Ranger Archive
Thread: For anyone who missed it: A Theory of Fun.
Its an interesting read, and was cool to think about in relation to what we hope for our revamp/update/whatchimacallit. I can definitely see a lot of what he is talking about when I think back to my first few weeks/months after launch, when the options, combinations and strategies seemed endless. Sometimes I can recapture that but mostly I find myself on the treadmill, and really it is my own decision to be there, not the game design.
If I spend too long there I fall into the treadmill mindset and start getting annoyed with anything that gets in my way. I have to actually force myself to go back and enjoy the other aspects of the game. For example, when
Holocron's srticle doesn't touch on it at all but I personally am curious - how much of game enjoyment do you think is the player's responsibility and how much is the game's responsibility?
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I found myself a month or so ago just hanging out in the cantinas and talking or watching people talk. I didn't hunt anything but Krayts or Jedi when I got bored of the cantinas, and mostly just hung around initiating my own type of fun. A casual gameplay mode rather than using the "fun" element that is merely treadmilling that the game has forced into my template. Tends to be what you can handle that becomes fun, and really it gets a bit odd trying to survive the grinds to make money in this game. It's more reliant on social elements than gameplay, I feel, because like any MMO if the social aspect is nonexistent it will all become a treadmill of advancement. It's good to have a decent element of gameplay to work around, but without the social realm to it we'll get torn apart in the long run by repetition.
Thing is,people can shoutaboutif a player is set in the treadmill routine then its their fault, because they could be out doing other things, grinding jedi, being a crafter etc but instead choose to go into a routine. All of that is nonsense though, if a player is bored with the game because none of the areas interest them then that is bad game design, not the player's fault.
Blaming boredom on the players just reaks of arrogance and projects a belief that the players should feel privelaged to play a game, that players should like what the devs think is fun or its the player's fault that the game doesnt live up to their expectations. Sure a SW game will always be hyped up something rotton but this is acustomer ledmarket and the devs need to acknowledge this much more than they do now.
Succesful games do not achieve that success from developers putting across their opinion and expecting others to agree. They achieve success by doing what the constumers desire and sticking to the mentality that the customer is always right.
Obviously in a market of this size you cannot believe that all customers are always right but you can still go by the masses and that is by far the biggest factor that makes a successful game.
If players are stuck in an unfun routine and the other possible avenues they could explore are percieved to be boring and uninteresting then that is most definatly a design flaw. The game should give the players what they want (within reason) in order to make the product sell.
The most obvious recent joke ofa decision came with the announcement of the new expansion. What idiot suggested that? I mean sorry for bringing harsh comments into the thread but the inteligence shown at that decision makes even George Bush look like good old Albert Einstien. The players wanted Hoth, the players wanted more SW and GCW, the players didnt want more jedi focus, the players were confused about timeline, the players were up in arms about the state of core professions.................. So the devs announce a non-gcw, non-hoth, jedi focused, timeline confused mess of an expansion with pretty pictures of lightsabers and the promise of a massively powerfull force crystal! woot! Like i said, Idiots.
It is said far too often and even moreso ignored by SOE but people should start listening to their customers and understanding that to make a successful game in terms of profit (because we all know thats what its ALL about) you need to do what the customer wants.
Wow is absolutally huge because it played to the market and did what so many customers wanted. They wanted a game with high end raids not restricted to only hardcore gamers, CHECK! They wanted a large and integrated pvp system with more than just your attack and finish systems, CHECK! They wanted to level up through quests, not grinding, CHECK! They wanted a fast leveling curve and focus on what you do around the high levels rather than dragging out the leveling, CHECK! They wanted an integrated story line, CHECK! They wanted fast paced combat system with very little downtime, CHECK! They wanted casual gamers not to be punished for not having masses of hours to play the game everyday, CHECK! The list goes on and on...............................
You may or may not like WOW but their is no denying, its the most successfull mmo ever. The reason why it is successfull is because the devs stick to the companies long standing goals: 'If it isnt fun, we dont do it' and 'we make games for our players to have fun in'.
End of the day, people can hide around the point as much as they want but ultimatly, if the game is boring to play and you have no desire to try other areas because they dont interest you then that is bad game design. The game is designed to keep people playing by giving them fun things to do, faulure to provide this lands soley on the devs shoulders.
There was a time when you HAD to go to a Cantina to rid yourself of BF and in many cases wounds and mind wounds. While waiting for these wounds to go away you often ended up socializing with the live entertainers(in the beginnig their were many of them) and the live medic/doc for heals. In many cases you stopped in a Camp to get the same and usually people were talking while waiting. The "downtime" now in SWG is so rediculously low that unless you are in a group you could go through weeks in the game without any incentivie to intereact with others. For a entertainers the downtime and AFK macros is a problem. There is noting supporting social interaction. Why SOE refuses to remove recursion from the macro system is beyond me but a lot can be fixed by eliminating the abilitity for anything to be done AFK. Autmation is nice but not to the detriment of the game
Dyrwen wrote:
The fun that the game allows is only as fun as your character allows it to be. The game allows my MRanger/MBH to harvest animals worth millions of credits, but it takes hours of treadmilling. The BH element lets me hunt down the same old NPC over and over gathering loot and traveling great distances. It also lets me run after Jedi and die the same way just about every time, but it does have more diverse elements to it, in that I won't know what I'm up against. The treadmill affect pops up a lot though.
I found myself a month or so ago just hanging out in the cantinas and talking or watching people talk. I didn't hunt anything but Krayts or Jedi when I got bored of the cantinas, and mostly just hung around initiating my own type of fun. A casual gameplay mode rather than using the "fun" element that is merely treadmilling that the game has forced into my template. Tends to be what you can handle that becomes fun, and really it gets a bit odd trying to survive the grinds to make money in this game. It's more reliant on social elements than gameplay, I feel, because like any MMO if the social aspect is nonexistent it will all become a treadmill of advancement. It's good to have a decent element of gameplay to work around, but without the social realm to it we'll get torn apart in the long run by repetition.
Serraphin wrote:Vorpaks one of the problems is the vehicles/mounts. A large portion of the game was detroyed when they added them. On the other hand an entirely new and exciting element was added to the game with them. Only the positive impact seems to hve been exmined when they were added because nothing was done to mitigate the consequences of adding them. That can be said for nearly everything added. Both sides need to be looked at before features are added. The planets were quite large before vehicles. Now that there are vehicles and Player City Shuttles the size of the planets is effectively quartered but SOE still views them as large.
I am definitely not disagreeing with you on that one. I can see how vehicles could be considered "an Alexandrine solution to a Gordian problem," ie: take the direct route.
I can also see how the vehicle thing applies to the difficulty of designing games when your oponent is the human brain. I believe they put in vehicles to 'increase the permutations, the possibility space' or in Basic, give players more options and more avenues to explore gameplay. But a side effect was to give the treadmill people - the powergamers - easier and more direct access to their goals. Level and "win" as quickly as possible. Even though the option is still there for us to explore and move around without vehicles, it is just not as valued because it is neither necessary or unique. And so if one person figures out the treadmill path, we almost all of us get sucked onto it regardless of whether we want to or not.
Serraphin wrote:
There was a time when you HAD to go to a Cantina to rid yourself of BF and in many cases wounds and mind wounds. While waiting for these wounds to go away you often ended up socializing with the live entertainers(in the beginnig their were many of them) and the live medic/doc for heals. In many cases you stopped in a Camp to get the same and usually people were talking while waiting. The "downtime" now in SWG is so rediculously low that unless you are in a group you could go through weeks in the game without any incentivie to intereact with others. For a entertainers the downtime and AFK macros is a problem. There is noting supporting social interaction. Why SOE refuses to remove recursion from the macro system is beyond me but a lot can be fixed by eliminating the abilitity for anything to be done AFK. Autmation is nice but not to the detriment of the game
I'm well aware of the situation, via my register date. Realistically the devs are killing social interaction day by day. The cities are quiet outside of pvp, the cantinas are hard pressed to have a good crowd talking, grind groups almost never talk because they're busy imagining "one more hour.. one more hour" over and over, and similar elements pop up in all other facets of the game. Space for instance is one big open silent place. Kash is a quest place where no one stops to chat because they've got to travel through 5 instances. Fun in an MMO is 50% gameplay, 50% social elements, usually. Sure there are exceptions, but generally speaking we're meant to be dependent on other professions and people. The game needs to follow the whims of the players, rather than the marketing department, as Owen said, but how we'll get that done is beyond me. Maybe because the SW saga of movies is done now we won't have to deal with anything related to the prequels once this expansions is released, but who can be sure.
They want to burn through a game as fast as possible to say they "beat" it. The low end content is meaningless to them and always will be (thats for NOOBS)
The treadmill is the only way to keep those guys account subscriptions extended, and SOE has to cater to them because they are a HUGE part of the MMO player base.
COurse for the rest of us, the 'grind' becomes sheer ugliness, and you are right, you need to take vacations from the grind, long ones, where you run around in the game and simply screw off, doing whatever you feel like. THats the real beauty of SWG, is that you can actually do that, and be rewarded for it.
In EverQuest, you cant do that..its ALL grind or nothing. Every aspect of that damnable game is grind but sadly grinding seems to be the way SOE keeps subscribers on the hook.
I refuse to grind, grinding is for those obsessive-compulsive types who can sit at a computer until they get blood clots in their legs from inactivity.
(Just an excerpt)
"On the treadmill--nobody likes treadmills. I do happen to believe that there's powerful drivers in human psychology that push towards treadmilling EVERYTHING, and I think that in life, it's an ongoing challenge to work to make everyday things seem fresh and fun. That doesn't diminish one iota of the responsibility of designers to work towards making every moment of gameplay fun. People often seem to take my observation of how treadmilling seeps into everything as an ENDORSEMENT of treadmilling, but it's not. I HAVE commented that getting on a treadmill (trading time for advancement) is a democratizing tool compared to making a game purely based on skill, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Having only the true hardcore powergamers be at the top isn't necessarily a recipe for fun for everyone either.
Getting away from treadmills is hard, though. I am sure someone will cite some other game at this point and say "what about them, they did it!" But all the MMOs consist just as much of repetitive activities (kill 5 things, kill 10 things, etc). What changes is really the moment to moment experience, whether people feel like there's a fresh take on the activity. There's a lot more about this in the book, but suffice to say, it's a tough problem. But not one that I think anyone is giving up on."
). This game is only fun for me, still, becuase of the people that play, and how I approach the content (quests, missions, professions, not PvP, PvNPC and PvCreature
). I didn't go out and do all the new content the day it was released. I am just now getting into the Kashyyyk missions. I am just now starting to try to unlock some FS trees (no, I won't be Jedi). Those are the fun things to do, and I waited until I was out of other fun things to try them.I would argue that powergamers can NEVER be happy. They want to be uber so they can do the content, but they blow threw the content so quickly that they have nothing left to do but twiddle thier thumbs.
Paks Wrote:
"I think Holocron would agree with everythig you said, considering his recent posts on the Shadowfire forum:"
Yeah, hopefully this is a change in message given off from the devs, not just one voice in a sea of noise. Its just so often what the devs do and what the devs say never meet up. Hopfully the new community director will sort that out but i really do hope the game starts picking up pace and moving forward. The new expansion really got me down as it only highlighted the points i made earlier but holo did say something possitive that we can call him on later:
"You need action, not words. Reiterating promises is pointless"
Lets hope they get to work.