Think that a PvP tactic is dishonourable? Or an MMO zone’s not fun?
It probably comes down to one thing.
You’re certain what will happen.
That’s the thesis that Random Average is advancing today in a lengthy but fascinating essay on uncertainty in gaming, and just how big an impact it has on the entire gameplay experience -
“Over many (many) years of gaming, I’ve managed to figure out (one situation at a time) when something I was doing was killing fun by making the results (good or bad) a foregone conclusion. (Sometimes this was a question of mechanics; sometimes it was a question of “the inviolate plot.”) It also helped me identify what was going wrong when I wasn’t having fun as a player, both at a table or online.
Slamming my head against the same raid boss over and over, when it’s clear we don’t have the right group or the proper gear to succeed? Not fun.
Fighting that same raid boss when we’re this close to pulling off a win, and every attempt might go for us or the bad guys? Exhilarating.
Farming that boss once we have all the best gear, know the fight backwards and forwards, and all the surprises are gone? Boring.
Wandering around the newbie starter zone with my max-level character, picking flowers to level my Herbalism? Boring.
Sneaking through a zone 10 or 20 levels too high for me, running for my life in an effort to get a specific location or find a special macguffin? Fun!
Getting insta-killed out of nowhere when you unknowingly walk your new character into a high-level PvP zone? Frustrating.
I think we get the point. It’s something to keep in mind when you’re running or playing a game in which you have any kind of input (usually tabletop, but not always). Are you bored? Add challenge to what you’re doing by changing the choices you make. Are you hopelessly frustrated by never-ending failures? Change things up, or take a break, right? ”
Random’s an EVE blogger, and the second half of his post deals with EVE – but in a manner that’s both accessible and interesting to the non-EVE player. He’s discussing the way in which many EVE players stay away from risk at all costs – and suggesting that maybe they’re shooting their own game experience in the foot by doing so.
From the central thesis to its ramifications for all gaming and gamers – highly recommended.
What do you think? Does it all come down to uncertainty?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I definitely think they have the right of it and it is a concept I never even thought about when it came to addressing my own boredom issues. This is probably why I roll so many alts. Because I’ve never TRIED something like that before.
Yes and no.
No, as gamer you want your toon’s accomplishments to ‘stick’. It does not matter if you have to kill 3000 bears for some title, recipe or whatever, it does matter that if you do that the results won’t be trivialized by the Devs changing it to 20 bears and clicking on some Questgivers, or making that Exalted Zandalar recipe a 4 gold-only Vendor Recipe If you look at WoW, while no doubt there are more reasons, I can’t help but notice that the constant nerfs/Tier resets etc. make people, including my friends and me , very wary to bother with things, and that since it has been official policy to do so the subs have been dropping (TBC brought new elements like Arena and ‘Pretty Evil’/Belfs to the table, murking the issue a bit; of course there will bemore reasons for the drop but triviliazing won’t help)
Yes, being ensured of succes is not fun, and can soon degenerate into ‘rewarding for showing up’ (eg Dailies) which is draining (I have enough chores irl). One of the many bad things Cataclysm did was remove the concept of ‘Red’ and Elite Quests: in a level-based system, doing things at a lower level than ‘you’re supposed to’ is the prime way to generate OPTIONAL challenge and hence interest, and GC c.s. scratched both player choice in general and this optional challenge.
Note that there has been e.g. a very thorough Thread on the EU Forums since Dec last year to fix this at the Quest sub-Forum, so far with no official reaction (no doubt having to do with the fact that the Devs don’t seem to be really interested in Quests/the levelling experience).
Same btw with Noding skills (Northrend and Cata Nodes have an additional level requirement of 65 to Node, even though a level 55 can have 450 skill, leading to the absurd situation that e.g. 60 Twinks that can 3-shot Isle of QD mobs can’t even pick up some Grey herbs in Howling Fjord) and Archeology having Level requirements for some odd reason (boring enough as it is, but doing it wth e.g. a 20′s character on its land mount >> flying in a world of Gray mobs with a capped toon; note that the rewards for Archeology are basically all fluff and BoA – you’ll make more gold Mining Copper for example – making it so odd that, unlike Cooking and Fishing, it has such high level requrements, especially because the BoA are better handled than Heirlooms ie fixed level, iso trivializing the levelling experience for practically all levels)
This is why specific games eventually become boring, I think. Eventually, they are predictable, even the randomised bits have the random happenings within a predictable range, and one gets to a ‘seen it all before’ stage.