Diminishing Game Features

This game needs greater difficulty and risks.
Don’t make something simpler or safer, just to do so.

When someone makes a point in the forums about a feature being made too simple or less immersive, the typical counter response to that person is that they have the capability to make that feature more challenging for themselves (turn on/off PvP flag, attempt a task with fewer resources, fight with weaker armor, don’t use instant travel, etc).

On its face that counter argument seems logical and simple. However, game play is typically reduced to its base requirements - the typical player will try to complete a task or achieve a goal using the most direct and easiest path. (There are always exceptions)

Which would the typical player choose? (not necessarily you)
1.) Press a button on the UI that refreshes once a week and placed 5,000 of any one resource (wood, ore, cloth, leather, etc) into that player’s inventory/bag
2.) Gather that resource over a period of days

The typical player would choose option one, we all know that.

I am a typical player. The typical player may roleplay on occasion, but they are not going to place extreme limits on themselves (like never kill undead) just for the sake of making things more difficult for themselves. They want to compete with the rest of the population (have a nice house, find rare decorations, kill the more challenging monsters, excel at a tradecraft and have their services sought).

I absolutely love how complicated and tedious crafting is at the moment – it gives that much more respect/notoriety to a grandmaster crafter.

When someone makes a point that elements of the game are being overly simplified (two biggest are inventory list and PvP toggling), don’t be so quick to say, “Well, if you want to play it challengingly, then you can.” – Because the typical player will always follow the path of least resistance.

 

Yea, they'll be competing with other players in these areas, they won't want to choose between handicapping themselves or playing solo. They'll just go with the easier option.

In general, my sentiment is that people overstate how tedious things are... in the sense that they'd still enjoy playing the game with all of the tediousness in it. But some of the suggestions on the forums are good, in that they make things a bit simpler without dumbing it down, so I think its a good discussion.

 

The LAST thing I want in my game is complicated and tedious. I'm here to have fun, not be frustrated and bored. If I wanted complicated and tedious, I'd live my life.

The flip side of the coin on your last statement is: Do not force me to have complicated and tedious gameplay, just because the typical player won't put for the effort to make it more challenging and tedious, if it's simple and fun.

Why people are against simple or quick to begin with is really beyond me. They must have much more free time than I do.

 

Because simpler and quicker doesn't necessarily make something more fun and less tedious. For instance, I think the double click crafting of UO is tedious particularly because its so simple, and all you're doing is clicking a mouse button over and over.

 

One thing that you have to be careful of is making a game that is so difficult, only the people with scripting knowledge or access to third-party apps can stomach it.

I agree that crafting should be difficult and make people use their brains. But if it's just a matter of doing the same thing over and over again, I have no problem automating that. I already have plenty of jobs like that in real life.

 

But why is it more tedious than making people just double click over and over? Its the same thing, but actually more monotonous in my opinion. At least if it involves some steps, it breaks the repetition a bit.

If you're talking about bulk crafting that's a different issue.. but there's also a question about whether bulk crafting should be encouraged. IMO, its good to discourage gold farming and bulk crafting leads to gold farming.

Anyway, the devs have discussed adding additional interactivity to crafting, possibly minigames.

 

Two choices:

1) You must move 10 ore and 5 iron to the smelting table. Then move the results to the carpentry table and add 30 wood and 10 wood shavings. This will get you 1 iron ore widget! Now go back and do it 15 more times and you can an EPIC iron ore widget!

2) You put all that stuff in a bag with your recipe on the crafting table. You put all that stuff in a bag on the carpentry table with a recipe. There may be extra stuff floating around in your bag, but since there's only one recipe, that's all you need to worry about. Poof, you have your widget and it's about 100 times faster and more enjoyable than choice 1.

I'm not lobbying for this specifically, I'm just saying that R2 crafting was brutally boring and overly complex.

 

I don't mind simplicity so much as I want it to feel like I'm actually doing something. The way a lot of smithing works in games it's like you have a formula of items that magically make a new, completely uniform, weapon. I find that a little boring no matter how many teeny pieces are involved. I would love a game where I have some control over how the weapon is balanced or it's length or if it has hand guards or not. I wanna be able to experiment with weapon types so people can see me riding into battle and it's like "Oh there's Chris with his pole falcata".

 

Yea, I don't have a problem with a recipe system, but I think the devs are avoiding it so they can avoid hand-holding.

I personally didn't find it boring, though, particularly considering that I don't think I'll be mass crafting.. just producing a couple of things at a time. I did find trying to discover recipes a bit boring, and don't really expect that to be as exciting an aspect of the game that some people are saying it will be.

 

That's a good point too, redfish. Finding a recipe is going to be great for people that want to spend days just switching ingredients in and out. I'm sure it's going to feel very satisfying when someone else finds the recipe and posts it to a wiki site.

I favor a spell casting system that is more like the crafting system though. I'd like magic to be rare just like I'd enjoy seeing crafting be mildly rare. But I don't think I've see a great way of doing that yet. I definitely don't want either to be easy, I just don't want them to be boring.

 

Oblivion's spell making system wasn't too bad. Wasn't really balanced but it was pretty fun to work with.

 

I can't remember what that was like, I wasn't a big fan of Oblivion. I've always like the idea of having to test out magical reagents to find hidden powers. Going across the world for a special ingredient and then having to figure out how else it might work besides what you already know. I think the key for any system (including crafting) is going to be how the UI works. Does it make the act of doing what you want to do something that is boring and repetitive? If so, that's a poor design.

If the game is so easy that anyone can be a mage or a crafter though, that's equally poor in design.

 

Yea, I'd like to be able to give weapons different types of hilts or handles now that we've separated the process of making the hilt from making the blade. And what you're talking about reminds me of those games designed for kids where you bake a cake and decide how you want the process to go, and what type of frosting you want to put on. Sounds fun Imagine designing a pole-arm that way.

 

It worked where you would buy basic spells and, if you were part of the mages guild, you could make spells from the spells you've either bought or had taught to you by NPCs. For instance I created a touch soul trap/harm spell for my unarmed fighter. So he'd beat people up and then steal their souls with the final "touch of death". I even named it "Shang Tsung's touch" because I'm a cheesy 90s gamer.
I forgot to quote but that was a repl to Drocis

 

I was really excited back when I played Ultima V, when I was a kid, and discovered that there were spells in the game not listed in the game manual (ie Create Food). The combination of reagents and words of power allow this kind of creative thing, but the Ultima teams never went too far in developing it. But yea, it would be really cool if magic spells were similarly discoverable. They're kind of going down a separate path, though, with magic skill trees.

 

I think they are doing crafting right. The option to click on a recipe to have the ingredients moved to the table automatically will be good. You already made it before, don't make me screw up and accidentally make something I didn't intend.

I originally asked for highlighting or shading to denote what you could make. But I think that might be too much hand holding, too much getting away from the challenge. Do I have these ingredients? I think I do i'll click it, nope what am I missing? I think we'll be fine if our book doesn't tell us we can make something or can't.

 

It is because the people who want the harshest consequences and greatest dangers aren't asking for them in the context of being applied to themselves, they are asking for them in the context of applying them to everyone else.

Ie: "We want to be able to choose to play full loot unrestricted PvP amongst ourselves" vs "We want to play full loot unrestricted PvP and no-one should be able to choose to play differently".

Why not? Why can't there be different playmodes? What do you lose by people having a different sort of fun in another instance? What is it about those people who choose to play the game by "baking bread" in another area that bothers you?

 

I have to admit I'm pretty late in the Ultima game but when I was growing up that would've excited me too. Discovering stuff is always a nice feel. I have flirted with the idea of using an Ultima style magic system in GURPS or Pathfinder.

 

Two servers is usually how most game companies solve that. That's how I would but I don't know if that will work in SOTA.

 

Which is something I really don't get. Why are people so against letting other people play the way they want, even if options for both styles are available? I hate this: "I want it this way, so it should be this way for everyone; otherwise you're a *gasp* casual gamer!

It's silly.

And you DO see it. There are people who advocate nixing the list feature because they don't like it, even though the bag feature is still available. You see this across the board.