This may or may not have been said numerous times.
Its something ive been thinking about since i started playing world of warcraft right around release and had bought a good pc and all that. A few of my friends and I started playing world of warcraft. I had 2 roomates about the same age as me and one of them was a close friend and we decided since we were living together and home on the weekends we would start playing pc games together.
Well i had heard about wow from another casual aquaintance and decided i would give it a try. Right off the bat it blew me away, bear in mind this was before any expansions and i really liked the whole fantasy element and immersion. My roomate was hooked as well. We both spent many a night gaming til the wee hours of the morning and it was a blast. But after awhile like any thoughtful person i started wondering if it was time well spent. I could justify it at first seeing as though i was sorta down and working a ton to get myself a life.
I had another friend who was playing very very casually but said he just couldn't give it enough time to rationalize paying a monthly fee. We started talking about why people play games like wow and diablo. Meanwhile my roomate who had started playing about the same time i did was now devoting huge chunks of his life to the game and did for the better part of 6 years. We sorta theorized that game developers aren't stupid. They don't make money if people don't play. So whats the best way to keep people playing? Keep the carrot on the stick infront of them. With wow i could certainly see the reason so many people were hooked. Many of you may have noticed when playing wow as you would level and become more powerful you would get a feeling of accomplishment. Almost as if you had done something in the real world. But that feeling is replacing a feeling of geniune accomplishment in anything meaningful. Simply put its almost like people charging to give you a false sense of something yet also keeping you hooked just enough so you keep comming back. Who does that? Easy answer.
And i know that at the end of the day will power is everything. If you can't pull yourself from a game to go and live a real life you have deeper issues. As i was playing diablo 3 the same thing happened. I could sense the carrot on the stick if you will, but i could also sense the false sense of value. And i've read tons about how legendaries are supposed to be legendary and this and that. But theres quite a few legendaries in the game. It seems to me that legendaries aren't exactly legendary, They have just bottlenecked them and probably to promote longevity of the game. But its something of a design pattern with a few of their games.
For instance playing wow after a certain while of raiding it was nigh impossible to go any further and i was putting in tons of time as it was. My one goal with wow was to have a fairly successful arena team. Theres no way i would have been able to achieve that without giving up way too much time to something thats basically meaningless. So why bother making a game that in order to experience the best there is in it do we have to then put our lives on hold basically. Obviously its up to the person but i would ask the question why their making their games require such a time investment and also why the rewards of said games seem smaller in comparison to earlier games?
For example Diablo 2 LOD, i could make a character and have that character pretty much geared in a weekend. And i wasn't constantly feeling like a gold farmer/human bot overleveling after the level cap or grinding out balooney for another copy of a pos whaling host that i then turned into a crafting matt to roll a stat. What kept people comming back was making new toons, muling, ladders, hardcore etc. You were always being given something, there was a constant sense of novelty comming from the game. Even white weapons were good on high difficulty. But the trend of more grind for less reward is a new thing and not a good thing.
This is the real world people don't have 6 months to invest to get set items and a good weapon. Thats just stupid and irresponsible game design to make more and more money for something thats a false feeling to begin with. And infact to me its insulting that your giving us less of that feeling like its in some way more valueable than it was during the old days. It's an illusion and see if your greed gains you more or less market share. More quality less quantity is what i say. You should never have to set aside a year for something thats a weekend hobby at best and then not even be assured you will ever reach your mark. What do you take people for? And this is in no way an insult to people who currently play, just an observation
This may or may not have been said numerous times.
Its something ive been thinking about since i started playing world of warcraft right around release and had bought a good pc and all that. A few of my friends and I started playing world of warcraft. I had 2 roomates about the same age as me and one of them was a close friend and we decided since we were living together and home on the weekends we would start playing pc games together.
Well i had heard about wow from another casual aquaintance and decided i would give it a try. Right off the bat it blew me away, bear in mind this was before any expansions and i really liked the whole fantasy element and immersion. My roomate was hooked as well. We both spent many a night gaming til the wee hours of the morning and it was a blast. But after awhile like any thoughtful person i started wondering if it was time well spent. I could justify it at first seeing as though i was sorta down and working a ton to get myself a life.
I had another friend who was playing very very casually but said he just couldn't give it enough time to rationalize paying a monthly fee. We started talking about why people play games like wow and diablo. Meanwhile my roomate who had started playing about the same time i did was now devoting huge chunks of his life to the game and did for the better part of 6 years. We sorta theorized that game developers aren't stupid. They don't make money if people don't play. So whats the best way to keep people playing? Keep the carrot on the stick infront of them. With wow i could certainly see the reason so many people were hooked. Many of you may have noticed when playing wow as you would level and become more powerful you would get a feeling of accomplishment. Almost as if you had done something in the real world. But that feeling is replacing a feeling of geniune accomplishment in anything meaningful. Simply put its almost like people charging to give you a false sense of something yet also keeping you hooked just enough so you keep comming back. Who does that? Easy answer.
And i know that at the end of the day will power is everything. If you can't pull yourself from a game to go and live a real life you have deeper issues. As i was playing diablo 3 the same thing happened. I could sense the carrot on the stick if you will, but i could also sense the false sense of value. And i've read tons about how legendaries are supposed to be legendary and this and that. But theres quite a few legendaries in the game. It seems to me that legendaries aren't exactly legendary, They have just bottlenecked them and probably to promote longevity of the game. But its something of a design pattern with a few of their games.
For instance playing wow after a certain while of raiding it was nigh impossible to go any further and i was putting in tons of time as it was. My one goal with wow was to have a fairly successful arena team. Theres no way i would have been able to achieve that without giving up way too much time to something thats basically meaningless. So why bother making a game that in order to experience the best there is in it do we have to then put our lives on hold basically. Obviously its up to the person but i would ask the question why their making their games require such a time investment and also why the rewards of said games seem smaller in comparison to earlier games?
For example Diablo 2 LOD, i could make a character and have that character pretty much geared in a weekend. And i wasn't constantly feeling like a gold farmer/human bot overleveling after the level cap or grinding out balooney for another copy of a pos whaling host that i then turned into a crafting matt to roll a stat. What kept people comming back was making new toons, muling, ladders, hardcore etc. You were always being given something, there was a constant sense of novelty comming from the game. Even white weapons were good on high difficulty. But the trend of more grind for less reward is a new thing and not a good thing.
This is the real world people don't have 6 months to invest to get set items and a good weapon. Thats just stupid and irresponsible game design to make more and more money for something thats a false feeling to begin with. And infact to me its insulting that your giving us less of that feeling like its in some way more valueable than it was during the old days. It's an illusion and see if your greed gains you more or less market share. More quality less quantity is what i say. You should never have to set aside a year for something thats a weekend hobby at best and then not even be assured you will ever reach your mark. What do you take people for? And this is in no way an insult to people who currently play, just an observation