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The quest for a Wiki-less game

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Re: The quest for a Wiki-less game

#71

Post by rickdeckard »

an_ko wrote: post #45
drw85 wrote: post #38

I also think this signals a change in how games are played these days. There are many players that don't want to be challenged or explore, they want to complete tasks and get rewards. Some of them don't really care that much about the actual gameplay, as long as there is a quick way to complete sets of tasks and get their rewards. Some of my friends are like this, they blast through games without looking at anything…

Has that really changed recently? Different people have always enjoyed different things, and some don't like puzzles. That was as true a hundred years ago as now.

Yes. But modern games also evolved to appeal to people who don't like to be challenged and look for a casual rewarding experience.

It becomes quite obvious when you play a game of the early 90s and compare it to gameplay of today.

If you couldn't identify(!) and solve the puzzle in a LucasArts Adventure Game, you were stuck, if you repeatedly died in Super Mario / Sonic the Hedgehog you had to restart from Level 1.

Re: The quest for a Wiki-less game

#72

Post by neilv »

drw85 wrote: post #38

I also think this signals a change in how games are played these days. There are many players that don't want to be challenged or explore, they want to complete tasks and get rewards. Some of them don't really care that much about the actual gameplay, as long as there is a quick way to complete sets of tasks and get their rewards. Some of my friends are like this, they blast through games without looking at anything…

> There are many players that don't want to be challenged or explore, they want to complete tasks and get rewards. Some of them don't really care that much about the actual gameplay, as long as there is a quick way to complete sets of tasks and get their rewards.

Exactly.

This was noticeable in Subnautica, in which most of the game is figuring out what you do next.

The PS4 shows you how rare it is to achieve each progress trophy for a game, among people who started the game, and... the completion level looked suspiciously high. (Especially for a game that was given away free at one point, so you don't have only people who paid money for the game, starting it.)

I did have to "Zoomer" the game once, when I was stuck over the course of calendar weeks, knowing which specific linking piece I was missing, but unable to figure it out. So eventually I cheated, by Web searching how you get this one missing link.

But otherwise, I figured it out with the in-game hints, and some not-too-hard exploring, mapping, note-taking, deducing, planning, survival resource tactics-ing, and grinding.

If this were a real-world business problem, not a game, I would've gotten help sooner. But I also would've been able to apply skills to solving the problem more effectively, than if I'd only ever learned how to copy&paste Stack Overflow or LLM robo-plagiarism.

Re: The quest for a Wiki-less game

#73

Post by jshaqaw »

I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3. I remember being very proud of winning BG1 without looking up hints. Now I find myself on the wiki. Why? I’m almost 50. I’ve got kids, businesses, life, etc… I can’t play a game for hours on end of immersion every night. I get to game in an hour here hour there slices through the week. If I spent 8 of those slices looking for some random nugget instead of moving the story forward there is no way I’d keep playing. I have no illusions that I’m “beating” the game organically but I’m having fun immersed in a fantasy world and having fun is the only point here.

PS - if you aren’t playing BG3 - this game is fantastic and a worthy heir to the BG 1/2 standard

Re: The quest for a Wiki-less game

#74

Post by xaitv »

seanhunter wrote: post #10

Really disagree with the hypothesis the author has, and especially don't think that the player experience is hindered (at all) by searching for things in an external wiki. Most of the games I really like (Factorio, Dwarf Fortress, Subnautica, Valheim, Satisfactory, recently Shapez2 as examples) I enjoy partly because of the active community (and wikis are obviously part of that). I love seeing solutions that other pe…

I feel like one of the most "extreme" examples here can be Path of Exile. Complexity there is high enough(I can't really think of a more complex game from the top of my head) that planning out how you're going to play(making a build) using external tools can be a whole game in itself.

Some people really like to go in depth on mechanics, look up every little mechanic on the wiki and optimize their build. Other people just copy what someone else did and mostly just play the actual game. Both are totally valid ways to play as long as you're having fun.

If I think about how the devs could've designed their game so these tools aren't needed I feel like that'd be nearly impossible without a massive time investment to bring basically those exact tools ingame. The easier path would be to reduce complexity which would make the game appeal less to players who play precisely because they like the complexity. So an external wiki and external tools seems like the right solution here to me.

Re: The quest for a Wiki-less game

#75

Post by Ekaros »

haunter wrote: post #23
rspoerri wrote: post #20

The problem is that two different systems collide (in the example of Terraria). Having an open world game and a learning curve for the things the user needs to understand to progress. Looking up informations in a wiki most often happens when the game gets boring or overly complex for the player to have fun (check Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow theory on that). Games that do that well, such as Zelda (which does this v…

>introduce new mechanics and scenarios in an very iterative way. By having a linear structure. A lot of games are also ruined by this handhelding style of design where 20 hours in you are still seeing tutorials

The Talos Principle 2 in my mind is good example of this. It really comes to having too many mechanisms in game. So any of them do not get enough depth for exploring, but instead you are just going to next one and starting new tutorial over and over again... Lot of content, but by the last 4th of game, you are still doing what is in essence tutorials.

Re: The quest for a Wiki-less game

#76

Post by IgorPartola »

michaelt wrote: post #60
drw85 wrote: post #38

I also think this signals a change in how games are played these days. There are many players that don't want to be challenged or explore, they want to complete tasks and get rewards. Some of them don't really care that much about the actual gameplay, as long as there is a quick way to complete sets of tasks and get their rewards. Some of my friends are like this, they blast through games without looking at anything…

> There are many players that don't want to be challenged or explore That might be true in some cases, sure. But in recent years I've noticed a lot of games adding things like crafting and alchemy mechanics that are pretty grind-heavy to puzzle out on your own. If I've got to brute-force recipes? Or if there are hard-won ingredients and they might get wasted or produce something useless? Or if the developers, not wan…

But is this because there is going to be a wiki explaining exactly what to do, something not done before?

Re: The quest for a Wiki-less game

#77

Post by WillAdams »

jshaqaw wrote: post #73

I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3. I remember being very proud of winning BG1 without looking up hints. Now I find myself on the wiki. Why? I’m almost 50. I’ve got kids, businesses, life, etc… I can’t play a game for hours on end of immersion every night. I get to game in an hour here hour there slices through the week. If I spent 8 of those slices looking for some random nugget instead of moving the story forward th…

The thing is, I'd be glad of this sort of thing in-game which could be sought out at need (go to Elminster) or turned on/off (map guide arrow).

I'm about 3 personal projects and 2 side jobs and 1 computer generation too far behind to play BG3 --- positive reports such as yours make me regret that, but I also worry about disturbing my pleasant memories of resolving a crisis and ensuring the best endings for my various companions....

Re: The quest for a Wiki-less game

#78

Post by __s »

Randomize recipes etc, then put them in hints throughout the game

Been enjoying Zelda randomizers lately, it needs a bit of a wiki to understand mechanics etc. But a game designed for randomization could include difficulty curve & then have higher difficulty levels where that hand holding backs off like how many modern roguelites have difficulty level mechanics

Re: The quest for a Wiki-less game

#80

Post by jccalhoun »

I find myself looking up walkthroughs for two reasons:

1) I have no idea what I'm supposed to do or where I'm supposed to go next. There have been lots of times when I've not know where to go next or seem trapped in an area with no enemies and had to go look up how to get out.

2) I want to make sure what I'm trying is even possible. I remember one game where a boss would come out of a room and attack. I tried a dozen times to shut the door to trap the boss before I looked it up and found out I was supposed to run away and you couldn't close the door.

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