And lo On Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:22:44 +0100, Sabrina Kilian <ski### [at] vtedu>  
did spake thusly:

> Phil Cook v2 wrote:
>> And lo On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:35:16 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did
>> spake thusly:
>>> (I had this problem with Frontier Elite II, which is supposedly the
>>> best computer game ever written...)
>>
>> But it can work, look at the MMORPG like World of Warcraft. I recall
>> reading something somewhere about development of some such game and they
>> left it completely open and it bombed with the testers. Just as you said
>> the attitude was "so what are you supposed to do?". The questions are -
>> Is that because games have evolved such that the player is expected to
>> be told what to do all the time and thus anything outside that is deemed
>> 'confusing? Or is the case that we simply don't like such open-ended
>> structures within the games that we are supposed to be playing for fun?
>
> If you approach a sandbox for the first time, with no toy shovel or
> castle mold, and no clue about what sand even was, would you know of a
> way to play in it? They are games, the universe has some rules to it,
> but the player doesn't have a clue what they might be. So, they might
> appeal to the game tester type who likes to push the engine around, but
> that's it; the average player doesn't know what to do.

So is it the case that we just expect the hand-holding and just gripe when  
it's not there, or that we don't like being left to fend for ourselves?  
Take Myst, what the heck are you supposed to do yet it was a massive  
sellout; was that despite its open nature or simply because it looked so  
good that finding tasks naturally occurred as you looked around?

>> I think the difference is that in one type of game you're presented with
>> tasks and in the other you're expected to go out and find them yourself.
>> In the former you know what you can do and can chose to ignore it, in
>> the latter you get the 'now what?'

More thought on this. At their heart InFamous and Prototype are identical.  
You get to run freely around a city, there's story missions and side  
missions which you can take or ignore - pretty much identical. Yet I love  
InFamous and hate Prototype and the reason for this is that the majority  
of side-missions in Prototype have no connection to the wider world. Beat  
up 300 points worth of infected, defend these troops using only this  
power, run from point to point following these markers, collect the purple  
orbs; um why?

> It is hard to find the task if you do not have a clue how to find them.

Which is akin to the "how the heck was I supposed to know that?" moments  
that keeps GameFaqs in business.

> I remember early days in Everquest, where the NPCs would only respond if
> you were to /say the correct phrase to them. This worked well for the
> times where the quest was obvious, or logical, or there was a reference
> in something they said previously. In the worst cases, developers would
> come back months and years later to say "oops, we misspelled something
> in the trigger, now the phrase 'cookies' should work for that quest." Or
> the rumor that there were 40% of the quests left unsolved by players, or
> uncompleted by devs. Or quests that, after 11 years, still can not be
> found that developers insist are active and in-game.

I would count that more as a developer fault over a structural one, you  
know the quests exist you just can't get to them.

> I have that problem with sandbox games, personally. I want some clue
> about the game, or some goal to reach. Just exploring a world and
> becoming all powerful isn't enough of a draw.

It's amazing how quickly that gets dull; no challenge. Yet at the same  
time if the game artificially ramps up the level of your opponents in line  
with your progress it makes it feel pointless trying to be powerful.

> Strangely, I have found
> that a good challenge is to find interesting ways to lose sandbox games.
> Dwarf Fortress taught me this one.

Hmm the closest I get to that is spectacular deaths.

> With no clue at all, all you have is the player community to fall back
> on. Some have great player support, others have walls of obscure text
> like "QQ moar, l2p newb".

I feel the same way when I dip my toe into WoW "can you buff my dps so I  
can aggro?" what? :-)

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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