Weapon sunsetting in action (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Wednesday, June 10, 2020, 12:00 (1625 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Okay, so you keep taking this to a personal level. Meaning singular gamer. You can't do that when talking about metrics and a massively multiplayer game. Destiny (the thing we are talking about) uses metrics because it's one of the few tools you can use to rationally figure out how much people are having fun in a game…

This is not true. You cannot measure fun. A metric can only measure something tangible like "Players use this weapon most" or "tons of people are dying here". There is no "fun had" stat that can be collected.

Thanks for using an example apart from what we were already talking about where I had to google it. I'm assuming you are talking about "Super Street Fighter II Turbo"? If so, that says that it was released in 1994... Yeah, of course you wouldn't need metrics for that game. It's literally a two person on a single TV fighting game.

This is not correct. First of all it was arcade only for a long time. It was a game played by a community of players, both in person at arcades, and at tournaments around the world. The reach was just as 'massive'.

Metrics do not measure fun.

I agree, they don't. But metrics are the best way to figure out if something is working out and thus giving your players the most amount of fun.

Think about a weapon in Destiny. The weapon is overrepresented in the metrics. What would you do? Bungie would nerf. But if people presumably want to have fun, doesn't that mean that more people choosing the weapon indicates they find the weapon most fun? So if you nerf, you remove fun. Is it overpowered? The metric can't really even tell you that. You have to play it and find out what makes the weapon fun to use. And that is entirely experiential.

The games that interest me the most, that entertain me, that wow me, that make me remember them, all have a personal touch. Designing by metrics rounds that out to mediocrity. The best games have personality, not consensus. We value art for it's originality. For what's unexpected and unusual in a pleasurable way.