Really good rundown and I agree the most from my own personal preferences (as a completionist hoarder) with the last point you edited in. And states the point I was trying to make better than I did because - it doesn’t create more fun, it actually can keep you from having fun with all the things they included.
Yeah, but I tend to see this as players failing to meet the game on its own terms. Not that a lot of them know they’re failing to, but still.
What’s a good example of this…
I got an older coworker of mine to play Inscryption. That game has a safe puzzle with a 3-digit combination. He told me, after he’d played as much as he could bare, that he really wished games would stop doing that. A 3-digit combination is not secure enough; you can sit there and try every number in about 5 minutes. Which is what he had done. He had sat there for 5 minutes trying every number.
This really puzzled me. Not that I disagreed. I saw the same safe, I recognized I could probably crack it whenever I wanted. But rather that he was willing to actually sit there and do it, knowing it wasn’t fun, knowing this probably wasn’t “intended,” only so he could complain about it later. I think that I had more fun with this safe because I was willing to let the game tell me when I had the solution, and let it work me into this eureka moment it obviously wanted me to have once I’d put two and two together.
Could the safe have used a few more digits to force him down the same path? I mean… maybe? I guess so. But, I think that it’s important as players to recognize that all games are some form of this safe puzzle. You can install CheatEngine and modify any game’s health and bonus numbers to make yourself invincible whenever you want, it’s not even difficult to do, but invincibility is not what makes a game fun. The game must impose limits on your freedom so that your skill has something to overcome.
Too many Megalixirs would trivialize any Final Fantasy battle. Too few would never let you punch above your station. If you can recognize that a game is giving you items you’re not using, I think that you should just use them. It’s either a bit of fun that you’re missing out on because you’re optimizing your play too much, or as Ephera explained, it may just be a catch-up mechanic for less skilled players. But in either case, you don’t really gain anything by refusing to use them. This is a self-imposed prison people lock themselves into.
Really good rundown and I agree the most from my own personal preferences (as a completionist hoarder) with the last point you edited in. And states the point I was trying to make better than I did because - it doesn’t create more fun, it actually can keep you from having fun with all the things they included.
Yeah, but I tend to see this as players failing to meet the game on its own terms. Not that a lot of them know they’re failing to, but still.
What’s a good example of this…
I got an older coworker of mine to play Inscryption. That game has a safe puzzle with a 3-digit combination. He told me, after he’d played as much as he could bare, that he really wished games would stop doing that. A 3-digit combination is not secure enough; you can sit there and try every number in about 5 minutes. Which is what he had done. He had sat there for 5 minutes trying every number.
This really puzzled me. Not that I disagreed. I saw the same safe, I recognized I could probably crack it whenever I wanted. But rather that he was willing to actually sit there and do it, knowing it wasn’t fun, knowing this probably wasn’t “intended,” only so he could complain about it later. I think that I had more fun with this safe because I was willing to let the game tell me when I had the solution, and let it work me into this eureka moment it obviously wanted me to have once I’d put two and two together.
Could the safe have used a few more digits to force him down the same path? I mean… maybe? I guess so. But, I think that it’s important as players to recognize that all games are some form of this safe puzzle. You can install CheatEngine and modify any game’s health and bonus numbers to make yourself invincible whenever you want, it’s not even difficult to do, but invincibility is not what makes a game fun. The game must impose limits on your freedom so that your skill has something to overcome.
Too many Megalixirs would trivialize any Final Fantasy battle. Too few would never let you punch above your station. If you can recognize that a game is giving you items you’re not using, I think that you should just use them. It’s either a bit of fun that you’re missing out on because you’re optimizing your play too much, or as Ephera explained, it may just be a catch-up mechanic for less skilled players. But in either case, you don’t really gain anything by refusing to use them. This is a self-imposed prison people lock themselves into.