Every player wants their choices to be important. For most this means every time they logon they're making important decisions (instanced PVP, tight PVE balancing.) For some this means infrequent strategic choices (choose to join the zerg guild -> dominate world PVP; AFK-harvest/craft.)
It depends on what you mean by important. I play games to have fun. I don't want to be a hero. I don't want to be a legend. I just want to have a good time while I'm playing, then go do something else. I don't care if anyone else knows my name or remembers me or even knows I'm alive, so long as I have a good time when I log on and can look forward to doing it again sometime.
Important as in the game doesn't play itself. Your presence is valued. You'll lose the fight with the giant rat (which you're fighting because you don't care if you're a hero) if you don't make choices -- or at a minimum, you'll fail to kill rats at a particularly fast rate.
Game AI doesn't value my presence, it doesn't care. If I lose to the giant rat, so what? Did I have fun while I was doing it? If so, it was worth it to me. Do I care about killing giant rats? Nope, but if that's what's thrown in front of me, I'll do it. I don't have a big head or an ego and think I'm better than killing giant rats. Throw giant animals at me all you want, I'm good with that.
Then again, I don't care how fast I kill giant rats because I'm not in an absurd race to end-game. I get to the end when I do, no matter how long it takes, especially since I'm deleting the character when it hits end-game. I detest end-game with a passion.
It's the game that "cares", not the AI. Do your actions produce meaningful results? If not, the entertainment rests solely on presentation (like a movie). If so, the entertainment has more legs to stand on (the stronger and more interesting each leg is, the better the entertainment.)
You could have a game where you're a slave scrubbing floors and players are still going to judge it based on whether their decisions are important -- whether their decisions matter.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I simply want to say that Claymore is my favorite Manga.
I you and that .gif image.
That said, I want actual crafting. Say a medieval MMO.
Put a chunck of metal in front of me, let me use a hammer and click it to hit the chunck of metal and let me pick it up and place it in water to cool it off and fire to heat it up.
God just PLEASE stop making me click a button and sit there watching a progress bar go across the screen.
Playing: *sigh* back to WoW -------- Waiting for: SW:TOR, APB, WoD --------- Played and loved: Eve and WoW -------- Played and hated: WoW:WotLK, Warhammer, every single F2P
I simply want to say that Claymore is my favorite Manga.
I you and that .gif image.
That said, I want actual crafting. Say a medieval MMO.
Put a chunck of metal in front of me, let me use a hammer and click it to hit the chunck of metal and let me pick it up and place it in water to cool it off and fire to heat it up.
God just PLEASE stop making me click a button and sit there watching a progress bar go across the screen.
Thank You
And I have never even heard or thought about that before an interactive crafting system in an MMO. Do you mean like using the mouse to trace and image into the raw metal or something along those lines? Crafting in many MMOs is generally considered boring so something like this might be an idea to make it better.
Comments
It's the game that "cares", not the AI. Do your actions produce meaningful results? If not, the entertainment rests solely on presentation (like a movie). If so, the entertainment has more legs to stand on (the stronger and more interesting each leg is, the better the entertainment.)
You could have a game where you're a slave scrubbing floors and players are still going to judge it based on whether their decisions are important -- whether their decisions matter.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I simply want to say that Claymore is my favorite Manga.
I
you and that .gif image.
That said, I want actual crafting. Say a medieval MMO.
Put a chunck of metal in front of me, let me use a hammer and click it to hit the chunck of metal and let me pick it up and place it in water to cool it off and fire to heat it up.
God just PLEASE stop making me click a button and sit there watching a progress bar go across the screen.
Playing: *sigh* back to WoW
--------
Waiting for: SW:TOR, APB, WoD
---------
Played and loved: Eve and WoW
--------
Played and hated: WoW:WotLK, Warhammer, every single F2P
Thank You
And I have never even heard or thought about that before an interactive crafting system in an MMO. Do you mean like using the mouse to trace and image into the raw metal or something along those lines? Crafting in many MMOs is generally considered boring so something like this might be an idea to make it better.