What I've been up to.
Again I've fallen behind in posting. So in an attempt catch up I've decided to post my comment from Evan Sampson's blog, “But Wait, There's More!” Which is a responce to Craft Thoughts. Which I admit that I should have read both entries a bit better from the start, but that aside here are my thoughts.
I think that it is a bit clearer as to what you are shooting for. Along with going back and reading social-whittling post with more care. I’m also going to take this opportunity to say that I got my feet wet in the MMO with UO. Which had very little to offer in terms of quests or mini-games, which I can’t say that was disappointing in my view (who knows the concept social-whittling might be left over from that time/player/designer base).
I think that if you want to design a viable social and active crafting, they both have to have their place within the game as a whole (which I might or not made clear, so I’ll expand on it some). I’m reminded of a quote from Richard Bartle’s book “Players will spend a lot of time being miserable if the reward is high enough. They’ll mindlessly click on the same “mining” icon for three hours, hating every moment of it, if the result is that they find the diamond they need to make a arrow of dragon-slaying.”
The real question/debate could be in evaluating each system on their own merits for the entertainment value of the player (which I attempted to touch on in my “RMT and game design”). While there certainly does need to be a “speed limit” to protect parts aspects of the game, such as the economy, are we trying to build a road with speed bumps or a 50 degree incline mountain road to climb? What value does long crafting/item creation times add to the entertainment value of the player? While it could be debated that it adds realism value, but that is hard position to support when the time it would take to make a sword in the real world would be much longer (even when converted into accelerated game world time).
And please note that I’m not completely dismissing the idea of active/mini-games crafting, I’m sure that there are people that enjoy them and would miss them if they were not there or worse they would view a “lite” crafting system as shallow. The primary goal should be to provide entertainment value for the player’s time. Much like any other form of entertainment (TV, movies, books, etc) what one person sees as great, another will think is mind numbing *cough American Idol cough ;)*. I personally envision a more streamline game and of course streamlining comes with its own pitfalls and challenges, but that is another story for another day ;).
I think that it is a bit clearer as to what you are shooting for. Along with going back and reading social-whittling post with more care. I’m also going to take this opportunity to say that I got my feet wet in the MMO with UO. Which had very little to offer in terms of quests or mini-games, which I can’t say that was disappointing in my view (who knows the concept social-whittling might be left over from that time/player/designer base).
I think that if you want to design a viable social and active crafting, they both have to have their place within the game as a whole (which I might or not made clear, so I’ll expand on it some). I’m reminded of a quote from Richard Bartle’s book “Players will spend a lot of time being miserable if the reward is high enough. They’ll mindlessly click on the same “mining” icon for three hours, hating every moment of it, if the result is that they find the diamond they need to make a arrow of dragon-slaying.”
The real question/debate could be in evaluating each system on their own merits for the entertainment value of the player (which I attempted to touch on in my “RMT and game design”). While there certainly does need to be a “speed limit” to protect parts aspects of the game, such as the economy, are we trying to build a road with speed bumps or a 50 degree incline mountain road to climb? What value does long crafting/item creation times add to the entertainment value of the player? While it could be debated that it adds realism value, but that is hard position to support when the time it would take to make a sword in the real world would be much longer (even when converted into accelerated game world time).
And please note that I’m not completely dismissing the idea of active/mini-games crafting, I’m sure that there are people that enjoy them and would miss them if they were not there or worse they would view a “lite” crafting system as shallow. The primary goal should be to provide entertainment value for the player’s time. Much like any other form of entertainment (TV, movies, books, etc) what one person sees as great, another will think is mind numbing *cough American Idol cough ;)*. I personally envision a more streamline game and of course streamlining comes with its own pitfalls and challenges, but that is another story for another day ;).
posted by Lost @ 9:49 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home