A. Yes, yes. In some mmos and mmo-like survival games it does solve this at the expense of making the world "smaller", less grand adventurous, and sometimes harder to spot the materials you used to make your fast travel vehicle.
B. No? Buying a horse doesn't remove the incentive to buy a horse. Players will seek the fastest means of travel even if it results in what I said earlier.
Now I don't know anything about your playing habits, @mmoguy43, but do you find yourself purchasing fluff from the cash store? There's no shame in saying you do. I do too.
But the way you answer Proposition B reminds me the "cash store logic" behind how games are designed these days:
"If you want a horse, we'll sell you a horse."
But there's a catch...
Of course the horse, like everything in the cash store, doesn't really do anything....Not when you can get to the dungeons quicker via portal or fast travel. Its presence doesn't integrate itself in any major gameplay system. You could just as easily forget about the horse and suffer no loss of function. You can consume content at just the same rate with the horse as without the horse.
But the horse is cool to have, just like any fluff item. Its very uselessness is the reason why it can be sold in the cash store for real money.
See, if we had to rely on horse breeders to find the horses in the wild, break in the horses, ensure they have some good pasture land to feed themselves, and protect them from orcs, dragons, tigers and bears, the MMO publisher couldn't sell them out of the cash store. Because there would be no reason to go through all that work and waste all that time, as a horse breeder, if every player could simply whip out a credit card and get a horse from the publisher.
But then, what would justify all that extra coding, resource management and effort to create an entire player market in horse breeding, if fast travel gets you everywhere faster than a horse ever could? Which means we are in Proposition A: time and distance creates a need for horse breeding.
I used horse as an abstract fast travel example since you are talking about gathering stuff to make a machine, possibly a vehicle, which is a method of fast travel. I take it you were actually ONLY talking about point-to-point fast travel teleporting machines?
"If getting around is quick and efficient through portals or fast travel, doesn't this destroy any incentive to build or acquire something that will make travel without portals less slow and tedious?
If it does, then isn't it just better not to waste time on building machines?" If teleports already exist, would there be a need to build more? Probably not, unless they don't last. Would teleports mean the end of other methods of travel? Also depends, both could have an legitimate use for different reasons. Teleports might need power, cost more, span only vast distances, or are destroyed after 10 uses. Horses/vehicles might also only be temporary, be useful for scouting, or are the only way to transport in bulk.
There are two reasons why at least the option of slow travel is important.
Decisions? Yes there are. You can be wandering along and think, "I wonder what's down that little track there?" Do you take it, or carry on down the road?
It all depends whether you want to play an action game where the only thing is to get from one bit of hack and slay to the next, or a role-playing game in a believable world.
The option of slow travel isn't a point of contention. Nobody really cares if slow travel is an option in a game, and a game would have to take some pretty extreme measures to prevent it anyway.
Similarly, nobody's really saying there are zero decisions involved in travel. The problem is they're infrequent and shallow decisions, which makes them boring.
Interesting decisions are the most common reason players play games, because the human mind enjoys improving itself by developing skills and mastering patterns. The most casual-friendly way of understanding whether a game offers interesting decisions is to examine whether players are ever considered "skilled" at a given system (in MMORPGs you DO have skilled healer/tank/DPSers, but you DON'T have skilled travelers.)
Role-playing games are still judged based on offering interesting decisions. Darkest Dungeon does a fantastic job. Mass Effect does a fantastic job. Progress Quest does not (nobody in the world plays PQ for its gameplay, only for its humor content.) The decisions don't have to be combat-related (as ME's most interesting decisions tend to be story-related decisions,) they simply have to be interesting decisions.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, it can force players (if it's done in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary and lame, it feel's natural to the game) players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
Interesting decisions and depth comes from emergent value of the tools provided as much as it comes from the hard-coded elements a designer implements. More systems like travel being tied into other elements of the game opens the opportunity for more emergent game value and more interesting decisions and discoveries than a strictly defined user experience.
Hence, again, the reason to reference some past titles that had pushed the virtual world and depth of overall game systems such as travel, and the present push that can be seen in eastern game design. The decisions and the opportunities are in fact there, you have to stop looking at the wrong kind of game and refocus on the one's that explore the use of simulated systems and deep world interaction.
Like your ME example having interesting non-combat decisions. That's because, while it's still an action driven game for the most part, Bioware has for a long time been about narrative. It has been a major pillar for them to deliver interactivity and interest through dialogue, so they choose to focus quite a bit on making those features more interesting than, say, WoW where the dialogue is usually just a matter of opening a little box and hitting accept.
EDIT: Also semantically I would say people that can fly the Gal reliably in Planetside one and two are quite distinctly amazing "travelers".
Kiters, gliders, divebombers, hell when someone manages to juke a bandit while driving a carriage/wagon that's pretty amazing too.
You're not going to hear dialogue praising any of that if you're not playing a game that enables the skillful application of any of that. Hence again where virtual world type games and the ones that use better integrated systems for emergent gameplay tend to be the sources of such interest. Not the titles that neglect the world and "secondary" systems to focus on delivering a strongly scripted and defined user experience.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
What is fun game play and interesting content then?
Good combat.
Good puzzles.
Good stealth action.
Good scenery the first time around.
NOT backtracking the same route again, again and again. That is why most open world games have fast travel. You can still walk if you want .. but clearly most don't care to do so.
In my own point of view, I really don't see the point of having a persistent world in the current MMO structures. What does a persistent world bring to the table that instanced content don't bring when it comes to questing. Persistent world means that time is a dimension that is/should be taken into account. With fixed content, it's not persistent, it's a snapshot. If players are unable to change the world, then persistent shared worlds is not an interesting tool.
The problem I see in many persistent servers with a lot of ability for the player to alter the world is that the devs are unable to predict what these changes will be. And as such, they don't tailor the world with these predicted changes into account. Take ARK Survival Evolved for instance on public servers. Servers that have been since the release of Early Access mean that new players will spawn in zones that are cluttered with player constructions.
Another aspect with persistent worlds based on player impact is how antagonistic they are to player progression. The greatest aspect of human progression is our ability to use tools to compensate our physical weaknesses. A fresh player spawning with 0 skills and requiring these skills to equip/use certain items means that he will not be able to play on the same leveling field as players that have been there for longer, while we are naturally used to using "shared" or "traded" items that that occured due to the progression of humans as a species. So, personal progression is a bit of a problem in a persistent world. Because game systems are designed so that the player can affect the world at release, but they don't change after release.
1) We are playing games ... i can easily suspend my disbelief if the screen pop a screen up and said "you just walk 2 days and now arrive at ...." and magically i appear at my destination. There is a reason why in movies, when people travel, they don't show a two hour drive .... and i don't see a suspension of belief to be a problem in movies.
You are missing the point. It's not fast travel that causes disbelief. It's tiny lands that you can walk the length of in 10 minutes, and towns with six inhabitants. Fast travel is essential and not a problem. But it should be fast travel over a landscape that is geographically credible.
Some other poster mentioned decision making and skilled decision making, and I don't agree. Skills are another matter, and obviously some players are highly skilled in combat, choosing the right attack move at the right time. I'm not! I fire off spells at random hoping that one of them will do the job, but I still have lots of fun if the game is good.
And some decisions are major, interesting and not related to any skill. Such as (in a game that gives you the option) deciding where to take a house. Most games give you little choice, but in Daggerfall you had hundreds of towns to choose from with houses for sale, and I spent some immersive time looking for one I liked.
It's great that they've taken that baby-step. Well done! But it's still just a baby step. For travel to be enjoyable to players, it has to be vastly deeper than that.
I honestly don't care if you're too obstinate to learn, I'll correct the mistakes regardless for others to read and learn from. Making personal attacks on me does not provide a valid argument, so try sticking to the truth next time.
Isn't the trouble here that Axehilt refuses to see that he is not the only player, and lumping ALL PLAYERS into his own forms of enjoyment is utterly asinine? Yet that is the basis of his whole point: "I don't like it, so NOBODY does!"
It's great that they've taken that baby-step. Well done! But it's still just a baby step. For travel to be enjoyable to players, it has to be vastly deeper than that.
I honestly don't care if you're too obstinate to learn, I'll correct the mistakes regardless for others to read and learn from. Making personal attacks on me does not provide a valid argument, so try sticking to the truth next time.
Isn't the trouble here that Axehilt refuses to see that he is not the only player, and lumping ALL PLAYERS into his own forms of enjoyment is utterly asinine? Yet that is the basis of his whole point: "I don't like it, so NOBODY does!"
Uh...You can say that about the majority of people that posts on this forum.
It's great that they've taken that baby-step. Well done! But it's still just a baby step. For travel to be enjoyable to players, it has to be vastly deeper than that.
I honestly don't care if you're too obstinate to learn, I'll correct the mistakes regardless for others to read and learn from. Making personal attacks on me does not provide a valid argument, so try sticking to the truth next time.
Isn't the trouble here that Axehilt refuses to see that he is not the only player, and lumping ALL PLAYERS into his own forms of enjoyment is utterly asinine? Yet that is the basis of his whole point: "I don't like it, so NOBODY does!"
The things I'm describing are the opinions of most gamers. The fact that my own opinions strongly overlap those opinions is somewhat incidental (but is mostly the result of my being human like everyone else, with a brain which has evolved to be delighted by pattern mastery and learning.)
So really what's happening is the exact opposite of what you're describing:
Look around. The most successful games are those which focus on gameplay (interesting decisions.) Street Fighter, WOW, Sim City, Civilization, League of Legends, these games all focus on providing a steady flow of interesting, hard-to-master decisions.
Meanwhile on the forums, a minority insists their opinion of how to make games is more important than what the vast majority of players have consistently preferred.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think people overlook the immersion factor again. If you have an area setup well with a soft traveling tune and neat looking scenery it's not that bad to travel around. Why are people so worried about wasted time while playing games that are a waste of time? I'd rather have things mimic the world a bit more and get lost in it than have constant action. I know many people how trouble getting immersed in things. I thought that part of my being able to get immersed in modern American movies and TV shows was just me getting older for a while, but having watched some Korean Drama's recently I realize that a lot of movies and games out there have lost the art of immersion by tying music, beauty, art, and action together. It is a lost of art that stems from imagination and classical storytelling. I still have some of the songs in my head from games I played when was a kid. Having the music for adventure, music for horror, music love, music for friendship, music for sadness, music for happiness, music for mystery, music for magic, etc. adds a lot to making traveling and other elements of the game feel enjoyable. So does environment and timing things so that they capture the person playing. Some of the places in modern games look amazing, but they are lacking that something while traveling that makes it worthwhile. I think part of that is definitely not having a good traveling tune.
I think people overlook the immersion factor again. If you have an area setup well with a soft traveling tune and neat looking scenery it's not that bad to travel around. Why are people so worried about wasted time while playing games that are a waste of time? I'd rather have things mimic the world a bit more and get lost in it than have constant action. I know many people how trouble getting immersed in things. I thought that part of my being able to get immersed in modern American movies and TV shows was just me getting older for a while, but having watched some Korean Drama's recently I realize that a lot of movies and games out there have lost the art of immersion by tying music, beauty, art, and action together. It is a lost of art that stems from imagination and classical storytelling. I still have some of the songs in my head from games I played when was a kid. Having the music for adventure, music for horror, music love, music for friendship, music for sadness, music for happiness, music for mystery, music for magic, etc. adds a lot to making traveling and other elements of the game feel enjoyable. So does environment and timing things so that they capture the person playing. Some of the places in modern games look amazing, but they are lacking that something while traveling that makes it worthwhile. I think part of that is definitely not having a good traveling tune.
Its not necessarily your time you are wasting. Its the time of all your friends' time when they are waiting for you to get to where they are. Its also about doing something fun rather than doing something that's not fun.
Travel might have been fun when everything was still new. But lets be real: the mystery is gone from MMORPGs. Huge portion of the player base are jaded veterans who have seen it all before - likely done better in some other game. It takes a lot to impress them and a lot to make them not feel like travel is a waste of time.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I think people overlook the immersion factor again. If you have an area setup well with a soft traveling tune and neat looking scenery it's not that bad to travel around. Why are people so worried about wasted time while playing games that are a waste of time? I'd rather have things mimic the world a bit more and get lost in it than have constant action. I know many people how trouble getting immersed in things. I thought that part of my being able to get immersed in modern American movies and TV shows was just me getting older for a while, but having watched some Korean Drama's recently I realize that a lot of movies and games out there have lost the art of immersion by tying music, beauty, art, and action together. It is a lost of art that stems from imagination and classical storytelling. I still have some of the songs in my head from games I played when was a kid. Having the music for adventure, music for horror, music love, music for friendship, music for sadness, music for happiness, music for mystery, music for magic, etc. adds a lot to making traveling and other elements of the game feel enjoyable. So does environment and timing things so that they capture the person playing. Some of the places in modern games look amazing, but they are lacking that something while traveling that makes it worthwhile. I think part of that is definitely not having a good traveling tune.
Its not necessarily your time you are wasting. Its the time of all your friends' time when they are waiting for you to get to where they are. Its also about doing something fun rather than doing something that's not fun.
Travel might have been fun when everything was still new. But lets be real: the mystery is gone from MMORPGs. Huge portion of the player base are jaded veterans who have seen it all before - likely done better in some other game. It takes a lot to impress them and a lot to make them not feel like travel is a waste of time.
Possibly, but I find music can have a profound impact on my mood and changing it. Most older games had music that was classical and setup like a play in many cases. Some Asian games still have this setup. Most games I play have very uninspiring music while traveling from place to place. Sometimes it kicks in during combat, but that's it usually. The rest is just reading text or listening to audio clips. Without the music it's likely you will care much less about whats going on. Traveling is can be a monotonous process as pointed out, but when a good classical tune is repeated that lifts your spirits or adds to the danger (in some places) then it's much easier to get into IMO. Then again I always was easily hypnotized by such things in movies and games. I noticed other people would keep talking during the game or movie while I was completely lost in the world and the music even if it was just 2D. The music and scene setup could bring the 2D world to life for me.
I think people overlook the immersion factor again. If you have an area setup well with a soft traveling tune and neat looking scenery it's not that bad to travel around. Why are people so worried about wasted time while playing games that are a waste of time? I'd rather have things mimic the world a bit more and get lost in it than have constant action. I know many people how trouble getting immersed in things. I thought that part of my being able to get immersed in modern American movies and TV shows was just me getting older for a while, but having watched some Korean Drama's recently I realize that a lot of movies and games out there have lost the art of immersion by tying music, beauty, art, and action together. It is a lost of art that stems from imagination and classical storytelling. I still have some of the songs in my head from games I played when was a kid. Having the music for adventure, music for horror, music love, music for friendship, music for sadness, music for happiness, music for mystery, music for magic, etc. adds a lot to making traveling and other elements of the game feel enjoyable. So does environment and timing things so that they capture the person playing. Some of the places in modern games look amazing, but they are lacking that something while traveling that makes it worthwhile. I think part of that is definitely not having a good traveling tune.
Do you feel the Lord of the Rings movies were immersive, or did you spend your time complaining about how travel wasn't shown in real-time?
Lord of the Rings skipped to the interesting bits, and in doing so was more immersive than it would've been if it was a tedious recount of every second of the year-long trip the characters undertook. Realism actually would've counteracted the immersion.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, it can force players (if it's done in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary and lame, it feel's natural to the game) players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Meaningful how? Because you have to do it otherwise you'd lose the game?
Are you really going to claim the decisions made in combat are different?
Decisions in combat are generally not equivalent to:
Shoot yourself in the head.
Don't shoot yourself in the head.
Decisions like these are not interesting. They do not make the game deep.
Let me fix that for you.
Decisions in combat are generally equivalent to:
Kill monster.
Die.
Decisions like these are rather binary. When you start talking about games where systems are heavily reliant on the likes of combat rotations and optimal procedure to repeatedly make the same basic decision through the same basic actions, that is very simply what was mentioned before.
You have to do it, and you have to do it the way the designers tailored it, or you lose the game because some mob will kill you.
There's no emergent value in that, there's no alternative. It's an exceptionally binary decision process.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, it can force players (if it's done in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary and lame, it feel's natural to the game) players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
Or they can naturally quit and go play something else where they are not forced to make do.
Axehilt said: Look around. The most successful games are those which focus on gameplay (interesting decisions.) Street Fighter, WOW, Sim City, Civilization, League of Legends, these games all focus on providing a steady flow of interesting, hard-to-master decisions.
Actually if you look at games like LoL you find plenty of downtime is part of the gameplay.
Same with Sim City. As a sim game there is a lot of automation and long-form gameplay and thinking to the strategy and gameplay. Civ as well, where it has moment to moment activities, but there are long term events and strategies that require players to step back and wait on elements like wonders, trade, and research upgrades. As Cadwell said "A lot of the best decisions in Civ are decisions that are aligning short term and long term objectives." It's not the task to throw a bunch of incessant actions at a player, good gameplay is blending short term actions and bursts of rush activities with long-form strategy and deep planning.
It's also again a mistake of yours where you think to draw "a steady flow of interesting, hard-to-master decisions" (note, Cadwell doesn't make this kinda claim).
Cadwell's commentary on this for example is this; "By designing for this, you really encourage player activity and reward."
Which he reinforces with this statement; "By incensing players to learn these tools, by putting them in situations where they have to use these tools, you actually get these players to sample in a way they actually get excited about a larger percent of your content."
In other words, rather than constantly trying to force a pacing and trying to force decisions and gameplay on people, the notion is that if you provide the tools and the integration, and subsequently give players problems to solve, they will solve them. That is in and of itself, interesting gameplay with "hard to master" goals. The difference is that it is developed from an emergent process rather than a strictly defined process.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, it can force players (if it's done in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary and lame, it feel's natural to the game) players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
Or they can naturally quit and go play something else where they are not forced to make do.
Sure, you don't have to agree with Cadwell's philosophy, but the use of the term "make do" there isn't to imply that game is actually forcing players to settle, it's more the implication that it's making them engage more with the game. It gives players a reason to look around and explore more, try out a broader range of features, and really get involved in an effort to obtain solutions to "problems".
That is itself gameplay. It's problem solving and learning through the exploration of the game's content on a general and meta level.
The idea of having such limitations isn't by itself to simply hobble a player, it's to provide a means, so long as those tools are integrated with the other features of the game, to overcome a challenge.
The irony in this being, the implication of people deigning to quit and play something else is itself an implication that players don't actually want to play something with such challenge and difficulty in mastering. Yet it's the core feature of rogue-like games.
It's the thing that Axehilt forgot on his list as well. Roguelikes very traditionally have a severely confined set of features that players have to play against in order to achieve victory. In many cases death means rolling you back to the beginning or taking a massive penalty and starting from a far checkpoint.
And yet, people enjoy Dark Souls. Even though you have to run all about in that place. Even though there is such disparity in the monsters you face. Even though combat abilities have plenty of gaps in their defense and opportunities to get sideswiped and die. It's popular specifically for these challenges and limitations imposed because it provides the value of difficulty to master and depth of gameplay in overcoming or circumventing the limitations imposed on you.
As it applies to travel, this whole point becomes the fact that if you provide a reason for the game world in terms of actions and activities in the environments and then travel has different ways in which it ties into these features, it creates something for players to "gameify" themselves by overcoming what aspects they see as hindering.
This also doesn't delve too much into the side point that there is a scalable scope that can and is built into such games through the control of travel. Without a mount for example, a player's "game world" may focus primarily on a small region of the world and all the activities around a given town and nearby forest. You get a mount, and suddenly inter-town travel no longer is a problem, and now the gameplay and economy game has shifted scope.
So long as content is provided at each tier of such scoping gameplay, then it creates layers to the depth of the game and how things can interplay with each other such as individual town economies versus global economy and region power resulting from their economic strength.
It's like, Dragon Age 2 would be the "without a mount" experience, where everything the player does is an event focusing on a home city/location and the surrounding territory. Or Dragon's Dogma, where there's only one capital location and it's closest key features (though travel in that game was still quite long easily).
The next step out when you get a mount would be the likes of DA: Origins or Inquisition, where suddenly players have access to disparate regions that they can ride between. Difference being, that in a "virtual world" scenario this is done through the use of a large environment and varying access to modes of transportation that changes travel time/ease.
It's the case that virtual worlds deliver gameplay in a different manner than a themepart style RPG would as well.
For example, the whole town scenario in a themepark treats the location more as a "quest hub" where you complete a finite set of scripted activities, and that eventually leads you to the next location/set piece.
A virtual world type RPG may throw some quests and general directions at you to lead you through some stuff, but there's also generally a lot of "things to do" simply in the game world. It's the players incentive and intent then to choose to settle in that location and commit to the random activities, or to move off to a different place and see what else is going on.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
It sounds mostly like combat, but strategies and improvisation can come from having to do certain non combat things like build a camp at a certain time in order to survive or having to make sure you have or can get enough food and drink. Those and more can be incorporated into a game in a meaningful way.
Just because combat is the most frequent source of interesting decision-making in games doesn't mean it's the only source of interesting decision-making possible.
Tetris/Tetris Attack/Puzzle Quest. Expertly planning out your moves to place pieces in precisely the right point will result in dramatically better results than just dumping them wherever (ie good decision-making is strongly rewarded.)
Sim City/Civilization. The majority of gameplay tends to be non-combat decisions revolving around the growth and improvement of your city/nation.
Mario/Sonic. Decisions involve successfully navigating the level by jumping the right distances and avoiding threats.
Gran Turismo/Need for Speed. Decisions involve manipulating the car to race within the bounds and get a quicker time than your opponents. There is more nuance to a turn than just "turn left"; you must account for your current speed, your vehicle's handling, and the bank of the turn, which are hard to master nuances.
At their core these games* are about interesting decisions.
(*and combat games, and nearly all successful games.)
The elements you mention definitely could be added into a game, but when you look across all these successful games the vast majority of them are successful because they focused on doing one set of interesting decisions well. Certainly if you're going to include an element, it should be done as well as it makes sense to do it, but in absence of depth it should at least be optional or require no significant amount of time (crafting in a lot of MMORPGs doesn't involve particularly interesting decisions, but it typically happens very quickly and typically is optional.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
1) We are playing games ... i can easily suspend my disbelief if the screen pop a screen up and said "you just walk 2 days and now arrive at ...." and magically i appear at my destination. There is a reason why in movies, when people travel, they don't show a two hour drive .... and i don't see a suspension of belief to be a problem in movies.
You are missing the point. It's not fast travel that causes disbelief. It's tiny lands that you can walk the length of in 10 minutes, and towns with six inhabitants. Fast travel is essential and not a problem. But it should be fast travel over a landscape that is geographically credible.
so play The Division or Assassin Creed Syndicate .. you have a whole city to fast travel or slow travel in.
Just because combat is the most frequent source of interesting decision-making in games doesn't mean it's the only source of interesting decision-making possible.
Tetris/Tetris Attack/Puzzle Quest. Expertly planning out your moves to place pieces in precisely the right point will result in dramatically better results than just dumping them wherever (ie good decision-making is strongly rewarded.)
Sim City/Civilization. The majority of gameplay tends to be non-combat decisions revolving around the growth and improvement of your city/nation.
Mario/Sonic. Decisions involve successfully navigating the level by jumping the right distances and avoiding threats.
Gran Turismo/Need for Speed. Decisions involve manipulating the car to race within the bounds and get a quicker time than your opponents. There is more nuance to a turn than just "turn left"; you must account for your current speed, your vehicle's handling, and the bank of the turn, which are hard to master nuances.
At their core these games* are about interesting decisions.
To repeat Cadwell again.
"Generally in Roguelikes players have diverse challenges and diverse tools, and often those diverse tools are imperfect tools." "By designing for this, you really encourage player activity and reward." "By incensing players to learn these tools, by putting them in situations where they have to use these tools, you actually get these players to sample in a way they actually excited about a larger percent of your content."
"A lot of the best decisions in Civ are decisions that are aligning short term and long term objectives."
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, it can force players (if it's done in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary and lame, it feel's natural to the game) players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
Interesting decisions are not simply from a narrowly defined set of mechanics, but the provision of challenge those mechanics can themselves provide and the emergent value in their use and limitations.
Racing games are deep and interesting because you "have to" drive the entire track.
Puzzle jumpers are deep and interesting because the limitations of movement and obstacle avoidance.
Sim Strategies are deep and interesting because the long-form strategies and their effect on short term play.
Puzzle games are deep and interesting because they challenge players mentally regardless of their pacing (unless part of the challenge is specifically time trial). For example mechanical puzzles, word puzzles, sudoku, etc.
Interesting decisions comes from the challenge imposed on players. Integrating game mechanics together and providing the limitations necessary to generate a challenge or problem to overcome (such as finite means of travel leading to players seeking further methods, or directing game scope though travel access).
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Comments
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
"If getting around is quick and efficient through portals or fast travel, doesn't this destroy any incentive to build or acquire something that will make travel without portals less slow and tedious?
If it does, then isn't it just better not to waste time on building machines?"
If teleports already exist, would there be a need to build more? Probably not, unless they don't last.
Would teleports mean the end of other methods of travel? Also depends, both could have an legitimate use for different reasons. Teleports might need power, cost more, span only vast distances, or are destroyed after 10 uses. Horses/vehicles might also only be temporary, be useful for scouting, or are the only way to transport in bulk.
Similarly, nobody's really saying there are zero decisions involved in travel. The problem is they're infrequent and shallow decisions, which makes them boring.
Interesting decisions are the most common reason players play games, because the human mind enjoys improving itself by developing skills and mastering patterns. The most casual-friendly way of understanding whether a game offers interesting decisions is to examine whether players are ever considered "skilled" at a given system (in MMORPGs you DO have skilled healer/tank/DPSers, but you DON'T have skilled travelers.)
Role-playing games are still judged based on offering interesting decisions. Darkest Dungeon does a fantastic job. Mass Effect does a fantastic job. Progress Quest does not (nobody in the world plays PQ for its gameplay, only for its humor content.) The decisions don't have to be combat-related (as ME's most interesting decisions tend to be story-related decisions,) they simply have to be interesting decisions.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, it can force players (if it's done in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary and lame, it feel's natural to the game) players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
Interesting decisions and depth comes from emergent value of the tools provided as much as it comes from the hard-coded elements a designer implements. More systems like travel being tied into other elements of the game opens the opportunity for more emergent game value and more interesting decisions and discoveries than a strictly defined user experience.
Hence, again, the reason to reference some past titles that had pushed the virtual world and depth of overall game systems such as travel, and the present push that can be seen in eastern game design. The decisions and the opportunities are in fact there, you have to stop looking at the wrong kind of game and refocus on the one's that explore the use of simulated systems and deep world interaction.
Like your ME example having interesting non-combat decisions. That's because, while it's still an action driven game for the most part, Bioware has for a long time been about narrative. It has been a major pillar for them to deliver interactivity and interest through dialogue, so they choose to focus quite a bit on making those features more interesting than, say, WoW where the dialogue is usually just a matter of opening a little box and hitting accept.
EDIT: Also semantically I would say people that can fly the Gal reliably in Planetside one and two are quite distinctly amazing "travelers".
Kiters, gliders, divebombers, hell when someone manages to juke a bandit while driving a carriage/wagon that's pretty amazing too.
You're not going to hear dialogue praising any of that if you're not playing a game that enables the skillful application of any of that. Hence again where virtual world type games and the ones that use better integrated systems for emergent gameplay tend to be the sources of such interest. Not the titles that neglect the world and "secondary" systems to focus on delivering a strongly scripted and defined user experience.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Good puzzles.
Good stealth action.
Good scenery the first time around.
NOT backtracking the same route again, again and again. That is why most open world games have fast travel. You can still walk if you want .. but clearly most don't care to do so.
In my own point of view, I really don't see the point of having a persistent world in the current MMO structures. What does a persistent world bring to the table that instanced content don't bring when it comes to questing.
Persistent world means that time is a dimension that is/should be taken into account. With fixed content, it's not persistent, it's a snapshot. If players are unable to change the world, then persistent shared worlds is not an interesting tool.
The problem I see in many persistent servers with a lot of ability for the player to alter the world is that the devs are unable to predict what these changes will be. And as such, they don't tailor the world with these predicted changes into account.
Take ARK Survival Evolved for instance on public servers. Servers that have been since the release of Early Access mean that new players will spawn in zones that are cluttered with player constructions.
Another aspect with persistent worlds based on player impact is how antagonistic they are to player progression. The greatest aspect of human progression is our ability to use tools to compensate our physical weaknesses. A fresh player spawning with 0 skills and requiring these skills to equip/use certain items means that he will not be able to play on the same leveling field as players that have been there for longer, while we are naturally used to using "shared" or "traded" items that that occured due to the progression of humans as a species.
So, personal progression is a bit of a problem in a persistent world. Because game systems are designed so that the player can affect the world at release, but they don't change after release.
Some other poster mentioned decision making and skilled decision making, and I don't agree. Skills are another matter, and obviously some players are highly skilled in combat, choosing the right attack move at the right time. I'm not! I fire off spells at random hoping that one of them will do the job, but I still have lots of fun if the game is good.
And some decisions are major, interesting and not related to any skill. Such as (in a game that gives you the option) deciding where to take a house. Most games give you little choice, but in Daggerfall you had hundreds of towns to choose from with houses for sale, and I spent some immersive time looking for one I liked.
1. Traveling is not content.
2. Traveling is boring content.
3. Traveling is content.
1. You play a lot of games with no content.
2. You play a lot of games with boring content.
3. You play a lot of games with content.
VG
- Shoot yourself in the head.
- Don't shoot yourself in the head.
Decisions like these are not interesting. They do not make the game deep.I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
So really what's happening is the exact opposite of what you're describing:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Travel might have been fun when everything was still new. But lets be real: the mystery is gone from MMORPGs. Huge portion of the player base are jaded veterans who have seen it all before - likely done better in some other game. It takes a lot to impress them and a lot to make them not feel like travel is a waste of time.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Lord of the Rings skipped to the interesting bits, and in doing so was more immersive than it would've been if it was a tedious recount of every second of the year-long trip the characters undertook. Realism actually would've counteracted the immersion.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, it can force players (if it's done in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary and lame, it feel's natural to the game) players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Let me fix that for you.
Decisions in combat are generally equivalent to:
- Kill monster.
- Die.
Decisions like these are rather binary. When you start talking about games where systems are heavily reliant on the likes of combat rotations and optimal procedure to repeatedly make the same basic decision through the same basic actions, that is very simply what was mentioned before.You have to do it, and you have to do it the way the designers tailored it, or you lose the game because some mob will kill you.
There's no emergent value in that, there's no alternative. It's an exceptionally binary decision process.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Actually if you look at games like LoL you find plenty of downtime is part of the gameplay.
Same with Sim City. As a sim game there is a lot of automation and long-form gameplay and thinking to the strategy and gameplay. Civ as well, where it has moment to moment activities, but there are long term events and strategies that require players to step back and wait on elements like wonders, trade, and research upgrades. As Cadwell said "A lot of the best decisions in Civ are decisions that are aligning short term and long term objectives." It's not the task to throw a bunch of incessant actions at a player, good gameplay is blending short term actions and bursts of rush activities with long-form strategy and deep planning.
It's also again a mistake of yours where you think to draw "a steady flow of interesting, hard-to-master decisions" (note, Cadwell doesn't make this kinda claim).
Cadwell's commentary on this for example is this;
"By designing for this, you really encourage player activity and reward."
Which he reinforces with this statement;
"By incensing players to learn these tools, by putting them in situations where they have to use these tools, you actually get these players to sample in a way they actually get excited about a larger percent of your content."
In other words, rather than constantly trying to force a pacing and trying to force decisions and gameplay on people, the notion is that if you provide the tools and the integration, and subsequently give players problems to solve, they will solve them. That is in and of itself, interesting gameplay with "hard to master" goals. The difference is that it is developed from an emergent process rather than a strictly defined process.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
That is itself gameplay. It's problem solving and learning through the exploration of the game's content on a general and meta level.
The idea of having such limitations isn't by itself to simply hobble a player, it's to provide a means, so long as those tools are integrated with the other features of the game, to overcome a challenge.
The irony in this being, the implication of people deigning to quit and play something else is itself an implication that players don't actually want to play something with such challenge and difficulty in mastering. Yet it's the core feature of rogue-like games.
It's the thing that Axehilt forgot on his list as well. Roguelikes very traditionally have a severely confined set of features that players have to play against in order to achieve victory. In many cases death means rolling you back to the beginning or taking a massive penalty and starting from a far checkpoint.
And yet, people enjoy Dark Souls. Even though you have to run all about in that place. Even though there is such disparity in the monsters you face. Even though combat abilities have plenty of gaps in their defense and opportunities to get sideswiped and die. It's popular specifically for these challenges and limitations imposed because it provides the value of difficulty to master and depth of gameplay in overcoming or circumventing the limitations imposed on you.
As it applies to travel, this whole point becomes the fact that if you provide a reason for the game world in terms of actions and activities in the environments and then travel has different ways in which it ties into these features, it creates something for players to "gameify" themselves by overcoming what aspects they see as hindering.
This also doesn't delve too much into the side point that there is a scalable scope that can and is built into such games through the control of travel. Without a mount for example, a player's "game world" may focus primarily on a small region of the world and all the activities around a given town and nearby forest. You get a mount, and suddenly inter-town travel no longer is a problem, and now the gameplay and economy game has shifted scope.
So long as content is provided at each tier of such scoping gameplay, then it creates layers to the depth of the game and how things can interplay with each other such as individual town economies versus global economy and region power resulting from their economic strength.
It's like, Dragon Age 2 would be the "without a mount" experience, where everything the player does is an event focusing on a home city/location and the surrounding territory. Or Dragon's Dogma, where there's only one capital location and it's closest key features (though travel in that game was still quite long easily).
The next step out when you get a mount would be the likes of DA: Origins or Inquisition, where suddenly players have access to disparate regions that they can ride between. Difference being, that in a "virtual world" scenario this is done through the use of a large environment and varying access to modes of transportation that changes travel time/ease.
It's the case that virtual worlds deliver gameplay in a different manner than a themepart style RPG would as well.
For example, the whole town scenario in a themepark treats the location more as a "quest hub" where you complete a finite set of scripted activities, and that eventually leads you to the next location/set piece.
A virtual world type RPG may throw some quests and general directions at you to lead you through some stuff, but there's also generally a lot of "things to do" simply in the game world. It's the players incentive and intent then to choose to settle in that location and commit to the random activities, or to move off to a different place and see what else is going on.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
- Tetris/Tetris Attack/Puzzle Quest. Expertly planning out your moves to place pieces in precisely the right point will result in dramatically better results than just dumping them wherever (ie good decision-making is strongly rewarded.)
- Sim City/Civilization. The majority of gameplay tends to be non-combat decisions revolving around the growth and improvement of your city/nation.
- Mario/Sonic. Decisions involve successfully navigating the level by jumping the right distances and avoiding threats.
- Gran Turismo/Need for Speed. Decisions involve manipulating the car to race within the bounds and get a quicker time than your opponents. There is more nuance to a turn than just "turn left"; you must account for your current speed, your vehicle's handling, and the bank of the turn, which are hard to master nuances.
At their core these games* are about interesting decisions.(*and combat games, and nearly all successful games.)
The elements you mention definitely could be added into a game, but when you look across all these successful games the vast majority of them are successful because they focused on doing one set of interesting decisions well. Certainly if you're going to include an element, it should be done as well as it makes sense to do it, but in absence of depth it should at least be optional or require no significant amount of time (crafting in a lot of MMORPGs doesn't involve particularly interesting decisions, but it typically happens very quickly and typically is optional.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
"Generally in Roguelikes players have diverse challenges and diverse tools, and often those diverse tools are imperfect tools."
"By designing for this, you really encourage player activity and reward."
"By incensing players to learn these tools, by putting them in situations where they have to use these tools, you actually get these players to sample in a way they actually excited about a larger percent of your content."
"A lot of the best decisions in Civ are decisions that are aligning short term and long term objectives."
"Tools need to be limited in some way, it could be that they are inconsistently available. It could be that you have options A, B, and C and all of them have different uses or importance. It could be that there's a lot of cool-downs. It could be that they're just not provided to you when you need them by some mechanic. I think that's really really important, it can force players (if it's done in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary and lame, it feel's natural to the game) players naturally get into this "making do" and creativity mode."
Interesting decisions are not simply from a narrowly defined set of mechanics, but the provision of challenge those mechanics can themselves provide and the emergent value in their use and limitations.
Interesting decisions comes from the challenge imposed on players. Integrating game mechanics together and providing the limitations necessary to generate a challenge or problem to overcome (such as finite means of travel leading to players seeking further methods, or directing game scope though travel access).
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin