with navigation and I think there can be *improvements* to the structure of a minimap that might encourage exploration without necesarrily requiring it to be removed.

A 3D map like Doom's or Metroid Prime's on which you can place custom waypoints actually would be vastly superior to a minimap that I spend half the time staring at, now that I think about it. Combine that with a compass in the top of your screen like Skyrim's and you have a vastly superior way to assist players in navigating a 3D space.

As far as open world games like GTA V go, I'd also like to see lines on the road leading to your destination when you get in a car. Saints Row the Third had big arrows when you needed to take a turn and I always thought that was a fantastic design choice. GTA V's method ensured that I was looking at the minimap far too often to ensure that I didn't miss a turn. I brought this up with a friend once and he disagreed, saying that I should work on memorizing the city layout in GTA V or focus on navigating via landmarks or something and only use the minimap as an assistant, but I never intended to be that dedicated to an open world as massive as GTA V. Also I'm just fucking terrible at that sort of thing.

Dark Souls 3 is my favourite game in a long time, and I think it's owed entirely to the fact that I'm actually in the game world, taking every cautious step, rather than looking at an abstract representation of the game world from a bird's eye view.

Any time I play a game with an all-revealing minimap/compass, I feel like I'm going through the motions of playing a game, but not actually playing it.

I think a minimap improves pretty much any game. I never want less information available to me.

If you want my minimaps you'll have to pry them away from my dead hands.

Typically I don't need my maps to lead my by the hand every step of the way, but I do want some direction. Games have taken several strides towards quality of life improvements that generally I think are welcome in modern releases. The painted GPS route in open world games that involve driving any sort of vehicles over a sprawling map are a big boon that help you stay in the game and despite all it's flaws I think The Crew has had the best one to date. Minimaps that ping instead of straight up highlight items are also welcome, although in maps with lots of elevation differences they can be infuriating at times.

I'm also a firm believer in giving the player a very basic minimap and allowing you to spend skill points or what have you to upgrade it so that by the end of the game, if one is so inclined, you can go on this "sweep up" mode with a podcast or something, collecting every single items that is now specifically highlighted for you on your upgraded all encompassing God-minimap.

What? The compass that shows where everything is absolutely ruins exploration in modern Bethesda games. A minimap is 100 times better than the compass that destroys any joy you can get from finding something. You never find anything in modern Bethesda games, you just follow a compass.

@gargantuan: Sorry but I completely disagree.

Compared to the things minimaps often do show, the Bethesda compass tells you comparatively little. In Fallout 4 it shows you nearby locations, enemy blips and whatever waypoint you have.

It doesn't show you plants to harvest, it doesn't show you exclamation points for quest giving NPCs, it doesn't show you shopkeepers, it doesn't show you collectables, it doesn't show you crafting items. These are all things that in a Bethesda game you need to actually look and find for yourself. Not to mention any unmarked locations and all map the space in between. I don't think it ruins anything. Enough of the time I see the ruined school or the bandit fortress before the compass marker tells me what it is so I don't feel like I'm being cheated of a discovery.

If you just mean in terms of following waypoints then that's an issue that affects far more than just Bethesda games.

@gargantuan: I don't have that experience with Skyrim at all. The joy from playing that game to me is role playing it and discovering new cool things. Getting a heads up on where to go to uncover said things does not ruin anything for me. It's what I find there that makes it worthwhile, not looking for it. Wandering around and exploring is still a thing in that game.

Well, you can always navigate via memory and reference the in-game map. So, I guess it can be important that the game isn't explicitly built around the mini-map, and that the mini-map can be turned off, or scaled down in functionality to the players preferences.

I don't personally mind them. I guess there are some games that could be spoiled by them by being overdependent. Far Cry is a little problematic, as while I don't want the mini-map on for some things, I do want it on for others. So sometimes devs make the wrong decisions regarding the information contained by the map, or don't offer enough flexibility for players to adapt it to their own tastes.

Minimaps don't bother me at all. For GTA games I usually look at the map to see where I want to go and then try and drive to that location taking note of locations on the way in order to get my bearings so that by the time I get to half way through the game I can do it as I do in real life. I use the street signs also as they can point you in the general direction.

I am for them. I have never been frustrated at the inclusion of a minimap, but ihave been frustrated when games don't have them.

Woah. Flashbacks.

Thinking about this now, I feel mostly the same about it. Although with each more powerful iteration of consoles, the mini-map stops being so vital - it's easier for developers to make unique and standout assets that you can use to orient yourself. I just played GTA5 again on PS4 and definitely felt that I could glance at the map at the beginning of the mission and then kinda know where I was supposed to be going without needing the GPS to take me there - but that's only a result of dozens of hours dicking around in GTA Online, which has made me familiar with the city. Not really an intuitive substitute for the map system.

Similarly in something like Fallout or Red Dead Redemption, where you're in a seemingly endless desert or wasteland, you can't rely as much on those unique assets because they simply don't exist in that context.

I like the Naughty Dog/Mirrors Edge style of colour-coded guidance, where you're almost manipulated sub-consciously into getting to your destination. Did Catalyst have a minimap? I can't remember.

I am old, give me a mini map so i know where to go next! I loath roaming around aimlessly, elder scrolls is an exeption but they still have a compass so i dont get lost. I want to get to where im getting and as quick as possible!

I really don't like them. It's hard for me to look at a minimap and think anything other that, "the developers couldn't, or didn't have the time to figure out how to put this information in the world itself, so they just crammed it into this corner." Any time a game is designed in such a way that I feel like I have to spend a lot of time staring at a map in the corner of the screen, it bums me out.

Conversely, I love it when games find good ways to give that information in the world itself. I'd much rather icons in the world, or arrows on the street showing me where to turn than a tiny map in the corner.

Eh a game could have the best possible sign posting and I'll still always want quick reference for paths I may have missed or something. Minimaps are perfect for that.