PAYING FOR PATIENCE

Ah, Craze, as abrasive as ever in confronting design choices.

I can definitely understand where you're coming from. This goes back to that whole shpiel about 'instant gratification' and how the attention span of modern players borders on deficient.

I agree that one should not waste the player's time with things like slow walk speed or unnecessarily long battle anims, but as surprising as it may be, there are some people who enjoy that sort of thing. Just not the majority. And here's where your design choices begin to depend on your target audience.

I would encourage game developers to be creative and make every moment of the gameplay worth the player's time, but it's all really subjective regardless.

Awesome, Craze is back. Let's get some for reals GD&T up in this bitch.

In my current project, Iniquity and Vindication, I made the design choice to never have the player fight the same group of enemies twice. This means the game will have no repeatable battles, and thus no grinding. It also means that every single battle will require a different strategy.

Now, I'm not saying every battle will be completely different, because that's a great way to make your game unplayable. The player shouldn't have to start over from the beginning of the learning curve every five minutes, that's not fun and makes the game not feel cohesive. So I do reuse individual enemies, but I group them in ways so that each battle requires something different. I build upon the player's existing knowledge.

Of course, you can only do that a couple times per enemy before it gets boring, honestly. So that's as long as I do it for. On average, about every fourth or fifth battle is a boss.

I also try to make both the normal battles and the bosses threatening enough to have a pretty good chance of killing the player if he or she messes up, so that the different enemy tactics in each battle are actually something you have to pay attention to if you want to win, not just a way to win slightly faster or slightly healthier. Tactics that the player can use, but can win without using, translate as "totally unnecessary" to me, and make a game no different than if they didn't exist at all. If the player can win by just attacking and healing when hurt, he or she basically almost always does.

I despise the ability to grind your level up for this reason. Kill a hundred extra orcs, and the next hour of the game becomes boring. Reward boring gameplay with more boring gameplay, but then use Skinner rewards and cool sidequests to make players want to do it anyway, so you trick players into making themselves bored. Awesome game design, right there.

author=LockeZ
I despise the ability to grind your level up for this reason. Kill a hundred extra orcs, and the next hour of the game becomes boring. Reward boring gameplay with more boring gameplay, but then use Skinner rewards and cool sidequests to make players want to do it anyway, so you trick players into making themselves bored. Awesome game design, right there.

I don't find being slightly overpowered to be very boring.

When having more power changes your tactics from "respond to the enemy's actions" to "disregard the enemy's actions" then yes, it makes the game more boring.

If you only get enough extra power to make the battle go faster without actually removing the tactics involved, then no, it doesn't make the game more boring. It typically makes it less boring in that case, actually.

Leveling/Grinding is an inherent fine-grained self-controlled way of managing difficulty for the player, but with a nominal cost (time/effort/patience).

I think it's important to recognize that you shouldn't be trying to force the player to enjoy the game the 'right' way. Grinding and side quests are optional. If the player becomes too powerful because they did those things, then that's their choice. If the player wants a challenge, they can just as easily choose not to do those things, possibly even in a second play-through. Saying it's bad design isn't accurate. If anything, it's better design because players who aren't looking for a serious challenge have a venue they can use to beat the game more easily, while the hardcore players can give themselves a tougher time.

I'll just say that lack of patience have prevented me from enjoying great games, and my recent attitude is trying to be as patient as possible with games. Speed is not always a quality (more often than not, it isn't).

Well sometimes the payoff to a real slog can be "worth it". And actually that much sweeter because it was a real slog.

Also any game's tutorials... Though I'd put that in the bad category. (Why are all game tutorials so damn shite?)

Tutorials really is one of those examples of something that tends to be really boring, for most people involved. Yet they are also kind of necessary to teach how a game works. An example is in strategy games (or real time strategy games to be exact). Every single one of those tutorials involve moving the camera and clicking on units. Yes, often they are optional, but then fifteen steps into this slog of a tutorial you come across one of those unique features of the game. And if you didn't play the tutorial you might miss out on an important gameplay mechanic just because you just couldn't be arsed to left click to select and right click to move.

And you shouldn't have to be arsed to do that. Tutorials should have some kind of... system where you get the obvious stuff out of the way. Or throw out context-sensitive help ("I see you haven't selected a single unit and you've played the game fifteen minutes. Did you know you can left-click on your guys to select them?"). Or something like that.

First Person Shooters tend to be decent about tutorials, though on the other hand they usually have a lot less complicated stuff to explain than your average rts.

Just make combat fun and engaging to the mind. Button spamming will get to be a chore. Too many battles will seem like a chore. Give people the option to avoid battles through items or having NPC enemies instead of random battles. No one really says yes another enemy fuck yeah!

Make enemies diverse. Make how you kill them diverse. Some enemies are immune to weapons. Others immune to magic. Break up enemy battles with puzzles, talking or literally nothing. God of War had plenty of hallways without anything in them.

Have diverse abilities with your enemies and actors. Nothing sucks more than having 4 warriors. More skills more brain power in how to defeat enemies. But too many skills too quick will confuse people. Plus having the player choose their classes and skills will improve things for the player.

Common battles should never last 5 minutes or 10 turns. You as a designer need to pick up the pace. Like if the battle goes 5 turns the enemies should do something more to win. Like an enemy can buff the party. Or at turn 10 enemies can have a very powerful spell. That adds urgency for the player to finish the battle and stop messing around.

BUT as a designer you can't have common battles go more than 5 minutes. Weaken the enemy or remove the heal spell. Mini bosses can go more than 5 minutes. Bosses should go 15 minutes. No more than that though unless its the final boss. I say 15 minutes because that's what people train for and it gives them something to sink their teeth in.

Don't have too many uber battles back to back. That gets to be a slog. Peaks and valleys. Mini bosses are a good idea, because that gives a challenge to overcome instead of a slog of lesser enemies.

Make segways between areas like... a mine cart race or something that doesn't have enemies. Have an INTERACTIVE CUT SCENE. Interactive meaning you the player participate by throwing in your thoughts from choices and have consiquence to those actions... like you come across a traveler in the woods... you talk to her. She's lost. Do you kill her / mug her / escort her / not my problem. If you do not my problem she will end up dead a shopkeeper finds out you didn't help and that was his daughter so he refuses to sell to you. If you kill her, then bounty hunters are sent after you. If you mug her... she will spray you with something branding you as a thief. If you help her... then her husband will assume you're sleeping with her. CONSIQUENCE!

Make a town between each cave. Don't make caves and dungeons last more than an hour. Don't have 3 caves in a row. Have a cave and a tower and a forest.

Variety... Don't have 3 fetch quests in a row (although technically everything is a fetch quest). Have a fetch, an escort and a rescue. Once you've done the rescue change the layout of the cave or have an alternate exit route so its not backtracking.

In fact never have backtracking. Once a puzzle is done. There shouldn't be a need to do the puzzle twice. There should be exit crystals so people don't have to backtrack. There should be shortcuts that become enabled once you complete an area. Like a teleporter or something. Or a teleporter between the new town and the old town.

Oh and lastly play your game... if you feel like an interlude shouldn't be there. Take it out. If you feel like damn I've played this cave 1 hour already and its only the first part of 4!!!!! Then have something to break up the battles for 15 minutes. Like a grotto town inside the cave. A bunch of exploring with no enemies. Have a save point and an exit. Just for 15 minutes. That way it breaks things up and when the player is ready to get back to it, they'll continue.

author=LockeZ
I have a hard time imagining that being boring could be a good thing. Please explain in more detail, calunio?

Boring if not the opposite of fast.

FFX is an incredibly slow game with all those 40 minute cutscenes. Some people find it a good thing.