Futility

Futility.

It is the driving fear of our lives. We learn that it exists when we cannot buy the comic books we want with our allowance, or miss out on a classroom reward because another student was better. We compare what we have or what we can do or what we can realistically become to what we want, and realize it just won't add up. It is in that moment of knowing that we are powerless to achieve our desires, dependent on the intervention of some outside force, that human behavior fragments.

There are two ways for one's desires to be satisfied: have more, or desire less. There are those who seek to downplay their own desires, embracing zen, asceticism, pursuing the path of Siddartha (More power to em, I say). There are those who seek the path of wealth, acquiring relentlessly, till the amounts trading hands could define entire lives of "normal" people. The Buffets, Trumps, Rockefellers... the names are endless, only the degree of celebrity changes. Those can be quite destructive in their pursuit of more, but it's definitely a functional way to live. And then of course there are those who seek outside intervention. Sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't. Some seek donations, or the power of elected office, or grants from governments. Some turn to their various deities. "Some outside force greater than me can give me what I want, what I cannot get for myself" they say.

This then explains our entertainment. Though only two men will step into the ring Sunday, and in all the world we would be hard pressed to find a third who MIGHT be worthy, billions will watch, screaming, laughing, some crying... as two of the world's best boxers demonstrate WHY they are considered the best. All sports are like that. We hold up the ones who acheive, who triumph, who's skill and physique is better. We know we'll never really be that good, that fast, that strong, that beautiful, but they are and we can watch them.

Video game entertainment is a bit different. Yes, there are professional gaming leagues now, and we can watch (and even wager on) people who are playing 'that game I have on my desktop', using "our" characters, but doing it so much more skillfully. But far more often we have the chance to pretend that we ARE those heroes. Just for a little while, distract me from my debts, my age, my shattered dreams. That is the appeal of video games to adults. We may be well off, just looking for a distraction from boredom, or a reason not to clean out the gutters. Or maybe we are not so well off, looking for something that takes us away from the sorrows of life. But that's why adults like video games. It's a place to run free with our imaginations.

What drives adults AWAY from video games? Two things. First the idea that it's immature, or stupid. And second... futility. Back to the old nemesis. When we realize, are coerced... forced even into accepting that the video game is pointless, we stop. We return to our looming finals, or term papers, or jobs, our uncleaned dishes, our leaky roofs. When the bubble pops, and we realize that the game fixed nothing, the fun ends.

And here is my point. Because that realization of futility comes in two flavors. One is temporary. We were really enjoying killing frostwyrms, and then the alarm went off and we went to work. Well, yeah! Of course a sane person chooses to show up to work rather than play another level, the game will still be there next time I want a distraction. And the permanent. "That last patch killed my entire character", "None of my friends play this anymore", "The graphics are so dated"... when the game reaches a point wherein it cannot sustain the bubble. When we are forced to label it as pointless. Futile.

That labeling of the entire game as futile comes when our efforts in the game fail to yield results, even when we do everything right. Our efforts are made futile when we learn all about combat only to find it is a boring rotation, when we seek the best gear only to find that it's that ugly outfit everyone else is wearing, when we build a grand castle only to find that it's precisely as grand as the eight castles surrounding it and nobody ever comes to visit. When we adventure far and wide only to discover that the best places to play are clearly marked by the huge crowds already swarming there, when we work hard to design a great spec only to find that there is a better one posted on EJ.com, that invalidates our efforts. And when we actually DID build something special, something better, and the game gets changed and patched so that our achievement goes away, that's the most futile of all.

We have the time to spend on games, and the interest (why else would you be reading this, dear friend, on a video game forum on the internet??), and we have proven that we have interest in SotA, and the money to fund it. We want a distraction. A shiny bubble. Of course we will be distracted by jobs, sleep, children, and other responsibilities. what remains to be seen is, can SotA provide us with relief from futility?

That's why we want houses, that's why we want gear, guilds, professions... we want what we do in the game to MATTER. We want the fantasy that we can, through our efforts, achieve more in this fantastic world than we do in the real one. We want our actions, our choices, to mean more than mere aesthetics or individuality. Bums on the street are very individual, but is that what we want? We want to achieve. Player owned towns!! Player crafted equipment!!

And player designed combat specs. Because if all we were going to do was to become master builders and designers, we coulda done that in minecraft.

If the system, be it housing, economy, crafting, socialization, magick, or combat forces us to be routine then it has already failed. If I must be mundane, I can do that in the real world, where at least a days's mundane labor brings me a paycheck. Being mundane in a video game gives me an animated picture of being mundane.

That's why I argue constantly for balance, because anything achieved without balance MUST be destroyed when the balance is changed, and is therefore irrelevant, futile. Inevitably, a lack of balance in the system will necessitate a rebalancing. At it's most successful, the rebalancing will actually achieve balance, and in THAT moment progress can begin, for the first time ever. At it's least successful a rebalancing just throws us off in the opposite direction of the previous imbalance, to disastrous results. The cycle of constant rebalancing is a systemic disease that infects and impairs a game quickly and subtly, but ultimately has killed more games than almost any other force, save progress. If we want to BE progress, if we want SotA to open up new doors in the world of online gaming, we need to keep it free of that disease. As soon as possible, as openly and directly as possible, imbalance must be purged. For without balance, success is futile.


Right now many aspects of SotA promise to be extraordinary, and I am thrilled. But I sense that the guiding principle of the game, of the forums, and of the devs has drifted. So I am posting this in "Skills and Combat" where I usually lurk (like some sort of foul spider, yes, I can hear you), and in the town square. I think it's worth thinking about. What will make SotA extraordinary? Allowing the characters in it to be extraordinary. Which allows the players to feel extraordinary, at least until dinner is ready.

 

I think you are saying that are current combat system is irritating and unfulfilling. People do not like to suffer for nothing. People want to achieve something great for all their hard effort. What do I mean by suffering? At the lowest level it is called an inconvenience and at its highest level it is called gut-wrenching agony. For example, if we are told by the Devs. that we need to test a second combat system instead of the early fixed deck in order to improve and test the game, we will say that it is fine because we know what the outcome is--a better combat system. However, people are not hearing anything like that from the Devs. specifically about combat. The employees of SoTA get paid money to put up with the combat system--they are not suffering for nothing. Apparently, many people think they are suffering too much with the current combat system without getting a better combat system. In other words these people are not convinced that the future combat system will be something they will like. Therefore, SoTA needs to convey a future combat deck to these people so they will stop experiencing low-level suffering. I have embraced the random deck and played with it until I felt I had become an expert. However, I am done with it for now and am going to use the fixed deck because I am tired of the frustration of the random deck. I will not try and change it anymore because there seem to be a lot of people who like it. Am I correct in what you are trying to convey as it relates to combat.

 

The random deck is only a minor part of what I am referring to. If it gets improved and it works, and people find it fun, then it won't be futile... for the people who like it.

Of course, some people will find futility there, because they'll just hate the random deck system. But the combat UI is only a minor part of this complex.

I am speaking to a vast host of issues which affect a game's enjoyability, reasons why I left previous games, or found them unworthy of my $$. Fears I have for SotA's development. Trends I am seeing in the community, in the devs behavior, and in the game itself.

If it was given to me to design this game, I would definitely do it differently. Then again, since I don't have like, fifty years of video game development experience, I'd quite likely screw something up. Probably something fatal to the game. Or not. Only way to know for sure would be to give me 5 million dollars to hire a programming team and design a game. I might pull it off. But I doubt it.

No, this post was in the hopes of creating dialogue that isn't just another endlessly self feeding dichotomy, but of people thoughfully posting, trying to put into words what they actually need in a game.

We had the PvP vs PvE debate, the Open World Full Loot vs Selective PvP with sharding debate (some pockets of resistance still ongoing) and the "random deck, is it the work of satan?!" debate (still sadly ongoing). I recognize that some issues just need to be hashed out, but I dislike the trends I am seeing UNDER all of this. So I said something. Do with it what you will.

 

I agree with you saying that when a game feels pointless, it starts becoming boring real quick... but I don't agree with your broad assessment of why people play games. People play for all sorts of reasons.

For example, I don't play for the reasons you're describing. I don't watch sports, because I don't really care about the drama involved in athletics, never really cared for playing sports, and I don't play RPGs to pretend I'm a hero. I play games for the same reason I might to a ton of other things: read books, stop by the library, do arts and crafts, garden, cook, play board games like chess, go to art museums, walk in the local park. Some of these things even might be considered "work"; for example, doing a crafts project, or gardening, or cooking. Some might even be considered boring and "tedious", like walking in the park. But whatever is enjoyable to me is enjoyable because its quality time. If I spend time with a book it might be because I love the book, and if I spend time with the game it might be because I love the game. But it's never because the game puts a carrot on a stick for me to follow around and make me feel like I'm achieving something.

The RPG I play most often, I treat pretty much like a hobby, and there's really no sense of achievement beyond achieving what you want to do, since its a sandbox game. I've mentioned it before; UnReal World, a survival RPG. There's a routine and a rhythm to the game, so you are doing a lot of the same things over and over again, though there's a lot of flexibility. You maintain your need for food and sleep regularly, and need to hunt or store up food. But there's a large variety to how this happens, since you're actually hunting and not just double-clicking on it over and over on a target until it dies.

And that's the problem, to me, with games that center around grinding; that they really just become about predictably double-clicking on the same things over and over. Its not that they become futile; they're futile from the start. As long as the gameplay helps show you new content -- new story content, new environments, etc -- it serves a purpose. But the gameplay itself isn't worth spending time playing. And very often, the new content isn't really worth discovering, either, IMO, which leads me to terminate some of the newer RPGs before I even finish all the quests. The quests are a bit uninteresting too, so I don't have a desire to sit through the gameplay to complete the story.

At any rate, all games that appeal to me appeal to me for the same reason -- whether they're RPGs or strategy games -- I feel like I'm spending quality time playing them.

 

What you've basically said here is that you play for enjoyment. Which is a distraction from the frustrations of life. Whether you phrase it as enjoyment, or fulfillment, or duty to your guildmates. Sometimes life sucks, and video games can be a way to escape that suckiness for a little while. If they are worth it.

 

I'd say more of a pastime than a distraction, Malak. I don't think life sucks.

 

Never ever? I think you are lying to yourself. If your life outside the digital world is so fulfilling, why are you online to have this conversation? Myself, right now I'm between a work shift and a hot date, the job is awesome and I save lives every day, but it's gruelling. The date is indeed hot and I'll be introducing her to indoor rock climbing, in return for her introducing me to surfing. But it's Friday, not Saturday, my friends are busy, and there's nothing to do. So I'm BORED, and it SUCKS, and I'm filling the time with video games, forum surfing, and old reruns on Amazon Prime.

I didn't say you had to be an alcoholic abuse victim with a pending divorce and kids who hate you to enjoy video games.

Sometimes all it takes is boredom. But that still counts as sucking.

 

Everything else aside -- Lets just say I don't play games to escape life, or necessarily to escape boredom. Its true; sometimes, if I'm bored, I'd play a game. But, I'd choose to play quality games even if I had plenty of other things to do. I occupy myself pretty well without friends around, and in fact prefer spending time alone to being with friends. I enjoy sitting around, or taking walks, or playing with my dog. I could be doing plenty of other things I enjoy, but I'm choosing to test the game.

I'd choose to make time for SotA, regardless, because I respect RG, loved Ultima, so far like the work the devs are doing so far, like the community here, like to contribute, and think the game development process is interesting.

I don't really think I need an excuse to be here

 

Malak-

Your post read so well, I read it twice and a third time fast, my brain then froze as if eating ice cream.
Before you write things like that again, maybe preface with a warning label.

 

What I see when I read your responses, is the contrary player who wants to be with the team but will INSIST that his motivations are unique. If everyone else is there for the game, he's there for the view. If everyone else likes the view, he's actually there for the roar of the crowd. If everyone liked the roar of the crowd, he's just there for the celebratory ice cream.

You think people need an excuse to escape reality, I think reality was made to be escaped. Our imaginations can create worlds vastly superior to any 'real' world, with none of the problems, and for those of us with the capacity to do so, visiting those worlds is both therapeutic and inspiring, as well as pretty darn fun. My life is also pretty rockin' cool, and a good book, the diversions of the city, and numerous other distractions *could* pull me away from SotA, but I care about games and stories inherently, and what RG and Portalarium are trying intrigues me. Succeed or fail, I salute their effort, and will support it for as long as I can. But it's still escapism by definition.

Of course, in my worldview, escapism is a good thing. The people who coined that phrase for it and defined it as delinquent behavior were the problem.

The girlfriend makes a similar complaint. I credit my mommy, who was an English major, and made a point of reading really GOOD books to us when my brother and I were little. Some of that writing talent seems to have rubbed off.

Thank you for the compliment.

 

I'm not saying my motivations are unique, Malak; you're reading way too much into my responses. I didn't post to be a contrarian, and you shouldn't see my responses as a challenge to you.

Like I said, one of the games I enjoy is a survival RPG with no magic in it and no dragons, and no really grand display of imagination. There are forests and rivers in it, but I can see forests and rivers in real life, where they're much more awesome. It isn't really vastly superior to the real world. Can it be called escapism? Maybe, but I'm not playing because I'm dissatisfied with anything in real life. I enjoy paintings and sculpture and read into art history. Am I escaping into the paintings? No, not really. Do I like Ultima for the the stories and the lore? Yes. But they're meaningful even without putting real life down. And there are other games with other stories that I don't think are good, even if I can escape into them.

 

Again, you argue for the point of arguing. Everything you have said, every single word, has fit within the theme of the OP. You are just filling space with pointless quibbling.

 

Lol, I see you as quibbling with me. Like I said, don't see my responses as a challenge to you. I disagree with some of what you said, but I'm not trying to argue with you.

 

Enough with the celebratory smoochies, let's get back on point Mr. Awesome.

 

Bit of a weird topic, but true in its own way. Any game that is designed without a definitive end must struggle with the same lack of a clear goal as real life.