CAZ'S PROFILE

Hmph, fine.. but I better still get my end of year bonus cookies.. >:(

author=UPRC
I... I like... chick flicks...

W-wow.. I think that's the most shocking confession yet. Makes everyone else look so.. normal and unaffected by such awful things! I feel bad for you, man..

author=Yeaster

author=Caz
Lady Gaga. No one can ever know. Ever.

Why not? She's awesome. <3

She doesn't much fit in with my other tastes or personality. My friends would laugh if they found out.. hence the 'guilty' bit.

Hm.. so, a bit like Scribblenauts? A platformer where you had to do weird, WEIRD things like helping an old lady across the road or getting a dinosaur to eat seven sharks while using as few items as possible/on a time limit/without the dinosaur eating all of the old ladies you just helped across the road? I guess that's a bad example because there were only about three achievements per level, but I do get what you mean. The aim of each level or what-have-you is to get all of the achievements you possibly can before mashing your head into a wall.

I've played very few games of that genre (they've mainly been flash games), but what I have played has been enjoyable. Particularly if you're competing against other people to show off which of the achievements you've actually done and they haven't.. but without other people, you can start to see how they may become a bit pointless and only ever self-gratifying.

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.