Map Exploration Controls

News & General Discussion
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In games with a zoomed ‘world map’ that you explore, the controls are almost always point and click instead of steering. I’m wondering why exactly, why do so many games opt for point and click. What are the pros and cons?

Examples:
Mount and Blade - point and click

Battle Brothers - point and click

Expedition Conquistador - point and click

Especially in similar style games where the map plays a much smaller, supporting role:

  • Wasteland 2
  • Blackguards
  • Hard West
  • many, many others

The major exception to the top down point and click is actually the parent of all these games:

Sid Meier’s Pirates! - analog style steering

Obviously, the main difference in Pirates is that you’re actually steering a ship, so the direct controls make a lot of sense.

I’m currently tweeking the interface to my map exploration, and I’m leaning (strongly) toward steering style controls: WASD, generally using a lower camera (25 degree angle for example). The mouse would be free to click on stuff or rotate - but would not be point and click to move. I feel like WASD style controls connect the player more directly. Pressing and holding that key down is a direct, immediate, connection to what’s happening. In Darkest Dungeon for example, you need to HOLD DOWN a key (or mouse button) to move, not simply click. Having the animation directly connect to the controls makes it feel much, much more immediate.

Looking at how in general, almost every game with a similar map design prefers point and click - I’m hesitating. Console titles, obviously prefer the direct steering style controls whenever you move on a map, so it’s certainly not impossible to do well, or utterly wrong, but it seems that most games strongly prefer the more disconnected point and click (even with a camera fixed on the character).

What are your thoughts on the matter? When is one approach stronger than the other?

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The big problem with direct steering on a map is it’s hard to be precise. With little icons and a big map, steering the two to come near to each other can be a pain.

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Do you point-and-click on the world map in Wasteland 2 on PC? I’m playing it now on Xbox and you do “steer” the pointer around on the world map.

But in general, I imagine it’s a simple matter of expediency. There isn’t really much to do on those maps, usually, and point-click is simply faster. (I once played with an app that let you move the Windows mouse cursor around with a joystick. Let me tell you about “tedious”… which, come to think of it, is one of the many reasons I hate trackpads.)

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Interesting comment about Pirates being the “parent” of these games.

Anyway, a number of them let you do both.

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One day I really want to build out like a game family tree. It’s really interesting how games borrow from one another.

M&B, BB and (to a lesser extent) Conquistador were all influenced heavily from Pirates!.

Wasteland, Blackguards, Hard West, etc, they’re different - but they still have a top down map.

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I’m going to go with the design decision mostly being about controlling the camera rather than the PC.The emphasis is on moving the camera and viewing everything on the map, as opposed to feeling connected to the PC to the point of including their PoV limitations. It also makes more sense on a world map that leans heavily on abstracted imagery (i.e. it looks like a paper map and is using simplified icons), where there are clear implications you aren’t at 1:1 scale.

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So I tried both ways. Point and click felt way… way better in my case.

I think the difference comes down to literally how much stuff is moving on the screen and at what speed and how often you need to interact with stuff.

Slower movement is way more annoying if you need to physically hold down a key to move.

@RockoDyne I think you hit the nail on the head with looking around at other stuff.

The thing is, if the movement time consuming and relatively uneventful, you just get bored. The main reason we look around the map while we travel in these games is because – looking at the character as he slowly trudges through the map – its just boring.

Unless there is something to interact with within maybe 5-10 seconds - or at least something new and meaningful to look at or consider interacting with - it just gets boring as hell holding down that button and staring at pretty slow movement while you wait 30 seconds to trudge uneventfully to your destination.

The low/close camera did feel really great though - for like the first couple minutes…after that it got really boring. You need to be able to at least look around at other stuff and consider “hey maybe I should go here” - or something.

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I just started playing Torment: Tides of Numenera … sort of interesting because I literally just finished Wasteland 2 (same dev, same type of game). In Torment, for some reason, they’ve decided to lock the camera on the main character.

In Wasteland 2 the camera controls were slightly wonky (had to constantly switch modes, the mode icon only stayed on screen for a few seconds, and the game arbitrary switched you to the default mode without warning) – but you had total freedom of movement. Being locked to the main character is driving me nuts in Torment.

I may want to see something without going there. And that complaint just tells me even at full zoom-out, there isn’t enough visible on screen. It reminds me a little of the way racing games never simulate a sufficiently wide field of view. In real-world racing you’d wind up stuffed into a wall without your peripheral vision.

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