Hint systems: part 1

Considering that the player is often required to look for a target from various viewpoints which they themselves would have a large amount of people to observe, it becomes a daunting task to figure out where to look. In the worst case, this could result in the player not ever looking at where the target is. To fix this problem, we can: 1. make sure the level is designed in such a way that this happens as little as possible, and 2. help point the player in the right direction i.e. a hint system.

Obviously good level design is key and constant play testing for any level will be important. However, some players may still have difficulty in figuring out where to look with so much going on. As such, this is where the hint system will come into play.

Ideally we want to have 3 parts to the hint system: letting the players know what vantage point to watch from, where to look at from that vantage point, and what sort of behavior/activity to look for that the target may be doing.

So far the latter 2 items haven't been figured out yet, but we now have a good idea for the first stage of the hint system. In order to draw the player to the right vantage point, we can have the character of the team associated with the vantage point draw the player's attention there with something like "I see the target." This way the player knows that they can go to that vantage point to find the target.

This approach fits in really well with the narrative of the game since the player essentially controls the team's "hive mind" or collective thought so to speak. As the character notifies the player of the target, it's up to the player (aka the collective team decision) to determine the situation and how to handle the target.