Good to know. Im using Sync and thats how it formated it.

Firstly. Are you talking about the olden days or modern games like dark souls?

Secondly. All the hidden doors in dark souls have glowing red texts in front of them.

Thirdly. Dark souls do the same “way foward is always clear” desing all the other games do. Its only the secred areas that are hidden in offline play.

Fourthly. Most of the shortcuts are done in a way where you find the wrong side of the door first, giving the player indication you will be able at some point to open said door/elevator/ladder giving you a visual hint that there is something hidden.

Go play Kings Field and you will experience what games feel like when devs dont want you to know how to progress.

Back in the day we ran againts walls punching them and hoping something would happen. I dont miss that at all.

Very good points and i mostly agree with you.

The yellow paint is very much a balancing act and especially in games like Resident Evil and many other horror games where recource managment is big part of the game making loot to stand out is very important.

If the breakables are easy to miss players will become frustrated when they dont have enough bullets or healing items to progres in game. If devs add loot so much that even blind players find enough loot, then sharp eyed loot goblins will have too many recources to have a challenge. Some games play around this by pseudo randomising the loot and making sure that if some recource is low players will allways find enough >!(The Last of Us does that and if you notice it will ruin your immersion even more. There is no reason to save any recources, because you will allways get enough for the next encounter)!<

Same with games with climbing mechanics. If the game is build around it and is fast paced you will hate the game when you die because you jumped against wall you cant climb.

Im fairly certain that most people who get annoyed about the visual cues would be even more annoyed without them.

Yeah. Im not really a fan of the full toggle system, because the visual cues are such a big part of level desig. All tough i fully support the idea of being able to tune the contrast. It is also good for people with visual impairments.

There are few good workarounds devs use that most people dont even notice. Like in fallout 4 almost every “dungeon” has its entrances lighted in some way and allmost allways doorways that go foward have some visual cue. Another from bethesda is how draugh dungeons have always stone pillars showing the way inside and bandit dungeons have flags. Dead Space has stompable crates that have lights and after opening those the lights shut down.

Then there is always the sixth sense way to do it that i personally like, where player can toggle or ping the what ever skill they have and it leaves the actionable objects high lighted for a time. The negative thing with that is that player can easily develope a habit of spamming the “loot view” all the time and spend too much time collecting every lootable item making the game progress slower than designed.

I feel many people underestimate how important visual cues are for the games. In tighter, more realistic games you can indicate the way foward with things like flickering lights, flash lights in the floor pointing to the right way, glowstick bread crump path or a million different thing.

But with large open world games, where player has freedom of travel its important for the players that they see with a quick glance if the wall is climbable or not.

For the game feel good players need clear rules how the world works. Red barrels explode, breaking this colour crate gives you loot, but these crates are indestructible, objects with this colour can be interactected with this tool etc.

I find it intresting when games have things like HUD on the screen and game highlights enemies and objects you can interact with people dont care about the immersion, but yellow paint is where they draw the line.

I remember reading how somebody hated how Resident Evil 7 marked everything breakable with yellow paint and how it ruined the immersion and made them remember they are playing a game. At the same time there is constantly visible ammo counter on the screen and you have radial wheel to change weapons and those things are not breaking the immersion at all.