HOW DO YOU HAND-HOLD THE PLAYER?

For me, the appropriate amount of hand-holding is simply to explain mechanics at the beginning, then after the player gets used to things, let him figure things out for himself while giving hints from time to time for the really important and not-at-least-somewhat-obvious stuff. To put it simply; give him a hand in the beginning, but then let him decide what to do from there for the most part.

I'm highly against EXCESSIVE hand-holding, though; I don't like it when my intelligence is insulted either, lol.

author=ShortStar
When there are no goals, people make their own goals and do what they want.

This isn't very good game design though. Or, to be more precise, whether or not you think it's a good idea, you have to admit it's not game design at all. You're explicitly not designing a game, letting the player design it for you.

Typically, if you're making a game, you have some sort of game in mind you want the player to play. Maybe you... don't? But in that case I don't know how to give you advice. So let's run with the assumption that you do have things you're putting in the game because you think they're fun, and you want to direct the player to do these things. You want them to be optional, but you don't want people to not realize they're there.

A big part of creating obvious goals for players is actually stuff you're more likely to learn in an art class than a game design class. They've done studies to figure out what sorts of lines, shapes and layouts cause a viewer's eye to follow a certain path. This has a lot of other practical applications in the real world (like drawing a customer's eye to the most profitable items on a menu) so it's something that's actually gotten a lot of study if you're interested, but if you're not interested in learning the theory you can just get about ten test players and watch what they do.

People will follow sudden changes even if they deviate from the clear central path for example. If your level starts out as a winding road with nothing meaningful to either side, but after a minute there's a stairway leading down to a riverbank, players will be intrigued. Even if people can't tell if it's a dead end or not, they will usually check it out. But if they get down to the riverbank and it turns into a 5-way fork where all the paths are clearly optional, and especially if they then they follow one of those paths and get to another 5-way fork, they will typically become worried or overwhelmed and return back to the original main road.

In contrast, if the main road itself splits 9 ways, people are much more likely to follow all nine side-paths to make sure they didn't miss anything. Even though it's the same number of paths, I guess they feel like they're not as far outside the intended game.

Another big part of making things clear to the player is a big flashy "SIDE-MISSION START!" or "AREA DISCOVERED: MACARENA WOODS" screen when beginning something, and a big flashy reward/success screen when completing it. The player knows that it's something they're meant to be able to do, and this makes them realize it's meant to be worth their time.

For example, if they start collecting treasure chests in a random unnamed outdoor zone, and then they leave the zone after opening them all, and nothing indicates to them that there was any particular reason to have done that beyond the basic video game assumption of kleptomania=good, they're going to feel kind of questionable about whether that was a good use of their time, and a bit underwhelmed with the result. But if the zone has a name that shows up when you first enter, with a list of hidden optional objectives underneath like
Optional Objectives:
???
???
???

...then suddenly the player is like "Oh shit, there's stuff to do here." And if they open the last chest and that screen reappears with a flash and a sound effect, but this time it looks like
Optional Objectives:
???
Collect 12/12 Treasure Chests - COMPLETE!
???

...then they are going to not only feel a sense of accomplishment, but also know that there's still more stuff to do, know that they were supposed to do that, and be able to guess that collecting chests in other zones will probably be a good idea too.

I'm with NewBlack, I hate hand-holding and always feel that it can really ruin immersion.
It has been done right, like the modern Fallout games. It's pretty simple to grasp and they incorporate the hand-holding tutorials very well in my opinion.
But a lot of games shove it down your throat and consider you an infant when the game isn't even that difficult to catch onto.

You can't please everyone, but by most gamers it's frowned upon because it only exists for the casual gamers, and it had to be there to cover all bases.

@CashmereCat- I feel like this is partly directed at me, haha. May not be, but my game Infection is about the opposite of hand holding.

author=Isrieri
The more in-your-face you are about guiding people and instructing them, the more negative a reaction you're going to get.

From people who like open world games, sure. But there are tons of people who can't stand it when they don't know what to do, it makes the game feel purposeless and boring to them. They would rather play Star Fox than Skyrim.

It's not like more exploration is always good with no limit. Making it possible to leave the battlefield in Star Fox wouldn't have improved the game. Having no actual objectives and just telling the player "you have arrived in Lylat; General Pepper wants to enlist your aid" and then opening up free roam would have made for a totally different game, and it's hard to argue that it would have been automatically better. It's possible to make both styles of games really well.

In my opinion:
Directions should be made obvious to the player without the need of flashing arrows or step-by-step text instructions telling you exactly where to go.

In combat the basics should be explained in a tutorial battle or something, then introduce more advanced mechanics later on that the player can figure out on his own with minimal ingame help. Or add an optional in-depth tutorial that explains advanced mechanics.

Eh Minecraft and Terraria are building games. I just couldn't get into Terraria unless my friends were playing. Then the game is great. But what isn't great with your friends?

GTA holds your hand by having you do simple things. Go here and pick someone up then go here. Saint's Row 3 has tutorial levels.

As the developer yourself it really hard to tell what is appropriate hand-holding. I strongly suggest getting other to play your game and then ask them very specific questions that test if they "got it".

The only other way would be to play other games (that you aren't related to and have no information about beforehand) of the same genre. The more games you play the better you can tell what appropriate hand-holding is.