• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.

Discussion Do you find this quote true for you?

Revolsin

Revolsin

Moblin
Pronouns
He/Him
e2gXVi6.png


i feel like this is so common with RPGs in particular, where we can grind for better stats or just do optional fluff for hours(which isn't very fun) all to make the challenges of the game easy(also not very fun) when doing neither would end up being way more enjoyable
 
Bwoaah

I think many people do this, as it can be part of the fun of a game. I think this kind of statement is very interesting with regard to the new Zelda titles, as they are very 'hard to optimize', so to say. There are no clear goals and you can approach everything in a billion different ways. At least that's what I struggled with when I first played them. The last couple years though, I've been trying to become a bit less 'machine' during games and more open (I think). More often now when I see something, I do something because I think it's funny or satisfying, rather than it helping me complete a goal. I think that might be the essence for it: playing more in the moment and less for goals. It's tricky, but more people (and games to an extent) should try it. It gives a nice balance and keeps gaming fresh. At least that's my take on this quote.

I don't know if any of it makes sense tbh
 
DenkeyKong said:
Bwoaah

I think many people do this, as it can be part of the fun of a game. I think this kind of statement is very interesting with regard to the new Zelda titles, as they are very 'hard to optimize', so to say. There are no clear goals and you can approach everything in a billion different ways. At least that's what I struggled with when I first played them. The last couple years though, I've been trying to become a bit less 'machine' during games and more open (I think). More often now when I see something, I do something because I think it's funny or satisfying, rather than it helping me complete a goal. I think that might be the essence for it: playing more in the moment and less for goals. It's tricky, but more people (and games to an extent) should try it. It gives a nice balance and keeps gaming fresh. At least that's my take on this quote.

I don't know if any of it makes sense tbh
Click to expand...

i've started doing that a lot more too.

a really simple example is in the game 'Cult of the Lamb' where an early initial choice is for you to either get '+1 heart' or 'damage all nearby enemies on hit'.

the former seemed definitively more useful to me in an overall sense, but the latter just sounded more fun so i chose it instead. and indeed it ends being more fun to have less health and more innate firepower
 
I tend to dislike grinding, and "optimizing" usually takes more work in the long run.

So I usually just play in a way that is more in line with what's intended.
 
0
This is not me knocking on anyone's playstyle; my girlfriend's roommate does exactly this with Stardew Valley. Will start multiple save files, but her end goal is always getting to a point where she has multiple sheds at max capacity with the ideal layout to maximize gem duplication of constant diamond farming to get something like 2.4m gold every few days.

I know people do that, and again nothing against it. I just don't quite understand how a game that supposedly is encouraging of multiple playthroughs/routes, people feel compelled to do the exact same thing with every farm layout and remarry the same spouse every time.
 
That is highly subjective. There are people who'd rather beat Elden Ring on their own, and other that don't mind summoning spirits or other players, and both are ok as long as YOU are having fun with that. There are people who want to feel the pressure of being underpowered and people who love the feeling of being overpowered, because after all, they somehow EARNED that.

If a game offers me the option to do farming and grinding and sidequests and all of that, I'm gonna do them if they are fun to me, whether it makes the game easier or not. After all, the developers put that there for us to take, it is also their job to balance it properly. I don't get the "I'm playing the game they way it's been intended" statement. If they PUT that there, it's intended, whether you choose to take it or leave it, it's up to you. The endgoal is having fun, and how you achieve that is subjective.
 
Depends on the game. In MMOs, you frequently have to follow a meta or be dead weight ('why it's rude to suck at Warcraft') , at least in random groups. In roguelikes, part of the fun is optimising what you've been given.

But outside of that, I try not to sweat it too much. I like to be functional, sure, and there's a joy to be had in the craft of something that works, but I think there is a risk of optimising away your fun. It's why I like TTRPGs - sure, there's a meta (there's always a meta), but I find it's a much better social environment to make an acceptable character that is still very much yours than any online game.
 
I've been thinking of this a lot when retrospective on Pikmin 4 - I'm of the opinion Oatchi kind of "optimizes the fun out of the game". When I first played through it I didn't ride Oatchi all that much and played it like a classic Pikmin game but when I later watched others play it I realized most people just ride him all the time and charge everything because that's the optimal thing to do - I think it goes beyond being a crutch for new players and actively eliminates some of the squad management in fights that made Pikmin fun. I wish they'd go back to doing difficulty levels or something but this kind of breaks the whole game design regardless unless you go out of your way to arbitrarily play less efficiently, which is extra contradictory in Pikmin.
 
Last edited:
Sometimes, I do tend to grade games on how well they protect me from myself.

Case in point, pokemon. It's not hard to be more optimal in that series's single player so I tend to find them not as fun.

That said, asking me to tie my hand behind my bactoand hop on one leg for difficulty? Might as well throw the game in the trash
 
Depend on whether or not the game is designed around the optimization. I like to grind a bit if it meant I can be overpower for the rest of the game or get through it faster. Many games I played have it instead that I need to be optimized to be on an even playing field or having I can spend the rest of my life to beat it playing casually.
 
0
I think the quote is true to me, definitely. Sometimes I like being as efficient as possible and doing things in a spreadsheet type of fashion, but sometimes I find it really drags down the experience but I do it anyway. As an example, I don't care for the Persona series and I think it's because it really invites this type of planning and optimization as it pertains to the calendar, and in the process being as optimal with the calendar as possible creates an absolute slog of a game that destroys the game's pacing. Instead of having a sensible pacing of interspersing dungeon crawling gameplay with the social elements of the game, playing optimally pushes you to do the dungeon in essentially 1 trip, and then doing an entire month of 1 click days with a social link here and there. I've actually had an urge to replay Persona 5 at some point and basically purposely play with no care of doing as many social things as possible and maximizing the calendar efficiency, and instead just come and go from the dungeon in smaller bursts and seeing how that affects my enjoyment.
 
Not true for me, but I feel this is the wrong dig to make at the segment of players that actually enjoy the optimization part. Those exist.
 
the problem with that quote is that it assumes that players aren't having fun by playing optimally

If there's a glitch
If theres a loophole
If there's a System I can leverage to make me OP

I'm gonna do it... and love it... and have fun with it.
In fact there's games I would have never put the effort into had there not been an exploitable loophole, as far too often a game asks too much of the player anyway.
 
Quote is deeply flawed in its generalisation. ‘Optimise the fun out of the game’ for who?

If that’s fun for that player with their game, good luck to them. I know plenty of rpg players and strategy game fans who view arranging combat for their party/army as something they love to micromanage and maximise. Which can be annoying in a tabletop rpg when you have a group of you with very different approaches, but in a single player game? Have at it.

Personally I’m somewhere in the middle where I’ll happily spend an hour tweaking stats of the whole army in Fire Emblem or rearranging and merging demons in SMT, but the minute it’s boring, I’ll hit the ‘auto-optimise’ button and go do something more fun instead.

The best part of this with game design for me is games that give you all the info- that show you the upcoming turn order, that show you exactly how long a status effect will last, that show you if your attacks are ineffective. I really dislike it when games are vague in an attempt to stop me being able to even slightly master the combat system through opaque rules. I don’t find that ‘fun’.

I’m sure there are plenty of players who can’t move on if there’s filler side quests available that offer xp etc but that they also find boring. The trick is not to put such boring filler content in games.

One other route I do love in games though is games where there is no ‘golden path’. I like games where decisions matter, where recruiting x means y turns against you.
 
Last edited:
The most interesting thing about this quote to me is how much backlash I saw it get in the comments of that one Mark Brown video. People absolutely despise the idea of being told how to play a game. Generally the comments that were actually about the video's content have risen to the top of YouTube's inscrutable comments algorithm over the years, but these were just some that I came across scrolling through.

"Often, playing a game the way it's meant to be played feels like work."

"Developers also need to not impose what they think is fun so harshly because often times they are completely wrong because not everyone gets fun out of a game the same way."

"To be fair, game designers can have some incredibly dumb ideas about what a fun player experience is."

"Game Designer: We must protect players from themselves so that they have more fun!
Player: Turn limits in Xcom are the worst invention ever and ruin the fun of the game"

"Developers: nO STOP YOU'RE HAVING THE WRONG TYPE OF FUN"

"Who are you to tell me what is fun for me. May be optimization IS the fun."

"One thing a lot of players hate is time limits, especially limits that require near perfection to pass. What players like most is freedom. Character creation, difficulty settings, tactics, weapon options. The more people get to play their way, the more enjoyable it usually is. If I’m going to be part of an adventure, I want it to be MY adventure. Too many devs are out of touch with what players want to experience. “I want people to play this way, how can I make them do it?” is the first mistake a lot of these games have fallen victim to. When someone plays a game, it’s their game, their story. The more control the devs exert, the less immersive that story will be. It’s all about the player experience and devs would do well to remember that."

"Personally, I wish games would just leave us alone and let us play however we like. I struggle to enjoy games that grade you because I feel like I'm better off watching a let's play if there's a specific way it's supposed to be done, doing it myself and getting a substandard score just makes me feel like I'm fumbling my way though and makes any strategy but one feel invalid."

"What I'm getting out of this is that it's not really "protect players from themselves" but rather "make players have fun only the way WE want them to"."
Click to expand...

Only angle I can sort of relate to this kind of perspective from is with sequence breaking in Metroid. I dislike the way the very difficult platforming gauntlets or hidden passages with no other purpose in Zero Mission or Dread make it apparent that this was designed and intended as a sequence break. It takes the fun out of trying to get somewhere you shouldn't be, it doesn't feel natural or like an accomplishment the way getting onto Kraid's ledge without the high jump in Super Metroid does. Of course, the developers still knew and intended for you to be able to do that. Banjo-Tooie falls apart if you sequence break because the developers weren't intending to design a Metroidvania and didn't take into account that anyone would even try to do things like hit the fire egg switch without egg aiming, so as you go on the ground shrinks beneath you and certain things just won't work properly, like Lord Woo Fak Fak's loading zone won't even be there until you get underwater egg aiming even though you can fight him with the submarine instead just fine. It's just that Super Metroid preserves the illusion much better than its sequels.

I think the main takeaway is that there are a lot of people don't play games as games and instead play them for more nebulous purposes like self-expression or socialization though.

DenkeyKong said:
I think many people do this, as it can be part of the fun of a game. I think this kind of statement is very interesting with regard to the new Zelda titles, as they are very 'hard to optimize', so to say. There are no clear goals and you can approach everything in a billion different ways. At least that's what I struggled with when I first played them.
Click to expand...
TotK is the game that I think of first with this actually. I watched my brother complete the game by just flying from lightroot to lightroot or shrine to shrine on the hoverbike. The thing is, if you don't take this kind of direct path to an objective, you might never actually make it there. They put so many distractions in your path. I completely understand not wanting to deal with having to get around in the depths, or being frustrated by the constant sidetracks in the overworld. It's magical the way a whole adventure can naturally unfold from the simplest of goals, but they pushed that a little too hard and the seams eventually start to show when you pass your 20th backpack Korok or sign guy on the side of the road. You'd think players would be following the road because they want to go directly to the destination, not constantly leave it to engage with the most banal tasks the game has.

But also, when you're deliberately flying over everything to just get things done as optimally as possible, are you even really playing the game anymore? It gave me a lot to think about.
 
Believe it or not, this is what kills the Pokémon series for me, it gets halfway through all the games I've played and I lose the fun, maybe I should just play without wanting to capture all the Pokémon, or dont trying to leave all my Pokémon at the same levels
 
I think some games should (maybe unfair on the devs) try to protect players from themselves a little bit, but I think it's easy to go overboard with that and make the experience worse overall.

A recent example of a game I felt needed more restrictions on the player is Unicorn Overlord, I found a couple systems/quirks in that game I feel shouldn't be possible which I had to actively stop myself from abusing.
 
Leica said:
I think some games should (maybe unfair on the devs) try to protect players from themselves a little bit, but I think it's easy to go overboard with that and make the experience worse overall.

A recent example of a game I felt needed more restrictions on the player is Unicorn Overlord, I found a couple systems/quirks in that game I feel shouldn't be possible which I had to actively stop myself from abusing.
Click to expand...
I think one I thought they could have done for Unicorn Overlord is put some kind of limit on how much stamina a unit can restore through items before it really needs to rest, and also how many stamina/wait time recovery items the army or a unit can hold/use in a single battle. As by the final battles I had enough stockpiled to pretty much ignore those key mechanics stopping your main frontline combat units from just rampaging across the map if I wanted to. So, similarly to yourself, it was a choice not to use them as they made what was already not exactly a difficult game an absolute cakewalk.
 
0
It's definitely applied in some cases if I'm not careful. The thing that sticks out is with Bethesda-style games like New Vegas or Skyrim, I would sometimes catch myself looking up all the possible rewards or outcomes or loot to try and "maximize" my playthrough, and that led me to a point where I was exploring dungeons or going through dialogue trees with a wiki always open on my phone. At some point I learned to stop caring and just let those games happen more naturally and it makes for way more memorable playthroughs
 
0
I mean, yeah. Games are basically toys, and a big part of engaging with any toy is 'make your own fun'. Even a game that lacks built-in options for alternative gameplay will still see fans coming up with unique self imposed rulesets and shit.
 
0
LinkURL said:
Believe it or not, this is what kills the Pokémon series for me, it gets halfway through all the games I've played and I lose the fun, maybe I should just play without wanting to capture all the Pokémon, or dont trying to leave all my Pokémon at the same levels
Click to expand...

whats unfortunate about the pokemon games is just how fast they crumble under optimization of any kind. if you're remotely utilizing your resources effectively in the newer games, you're going to obliterate the intended difficulty by a mile and battles immediately become a snorefest.

i see people taking this quote as a sort of shot at us as players, but really this is also majorly a thing on devs and how lack of proper balance combined with optimization can break a game in half.

lightning16 said:
I think the quote is true to me, definitely. Sometimes I like being as efficient as possible and doing things in a spreadsheet type of fashion, but sometimes I find it really drags down the experience but I do it anyway. As an example, I don't care for the Persona series and I think it's because it really invites this type of planning and optimization as it pertains to the calendar, and in the process being as optimal with the calendar as possible creates an absolute slog of a game that destroys the game's pacing. Instead of having a sensible pacing of interspersing dungeon crawling gameplay with the social elements of the game, playing optimally pushes you to do the dungeon in essentially 1 trip, and then doing an entire month of 1 click days with a social link here and there. I've actually had an urge to replay Persona 5 at some point and basically purposely play with no care of doing as many social things as possible and maximizing the calendar efficiency, and instead just come and go from the dungeon in smaller bursts and seeing how that affects my enjoyment.
Click to expand...

i think the recent P3 Reload(and maybe the original, i don't remember) did something a little clever while considering that.

the idea is that there's almost no social links available at night for most of the game, and the only other thing you can really do is raise stats or get money, so Tartarus actually becomes a pretty reasonable option on any given night that doesn't feel like 'im wasting time' so to speak. especially since it can provide a lot of money and actually fuel your day activities to be more efficient.

though given my habits i still did it in one day most of the time anyway. it is hard to convince yourself not to a lot of the time even if it's not fun
 
PixelKnight said:
Quote is deeply flawed in its generalisation. ‘Optimise the fun out of the game’ for who?

If that’s fun for that player with their game, good luck to them. I know plenty of rpg players and strategy game fans who view arranging combat for their party/army as something they love to micromanage and maximise. Which can be annoying in a tabletop rpg when you have a group of you with very different approaches, but in a single player game? Have at it.

Personally I’m somewhere in the middle where I’ll happily spend an hour tweaking stats of the whole army in Fire Emblem or rearranging and merging demons in SMT, but the minute it’s boring, I’ll hit the ‘auto-optimise’ button and go do something more fun instead.

The best part of this with game design for me is games that give you all the info- that show you the upcoming turn order, that show you exactly how long a status effect will last, that show you if your attacks are ineffective. I really dislike it when games are vague in an attempt to stop me being able to even slightly master the combat system through opaque rules. I don’t find that ‘fun’.

I’m sure there are plenty of players who can’t move on if there’s filler side quests available that offer xp etc but that they also find boring. The trick is not to put such boring filler content in games.

One other route I do love in games though is games where there is no ‘golden path’. I like games where decisions matter, where recruiting x means y turns against you.
Click to expand...
On the subject of Fire Emblem, I think a good example of that for me is the activities outside of battles in Three Houses compared to Engage. Garreg Mach and the Somniel are similar in terms of functions they offer for the most part, especially as it pertains to unit management and growth. And though Three Houses can get tedious in the back half, I still enjoy the act ot exploring the monastery, building unit supports, and customizing my units.

The Somniel in Engage starts novel, but loses its luster almost immediately. It has more robust mini games for generally less useful rewards, doesn't offer systems that are as in depth for customizing unit builds, and isn't as interesting to explore in general. The Somniel also lacked facilities for building unit supports at launch, which sucked particularly hard given supports grow at the speed of frozen molasses in Engage.

I want to take all the time I can at Garreg Mach, but I want to blitz through the Somniel as fast as I can.
 
I try not to, but I did end up really leaning on the hover bike in TotK in the latter half of my playthrough.
 
0
No!

I have heard this quote a number of times and I think its prevalence is a symptom of the way the culture in the industry has shifted in the past two decades. "Gamer" culture, for lack of a better term, has become very similar to anime culture in the sense that players seem to tie some of their own personal worth to the number of relevant games they've played and/or completed. I've seen a lot of people on this website and others talk about finishing a game within a certain timeframe the same way publishers might talk about crunching to meet a release date; they're not stopping to smell the roses so much as they are trying to find the most efficient way to sniff the roses so they can consume the aroma of the violets, tulips, sunflowers, etc. (I ran out of flowers because I know shit about the natural world).

So, yeah, I think it's true for a lot of people, and I think it's due in large part to subtle societal pressures to complete all the games.
 
It's generalized, context-less shlock that's meant to farm engagements. I can't pull anything out of that statement, so it's a nothing statement.
 
Not when the game is designed around optimizing. Those are my favorite kinds. A great example is SMT.

Any good game that offers a lot of customization options will usually offer a balanced challenge as well. There are exceptions, like Pokémon and FFXII TZA, but I still enjoying messing around in them anyway.
 
Hailinel said:
On the subject of Fire Emblem, I think a good example of that for me is the activities outside of battles in Three Houses compared to Engage. Garreg Mach and the Somniel are similar in terms of functions they offer for the most part, especially as it pertains to unit management and growth. And though Three Houses can get tedious in the back half, I still enjoy the act ot exploring the monastery, building unit supports, and customizing my units.

The Somniel in Engage starts novel, but loses its luster almost immediately. It has more robust mini games for generally less useful rewards, doesn't offer systems that are as in depth for customizing unit builds, and isn't as interesting to explore in general. The Somniel also lacked facilities for building unit supports at launch, which sucked particularly hard given supports grow at the speed of frozen molasses in Engage.

I want to take all the time I can at Garreg Mach, but I want to blitz through the Somniel as fast as I can.
Click to expand...
Yeah, agree. It helps as an evocative setting in TH that Garreg Mach is both what the game is built around but also the entire political setup of the continent. Literally the centre of the geography, where all the scions of the houses are, where the goddess lives, and what the game clearly marks as its core identity that the gameplay loop reinforces with activities that make sense. The Somniel in comparison… is like a floating resort hotel with mid facilities and a single bedroom.
 
The phrase alone doesn't tell me much.

Are they referring to minmaxing that is common, for example, in RPGs? Playing in an unorthodox manner? For instance, I like to play Age of Empires II as a city/country builder sometimes. Is it about intentionally looking for glitches and exploits? Modding?

IDK, but the best answer I can give is the generic one: it depends on the game
 
0
I went and grabbed the original column this quote is pulled from. You can read it here.

It's a more interesting design problem and idea to mull over with the full context of these examples brought up through the whole thing. Whether or not you agree with some of the solutions or whether or not these things are real problems to be solved is up to you.
 
Optimization can have radically different connotations from genre to genre and even game to game. But generally, for what I usually play, I can't say that it reflects my experience to any significant degree, perhaps even the opposite. I like it when a game trusts me enough to give me the tools and options to let me "break" it because I either won't use it or figuring out these things is part of the fun. I finished a replay of Dragon Quest VI the other day and it basically showers you with tools that would be considered cheesing in other games. Throw a prayer ring on your hero and you can basically spam Gigaslash indefinitely. It's cool that magic is basically the "easy mode" build in Souls games. The Zelda hoverbike is also a pretty good example. I did that once because it was funny and then didn't touch it again because I'd just deprive myself of actually playing the game.

I find myself more often frustrated when games are designed in a way that really only allows one solution or one playstyle with so little resistance that it becomes little more than following an implied set of instructions. This is an issue with a lot of modern action adventures that don't (or rather can't) take into account that a portion of their playerbase is intimately familiar with the design language of games. I've been playing games for almost three decades. The last time one of these games actually stumped me was in Majora's Mask. Unless you do something radical like Cocoon your fancy mirror puzzle is not going to do it.
 
I've definitely seen people that phrase applies to. Beeline to the most optimum thing you can do in game, purposely, and then when they finish it, say the game is really dull and one-note because all you need to do is just look up the easiest way to play. There can still be fun in that of course, I've done it before, I just don't think it's fair to write off other ways to play. I think the last time I personally saw it happen in a gaming community and also by a friend was Rivers of Blood and bleed in general in Elden Ring.
 
0
This remind me of a YouTube video about how one of dark souls biggest flaws is that it teach new player to be very dependent on using shields and by that prevent them from experiencing the fun way of playing the game
this video was one of the rare occasions that the comment section was united on a opinion
the opinion that the most fun way to play any game is completely subjective
and there is many people who have the most fun in dark souls while using shields
 
0
For me, yes, very often. I often bee line right for goals. I can't seem to just vibe in a world much any more and like to make progress reasonably quickly. I don't tend to grind much or abuse exp/loot routes unless I have to though.

Personally I think the most engaging way to play or best content should really be the the focus of in game goals or external gratification but it isn't always like that. Although part of that can come down to small things overlooked in balancing or some minor bugs or something, which devs can't always account for. And players don't always react well to nerfing exploits or loot/exp routes. (I guess you can try and increase the rewards for more engaging stuff to offset it).

Or maybe some of the "less-engaging" stuff like say loot grind or hyper optimized progress routes/mini games etc, should have some limitation, or a quickly attained reward and then less. So you spend less time on it.
 
The quote applies to me, and has made me more cognizant of working around the pitfalls of trying to solve games by creating my own spreadsheet for each of them, though satisfying it may be to some deep part of my psyche.

A key aspect of the quote is that while the process of optimizing a game can be fun for certain personalities, once a game is optimized that fun is quickly exhausted. And of course today there is the problem that a game will often be figured out by the gaming community as a whole before we, as individual players get to approach them on our own terms, so we never get the chance to have the fun of trying to solve a puzzle ourselves unless we make the conscious effort to ignore the collected wisdom of the internet and bear the niggling awareness that we are, right now, playing in the least effective way possible.

But the quote is even more valuable for designers than players to keep in mind. Like most quotes it is reductive and at best can be a great shorthand for a greater idea. Here's the essay the quote is from, for more context, a number of examples, and discussion in the comments.
 
as far as overly min-maxing stuff? not really

i'm like a goldfish when it comes to side content though, if i'm enjoying it i'll try and do all of it even if there's far too much of it for that to be reasonable and that can sometimes cause me to burn out on games
 
0
PixelKnight said:
Quote is deeply flawed in its generalisation. ‘Optimise the fun out of the game’ for who?
Click to expand...
In games where there is not enough checks to prevent players with poor impulse control from using certain options if they are the path of least resistance even if they may be monotonous.

In my case it's the inability to turn off rewind on NSO that makes certain games not fun. But that moment of frustration losing a life makes me put my fingers on the trigger anyway because that moment of frustration is getting in the way of me beating the game. Though my feeling with beating certain games is that I had less fun making it to the goal with excess rewind.

Heck, it's why I love Celeste's assist mode being a separate menu. It's there for those who need it, but separate enough that I can just ignore it. More than a button press I can't turn off or an EXP share you can't take off.
 
Mer.Saloon said:
In games where there is not enough checks to prevent players with poor impulse control from using certain options if they are the path of least resistance even if they may be monotonous.

In my case it's the inability to turn off rewind on NSO that makes certain games not fun. But that moment of frustration losing a life makes me put my fingers on the trigger anyway because that moment of frustration is getting in the way of me beating the game. Though my feeling with beating certain games is that I had less fun making it to the goal with excess rewind.

Heck, it's why I love Celeste's assist mode being a separate menu. It's there for those who need it, but separate enough that I can just ignore it. More than a button press I can't turn off or an EXP share you can't take off.
Click to expand...
That easy access to rewind also turns some NSO titles from monstrous frustration into a fun time, so its usefulness will always vary.
 
Hailinel said:
That easy access to rewind also turns some NSO titles from monstrous frustration into a fun time, so its usefulness will always vary.
Click to expand...
Much like how people would say the same toward accessibility features like say... an assist mode menu. Does it hurt for me to want to turn it off without having to lose access to save states and the main menu?

I ask for a check to protect myself that comes at no cost to anyone.
 
0
Yeah. Lots of times I don’t even notice that it happens. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like BotW or totk as much as I’d want to because it’s incredibly easy to accidentally have less fun with the game. You can reach your goal and completely eliminate any meaningful design way too easily. Not even on purpose. You can see something that you think is just one piece of the puzzle and then execute on it and suddenly you’ve solved the whole thing. Sometimes that’s cool, but sometimes I feel like I’m being robbed of the real fun.

But even beyond that it’s very common for me to break and take the easy way out of stuff even though I know it’ll technically be more fun not to. So I appreciate games that go out of their way to prevent that, and it’s why I’ll never agree with the “options are always better” crowd. Less options has more than often enough made me resonate with a game more than I would have otherwise.
 
0
For me a lot of the fun IS optimisation. I tend to start a new Cities Skylines save when I think I've exhausted the optimisations, or the layout is so ingrained that it's calcified, and messing with it will bring inefficiency. While I always WANT to build a money making city up front, then tear it apart to build a new Magnasanti, I get attached, and I want to make the existing city better. Right now I'm working on a super small (all zones in one map square, with extras only for utilities), super dense city and trying to minimise traffic, and that's really fun!

I've found misery in optimising Animal Crossing, though, and similarly I've found misery in NOT optimising Stardew Valley, where I'd have been better served working on efficiency over relationships once I realised I disliked nearly every character in the valley.
 
Concernt said:
For me a lot of the fun IS optimisation. I tend to start a new Cities Skylines save when I think I've exhausted the optimisations, or the layout is so ingrained that it's calcified, and messing with it will bring inefficiency. While I always WANT to build a money making city up front, then tear it apart to build a new Magnasanti, I get attached, and I want to make the existing city better. Right now I'm working on a super small (all zones in one map square, with extras only for utilities), super dense city and trying to minimise traffic, and that's really fun!

I've found misery in optimising Animal Crossing, though, and similarly I've found misery in NOT optimising Stardew Valley, where I'd have been better served working on efficiency over relationships once I realised I disliked nearly every character in the valley.
Click to expand...

This is a good example of the kind of optimization the quote is and isn't talking about.

If you're bulldozing existing cities to build the same identical, proven, tested, most efficent layout on top of their ruins each time, that's fun-destroying optimization. If you're trying to take different cities and optimize their function while maintaining their characteristic character, that's fun optimization.

It's the difference between racing for the same early tech in Civilization each game and having to pick between a few viable options which one is the most optimal in your specific circumstances this game.
 
I do it in some games but not all.

Tangerine_Cookie said:
Not true for me, but I feel this is the wrong dig to make at the segment of players that actually enjoy the optimization part. Those exist.
Click to expand...

Make sure to put extra Karmotrine when it is optional and you are changing lives.
 
Hailinel said:
On the subject of Fire Emblem, I think a good example of that for me is the activities outside of battles in Three Houses compared to Engage. Garreg Mach and the Somniel are similar in terms of functions they offer for the most part, especially as it pertains to unit management and growth. And though Three Houses can get tedious in the back half, I still enjoy the act ot exploring the monastery, building unit supports, and customizing my units.

The Somniel in Engage starts novel, but loses its luster almost immediately. It has more robust mini games for generally less useful rewards, doesn't offer systems that are as in depth for customizing unit builds, and isn't as interesting to explore in general. The Somniel also lacked facilities for building unit supports at launch, which sucked particularly hard given supports grow at the speed of frozen molasses in Engage.

I want to take all the time I can at Garreg Mach, but I want to blitz through the Somniel as fast as I can.
Click to expand...

funnily i've generally seen the opposite opinion on 3H. since exploring the monastery is seen as important and optimal on most given days, players will opt for it every time and that can become monotonous fast on repeat playthroughs.

the biggest fun suck i've heard people do is the fishing optimization. which is waiting for that one day where you get more fishing rewards... for which people spend upwards of an hour+ fishing and end up exhausted and bored out of their minds as a result.

for that reason i ended up doing a run without exploring, occasionally skipping weeks or having seminars. it's surprisingly very manageable and the game progresses at a much more satisfying clip.
 
I think the natural inclination of playing a game (especially games with lots of number crunching where optimization isn't just possible but encouraged) is to optimize yourself as much as possible, and if I am capable of doing so to such a degree that I make the game less fun then that's a skill issue on the dev's part.
 
"Why would you try to balance a singleplayer game" is a question I occasionally come across and this quote is why I scratch my head every time.
 
Sometimes playing "efficiently" can take some fun away, but we can't place all the blame on the player. Like in some games where traders change prices based on item availability, you can do stupid things like buying all of an item, having the trader thus consider it a rare item, then sell it all back for more money than you paid. But what am I supposed to do? Choose to leave money sitting there that the developer is waving in my face? Choose to spend more time doing other tasks to achieve the same goal in a slower way? And if I'm imposing that kind of limit on myself, should I also choose to ignore loot they've left sitting in chests?
 
This quote was very true for me in BotW. Bombs are free and unlimited, so I would not permit myself to waste weapon durability on shrine switches or on enemies that always die do 1 hit (keese, stal enemies, etc.). I was able to shake that mentality more in TotK, probably because no free bombs and and an even bigger abundance of trash weapons. Still, I wish Link could throw a weak punch or something, or just not have switches consume durability, I never got the point of that anyway.
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
Sometimes playing "efficiently" can take some fun away, but we can't place all the blame on the player.
Click to expand...
If you would read the column this quote is from that has been posted in this thread twice now, you'd understand the person being quoted is placing the entire blame on the designers. I don't mean to pick on you specifically it's just so many replies in this thread feel like they have completely missed the point.
 
BotenAnna said:
If you would read the column this quote is from that has been posted in this thread twice now, you'd understand the person being quoted is placing the entire blame on the designers. I don't mean to pick on you specifically it's just so many replies in this thread feel like they have completely missed the point.
Click to expand...

definitely interesting so many took this as an attack from devs. i just thought it was an interesting point on how our psychology tends to work in games, and how we or devs find ways to circumvent it or don't.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom