Let's not criticize how much he cares (Destiny)

by kidtsunami , Atlanta, GA, Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 04:15 (3805 days ago) @ electricpirate

From what I've seen, I would rate Destiny's "investment system" as part of "all the content."

Now we are getting academic, because technically it CAN'T be part of the (fun) content. If it WERE, then the investment system would undermine itself!

Let's say you are making a puzzle game with three big puzzles (for sake of argument). One is an easy puzzle, one is medium difficulty, and the last is hard. You have an investment system in the form of IQ points. When you solve a puzzle, you get IQ points. Get enough, and you can play the next puzzle.

So you solve the easy puzzle and want to try the medium one, but you don't have enough IQ points. To get IQ points, you can solve a bunch of little puzzles to slowly get more IQ points. Let's say you need to solve 3 little puzzles to get enough IQ points to move on to the medium puzzle.

But think about it. If the little puzzles were part of the fun content, then the designers would simply design the game to progress from easy puzzle, to 3 little puzzles, to the medium puzzle. There'd be no reason for IQ points at all.

So in order to justify the system, the little puzzles MUST not be fun in their own merits, because if they are, the system is unnecessary as just explained.

So to go from medium to hard, you might have to play 7 little puzzles to get enough IQ points - puzzles which are required to be less interesting by the inclusion of the IQ points system. You're not dumb though, and you want to solve the hard puzzle. Why do you have to play 7 easy ones in order to do so? You'd be right to just want to skip the puzzles which are designed to be bad, because if they weren't the investment system is unnecessary.

So the proper way to design the puzzle game is to remove the IQ point system, and either have the three big puzzles, or have the little puzzles (which now have to be fun!) included between the big puzzles.

That's the crux of it. Investment systems are designed to make tasks that aren't fun fun, through the addition of a reward system. And if the investment system was itself fun and complex, it'd just be a normal part of the game, which would itself not need an investment system.

If you want to do a level 50 strike, and you've played all the content up to that point and are level 50, then there's no need for the level requirement: simply order the content as in a traditional level progression with the level 50 strike at the end. You can mix it up and allow for some choice if you like. You can choose to do the first 8 stages in any order in megaman, but to play the castle you have to finish all 8 stages. So make the level 50 strike the castle, and the content before it the robot master stages.

But if you play all the content you can play at your level and you AREN'T level 50, then that means replaying boring content. If it wasn't boring, then it would have been designed and ordered as described in the previous paragraph since it would be fun on its own and you wouldn't need a reward to play!

If you could replay 10 missions to get the exp to get to level 50, then the level lock would function the same way if instead of requiring level 50, it said "REQUIRES: replay 10 stages". Functionally it is exactly the same from the perspective of the player, but when worded this way it seems strange and dumb. Because it is.

But if investment systems are there to try to make things that aren't fun fun, why not simply just make everything you ask your player to do fun? Ideally you would do this, but the real answer is time.

The investment system ensures a minimum investment of time to progress through content. This is necessary because Bungie wants people playing their game for ten years, and actually designing fun content takes waaaaay more time to make than to play. By adding what is essentially a time gate, you get the most bang for your buck so to speak when it comes to playtime / development cost.

But haven't you ever played a free to play game with content locked out through time, like an action meter that takes time to charge to let you do something? And isn't that fucking annoying? Investment systems are the same thing, just wrapped in a prettier package.

Everything, including finding and customizing gear, your guardian's skills, and weapons can be done without the need for an investment system.

So when you have a fun game, necessarily burdened by filler, would you skip the filler if able?

Because you're like *really* obsessed.

At some point, it just bears mentioning, a lot of people enjoy a nice power curve. It feels good. There are plenty of other formal game design reasons for it, but the fact that people like investment systems make a pretty strong case for their validity.

I think game design is really important and worth hashing out intensely.