Like with any skill, the yt videos feature the 1% of the time when they get to show off progress. But of course the other 99% of the time is spent on the struggle bus. And like with any skill, if you can learn how to slog through the lows, the highs can be a very rewarding experience.
There’s really nothing like seeing someone play your game for the first time. I assume it’s similar to a musician showing off their music, or a director showing off their film. But that interactive element is very unique; getting to see how people interact and respond emotionally to this thing you built. Actually, maybe it’s like being a toy maker.
I think realistically, TotK is going to win the popularity aspect by a longshot. Even though BG3 is, IMO an objectively more impressive feat, and most of the novelty in TotK was already in BotW.
RDF is useful if the goal is completing content, but not if the goal is interacting with other people, which I believe is a crucial part of the MMO acronym, even when I don’t have much time to game. If my goal is to complete content, there are more interesting single player games I can spend my limited amount of game time playing than WoW.
IMO modern WoW is designed to give you the sensation of completing content so rapidly that you mistake the resulting dopamine hits for the feeling of having fun. Meanwhile, anything that could interrupt that cycle of hits has been optimized out, which includes virtually any dependency on another player. (Vanilla has quests that require you to find another player to craft you an item! They never made that “mistake” again…)
I currently run a 10m “dad” guild in WotLK classic. We’re only on for 1 night a week for 3h to raid, and virtually every week at least 2 people can’t make it due to work, family, or other reasons. And it’s fine. Yeah, we progress slower, we still haven’t even fully cleared Ulduar which was 2 phases ago, but it makes for a more rewarding experience IMO. The goal isn’t completing content, it’s interacting with other people.
Meanwhile, when you queue in RDF, no one talks, everyone already knows all the fights, and if you don’t keep up you will be vote kicked. I don’t see the appeal. TBH I don’t even see anything “massively multiplayer” about WoW these days. Everyone else running around could be bots and I wouldn’t have any way of knowing. The hardcore WoW servers are probably where the most interesting multiplayer experiences are happening these days.
I’m not really interested in any MMOs these days which all deemphasize player interaction and prioritize content completion. I’m sure it appeals to the widest audience and thus is the easiest way to pay the bills, but it also makes for a braindead experience.
I’m reservedly optimistic given the wow vets involved, but if they do stuff like:
adding fast travel portals instead of reliance on player mages,
random dungeon finder,
random cross-realm interaction at the cost of fostering server communities,
and otherwise make a single player experience where other players might happen to appear,
then It’s not interesting to me. Also, I don’t think being a retail wow clone will be enough to dethrone retail wow.
In spite of your short attention span, these are good questions. The point of a proper simulation isn’t to be fun, and game that wants to be fun is usually not a perfect simulation. A game that wants to be a fun simulation has to find the middle ground. I’ve heard it referred to as “the good suck”: It sucks to have to wait for something in a game to happen, but it contributes to a larger, sometimes desired feeling of immersion. But yeah, there’s always a line where the suck outweighs the fun.
In the case of SC, if the game literally makes you sit and do nothing for 10m, that’s one thing. But my guess is it doesn’t. My guess is you can do other things in the meantime. So it’s basically like any game: you can’t just do anything you want at any time, otherwise it’s not a game, it’s a skinner box.
Disagree. The intention is for SC to be a space sim sandbox, so I’m surprised they’re only making you wait 10m.
When you take your car into the shop and have to wait a few hours for it to be repaired, you don’t think “the solution they want me to go with is to buy a second car for this moment”, right? But that’s the argument you’re making here. If this is the lens you see all games through, then it’s impossible for anyone to make a game that’s just literally normal life.
Conversely, I could argue that mobile games are built around instant dopamine rushes. Any 10m wait is explicitly accompanied with an option to pay the wait away immediately. Afaik, that’s not an option here, if you’re a new player, you have to wait that 10m no matter what. Correct me if I’m wrong. But that’s not a very good job at capitalizing on the wait time.
Yeah, Morrowind was mind blowing when it came out. Then I skipped Oblivion, and Skyrim, mechanically, wasn’t that much of a leap over Morrowind. Sure it looked better and had voice acting, but it still feels like a static world. I wouldn’t consider Witcher 3 to be quite the same genre as TES, but imo W3 raised the bar for my expectations from Bethesda. So far I think they still have not made a game as good as W3.
Yeah, as someone who hasn’t played Starfield and has no interest in playing it, all their criticisms were just saying they didn’t care for the style starfield was going for. Which is fine, but that doesn’t make it a bad game.
It could be that “NASA punk” is boring to 99/100 people, but that doesn’t mean a game in that style is bad. I think we can all agree that games that are enthralling to a very niche set of people are a good thing, because we all want that game to be for us. We don’t want or expect every game to be equally enthralling to every person.