| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Tuesday 17 May 2005: |
| Today I am a bit cross with Guild Wars. Sort of unfairly so; the thing that's annoying me is something that's true of all games of similar genre, and Guild Wars avoids it more than most. But not entirely, and today is the point at which it impacts on me. The decision of wanting to play as a different class, and having to bloody start again and re-do all the stuff you already did. For player-versus-player, Guild Wars largely avoids this problem - my already-advanced character could switch secondary class through all the other classes, and unlock all the skills, then I could create custom PvP characters fully powered and equipped at whatever level I like. The problem lies in the two post-completion non-PvP areas, which can only be accessed with non-PvP characters, which means all the levelling up, and acquisition of skills and equipment, must be done from the start. I realise a lot of people enjoy the whole levelling thing, but it's not really my cup of tea. I realised how annoying it was when I played the platform game I linked to the other day and had more fun playing that than recently playing Guild Wars. Which set me wondering whether the game-design I have in my head for future development is actually going to be fun or not. After some pondering I realised that the answer is "sort of". That there are completely distinct sorts of fun, and my brain-stored wargame would score highly on my favourite of them. So now I'm trying to mentally codify what sorts of fun there are in games.
So, the wargame in my head is pretty much all Concentration, and, on consideration, very little Chore. So that's good, as far as I'm concerned. The other simpler multiplayer puzzle-ish game I'd quite like to make would be Twitch, Concentration and Solving. And Robobeasts, the game that's actually in development already... doesn't really fit into any of the categories very well at all. But I'm fairly convinced that it would be fun, so I must be missing a type. I don't know, maybe it's a bit of everything but Twitch. Perhaps cooperation and competition are more types. Ah - diplomacy? I don't know. And what sort of fun are personality tests? [02:22] |
| Stel |
| Personality tests are Question fun because people like answering questions about themselves. They're pretty much a way to blow time and talk about yourself. |
| garlkgjarl;sgjv |
| for RPGs: diamonds ('achievers')like leveling and 'scores' spades ('explorers') like learning about game mechanics and exploring hearts ('socialisers') like socialising clubs ('killers') like killing other players |