Yellow Paint Sucks and We Need It

[@ProfessorBopper]

This video is the second part in the Primary Colors Trilogy which began as a joke, but is real now! Here’s the first video about Blue Curtains: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nKmYZp14ZqxrpMksi=L-1LXH9wdwPtQ5sq

[@biffwhittle7659]

Insightful. I can't wait for part 3 of the Primary Colors Trilogy about HHGregg and how his red-and-yellow color palette is a manifestation of Gregg's innate balance of helpfulness, subtlety, and playful intensity. After this, we circle once again to blue, representing a sleek Panasonic Blu-ray $99 that calms the soul and brings us to a rested, peaceful state not of normalcy, but of new appreciation in our shared experience of HHGregg.

[@fakesmile172]

"As visual fidelity increases, visual clarity decreases."

[@Someguy6470]

The children yearn for NES Castlevania

[@Profecy02]

The real villain here is fidelity. Let's all just make PS2 games again. If everything is glowing and bright like Mario Sunshine, then nothing is

[@fakesmile172]

6th gen games often look great when rendered in a high resolution such as in an emulator, even moreso with an HD texture pack and maybe some filters.

[@FowardShift]

I still remember the whiplash after going from the original Deus Ex to Human Revolution. So much clutter that made my head hurt trying to find interactive elements

[@alanlee67]

​@FowardShift the yellow outline around interactables helped. That game had a pretty slick ui

[@nomercyforswine]

Anyone who has worked in retail for a day knows that people have an aversion to reading the things that are right in front of them and will make their experience faster and less frustrating. This isn't a gamer problem, it's a human problem.

[@vivil2533]

Heres a genuine problem i had. Is anyone familiar with red barrels. They explode when you shoot them right? In an interview with i think the "bullet storm" developers they mentioned that they originally made the explosive barrels in there game green. And nobody shot them. Because games as a whole had established red barrels = explosive. So this brings me to a psychological problem I have experienced. The moment i see yellow paint in a game, i completely lose the ability to find interactibles in that game without it. The game has established that it will show me where to go with yellow paint so i stop looking for anything else. And im not the only one. Thats probably what happened to everyone in the FF7 example on this video. Ive seen peoples ability to explore a game change dramatically between games based on how tyat game chooses to apply "yellow paint"

[@ETBrooD]

Perfectly explained. Yellow paint exacerbates the problem, it doesn't solve it. The more it's being used, the more it needs to be used. It's a solution for a problem that was caused by the solution.

[@vivil2533]

@@ETBrooD I will say that if we use "yellow paint" in the metaphorical since used in this video. Not all forms of it are bad. Primarily it's a problem if it's too aggressive/obvious. Or especially if yellow paint is use on every intractable. If yellow paint is used, on one especially hard to find passage or ladder that's fine. Personally my preferred form of "yellow paint" is lighting. Put a torch next to the ladder.

[@ETBrooD]

@@vivil2533 Overuse of yellow paint is indeed a big problem. It disrupts the flow of exploration and turns it into a checklist. The game should be beatable casually even if players miss over 50% of the content. Plus, I always say the first playthrough should be worth the whole price tag. With that approach, yellow paint becomes completely redundant. Missed some content? No problem, just do another playthrough and follow a different path. Developers must learn to not be afraid of gamers missing most of their content in their first playthrough.

[@lordpent]

Trying to make tutorials for any remotely popular game sounds exhausting- it's amazing how stubbornly Gamers will just not read the screen... But don't worry about all that, keep mashing past those pesky instructions! You already know all this because you're so talented and hardcore!

[@DeltaFluxx]

I think another thing about yellow paint that makes it super important is that developers have no idea when a player will stop playing a game. I know for me there have been many times when I’ve just not had time to play a game for a few weeks, jump back in and because I’ve forgotten what I was doing in the game and am past whatever direction I was given on where the game wants me to go, I’ve felt like I need to start the game over just to keep playing. Yellow paint can allow a game to guide you where you’re supposed to go, even if you have forgotten where you were trying to go

[@colossalweeb]

This is how I feel about any JRPG that doesn't have some sort of journal or summary of what happens since you left off in the game. Many times I've opened up a final fantasy game just to be on the world map and say to myself "what was I supposed to be doing again?" I personally don't think I need the sort of yellow paint to tell me which direction I need to be facing but something that just reminds me of what's happened and what I'm actually doing at all is essential for when I take extended breaks from playing certain games

[@Drayze1]

I think it's worth acknowledging that when playing a video game, we end up doing what we're trained for. The game teaches us what to expect we can and can't do, or should and shouldn't do, in its first few hours, and we generally stick to that as part of the contract we sign with the game to immerse ourselves. In a game like RE4, we learn early on that the game is shooting Spanish zombies and solving cryptic puzzles, and if we're not doing either thing, we are on our way between zones that let us do either thing. Why can't we make the choise to write off Ashley as dead, and come back with the US airforce to nuke the entire area into kingdom come as soon as we realize what's going on there? Because that's not what happens in the game. Why can't we leave the designated forest trails we're traversing? Because that's not what happens in the game. If our eyes miss the only way forward, our first thought is that it must be puzzle time now, because we cannot advance, and there are no Spanish zombies to shoot. It doesn't matter how obvious the ladder is, anyone who's ever searched their pantry for ten minutes looking for something, only to realize it was directly at eye level when they walked in knows that sometimes you just miss things, and in this case, you can't even be sure what it is you're looking for. Don't even get me started on not having your pixels aligned properly so you push the action button and nothing happens, so you assume the thing, whatever it is, must just be set dressing or something.

[@basedgebby5820]

I think it was criticisms of Doom Eternal that initially led me to believe that, in fact, it is sometimes okay for the video games to be mean to you for playing wrong. Tutorial popups, ammo pinnatas, overall atmosphere, whatever, if you prefer Doom 2016 I don't really care, but the most egregious "critique" I've seen is that Eternal doesn't let you "use the gun you want to use" and becomes brutally hard if you don't learn to listen to what it wants of you; the idea that combat becomes a "puzzle", where there is a correct answer to every enemy beyond just using enough bullets, is reviled because the player's wants should supposedly come first. Thank you for perfectly articulating why this bothers me so much.

[@ProfessorBopper]

Doom Eternal criticism always irritated me for the same reason. I get why someone might prefer 2016’s more loose style of aggression, but it’s not like Doom Eternal ever forces you into unwinnable puzzle situations. Ammo’s low, but not that low if you’re conscientious

[@MythrilZenith]

After having replayed both on Nightmare this past week, the ammo "problem" isn't in any way the actually issue with Eternal. It's that the late game combining of gimmicky puzzle fights that are only able to be won one way [Sentinels, Doom Hunters] with endlessly respawning gargoyles that can no-scope you from across the room if you look away from them that makes it more frustrating than fun. You will never run out of ammo and will always have hp and armor available thanks to said respawn, but changing it from zombies to gargoyles while you're dealing with arch viles and sentinels is a step that adds more frustration than fun, at least for me in particular. More power to you if you find that fun. Super Gore Nest and BFG10K platform are legitimately some of the most fun levels in either game, but there are like three rooms in particular in the back third of the game that actively suck all enjoyment out of me. The highs are very high, but the lows fall below 2016. Still fun though.

[@MagikarpPower]

​@@MythrilZenithdoom eternal is a really good place for criticism of this video. just bc you can play the game the "right" or developer intended way doesn't mean it's fun. when i realized the way DE wanted me to play i just got exhausted. nothing against anyone who likes the game, but i preferred 2016 a great deal more. i don't find playing with summons in ER fun even if its the intended way to play. it changes the way you interact with the boss for the negative imo. i think to maintain the difficulty without changing the formula too much from DS3, fromsoft was forced to up the ante and dip into some fake difficulty. personally i don't think its too much harder than usual (except the final boss) but i understand where ppl are coming from.

[@aureateseigneur5317]

​@@ProfessorBopperSure, chasing down ammo all the time gets fucking old as shit tho.

[@virn333]

It's a huge problem in doom eternal because it's a fast paced shooter based on movement which does not lend to tactical gameplay. The ammo problem is also huge on higher difficulties. Both are artificial difficulty and padding and don't fit the genre.

[@RazzleTheRed1]

In the resident evil 4 remake example we also saw a bloodstain smeared on a climbable wall in a similar manner to the yellow paint on the ladders. This is an example of signposting done well, because it is very believable that in the castle filled with crazed murderous zombie cultists there would be some blood around where some grisly act took place. Where as every interactable object being painted yellow implies the existence of some unseen mad painter who's going around painting things yellow, but only the objects that you can interact with. There is of course no lore to suggest this is the case and thus it kind of breaks immersion.

[@jeanotrilow5647]

Eh, in an RE4 where Merchant exists, you can just chalk the paint up to him. Dude has treasure maps and can freely move around, has an arsenal of weapons of war, an endless supply of cash and rocket launchers, and will pay you with gemstones if you kill some rats.

[@Tuffkid42]

At first I was like “is this gonna be a sequel video to “Blue Curtains”???” Can’t wait for your next video on Red Chairs. Anyway, love this video Bopper. Really well articulated, thought provoking, and entertaining all at the same time.

[@JoKad17]

The thing is people playing SoTE wrong goes beyond being pig headed against bosses, people straight up play it like it's the wrong genre. At it's core you have an ostensibly linear main path gated by a light sprinkling of mandatory bosses that you might not have yet the "juice" to beat and there's a grand variety of regions mostly unrelated to the main path where you can find the "juice" needed for progress. So basically it's a collectathon like Mario 64 but people expect to go throw hands with Bowser with only 20 stars. The work FromSoft made to maximize player exploration is insane and unique in the medium. The areas have wildly different mode of progress and traversal, verticality has reached a new peak. Every area offers a condensed experience and mood, from the anxiety inducing abyssal woods where you have basically no landmarks to orient yourself, few extremely deadly enemies and scarce rewards to the constant battleground of Scadu Altus where it's like Limgrave if the armies where still mostly operational and huge creatures roam around smashing dozens of soldiers at a time, to the spiraling descent of the fissure, to the constantly climaxing climb of jagged peak and many many more. Ultimately the scadutree fragments are not to be considered primarily as "the thing that makes the bosses easier", they are the glue that binds the experience together: they force you to explore to progress and the exploration is exactly the point. Just like the main game if you know what you are doing you can clear the dlc in an incredibly short time, the mandatory path is just a fraction of the experience. This time toh the game expects you to explore and at least check all the areas: most fragments are found at churches and stakes of Miquella, extremely easy to locate. Also as in most collectathons the vast majority of "progress juice" is not needed. At just 20 out of 50 fragments you already reach lv 10 and have a 65% damage boost and 40% damage negation, progress after that is very small increments. Now consider that in the starting area you have a bunch of sign posted crosses and a church. If you engage with the exploration aspect at all, even if you are bad at it, if you miss hidden crosses, pot bearing people with fragments and other random places, there's no way you can get to any boss without having at least lv 3 blessing in a blind run. You'd have to willfully avoid exploring and at that point is like playing Mario 64 and complaining you have to explore the levels to find stuff.

[@5chneemensch138]

After exploring once, the game becomes a checklist. That is the problem.

[@davidwegescheide3796]

I think the most important lesson here is that we need to have food rewards at the ends of games. That is clearly the major difference between gamers and octopi.

[@shine111]

The great tragedy of life, imo, is that you have to make your own food rewards. And then, get this, you don't even get an extra food reward for making yourself a food reward! Terrible game design

[@theargawalathing]

​@@shine111If life is so good, why isn't there a life 2???

[@shine111]

@@theargawalathing Same reason there isn't a bloodborne 2 🙏🙏🙏

[@michaelvisosky743]

You have given me the courage to believe that I am correct for believing someone is "playing the game wrong" when they skim past the text in Outer Wilds and refuse to consider it. Don't worry, I won't angerly say that to someone's face, because I am agreeable and that would be mean. I simply now trust that leaving was justified.

[@Advon]

I feel like there's another side you're forgetting, though you're generally correct. We need the yellow paint to mark usable ladders, because how many completely meaningless ladders that can't be interacted with or lead nowhere did we pass on the way to reach this one designated Correct Ladder? 'Ladders always go up/down' is a rule that only actually exists in our reality, not the reality the game takes place in. We need yellow paint because the rules are almost unavoidably inconsistent. This isn't *just* the fault of us gamers.

[@bld9826]

So I'm only about 10 minutes in but the discussion of people not engaging with a game on its own terms reminds me of something I said about Codename STEAM- yes, that obscure 3ds game by Intelligent Systems. Basically it's a 3rd person strategy game like Valkyria Chronicles, but there's no overhead map. Negative reviews would rip it apart for how they'd get ambushed, or how they couldn't even find the goal to some levels, while also saying the game didn't offer any new ideas. And it's like - you guys! The new idea is the thing you're refusing to engage with, the thing you JUST complained about! But at the same time, as a wannabe indie game dev, I wonder if there are ways to better onboard players to the intended experience, without railroading them. But that's what i figure this video's about, so I'll shut up and watch the rest now.

[@Roughling]

33:22 this right there. write that down. print that out. get your embroidery hoop out and start stitching. hang it up on the wall, as close to the screen you play on as you can.

[@IndigoEuphonium]

Watching DSP trying to play TotK made me understand how programmers and designers feel

[@mikehawk8984]

I think there's something to be said about this problem with how older survival horror tackled it. With Silent Hill and Resi 1-3 items were clearly differentiated between the background as an interactable because they all used pre-rendered backgrounds and the items weren't a part of that. Also the fixed camera gave clear intention as to what the game WANTED you to be looking at. With Silent Hill 2 and 3 on the PS2 the fidelity increased so it was harder to pick out the items that were interactable, so they made the character turn their head and look at items you could pick up.

[@EmeralBookwise]

I think this video might just be a bit needlessly adversarial. Yes, there is a point to be taken that game developers sometimes need to implement design elements to guide players along an intended path of how to best engage with a game, but that doesn't necessarily mean players are "wrong" for wanting to play differently and pushing back against that guidance. One of my favorite examples would be the 2012 XCOM and its 2016 sequel. The sequel specifically uses more timed missions in an attempt to pleasure players use riskier strategies, because the devs thought that was a more "fun" way to play than more methodically safer alternatives most players had adopted in the first. The friction this caused resulted in complaints that timer in the sequel was an unwanted form of artificial difficulty. A game like Elden Ring is sort of in the similar position, because while it is technically not Dark Souls 4, it's adjacency to that franchise and the fact it carries over many of the same mechanics means a lot of veteran players sort of expect it to still be the same as the games they've grown accustomed to. No one complained as much about needing upgrade items for weapons or the flask, because those were types of exploration rewards they were already familiar with from Dark Souls, but Scadutree fragments are something new and different and so not afforded the same nostalgic protection. It's not even the first time for Elden Ring, as even the base game had players arguing over whether using spirit ash was just a crutch for people who were bad at the game, in this case because the mechanic more closely resembled co-op summons, which had always been a divisive topic in the previous games. When it comes down to it, yes, whether or not a game is "too hard" will always be subjective. There is no one size fits all level of difficulty that will provide the same experience for every player... but that's also why the entire concept of difficulty settings exists in the first place. Do I think Elden Ring or any game needs an easy mode, no, but I also don't think including such an option is ever a bad thing.

[@hi-i-am-atan]

i think you might just be a bit too willing to accept someone coming up to you and calling you a little bitch with your only response being, "ah man, i guess i'm a little bitch" bare some teeth, gov! anyone who gets on your case about being just as bad as your tormentors is just looking to use you as fap fuel for their civility fetish anyhow

[@tehSunBro]

I feel like the main reason why things like the RE4 yellow paint are worse for immersion is because of how it is diagetic. Andre as a blacksmith explaining to a player how his job works makes sense in universe. He would obviously explain to his customer what the service he offers does for his customer. But how do you explain a rural village in the middle of nowhere spain having painted random boxes, ladders, and other things. The reason the "big button in the middle of the screen" or even things like the high tech hud elements of 7Remake are less intrusive, is because as a player i know these things aren't really there. I can see the big button, but Leon can't. But i also agree that the yellow paint is needed. There are mods for the RE4Remake, that completely remove the yellow paint, and even after playing the game multiple times, just turning it off will lead to missing a bunch of things. I used a secondary mod that would highlight every item in a massive radius, just to scan for all the things i have missed, and its a lot. However, the same mod also lets you change the yellow paint to a blood texture, and seing bloody crates and ladders does a lot for improving the immersion, because its less questionable that there are bloody crates all over RE4.

[@cheezburger2000]

I'm 26 mins in and have to say I agree with the premise of this video (my personal philosophy is no game wants you to not beat it) though I have to disagree with u on Gongaga with my own personal experience While the area was great. And it did give me the feeling of navigating a sense jungle area the game instilled in me the idea that mushrooms lead to areas of interest, imagine my surprise when a mushroom didn't do that. The problem with gongaga is the fking mushrooms and I wish they'd have removed some of them because for a while gongaga made me feel like a beast making my indian rainforest trekking ancestors proud with how easily I grasped the geography and layout of it.

[@ProfessorBopper]

I didn’t have the mushroom problem simply because I liked watching the chocobo go zoom

[@desmondbrown5508]

The yellow paint phenomenon is literally no different than the ways we tricked ourselves into thinking we were smart in older games. What's the difference today though? The fact that dynamic objects in game worlds can and routinely do take the exact same quality as static assets in scenes and the fact that we are capable of densely packing scenes full of cruft just to make places feel lived in. All that noise, can often make the otherwise mundane secrets of 15+ years ago almost impossible to find for most people. Like, in older games like N64, we ALL know you could tell when a wall was breakable because there were seams on it that aliased weirdly or that breakable part of a wall was oddly lighter color or more obviously z-fighting on the edges because it was harder to make those assets blend in. And of course, not a lot of static and other pointless dynamic geometry was cluttered around back then (due to constraints of hardware back then) to take your attention away from the obvious seams/off-brightness/etc. Not to mention, interact-able items had either glowing effects, sparkles, or were just outright shaded a lighter hue just to make them stand out more. ALL of this, even in some older Souls games, existed primarily to draw SOME attention to things in the exact same way that today's "yellow paint" does. It's literally exactly the same thing. I get the feeling a lot of the complaints about yellow this, orange that, come from people that just haven't been around in gaming for a long enough time (or just have some strange rose-tinted view of the past). Because all of the stuff I've seen complained about in modern games (easy modes, yellow tape, etc.) is all shit that we've had in games since they first started being made. Absolutely NONE of this stuff is new, novel, or by any means offensive. It wasn't before, at lest.

[@Kuuribro]

I am very glad that people are starting to pick up on this. I've been trying to point out to people in discussions for years now that the higher fidelity higher normals maps better lighting literally makes it *harder* to visually pick out important things. Chasing realism has reached the point that necessary UI and player guiding tools just feel out of place in the "realistic"ness of it all

[@ETBrooD]

You still had to pay attention in those old games. You had to notice the cracks in the seams. Now you don't.

[@TM_0153]

I don't necessarily agree with everything you say here but I appreciate that you're able to express your opinions in a logical and clear way, making a solid case.

[@Kryptnyt]

I think it's valid to have an option at the beginning of the game ask you if you want the Yellow Paint or not. The dark souls and elden ring Yellow Paint is the message with the guy pointing at the hard to see ladder or secret wall in online mode, and if you don't want backseating, you just play offline, right? You consent to that. There's some more thoughts that come to mind- Morrowind's verbal directions versus Oblivion's Quest Markers. One is more tedious and more rewarding and satisfying, but will filter certain people out of enjoying the game. It's not more hardcore or more difficult or inaccessible, but people fear that uncertainty. It's scarier! Take a right after the fourth tree? Uhh, was that bush back there a tree or a bush??? Scary. Thanks for the video Bopper, good stuff to think about. I think the REmake4 paint genuinely looks awful. I didn't find myself struggling too much with SotE, but I did use some strong tools to make things go quicker. Game gives you them for a reason. Also, shields are good, I like shields.

[@merlinthetuna]

This can be hard to do just right, especially since "just right" is going to vary by player. Dishonored is a memorable example, where the options menu allows you a *lot* of toggles for what does or doesn't get UI elements. I opened that before starting, said "what the heck am I looking at here", and ran with the defaults. The defaults are somewhat too helpful IMO, and Dishonored also features a dedicated Yellow Paint Vision as its own problem. But the point is: even just picking Easy/Normal/Hard can be weird at the start of the game because you have no reference point for it. Picking something even more esoteric than that is going to have at least as many misses as hits.

[@ceulgai2817]

Serious question unrelated to the video: How do you not have 100k subs? No joke, this is a great channel; seriously underrated.

[@p00pdragon]

I had to mod re4 to not have yellow paint and it literally made no difference on progressing the game for me. It was so ugly even if it’s helpful. I’m not playing re4 for an easy game IMO they shud of restricted it to easy mode or something.

[@Hiya8partyz]

Instructions unclear. I’m blue dabadeeabodai

[@nngnnadas]

Proper yellow paint is diagetic. It is literaly a diagetic alternative for the UI-based solutions that were more common prior to it.

[@nngnnadas]

Ok. Later you basically agree with me 😅 I think. But I went back and the way you phrase it in 3:53 is still confusing, You mean that "yellow paint" in the broader meaning refer to both the diagetic and not diagetic types of guidance?

[@nngnnadas]

To be clear. It is diagetic because the paint exist in the main game space, the same space as the charecters. Even if it's unrealistic and immersion breaking, it's supposed to be literaly there. A button prompt exist in an extra "HUD" space, and the charecters are not supposed to be able to see it. The same as they can't hear the music intensifies when a battle start.

[@ceulgai2817]

If "gamers" weren't so concerned with video games looking like real life, we wouldn't need so much yellow house paint :shrug:

[@ceulgai2817]

Like, how many "trivial objects" do you need? Why do you care so much about making your game "realistic" or "pretty" to where an interactable door and an interactable door look the same?

[@goldenalpaca3881]

I find it hysterical that so many people first played Elden Ring, ignored most of Limgrave to just beeline to Stormveil. Just to get bodied my Morgot because they had no gear or levels then flock to social media to complain that the game was too hard... just the realise their mistake later. Only to, two years later... boot up Shadow of the Erdtree, ignore all the shadu fragments the game tells you to grab so they can beeline to Belurat and get bodied by the Dancing Lion because they had no levels then flock to social media to complain that the game was too hard... just the realise their mistake later... AGAIN. When you look at the pattern, it's very hard to take the 'I don't like it when games insult my intelligence' crowd very seriously.

[@BUKUDI]

Your final statement makes no sense. The yellow paint is for the people you described. Most of the people annoyed by it are the ones who don't need it but have to endure it because of the idiots

[@ChicanerDiMarty]

It's hard to take the Souls community seriously right now in general. They really thought they knew what they wanted out of this new FromSoft release but in reality they don't know jack about game design and now because some of them had a bad time with the game (which most of it self induced btw), it is now the game's fault. I'm just glad the Souls community has no actual input on what gets made.

[@datzfatz2368]

@@ChicanerDiMarty i was very dissapointed in the community on this DLC, yeah. Its not like we havent been through this whole circus of cringe EVERY SINGLE TIME Fromsoft releases a new game. You would think people would have learned this by now, but alas, guess not^^. I bet you in a few years or after Fromsofts next big Release everyone will start complaining about that one the same way, and Elden Ring/SotE will be looked back on more fondly or with the classic "we were wrong about/to hard on it". Its always the same cycle and it so annyoing at this point lul^^.

[@flavionms]

​@@ChicanerDiMartyWhat do you think is the right way to play Elden Ring? And SoTE, if applicable.

[@blueberriesinmycoffee1234]

I liked the comparison between the item crate in og RE 4 and the remake. I've never really thought about it before, but it makes sense that higher graphical fidelity would ironically make it harder to find things. As an aside, I went from playing ffxv to ffvii remake, and I've gotta say, I missed big shiny glowing item chests in the former so much. Part of that's just that I find it more satisfying, but it also just really is easier to see. All of us have failed to pick up so many dimes and quarters, I think people don't need to feel quite as personally hurt by it.

[@absoul112]

For some reason, this video has been more convincing to me to try out (some of) From Soft's games more than anything else. I'm still a little hesitant because the visuals creep me out. I do have to wonder why so many who don't need yellow paint get so upset at it. At least to me, the anger comes across as insecurity.

[@Moonsong227]

This essay makes me think about the diversity of play styles in pokemon mainline games. Everyone was mad about sword/shield, but it took me three playthroughs to realize that the game has a specific way it wants you to play, AND that play style IS enjoyable! It's just annoying to be confronted with at first if you're someone who likes to transfer up a lot of pokemon and catch a lot of pokemon, or if you're someone who likes to form a team early and watch only that team grow. Soon after this discourse, the whole fandom started talking about "X game is the best" and "X game sucks, actually". Meanwhile I was setting out on a long term quest to very thoroughly play everything my pokemon games had to offer, starting with platinum. And I discovered that each set of games, though it is a jrpg, wants you to play in very different ways--but if you were a kid and pre teen playing the middle generations, which had an streak of aesthetic and story cohesiveness, you hyperfixationed your way through the plot and probably didn't understand the tiny enjoyable things along the way. You noticed the parts that were the same, and said THAT is the shell which defines a pokemon game. Sword wants you to play through a loop on the map, then go do whatever in the more open world areas of the game that your progress unlocked. Sinnoh games want you to sloooooow way down and drink in every side attraction, and even the mythology of Sinnoh points to this, being all about "the world and the people in it is awesome and the world exists for you to just enjoy that awesomeness". Hoenn games go even further into the no-lifing jrpg come back every day to make slow, world changing progress, on top of being very very social with the game. Unova wants you to care about the plot and how it reflects the way you think about your team. These long and steady play style games, it just so happens, are the ones that get video after video complaining about how long it takes someone who's made videogames their job to no-life grind for these slow progress points. The rest of the videos in the fandom are complaining about how more recent generations have made these slow world changing progressions into one somewhat long sitting, or even just a quick hunt for the goal, and that this has ruined the mystique of the series. Long story short because I have to go make supper, I've realized lately that in a long running series, you have to accept that there's going to be diversity SOMEwhere, and that is a GOOD thing, and gamer internet personalities just aren't usually good at accepting that. Idk if its neurodiversity or gamer culture or how game fandoms have a tendency to crystallize what they think the game is, but theres a sense that Gamers (tm) really like consistency, but also kinda hate it.

[@easy_nin]

The entire world would be yellow in Donkey Kong 64

[@Slenderquil]

Bananas

[@Treblebeatgames]

It's always made me laugh a bit when people talk about how yellow paint on ladders or whatever is immersion breaking. Is it tacky and silly? A bit, yeah, but when I'm getting chased down by infected in ResE4, the last thing I'm thinking about is yellow paint, and I'm mostly glad I know what I can and can't break to try and save my sorry ass for being bad at the game. I'm genuinely not thinking about why it's painted yellow, I'm just glad it is.

[@itsallenwow]

I really appreciated your part about the difficulty in the original dark souls can better be described as a lack of yellow paint. When dark souls dropped and I first tried in 2013, I had been playing games like Bioshock / Skyrim. That have a lot of yellow paint, and the difficulty and uniqueness of dark souls was that it didn’t have the map, quest markers, or even a super defined moment to moment goal. In reality you can get through basically all of ds1 by holding up a shield and making your way through the world blocking everything. And figuring out the mystery. That’s what was meant by dark souls being hard, it had vague goals and punished your mistakes with run backs and curse etc.But the amazing thing was you could kill these huge gods, with just roll / poke. Incredibly novel at the time, but 11 years later they can only design so many bosses that fit that mold. But by the time dark souls 3 came around what “dark souls hard” morphed into was the combat is super fast, and the bosses will have much tighter windows to roll. Suddenly, the frustrating experience of being stuck on a boss for hours and hours overshadowed DS1’s original appeal. Now you just have to fight Bayle for hours and hours because that’s what the expectation has become. If anything Erdtree has even more yellow paint than the base game. Where they’re telling you “this item will increase your damage and make you take less, pick this up.” In terms of Scadutree Fragments. One other piece of criticism I have about the modern design is just that I’m never surprised by the bosses anymore. In Demons Souls you have no idea what’s about to happen to Malden Astrea in her boss room. And it’s super memorable because of that. In Elden Ring you pretty much know it’s gonna be a giant boss that’s super aggressive and you’re going to spend 45 minutes to 2 hours battling. On that level I fully understand Asmon’s lack of desire to finish the DLC.

[@hydrophobia936]

I do miss how unique the bosses in the previous games used to be. I miss dumb and sometimes easy gimmick fights like Fools Idol, Phalanx, Deacons of the Deep, and Halflight/Old Monk. Big guy with a big sword or a big monster is fine if it's not the only thing in the game.

[@Roughling]

the hammer to head of nail ratio in this video is staggering

[@mc.type_guy]

Long version: Modern gamers need to learn that for a game to truly be a unique, artistic experience, the designers will have to make decisions that serve to push players into certain directions. In the same way that framing and composition can convey intent and meaning in a film, well placed yellow paint (literally or figuratively) nudges the player in the right progression, making it easier for designers to manage progression and expectations. Short version: oh no there's a blue arrow or yellow paint on the wall. Who cares? sounds like you need to touch grass

[@flavionms]

The difference is that movies don't put a big red circle around the object you're supposed to pay attention to, they use framing and composition. No one (well, no one reasonable) is saying games shouldn't lead you the right way. They just shouldn't do it so crassly.

[@Kenneth735]

I wonder how this line of thinking would apply to games like Smash Melee. They only use a small part of the game, and the developers openly dislike that but they continue to exist as a big community.

[@medalkingslime4844]

I like broadening the definition of Yellow Paint here. The "way too hardcore for you" marketing kept me from the Souls games for far too long, but it actually didn't start with Bamco and the Prepare to Die Edition. In 2009, as a less irony-poisoned high school weeb, I went to Anime Expo and had to see the Atlus US presentation cause I was super into Persona 4. The blurb just said they were announcing they were publishing a brand new type of game called "Demon's Souls". They started the presentation by asking something like "Everybody who's been ambushed in Nocturne, got all your turns stolen and lost more than 2 hours raise your hand!" and most attendees were cheering about that. They went over DeS by going over all the difficult aspects and compared it to SMT in terms of its hostile game design and I just walked out without even getting in on the raffle for a promo figure cause they made the game seem so hateful toward players. What I'm saying is that it was MegaTen fans who bear responsibility for the elitism [in the English speaking world at least] that plagues the Souls fandom. Discussion of the game was targeted at the group of neckbeards who used Nocturne as their dick measuring contest and we've never recovered.

[@flavionms]

Did you actually enjoy them for what they are when you finally got to them, though?

[@ricniclas]

I still agree with Joseph Anderson's point because of one reason: The series generally doesn't create enemies that responds well to ranged builds/summons. I usually play as a mage whenever I can in other games, but after Dark Souls 1, I've never never started any FS game as a sorcerer because the class made me not learn enemy patterns, exploit their AI, and it wasn't fun for me. The problem with Elden Ring is that, it is rarely "appropriately" hard. Summoning still makes boss fights boring, enemies most of the time still don't know how to deal with magic (although a lot of enemies remedy this by beeing super aggressive), but playing melee against some bosses is not just hard. its boring. Enemies are sometimes more aggressive than Sekiro's counterpart, and don't leave clear punish windows and flip on the whole arena. In Sekiro, you aggressive enemies didn't make you roll 16 attacks just to get a single R1, but that's how most fights end up in Elden Ring. TLDR, the problem isn't exactly the difficult, but just that the enemies are too aggressive for basic melee builds to be fun, which encourages builds that ignores the enemies moveset/just nukes them. the problem is. which never lets the game have a satisfying difficulty level

[@Nudderbols]

"If the game is too hard just use bleed"

[@pantarei3446]

I feel like the problem in this case is still thinking that the game plays like a "turn based" like previous games (which also arguably tried to move away from that mindset). You don't need to wait for the boss to finish his combo, attack in the pauses: with a fast weapon you have plenty of time to recover and do it again more frequently, while with an heavier weapon you don't have as much chances, but you do more burst damage and you're more likely to break poise (a mechanic that they're pushing with every AAA they made after ds3). It's not nearly as tedious or boring if you play it like this, but it sure requires commitment. More than their previous games for sure

[@lito7306]

"aggressive enemies didn't make you roll 16 attacks just to get a single R1, but that's how most fights end up in elden ring" is a very bad faith interpretation of the boss design and almost every scenario in the game

[@ChicanerDiMarty]

Joseph Anderson convincing people that playing melee in Elden Ring is boring is the worst thing to come from his review of the game. Enemies nearly don't have the amount of attack strings as people think, it is simply a matter of positioning and the direction of your roll being important.

[@ricniclas]

@@ChicanerDiMarty Nah, I think it is boring compared to Sekiro. I got really spoiled by getting used to how good the combat was on that game

[@starryslight7095]

CHRIS NAKED MOD- 🙈🙈🙈 BOPPER- Actually this reminds me of some metaphorical? metaphysical(?) yellow paint i encountered while playing smt5. First big boss, I found its weaknesses okay, but I was throwing attacks at it from super unoptomized demons that were doing baby damage to it 😂 i barely won and I was like hoo man what a fight, I can't believe those attacks barely hurt it. Then I started actually fusing my demons and immediately got one that would've cleared the boss way easier. I was like 🧍‍♀️ oh I wasn't supposed to get my entire team killed. That was a me problem It's funny how much easier or more intuitive games can get when you actually play them the right way 😂 I forget that sometimes, maybe we all need this video tapping on our shoulder and reminding us every so often ha ha. I am v excited for the third video of this primary colors of meaning trilogy 🙏

[@goodgamer1419]

I think a game should make it clear what the easy build or playstlye is, i think a major part of Soulslike difficulty is that the marketing has charicters in armor using sword and sheilds, its on the box, and that makes players assume that that is the "default" way to play.

[@aureateseigneur5317]

It tends to be one of the easiest. Good armor, a kite shield, and a straight sword is one of the strongest entry builds in every Souls game. The Straight Swoed is consistantly one of the best weapons in these games and the cover Knight is always using a Steaight Sword.

[@5chneemensch138]

@@aureateseigneur5317 That only applies to intermediate players. Absolute beginners are generally better of with a big bonk stick because most enemies can just be staggered to infinity. But yes, the arming swords are great in all Souls games.

[@fy8798]

Lovely video. Sometimes I play rather odd games, and the amount of walls some gamers run into over and over because "No yellow paint" is pretty...staggering. It's not just a fidelty thing, can happen with pixel art too. "Where do I go" after the NPC told them to directly AND the game put a general (subtle) marker on a map too is very common indeed. Part of it probably is that, despite the posturing of many gamers, gaming is not in fact the hardcore hobby of the hardest tough cookies, it's still a means of relaxation and switching off. But it's good at making people feel like they're the hardest of the hard for beating a game.

[@jonathanwilson7949]

My take is that yellow paint usually takes less than three seconds to get through or traverse so complaining about it is kind of a weird take imo lol

[@Ram-fu6sy]

Is your intention to murder someone with that low framerate gameplay of Elden Ring?

[@ProfessorBopper]

Yes

[@NasuPrime]

What’s most frustrating about the yellow paint discourse is how people neglect to consider exactly what is being painted. Where is friction being removed? There’s a world of difference between a yellow re4 ladder and slathering paint on el gigante’s weak point. It’s an action/survival horror game, not a ladder climbing sim

[@AB54099]

I remember having the same friction with Lies of P as you did with Like a Dragon Isshin. Maybe for a touch longer since I kinda did get away with it for longer as a "Sekiro with a different parry window". Throwable items and realising the dodge is better when strafing/locked on saved my bacon when things got tough and made it easier to see the actual strengths and flaws with the game.

[@dogf421]

solution: miquella descends from the heavens when you enter the realm of shadows grabs you and says "if you dont get scadutree fragments im gonna KILL YOU" then floats away

[@jierdareisa4313]

I love ALL Professor Bopper videos!!!! ❤

[@Kuuribro]

Thank you for giving me a more eloquently backed up argument for "you're playing the game wrong" discussions!

[@Dartagnan4012]

In regards to dark souls and playing it the "right way" i do play it like anderson does, with a melee weapon and no summons, because for me, it is the most fun way to play the souls games. There is no longer enough challenge for me to have fun with it if i do it another way. Its part of why i liked sekiro so much, because they took that style and refined it even more. Im not gonna hate on anyone for playing the souls games differently but it does feel bad when my favorite playstyle is not designed into it. And i understand taking a game on its own merits, im just saying in this instance if the souls games forced me to summon or to use non melee builds, my enjoyment of them would be grately diminished

[@ProfessorBopper]

They good news is that From seems to be going back and forth with shorter, melee focused games (Bloodborne, DS3, Sekiro) and larger, more build focused and adventury games (DeS, Elden Ring)

[@shine111]

I love how your approach to making sure people understand some of your editing and phrasing choices is written footnotes on the screen, in a video in which part of the thesis is "yeah this is an insult to the players' intelligence but also some of you people are too stubborn and/or stupid to read the instructions on the screen". Very brave. My main experience with yellow paint problems was with dragon age inquisition, where you're told, when you enter the first large open level of the game, that you're there only to do a couple quests and then the next phase of the plot will unlock, and you can return to your base. There are a lot of available quests and stories and tons of stuff to explore though, so when I finished the necessary ones I went like "ok but I'm having fun and this is so pretty, the plot can wait" and then after a few hours I hit a couple higher level areas and decided to leave and come back later. So you can imagine my surprise when I found out that the meme is that the game makes you get stuck in the hinterlands for hours and hours and hours at the beginning, that it takes forever to see plot. They ended up patching in a few lines from your companions so they'd tell you "hey you remember that we have to go back to base to continue the plot right?" and you won't believe this but people ignored that too. And they don't read the damn flavor text either like is this not why we play the fantasy video game? Like I know I like flavor text more than most (silmarillion fan) but why are you here if you don't want to engage with the world of the game even a little bit

[@lumer4199]

only a ten minutes in, but your point on engaging with what a game is and not the preconceived notion of what it should be was very insightful and has allowed me to reflect upon my own criticisms of all mediums.

[@templarkid.]

>Year of Our Lord of Twenty Twenty-Four >720p 💀 Great video, though

[@zaperzero]

This is a super compelling dive back into the yellow paint topic, and I really respect the writing chops to be able to fold in this retrospective on that topic with the current controversy of Scaudtree Blessings. That being said, I feel like the signposting that scadutree blessings were important was something I'd intuited from just seeing that it was added to the dlc that it'd replace leveling up your character, and I'm frustrated with the mechanic because it doesn't have the same flexibility of access as levels, nor the same tangible sensation of strengthening a character that leveling has. You have to fight something with and without a certain growth of scadutree fragments to see the difference, necessitating revisiting old locations you've already thoroughly explored enough to remember how the enemies felt to fight, AND you have to remain on the same build using the same or similarly strengthened gear to experience that growth directly. However, leveling up simply gives you tangible access to new stronger weapons and spells, visibly expanded bars (hp/fp/stamina), access to new tools such as the variety of debuffs from dragon communion incants for example. That's why I think a lot of players (even if they can't quite articulate it) feel like the Scadutree Blessings are a punishment you have to explore to remove, rather than a reward you have to explore to attain, despite the game's best efforts to paint it as the inverse.

[@ProfessorBopper]

I would be interested to see what the response would’ve been had FromSoft made Shadows of the Erdtree closer to something like The Ringed City: a short, taut, incredibly difficult gauntlet. With the exception of the final boss, I think the bosses are about equally as difficult as The Ringed City (factoring in all the tools and expanded moveset the player has). I think Scadutree fragments are good, but mostly because I wanted more Elden Ring and other than a few spells, they didn’t add anything with insane stat requirements because levels have such depreciating value in endgame

[@grumpyman2]

The footage of matthewmatosis getting "shellacked" by prowling magus shows him getting hit... one time? idk about that dude

[@clvr51]

DOOM did it so well with its diagetic green lights, I don't understand how nobody else does something like that.

[@randalthevandal4170]

You cooked

[@JuliusKingsleyXIII]

It is very difficult for me to figure out the "intended way" to play Elden Ring when really I don't think there is one. I beat the game and DLC melee no summons and it was pretty miserable. It's pretty clear they intend for you to use every tool at your disposal, but the problem is that it swings the balance too far the other way. I don't think I ever missed the popup about Scadutree fragments, but also literally every review mentioned them so I'm not sure how anyone could have. As far as the actual "yellow paint" goes, I personally think its too much but I also recognize most people are really stupid. I don't think I need it to figure out what boxes I can break in RE4R, but at the same time I recall just this week a moment in Sekiro where I did not know where to go because the cliff I needed to jump to was below me and stood out from the environment so little that I missed it. But I feel like you could achieve better visibility in more natural ways like...idk...not making them damn near invisible to begin with.

[@hi-i-am-atan]

i thought as i was watching the very footage in this video how it's kinda odd that the ladders are just kinda _splattered_ with the paint instead of being fully coated or having a old coat with marks of wear or something ... but then i remembered that brightly colored ladders are usually _metal,_ not wood, and that made me wonder if metal ladders or fully painted wooden ones would look any less odd in the contexts re4make uses 'em plus, there's the whole consideration of _when_ the paint was added in development, with the most likely answer being "very, _very_ late during qa testing" so chances are it's a cheap-feeling solution because the remaining budget literally couldn't afford a more elegant one

[@ricniclas]

Was the part of Sekiro that you miss was right at the start of the game, after one of the first mini bosses? were if you don't find the right path, the only available way is to face the beheaded zombie guy? If so, I lost myself the same way as you lol

[@SoupWizard776]

I never thought I would get another Bloodborne pov, but shadow of the Erdtree proved me wrong

[@valentinvas6454]

Apparently we will have the option to turn the "yellow paint" off in SW Outlaws and that sounds very good IMO regardless of the game's quality. Shadow of the Tomb Raider had something similar with white paint if memory serves right.

[@jonathanwilson7949]

This just makes me appreciate Resident Evil 4’s tight as hell difficulty

[@theboostedbaboon4586]

This is a really good video essay. I had never realized it until it was pointed out here, but I agree with the points. I like flat out tutorials and pop-ups, as I need to know how to play the game. I also enjoy more diagetic tutorials. 2D Mario is really good at getting a player to learn a mechanic without blatantly telling them. They make it so that you cant progress unless you do an interaction that a player needs to know to beat the rest of the level. It prevents people from missing a key mechanic and getting stuck. The "yellow paint" that people don't like is in between these 2 types of tutorials. I don't like when a tutorial tries to be diegetic, but can't fit into the game naturally, so they use paint instead of committing to something more "video-gamey" and easy to read. Like if we're already going to forgo immersion to teach me something, I'd rather it be obvious then "fake blend in".

[@sol3019]

I jumped in this video fully expecting a rant about how yellow paint makes any room look like ass but this is fine too

[@Tarnished_Onryo]

Thanks for teaching me how to say cait sith. Ff7 being a childhood favorite, this is important to me

[@chrisdiokno5600]

You know, I can get yellow tape to an extent. Like, at times, especially in non linear games, a player might forget where they're supposed to go for X or Y, so some reminders can be useful. Alongside this, in the case of climables, to me, you need some way to like, denote that X or Y is something you can climb on, whether it be through color ala Mirror's Edge, or something as simple as making it jut out from a wall.

[@wolffster25]

I’ve heard people say understanding games is like learning a language. A lot of these decisions is to make it obvious to people who don’t play games a lot. However there are some games that demand you get intimate with them like Tactics Ogre in the most recent release the game will cap your level preventing you from grinding. This is because of the way the enemies scale to your level to prevent them from getting too powerful and to encourage you too use all the games systems (items, equipment, classes etc) as it is a strategy. However a lot of people will not like that because it is not what they expect or want. I think this saying is going to be more important as time goes on “A game for everyone is a game for no one.”

[@chemccord]

A big issue we have is too many game designers act like you either have to have your hand held or this weird esoteric design that relies far too heavy on needing KZbin. There’s a heavy mix and I wish ppl would be honest and say there are parts in games souls style included has some quest or mechanics that come off as only being found if someone told you or ran around hitting pots for 309 hours

[@SkyBlueFox1]

Great video! I've never gotten too involved in (or burnt by) the Yellow Paint(tm) discourse, but speaking as a PSY student, I think a lot of it tends to come down to - for lack of a better term - a lack of media literacy. Which is kinda weird, right? Like, most people who've grown up playing videogames *do* develop an intuition regarding games; watch any video of a "non-gamer" trying out a game like BOTW or whatever and you immediately notice the difference. To an extent, the people complaining about Yellow Paint *do* have some amount of media literacy. The issue isn't one of being unable to read or understand or anything like that - it's more about the mindset that people go into videogames with, and how that can affect or impact their experience. One example I always think of regarding mindsets is Morrowind. It is, for all intents and purposes, a traditional, old-fashioned CRPG, just in first-person and with a solo-character. But when it was released on the Xbox, it was being played by a whole generation of people who had probably never even heard about that genre before. They had no frame of reference for "CRPG", so most of them ended up playing Morrowind under the assumption that it was some sort of action-RPG - and that misunderstanding is where the majority of critique came from. (That's not to say MW doesn't have issues, of course! But the sheer amount of people who didn't understand what kind of game they were playing? That's why Oblivion and Skyrim were so heavily retooled and simplified, respectively.) Digetic elements; abstract elements; genres; goals; none of this stuff can be assumed or lumped into a single nutshell. Always approach games with a fresh mindset, even ones that you might have prior experiences with. You might be surprised at what ends up clicking with you if you're patient!

[@SkyBlueFox1]

(And as a personal aside, this Yellow Paint stubbornness doesn't just apply to gameplay, either. There's a surprising number of Zelda fans who actively decried Tears of the Kingdom not for any earnest criticisms, but because its story and worldbuliding didn't "fit with the timeline" and "doesn't make any sense with the rest of the lore". These people have enough media literacy to understand their favorite series, but they aren't literate *enough* to realize their preconceived notions are getting in the way. It's good to have a passion and a drive towards the writing and storytelling of a series, but, once again, always approach games with a fresh mindset - and understand the devs' priorities may not be the same as yours!)

[@hi-i-am-atan]

morrowind is a funny case of, in a sense, re4make without the yellow paint to such an extent that it _permeates into its core gameplay mechanics._ it's a traditional, old-fashioned _first-person_ crpg in line with the previous elder scroll titles and things like ultima underworld, but everything's 3d models and the animations are all smooth and it's reached a level of fidelity where traditional, old-fashioned first-person crpg mechanics ... kinda really suck to play, actually! and it's not the gameplay itself, no, it's perfectly fine but there's this whole major hurdle of swinging your cool sword at something and getting _absolutely no feedback_ as to why hitting the thing didn't hit the thing which just feels _so_ much worse when it's 3d models swinging at each other instead of 2d sprites jazzwalking through the low resolution 3d world and that sorta thing just permeates almost all of morrowind's dice rolls. the presentation of those older games afforded them an abstraction that morrowind's doesn't, and this has not changed even as morrowind's look ages further and further into a relic of a past era. it's just _too_ visible when something happens that the dice randomly deciding that no it didn't happen actually doesn't read as an intentional part of the game, but rather some jank bullshit that you have to constantly fight against throughout your cool fantasy adventure in a land of mushrooms and swamps and pterodactyl things trying to tear themselves into your nightmares feels like one helluva instinctively-bold-but-actually-pretty-cold take to make, but honestly morrowind might be several degrees more impenetrable than any of the souls games for this very reason. there's just nothing in any of the souls games that remotely reaches the same peaks as going through morrowind's extremely guided and literally bureaucratic character creation, stepping like a yard outside seyda neen with the dagger you swiped from the census office, and getting caught in a shadowboxing match with a random mudcrab until your cool fantasy dude's chest suddenly splits open and you're told to reload your last save. now _that's_ a formative experience like no other!

[@SkyBlueFox1]

@@hi-i-am-atan Yeah the lack of feedback is the biggest issue MW faces. Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale and even Daggerfall had sound effects for missing or clanging against armor or whatever, and that went a long way towards making the dice-roll mechanics easier to parse. Hell, for as complicated and different as Daggerfall is, the fact that you do get those sound effects arguably makes it a little more approachable - at least in that specific sense. It’s legit super-fascinating stuff!

[@thedom2753]

Shadow of the Erdtree is way too hard and its not because i'm at scadutree blessing 2 vs rellana and only use jumping heavy attacks Why is the game not designed to be effortlessly beaten by my exact playstyle, I'm obviously right 😡

[@avelonzx]

Dead Space is still the best designed game in terms of diegetic HUD and even gameplay mechanics like the weapons having context behind them as believable engineering tools in the context of the game's setting, while still being highly imaginative and original.

[@ldib7798]

I don’t think a game explaining its mechanics is bad. If a games mechanics are too obscure then it essentially will force the player to look up a guide or play the game with extra frustration because they missed a vital concept. It’s better to have a system in game that allows the player to learn so they don’t have to wiki surf to understand concepts.

[@rafaelferreirademoraes3479]

Excellent video!

[@williamcasey9427]

I am too dumb for this channel. Great video.

[@Gilgamessedup]

Art is subjective. It's so easy to say but hard to practice. Not every game was made for me, or to please me, or to cater to my preferred playstyle. And especially after a large financial investment, this can become hard to accept, but the truth of the matter is, either I give it a proper chance or simply accept that hey, it might not be my cup of tea. I'm all for creating more accesibility, but accessibility created out of complaints saying "It's bad because I didn't engage with it." is a little ridiculous. I was really looking forward to this video and you did not disappoint!

[@unknownuser494]

I don't think og re4 fans are complaining about yellow paint, it's definitely PSX RE and CV fans who are behind this.

[@rdrrr]

Bopper's usually really good at being concise but this video felt belaboured. What did I get from this? "Yellow paint is a necessary evil when you need to sell 16 zillion copies to recoup your $100,000,000,000 budget"; also "literal yellow paint feels out of place in a realistic environment but metaphorical yellow paint is A-OK because gamers have been trained to distinguish between diagetic and non-diagetic hint systems and will happily suspend disbelief when they see glowy arrows". Also some stuff about not all games being for everyone, although that was just bluntly stated as if it's axiomatic and not really argued. Bopper would probably say it _is_ axiomatic so it _doesn't_ need to be argued but I don't think it hurts to make your reasoning clear. I feel like this video coulda been 10 minutes long - though I cannot discount the possibility that I am the brainlet wojak and have failed to grasp some greater point that was made here.

[@flavionms]

In Joseph's defense, these games' combat mechanics are certainly designed around you being alone, in that the A.I. is incapable of handling multiple foes, and even multiple enemies are designed to be a fair fight when you are alone, for the most part. Doesn't mean that's what the game as a whole is about, but the idea isn't coming out of nowhere. Unlike people wanting the game to be a walking simulator, those people must be allucinating or something.

[@Sroomfie]

I feel like there's a bit of a difference between the metaphorical yellow paint and the literal yellow paint. Button prompts and hints menu also affect immersion on some level but I think a modern videogame player is somewhat used to it and can tolerate or even ignore its effect, meanwhile yellow paint and other hints that attempt to be diagetic and pretend to be part of the game world are quite jarring. It's counterintuitive sure but that's how I see it, and I think that's why it annoys so many players. Button prompts to denote what is interactable when you walk close to something are acceptable, but trying to cover that fact with a splash of yellow paint isn't and can in fact feel patronizing

[@PregnantAdamSandler]

My issue with Scadutree fragments is that while they ARE tutorialized they are not tutorialized WELL. If you check the fragment description it will tell you that you can find them at "the church of marika and other places" which is incredibly unhelpful when there is only one church of Marika in the starting area and the next one is beyond Rellana (technically not because there IS a way to get into Scadu Altus and bypass Castle Ensis but its on a path that some players might just miss entirely). I would argue that the fact Fromsoft made a steam post (the one screenshotted later on) about the fragments somewhat proves this because it mentions the pot guys which are COMPLETELY UNTUTORIALIZED IN THE GAME. There's also a completely different pot guy enemy that uses the exact model minus the sparkles that just attacks you. Some of them are just outright hidden too, there's one in a completely unremarkable and small cave on the cerulean coast. It's baffling to me because the base game's Golden Seeds and Sacred Tears, hell even the scarabs to a degree, all had much better "yellow paint" mechanics than the scadutree fragments do. There are redundant seeds so you don't need to grab every single one, and the sacred tears are in incredibly consistent areas that are clearly marked on the map. Meanwhile the sparkling pot dudes respawn unlike the reward scarabs and sometimes don't even have a scadu fragment or sacred ash. The scadutree fragments really could have benefited from some tweaking in my opinion.

[@dmoogle2006]

I was guided to this video by KZbin's yellow paint. Curses!

[@squatch1565]

Ah, a classic Bopper video about how something sucks, therefore it is great. Your examples of game devs dealing with testers who get stuck on "easy" things is a great example of the difference between the artist and the consumer. The artist knows what's going to happen in their story, or what to do in their game. If you're writing a mystery novel with a SHOCKING REVEAL, all the clues seem super obvious since you already know the big twist, but readers may still have their jaws drop. Likewise, if you're making the game you know which door to open, but the first-time player doesn't. In my experience, the best game(s) to use diegetic yellow tape are the Batman: Arkham games, particularly Arkham Knight. All the main and side quests have markers on the map for you to follow throughout Gotham City, which makes sense because of how the character of Batman operates. And anyway, there are still quests you need to find like the missing firefighters and dead bodies. Your final line is perhaps the best argument for yellow tape. We play games to relax and experience new things (or at least I do), and if an in-game guide helps me through it faster, than that's fine by me. And if I enjoy it enough, I'll come back to it eventually

[@5chneemensch138]

The testers example is actually bad because according to those examples shown, these people never held a controller in their hand in their lifetime. This is the equivalent of an investor trying to tell a gamer what a good game makes.

[@nathankeel6667]

Great video games are like any other medium have a intended experience and different rules need to be applied comparing a large open world to a linear rpg to a platformer is like comparing a book to a play to a movie there different experiences that require different approaches.

[@MagikarpPower]

short tutorials are drastically different from yellow paint. notably bc they come usually at the very beginning of the game, establishing the rules as if you were reading the manual. yellow paint on the other hand is constant and makes no attempt at separating itself from the world like tutorials do. this is my biggest issue, not that the game thinks im stupid but that my immersion is totally broken. this is also why, at times annoying and immersion breaking, button prompts are not yellow paint. they're clearly not part of the world the game tries to sell you. there will always be some gamers who struggle at points but i think losing them is worth maintaining that immersion. there's plenty of ppl wanting to return to the 90s - 2000s era of games and appealing to them over the lowest common denominator would be worthwhile.

[@adamgalloy9371]

I feel like an example of a game that leads to a lot of burn out and frustration because of a lack of (metaphorical) yellow paint is Dungeons and Dragons 5e (I'm coming mainly from a DM's perspective). The game absolutely refuses to tell anyone how it is supposed to be played while also claiming its "for everyone" and the result for a new (and even experienced) DM is a confusing mess. Is the DM's goal supposed to be crafting and guiding the players through a compelling story? Is the DM's goal providing satisfying combat challenges with the game's oddly abstract and tactical combat system? Is the DM's goal creating a fantasy adventure sandbox where player's can make meaningful decisions and guide their own exploration? Is the DM supposed to make dynamic rulings to make the world come to life in a realistic fashion that can't be accomplished in more traditional games? Is the DM supposed to enforce the rules as written to make sure players' expectations are met and all the game's various systems and abstractions work correctly? It's very difficult or even impossible to accomplish all these things at once even if you are an expert DM, let alone a new one, but the game creates all those (sometimes conflicting) expectations amongst its players right from the outset. The game has such an identity crisis that it doesn't really even have a sensible "how to play" guide. DM's are just supposed to let the spirit guide them I guess. I never really felt comfortable DM'ing until I ran other TTRPG's that weren't afraid to say "this is what the game is about and this is how the DM should approach it" when it was necessary. Some people can argue 5e's lack of firm identity and ability to be about whatever the DM makes it is what makes it great, but IDK. It just sort of left me looking to other games to actually figure out "how to play" and at that point, what reason is there to play 5e? I'd just play the game that taught me how to create a compelling experience rather than try to make one by running players with all-over-the-place expectations through a formless hodge-podge. Note: I haven't seen the updated books and am not sure if they have done anything to resolve this issue.

[@midnalight6419]

Let me tell you WHAT. I think the point you had about players differentiating between a hub element and something that is "in the world" is understated. Players, or just me, want the world to be its own micro-chasm that I interact with. While the Hud is the lens that I can view this world. So when a hud is something that has a popup, it is just that, a pop up in my video game. That is in the layer that is above the sight into the game, so it's fine. But when there is a pop up with information that is not blended seamlessly with the world (See tutorial design discourse), then it creates discord. Sekiro's "You can wall grab here" and "Death" icons, I never questioned. Not once. They're perfect. "Yeah, a rock could look like that" and "Yeah, it's an anime game. Let there be red." Of course, FromSoft are just heavensent devs, but it's also true that when it's incorporated into the world, it better feel right. When it doesn't, it's a big problem. Or do the FF7R thing, and make it part of the hud. That's okay, too.

[@JEANS__]

Excellent video Bopper. Very epic.

[@cheezburger2000]

So apologies for leaving another comment, I like leaving my comments in a single thread but oh well, hopefully this comment helps with engagement lmao So I saw this video just a few weeks after Yahtzee made his video on him getting tired of souls games and while I love Yahtzee videos the argument he made in that video is that Souls games always beat the shit out of you but like a boss I decided to plug you in and say hold it, souls games are meant to be adventure games and not hard difficult games that grind your ass to the ground. (One of my favorite Bloodborne moments is fighting the shadows of yharnam with two other summoned dudes and kicking their ass). Though I haven't really finished the souls games, I see your thesis shining through in the design lmao. And that's the thing, games don't want you to not beat them. It's too much money spent to make a game world that you can't beat. If the gamers who want b.s games you can't beat, you're better off going to an arcade. Another thing you mentioned are people not engaging with a game on its own terms. It's the same problem with story analysis. A lot of people hate FF7 Rebirths story because it deviates from the original and while I agree with some point, the arguments are all bad faith in what I call boomer reviews, appealing to a good old days when final fantasy stories were good. (It's a whole other topic to detail my misgivings with the FF community) but ultimately nobody wants to engage with a game on its own terms and it's hard to find good faith reviews like yours out there. You, Vivian Aldaran and King K make reviews I actually enjoy cause you're willing to engage with a game on it's terms. Appreciate the reviews and can't wait for your other videos

[@joshuagreenough1954]

good video, but I hope nobody ever makes a drinking game based on hearing the word diegetic or they will probably die

[@MythrilZenith]

I'm glad I'm not the only person who has been more greatly appreciating games that are unashamedly what they are, rather than wanting to turn games into whatever their players want them to be. After replaying Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal on Nightmare the past two weeks, I had friends recommend Ultrakill to me. I've had the hardest time explaining why Ultrakill just doesn't click with me the same way the two modern Doom games do. But I'm not going to sit and complain about Ultrakill not fitting my needs perfectly, because I have two other games that DO. I'm more than happy for the Ultrakill fans that their game is proudly what it is. The world is better when games are what they want to be, and players experience them and can debate and discuss, rather than games trying to metamorphose into whatever each player wants them to be, at the cost of any actual common ground between each player's experience. You continue to be my greatest video making inspiration and proof that the mentality I wish to see in the world isn't dead.

[@reidbishop7965]

This is super similar to my experience playing Amnesia The Bunker. I am an avid horror enjoyer, especially when it comes to resource management immersive sims. Yet for some strange reason I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I should have. I enjoyed it enough to complete it but there was always just something missing for me that others found immediately. It genuinely frustrated me for a long time that I couldn't enjoy it as much as I wanted. You know what I did? I eventually just sat down and said. "Yeah, it ain't my cup of tea" and went to play things I did enjoy. There wasn't anything wrong with the game itself, it was quite literally a me problem 😅

[@dylangarza1237]

Wait you’re telling me all games have yellow paint!? … always has been.

[@narutofan4545]

Blood would look wayyyy better then yellow paint

[@Aondeug]

I've always been kind of baffled by the notion that the proper way to play From's games was strictly sword and board with no magic at all because magic makes the game "easy". It's a tool they put in the game for me to use and if I use it and it makes something easier for me and I win because of it then I think that's fine. And it's not like physical builds can't also have things that make the game easier. Dark Souls 2's large amount of armored bosses can be bodied by blunt weapons, for example. And I learned to love bleed in Dark Souls 1's dlc because it got me through the manticore. Whether I'm using magic or only doing strictly physical stats I'm looking to make the fight "unfair" in my favor. Because I mean the Capra Demon showed me that the bosses aren't going to be fair to me so why should I extend them this courtesy? For me a lot of the fun of Elden Ring in specific is that the game gives me a lot of tools and a lot of flexibility in what tools I can and can't play with based on my build. Like my first build I didn't make use of magic stats at all because I wanted a quality build and to be able to wear slightly heavier gear. But through the crafting system and heavy use of things like the pots and bows I didn't really feel like I was lacking in terms of tools to counter challenges. And with my magic focused builds, there's easily accessible low stat investment options for all the physical damage types. Which I can then either buff with my spells or which I can just alter the scaling of entirely once I have it upgraded enough. And that is on top of the weapons like moonveil and the sword of night and flame which use naturally scale with the casting stats. I did run into a horrible stubbornness problem with one of these games in the past, on this note. Specifically with Bloodborne. The first time I had a chance to play the game was when I didn't own a ps4 and only had about a week to use my visiting brother's ps4 to play it. So I was very intent on getting through the game as quickly as possible. But not on learning how to play it versus how to play Dark Souls 1 or Dark Souls 2. So Gascoigne just tore me to shreds repeatedly until I was just having a very bad time. I've since come to really love Gascoigne's fight. He's fun if you engage with Bloodborne as it is meant to be played. But if you try to play it like Dark Souls you're in for a very bad time. There's a lot of bosses like him in games like these and I think they're neat. Nioh's early bosses punish you very hard for refusing to learn how the dodge works in the game or for refusing to engage with the Diablo-esque bonuses on your gear. Acting as gates to (hopefully) ensure a lesson is learned.

[@Sigdowner]

I do think Elden Ring is lacking clarity, and it's not about the scaduthings. Maybe I'm getting old but I find bosses' animations too hard to read, and hard to know where to be and not to be so an attack does not hit you. Sekiro was much better with this with the Kanjis and showing the enemies' posture bar. Yes, it's a bit more gamey, but I always felt that I know what the game wanted me to do even if I failed. Sekiro taught you how to play Sekiro wonderfully, and that is why to this day the hours I passed attempting SSI are a fond memory for me. Elden Ring does not do a good job teaching you to play Elden Ring, and the constant anime bullshit, unclear hitboxes, lack of posture bar, particles everywhere, instant gap closers, excessive tracking etc. etc. etc. really makes them feel like a chore rather than a fun challenge. At least for me. I'd rather have a more gamey experience like Sekiro or Hollow Knight than ER.

[@salzburysteak]

Either my phone is having a heart attack or you need to render your videos

[@Moonsong227]

You would think people would like indicators like this because it makes the game easier to stream and grind out playthroughs of. Shrug.

[@deathmetal6546]

Great video keep it up ❤