BATTLING IN GAMES, BUT.. WHY?

Facebook games haunt me eternally. You sign up to one thinking, "oh, that looks like a nice game!" and you play around a bit and have a small amount of fun getting exp from every little action and it's great. But then you get to a later stage where it says, "you need 10 of this item. You can only get this item from your friends, OR would you like to give Zynga all of your money instead?!" and while I love the idea of getting my friends to help me and me helping them, I am on the receiving end of this far too often. Every day I'll get "this person wants you to send them this" and.. I don't want to commit myself to doing that EVERY SINGLE DAY for them until they finish their dumb quest/get bored of the game. Maybe if their games weren't so centred around friends and money, they'd be decent concepts for a bit of a timesink each day. Then there's the waiting in between of getting people to send you stuff.. or your crops growing/buildings building/trees chopping/water splooshing/gun loading/self shooting/arrgghhhhhhhh make it end.

But I do love games where little actions get you a bit of exp. This was done okay-ishly in Fallout 3 where you'd disarm a bear trap or some shiz and you'd get exp/level up in order to progress. But that's where it became too vague. Hacking a computer terminal and levelling up from it meant you could put points into anything. Even strength. Hacking = physically stronger? Buh? Unless you beat that computer into submission with your amazing muscles, I don't see how that translates. Perhaps if hacking the computer specifically gave you extra intelligence or beating a man to death with your enormous legs gave you more strength, it'd be a better concept.

Speaking of better concepts, I have been playing a game called 'Haven & Hearth' as of recent and, despite the immense lag, the "levelling" system does not enrage me too badly. Each time you perform a new action, say, picking some carrots or drying some tea leaves for the first time, you get a small portion of Learning Points. You can also get these by studying 'curiosities' which you can make or find and take a bit of time up before they give you your LP. Anyway, point is that you can spend your LP on skills which will allow you to do more actions. So, you can spend them on mining or cloth making or first aid or fighting skills, and so on. Each of the skills is in a tree too, so one will unlock another or several more. I think it's an alright concept because it encourages you to try everything out to get more LP. You also have base stats like strength/intelligence/perception/etc. which will increase depending on the food you eat. Fish increases intelligence, I think. And the more INT you have, the more curiosities you can study/other stuff. It's cool-ish, but I've yet to really delve into how good it will continue to be..

Yahoo Answers does have a sort of attraction to it. Like, you're not really helping people for the sake of being nice, but for being the one who is the BEST at answering stuff. It's quite self-centred, but I know what you mean about its appeal. :P But would you rather go on Yahoo Answers and answer questions or play a game instead? Or would you consider it to be the same thing?

At the minute, I'm going for some wacky Harvest Moon-y game from the ideas in this thread. You'll run a farm of just animals: cows, sheep, chickens - you know, animals. Every so often, a nasty monster (or several) will attack your farm. These will be pretty damn difficult, so you'll probably have to cooperate with other people in the town (blacksmith, doctors) to get all the equipment you need. You will be able to provide a few things for yourself, but it'll naturally be easier using your relationships with townspeople. Anyhow, if you lose against these monsters, the town will suffer in some way. Animals will go missing from your farm/villagers may become injured and.. maybe they might even die, causing you to look for your own stuff to make up for what they can no longer provide you with. So if the doctor dies, you damn well better have a save file before it happened or be willing to look for your own medicines. Do you think this is too harsh, or do you find the reality of the possible dangers somewhat exciting?

I realise this is a long post, probably to make up for not posting in a while.. my bad. ^^ My main questions are underlined to make things easier.

You know, it's really quite weird you'd say that because that is essentially the exact setting of the game I'm currently working on. :/ The main character has narcolepsy brought on by stress and, naturally, he is frequently stressed or scared by something (mainly monsters trying to attack him, but similar to a possum, they leave him alone when he's "playing dead"). He falls asleep and has to play out a certain challenge in his dream, ie. saving the world, or a personal goal like traveling somewhere. He will be in turmoil within his own brain deciding on whether he wants to actually wake up or not. If he doesn't wake up, the monsters might kill him. If he does, he has to go back to his crappy life of narcolepsy and other stuff he doesn't like. I have more, but I'm still ironing out a lot of the details.. I figure each dream will take up one game.

EDIT: Here's the Word document of my basic plot thusfar:

Mwell I guess there're no real reasons behind dreams, and most people dream at night so I wouldn't feel too weird about putting that in with little explanation. I do feel there will be a lot of symbolism in them all though, and I hope to tie them all up pretty nicely at the end.

Thanks for your help and advice, by the way. ^^ That goes for everyone. I'm gradually tying pieces together now, and I'm already into making the plotline/gameplay of several future games. This thread has been suuuper useful, and I hope I'm not the only one getting great inspiration from what's been said!

Yeah, I suppose you're right about that. I hadn't considered him being too fearful to fight for himself and that being a reason behind falling asleep all the time.

My current ideas for symbolism are things like rebuilding society (games where you have to rebuild the town, as mentioned before in this thread), trying to find a person or being upset that someone has left/died, and even just human interaction. All of these dreams will have a relationship mechanic where you get to befriend the people you're around for whatever reason. For someone who is all alone in the world, it makes sense that he'd dream of talking to other people.

author=Dudesoft
In ye olde times, people didn't go into the countryside to fight a cockatrice for fun. That's fantasy.

I dunno about that, there's still game hunting in a modern day setting. If I had the opportunity and it had less stigma, I'd certainly rather have fun obtaining my food by getting it myself than going to the supermarket for it.

I do get what you mean, though. I hate that a lot of fantasy games see the heroes go out and beat the living hell out of everything and everyone for no reason. FF8 was.. weird. I liked it. A lot. But it still weirds me out. Particularly how it makes you think that Squall's party was the first to ever get the opportunity to go to a cave (that's been there for - y'know - forever) to go fight Ifrit. Why did no one else in Balamb Garden think to go to the cave right next to the garden to do some training? Also, FF8 makes me suffer from the GF effect in that I remember nothing about it! I've played it two or three times through, and I can't remember anything that happened.

Back to the Ifrit mystery, I can't help but think about these things when playing games which sort of ruin the setting for me a little.. I still enjoy a lot of them, but I take them less seriously than when they're patched together nicely.

It sucks that I never found a copy of Shenmue 'cause I've heard awesome things about it (mainly the music). When I get the money, I wanna buy as many olde games that have been recommended to me as possible. I feel like I missed out. D: I rarely had the money for games as a child, hence why I turned to RPG Maker to make my own.

If I were to create my own world to base a game in, it'd be a lot easier to put fighting into it because I could just abuse a fantasy setting or make fighting a major part of the world/something with a decent explanation behind it. I find what I'd lack the ability to do is make a better, more fun battle experience. Must.. learn.. RGSS.. I think that is my next step in game making.

Well like I said, I've forgotten most everything about the game. But it never explains how everyone who's finished the test can summon Ifrit. I imagine that gets a bit annoying for him. Plus, it doesn't even look like the cave has been touched at all. I didn't say there was no explanation within the game, just that it made me think Squall was first to use it due to an overall lack of people in the area or any signs it had been used. Sorry, I should've explained that better. :P