[Article] Hardcore Game Design and Subsystems
" Normally you write some serious bullshit but that text had some good points. Definition of fun: Fun is achieving victory in an isolated system with defined set of rules. Winning is fun, but so is the process of losing, if by losing you always progress a little. By progress I mean it can be anything from learning a boss' behaviour to jumping at a right time at a cliff to increasing your stash value just a little bit more (PoE HC example). Last edited by mushioov on Apr 9, 2013, 10:46:14 AM
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 Seriously though, great post. In Wraeclast, if someone tries to kill you... you just kill them right back.
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" If you asked me, the fun went out of gaming when they stopped being developed by bucktoothed fat ones, loners, bespectacled pimplefaces and women with moustaches who don't shave their armpits for an audience of bucktoothed fat ones, loners, bespectacled pimplefaces and girls with moustaches who don't shave their armpits. The fun went out of gaming when the normal people took over. No normal person would sit for hours over some obscure, ugly, difficult as fuck game trying to figure out ways to beat it, drawing maps and making spread sheets and memorizing keyboard combos and whatnot. No normal person would feel the need to be as dedicated. So since nowadays everybody and their moms play videogames and since this is where the money is everything is designed for everybody and their moms. And THEY, the normal ones, want to consume a game like a movie, just sitting back, with their brains and their life for this half hour on standby. I don't blame them, don't despise them, it's just the way it is. | |
" Well said. Absolutely true. And made me giggle, too. A+ | |
" I don't get this point. That's artificially creating difficulty by keeping players ignorant of what is going on in the game. If you want to continue off of the point, Path of Exile should be just a blank black screen where you don't know what's going on until you die, which the screen will light back up, and a resurrect button will appear. " Don't agree. Losing is never fun. The reason most people play HC isn't to have a pretty stash and a character screen of former HC characters. Playing in a setting where you death = booted from the server, it is a greater challenge, so when you accomplish something under a higher difficulty, the sense of accomplishment is greater. IGN: ragol Last edited by Pioneer2 on Apr 9, 2013, 11:09:01 AM
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"On the one hand, the lifestyle you're describing there -- unabashed, full-tilt nerd -- is something that's under attack in our culture, and your point rings true overall. On the other hand, I think you could have made that point without stereotyping nerd as ugly. Speaking from my personal experience, I was pretty much a clone of that polo-shift wearing guy from SLC Punk -- into various subcultures, very much not mainstream, felt no need for the ridiculous "costumes" my friends were wearing. By the same token, a marathon-running fitness nut can be a grade-A nerd; don't judge books by their covers, or vice versa. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Apr 9, 2013, 11:18:13 AM
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Well, the ARPG genre always had to mix casual and hardcore. Naturally, these problems are going to remain, despite what both parties desire.
Looks like it's back to playing roguelikes I guess. Still need to hone my Dorf Fort skills. | |
" I loved the overall flavor of your original post. This part, however, is more than a little bit hokey. I have seen hardcore games where facilitative trading subsystems have not made things easy. An easy example would be EVE Online. If anybody tells you that game is easy, they are basically full of shit. However, there are endless facilitative subsystems. The reason those subsystems worked in that game and didn't break any of the difficulty curve was a simple reason, the economy was extremely well designed with many sinks, and check/balances. Adding subsystems reveals much about the underlying design of games, for good or bad. If the economy is not well tuned with proper sinks, and trading is introduced, the difficulty plummets. If it is well tuned/designed, introducing these subsystems is natural. So in the end I agree with you. If you aren't incorporating proper economic sinks, and do not have a system that can keep a stable state for a long period, or at least do something predictable....If you don't have this, adding facilitative trading systems will almost certainly injure the game. The PoE economy is absolutely not stable. Last edited by HopTortoise on Apr 9, 2013, 6:31:32 PM
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" I think the thing is the ARPGs are simple games at their core, which MMORPGs are not. Ultimately ARPGs about build, and gear, and to a lesser extent smart play. But once you have a good build and strong gear, smart play almost goes out the window, as you end up with a character that's strong enough to be able to play stupidly and still wreck almost everything. Builds can be figured out and shared in guides, and copied by others. And gear, not being earned from quests or professions or anything of that sort, is earned from either farming or crafting. And the currency to craft comes from farming, so everything basically goes back to that. So in a game like this, trading is and always will be a shortcut to better gear. It's inevitably more efficient than farming all of your own items. Playing entirely self-found in this game is completely doable, but it will take a lot longer to get everything you want. The easier and more efficient it is to trade, the less efficient it is to farm, by comparison. And since much of the difficulty of the game comes down to obtaining the gear that will make your character wreck things in the endgame, trading definitely affects the difficulty of the game. The easier it is to trade, the easier it is to obtain that gear, and the less of a reason there is for players to actually try to overcome the challenges that you have presented for them in the gameplay itself. |
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" See, it's happening again. This "the game will melt no matter what" mentality without any real evidence or substance behind it. The reason why the game would melt with an auction house isn't because this game is "simple at heart," it's because the economy isn't stable. It is absolutely possible to have a stable economy in this type of game, a situation where the difficulty is NOT ruined by having easy trades and subsystems to support it. It just requires a very well designed, stable economy. Last edited by HopTortoise on Apr 10, 2013, 12:18:17 PM
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