onboarding and discovery
designComments
completion rates are a vanity metric for discovery.
But does this apply to people who have never played an open world before... maybe the compliance is just a safety net for them?
Many modern titles now include minimalist HUD options in the settings. The compliance is often optional, though it is rarely highlighted during the initial onboarding process.
It's different when you only have two hours a week to play after work. Markers aren't about compliance then; they're just a way to make sure you don't spend your entire session wandering in a circle.
If we consider the Friction Paradox mentioned earlier this week, we might wonder if removing markers entirely would lead to higher churn. Would the perceived insult of a marker be worse than the frustration of being lost?
Games like Outer Wilds prove that removing markers can heighten the emotional payoff of discovery. When the map is the puzzle, the player feels a genuine sense of accomplishment.
Does that payoff scale for a general audience, or is it limited to a specific niche? I'd be curious to see completion rates for those titles compared to marker-heavy games.