WHEN DOES DESIGN OVERTAKE FUN?

I'm fairly positive that every aspect of my detailed design is there to make the game more fun, not less. I might not always succeed, but I wouldn't be hyperanalyzing my stuff if I weren't trying to improve it.

Yes, I think being overpowered is bad design. I think you should design the dungeons and enemies to be fun, and if you're successful at that, then giving the player a way to skip those parts is giving them a way to skip the fun. In general, skipping things only feels fun when the designer failed at making the things you're skipping fun.

One obvious situation where this doesn't apply is if the player has already done the stuff before and wants to skip it this time through. But, this isn't really the same thing, because they're not really skipping anything. This is just the equivalent of new game+ mode.

As you note, this topic is very situational, since every game is going to, ideally, be fun in different ways. However, I can give you my general advice, which is to identify what your game design does well and maximize it as much as possible. If, for example, your game has combo techniques which can be chained for all kinds of effects, try to emphasize situations where that will be relevant. If your game is puzzle heavy, try to implement good brain teasers which provide greater challenges over time. If your game is story-driven, try to get the player invested by having their choices make an impact, etc. Your game can of course do all of these things and do them well, but try to think about your game in terms of what kind of game it is, and who it is for. Place yourself in the player's position and ask, "would I want to play through this section?"

It is also worth noting that delayed gratification is a big part of RPGs, and always has been; whether your game is like a 1980s old school dungeon crawl, or a modern MMO, chances are the player will have to do a great deal of work to have the best items, skills and equipment available. While most players would not consider grinding for these items fun, the satisfaction of having earned them and then being able to use them makes it all worthwhile (without this sense of satisfaction I doubt many people would play MMOs!) When designing such goals, it's important to find the right balance between what is hard work towards a tangible goal, and what is pointless level grinding. There's no perfect answer to this, but it is important to keep the best stuff out of easy reach of the player; the challenge in itself will provide the fun.

I always saw the level warps in SMB 1 and 3 as being there for people who'd already beaten the stuff they were skipping.

Well, I didn't always see it that way. As a kid I just saw it as a cool way to get ahead. But looking back as a designer, I can see that that was how it was presented to me, how I used it, and how the designers wanted me to use it.

author=Rave2020
Skippers (people who'll skip in game on every occasion) won't get much fun out of game, but who cares? That was their choice to skip levels, they wasn't forced to do that. They aren't forced to use OP items either.

I care! I want my players to have fun. It's my job as a designer to make sure that the way players are most likely to play the game is also the way that's going to be the most fun for them. This means not using psychological tricks to lead them into doing the non-fun ways. Disguising a content-skipping option as a reward is an example of such a trick. I don't think I've ever played worlds 6 or 7 of SMB1.

author=Rave2020
I've once seen on YT guy who beat SMB entirely as small Mario, forcing him to shrink every time he accidentally bumped into mushroom. The only bonus he tolerated were 1-up mushrooms and only legit (hidden in question mark blocks), not hidden (unless he accidentally bumped into them), and when he hit star, he waited until it wears off.

So if someone will really want challenge he won't use OP items. On the other hand, people who aren't as good at games, won't get frustrated and throw game.

To me this isn't a satisfactory solution. You know why this stands out as memorable to you? It's because almost no one does it. Normal people play the game as presented to them; they don't make up their own game rules when they find yours unsatisfactory, and they shouldn't have to. You're the game designer. It's your job to create the game, not the player's.

This is the kind of excuse you see people on Bethesda's forums making for Skyrim. "If something's overpowered, just don't use it!"
It really is a silly excuse, because as a designer it's your job to make sure overpowered stuff isn't there to begin with, and if it is, you haven't really done your job right.

It could also simply be that everything else is underpowered. It's no secret that dragons in Skyrim are a pushover unless you run some mods on them, why is everyone parading me about as the Dragonborn when a random troop of 3 guards can take down that giant flying lizard? ┐(￣ー￣)┌

Back on topic, I'd say design gets in the way of fun when the numbers take on an exceeding presence in the game. Min-maxing might be fun for some people, but it should never be required to min-max, or otherwise manipulate the numbers in a specific way to achieve something crucial to the game.

author=LockeZ
@hereisnowhy:
Limiting the number you can use in the game like that is actually a pretty appealing method of including overpowered stuff. You can probably include almost any power in a game without unbalancing it, if the cost and limitations are right. In your case, the player will want to save the banish scroll for a last resort, since he might potentially need it more later. (And then if he does need it later, if he's like me he'll keep saving it anyway, because maybe even later he will need it even more.) But if you just want to blow some enemies away, or you're having trouble, or something is taking way longer than it should, it's there as an option.

My personal recommendation would be to not only make them expensive but also make a limited supply. Like, you can only buy ten or so before the store runs out. Or maybe each town only has one. (Look, here I am in a topic about overdesigning, and I'm going off on a tangent to help someone overdesign their game instead of talking about the topic. I WIN AT RPGMAKERING.)

Well, there's currently only store you can buy them from and it's kind of remote compared to where everything else in the game is. I thought about putting those scrolls in every magic shop, but now I think it'd be a better idea if you could only buy them there. But yeah, it could be good idea to make them even harder to get/make less of them.

I thought this thread was about over-designing making the game development process not fun for the developer(s).

To which I would say: Pretty much as soon as you have to start implementing the grand ideas you've carefully crafted in your head.

As far as the game. If a designer has spent so much time on it that he's made it not fun, that's kind of his own fault. It's up to the designer and play testers to determine how fun a game is. If an product that isn't fun makes it to release, either the designers/playtesters are at fault, or the production company forced them to release it before it was ready.