One aspect of games that I think is interesting and isn't talked about much is games that become less fun the better you get at them.
Games like Payday 1/2, Dead by Daylight, Helldivers 2, and more have a weird difficulty curve that results in highly restrictive gameplay as you get better at them.
Games like Payday 1/2, Dead by Daylight, Helldivers 2, and more have a weird difficulty curve that results in highly restrictive gameplay as you get better at them.
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Then 2 minutes and 13 seconds later you get stun locked by a freshy with a stick
Some people like finding new stuff to do and experimenting so on and so forth
Others like honing what they already like
https://bsky.app/profile/spaceprez.bsky.social/post/3lbl2ybd7kc2k
Some people legitimately forgot how to have fun. Remember the old proverb. "If it's not fun, why bother?".
This is even true in Poker weirdly enough, where they've developed huge manuals of hands and their statistical probabilities.
I'm really good at certain 4x games, but they always remain fun because being really good just means more opportunities to do the things that are fun.
Same with Factorio et al.
Delayed satisfaction FTW!
Oh wait, he’s 8 years old, ignore me
The higher-tier difficulties are far too hard to enjoy playing, and the lower-tier difficulties are too easy/brainless to enjoy playing due to lack of challenge.
Life is like this. More knowledge begs more questions.
By definition, accomplishing this would mean designing a game that is interesting even to players who are more talented than the game designer…
The reason a player grinds for a higher level is so they don’t have to grind so hard anymore (usually due to better equipment).
Not to get into a semantic argument, but I think you see where I'm going.
I appreciate your insights and for spurring the conversation! The theory of fun is always a fun topic :)
Maybe this is possible if the act of playing the game includes designing the next level of the game.
Maybe games can integrate the meta-game directly.
But it quickly became an Idlw game when you get Rockets, crit glasses, and daggers. Or some other busted item stack
I stopped running it, even if it meant way more runs die early thanks to bad/un-synergestic items.
It forces you to struggle.
Players gotta get used to the idea.
"Fun is just another word for learning"
But its not an easy problem to solve.
Community / private servers is one approach.
And that point is almost always down to the player's choosing.
With that said, it's a habit that can be unlearned. I've been Helldiving at difficulty 7 and just enjoying the variety of guns and different skills that can be mastered there
If you want to get really good at chess, you have to pretty much learn openings by heart.
If you want to get good at soccer, you will employ strategies that are far from the most entertaining.
Holy shit War Thunder
As you get more pro, it all narrows. Only a few classes or guns are s-rank viable. Others are just strictly bad
But any game where you have teammates, that's off the table.
The problem is that mathematics is not a good game designer.
Which is WAAAY easier if you've got 3 complete kits with 10 distinct features each rather than letting players pick 10 features out of a list of 30.
The idea was that you could learn any ability from any class.
Over the course of the server's life style they tried EVERYTHING to get players to pick something other than Ice Block + Explosive Shot.
Eventually they settled on a new class system.
But if you're playing the game at LFR? Go wild, use whatever talents you want.
But VERY FEW gamers explicitly recognize this.
You see people talking about this better than that and it just affects you psychologically. Even though you don't play at that level yourself.
You should always be improving? So why would you intentionally hold yourself back?
There's a lot of ways in which thinking about the average gamer like an amateur eSports competitor gets it wrong. For many, the only goal is FUN. No more.
https://youtu.be/BKP1I7IocYU?si=00UtFjrS0sp3k_Vm
Diablo has both explicit and implicit incentives for "X per second" above all else. In contrast, there are efficient machines in TotK but (afaik) no explicit penalty for creative/expressive creations.
I'm rambling now 😜
Mario is just Mario. There's no reason to do anything but have fun.
I mean I guess speed running, haha. So people will still invent it for themselves sometimes.
I think it’s the enjoyment of “carrying”. I don’t like the negativity of the term, but something about playing these games close to a big sale, and teaching new players is what gaming is all about.
Much prefer playing at the lower ranks with newbies.
This happens in Pokémon, too. You see a handful of Pokemon - less than 1% - reused in the world championships.
So what causes this issue in other games?
When you start out playing, you just mash with no knowledge or strategy, and this is (maybe counterintuitively) extremely restrictive. You can't set things up, you don't see openings, you don't know combos. There is no expression.
You get really good and start trying to do shit solely because you think it's cool, or you wanna pull it off live for the first time.
sure, Im by no means a pro at those games, but games just started becoming the same strat over n over. But the former games always felt fresh
Once you're a veteran, every round becomes just.... going through the motions.
That said, I think they're somewhat independent. What I was originally talking about is more like playing soccer with your friends vs competing.
Soccer hasn't changed, so no novelty there after awhile.
When playing for wins against other teams, you have to do your best, which is stressful.
But your point is also a thing for sure, and also something that wears off after time.
modded it's still pretty good, check out restoration mod
There's definitely a fun to be had in succeeding with a weaker build. I think about low tiers or joke characters in fighting games
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Lots of gamers go on and on about how "MMR" is ruining their favorite shooter, but like, its not the matchmaking algorithm. Its the nature of being in a pool where there's infinite other players and always better and better ones out there.
Players talk about quickplay and unranked and smurfing to get around it, because they just want to have fun.
I think the only answer in a lot of cases is to mix in games against bots that are designed to lose and make you feel better. Some games already do this.
But its *more* fun IMO if you don't play on Death Sentence because then you have to use one of a few builds.
There's like 10~15 viable weapons if you don't wanna shoot the dumb af enemies for a whole minute to kill them.
But once you're endgame, you're just playing fast or you're playing slow, its so palpable it forces you into the best build.
Enemies are just as dumb, miss 90% of their shots, but now have millions of health.
Cut that HP gain and give enemies better spacial awareness and accuracy and we're talking.
It becomes an ouroboros eating its own tail inevitably.
I'm looking at you Plasma Coil, you pos
Sliders like health/damage, for both player & enemies, tactics, # of enemies, frequency of combat or using special abilities, etc
I'm a senior who finds that games are getting harder. Sliders let the player customize the experience.
Games that aren't challenging become boring as you get good. Games that are challenging become more fun as you get good.
This is a good point and I largely agree with you.
Wooo those were the days!
There's actually a wiiild amount of options to have fun with if you're good at the game, especially as Killer. Unfortunately the issue you get is that the game will prob have changed for the worse by the time you get good :)
High level can still be very fun, although less so now, esp with SBMM being broken.
I am talking about a phenomenon that happens with some.
Saying "people don't talk about games where x" doesn't mean all games have x.
The factory must grow. Nothing else matters. No competition.
2 lives, in stead of 1.
The mechanics are simple, but the random things kill me every time. Hole and no ladders. Bear. redoing my basement and ignoring the tiny rocks falling on my head. BEAR! Did I mention BEAR?!?!
It becomes a different game with much more at stake. You need to understand every small detail of the game and utilize strategies that you'd otherwise ignore playing as a team or on easier difficulty
Designing for an interesting challenge is very important, and pretty difficult to nail down.
Best example is how not every game is fun to speedrun. Some are inherently more fun to play, almost through accidental design.
You can just relax and have more fun that way. You can use more guns.
I see this a lot in fighting games, where people will look at a game as a series of "functions" that determine the best outcome.
Everything boils down to a numbers game after awhile.
I'm more of a vibes guy and play games for novelty/entertainment reasons.
The min/maxxers of the world are beating games at record times and doing the impossible, I have a lot of respect for them!
Same goes for something like souls games.
Just play whatever shitty build you wanna play.