[Role Playing Game] Thoughts on Quest Markers

[Knight of Arsford]

That exclamation mark above a character, is that really necessary?

I'm making an rpg and I'm currently deciding whether to add exclamation marks or not. I personally feel that the experience won't be organic if players would just mindlessly follow the mark wherever it is. On the other hand, I wouldn't want players to be frustrated when they have to find the quest guy.

The quest description describes enough so why would there be a need for a visual representation?

 

[Footman16]

I think the quest marker definitely helps; especially for an RPG with lots of quests.

 

[Avahor]

IMO quest mark correctly assigned gives some sort of engagement to the game. It's a sign that there'll be some event interesting to do. For example if you played Sacred 1, It was nice to see people with quest mark after a long journey walking through plains and plains of aggresive monsters.

 

[Tickles]

It's unfortunately necessary to have handholding indicators like that in multiplayer games. People don't have much patience when they're trying to keep pace with other players.

I would only do without indicators if it was a single player map or campaign where immersion is more important, and the player can take their time with each NPC or encounter.

 

[cleavinghammer]

You have to balance immersion with convenience. Using, for example, a question mark for "quest in progress" and an exclamation for "quest complete" may be jarring, but it's less frustrating than digging through the quest log to remember who and where the NPC is and what he wants.


You don't have to use quest markers, but then you need to ensure the quest givers are easy to spot, mark the names and locations in the quest log, maybe give them a "quest not completed" reaction if a player gets close... And even then you'll probably still get "NPCs should use quest markers" comments from people playing the map.