[marvio]

Originally Posted by Weare6

Yeah I'm with 'Arial Type' on this. I detest the Hot spot Highlighter.
For me it makes the adventure too easy. (with a few exceptions)
If you can't be bothered looking around an environment for a while and just
want to be told where it is then... I'm sorry your either lazy or impatient.
With the old school adventures they made you work for everything and pixel hunting
was just another part of it. Sure there are people out there that love it ... thats cool.
I know its a button and you can use it when you really need it but its just to tempting
to cheat. I enjoy & appreciate a game more knowing I finished it without any outside or inside
help if you know what I mean. Anyway each to there own I say

But that's not it at all, is it?

Pixel hunting has nothing to do with exploration, it tells yo nothing about the story/enviroment or characters, it just you scanning the scene from top to bottom to see what "lights up", you never know if that "shovel" was meant to be picked up, and sometimes it's the 4 pixels wide piece of paper next to it, which you have to combine with the coat hanger and the piece of rope to make a fishing rod type of contraption, that you can/want to pick up (see where I'm going with this?). That's not playing the game, that's just a waste of time.

Granted, if you could interact with every last little pebble on the street, and if the puzzles would allow for every possible way for you to "break that window" I could see your point; But that's never the case, is it?
A lot of times you have to use something you would never had thought to have used in the real world to make something happen, so, what were we trained to do? Go over every last pixel on the screen, and when it lights up, that's what you want!!

Does that make the game any more engaging, more "complex", I say it doesn't, it's just bad design period.
There are ways to make the interface intuitive and allow for "endless" interaction, pixel hunting ain't it

[Dan_Dan_91_07]

I think that in some cases "pixel hunting" simulates the exploration the character would have to do in order to find whatever corresponds to the appropriate hotspot.

It makes the player do some work, just like the character would have to, and I prefer doing this rather than using a hot spot highlighter, for this reason

However, cheap attempts at making games harder by making hotspots ridiculously hard to see, is shameful.

I welcome the feature with open arms though! Why? Due to the fact it makes the games more accessible to people unfamiliar with the genre, which could create more fans, which could create more games!

[Weare6]

Originally Posted by marvio

But that's not it at all, is it?

Pixel hunting has nothing to do with exploration, it tells yo nothing about the story/enviroment or characters, it just you scanning the scene from top to bottom to see what "lights up", you never know if that "shovel" was meant to be picked up, and sometimes it's the 4 pixels wide piece of paper next to it, which you have to combine with the coat hanger and the piece of rope to make a fishing rod type of contraption, that you can/want to pick up (see where I'm going with this?). That's not playing the game, that's just a waste of time.

Granted, if you could interact with every last little pebble on the street, and if the puzzles would allow for every possible way for you to "break that window" I could see your point; But that's never the case, is it?
A lot of times you have to use something you would never had thought to have used in the real world to make something happen, so, what were we trained to do? Go over every last pixel on the screen, and when it lights up, that's what you want!!

Does that make the game any more engaging, more "complex", I say it doesn't, it's just bad design period.
There are ways to make the interface intuitive and allow for "endless" interaction, pixel hunting ain't it

You have an interesting point and I understand the frustration in pixel hunting... I have been there before many times..... but I am one of those rare people who love to hate.
I kind of enjoy the search & I feel its part of my adventuring. A lot of people in this discussion have brought up some interesting points and I appreciate that. But as engaging as it might be I grew up searching for these objects and its been permanently embedded in my adventure game experience. And although I dislike the highlighter option I certainly don't get 'enraged' or either are my 'experience ruined' by it as some people have said.
As someone on this forum stated before:
We can agree to disagree.