Also, developers can't love their own games?

And it seems to me I've heard Bungie's slogan is something related to it, what is it again?

A lot of people actually really suck at creating their own goals. It is much easier to adopt one. That's not 'obedience' because in games you can still fully choose not to do it.

Again, in real life we call folks who have no goals or are unable to form goals 'losers'. Why do we not tolerate it in life, but suddenly do in leisure activity?

Firstly, I'd say they have trouble getting themselves motivated, and I might try to help them. Secondly, why do we tolerate shooting people's faces off in video games when we don't in real life?

Too often, yes, it is not presented by developers or seen by players as a choice to adopt the goals or not. They seem coerced too heavily. Too often, the goals they provide are not interesting.

But the goals are there, ready and waiting for you. You can choose to adopt them, and you can end up having fun during the pursuit of it.

It is a sacrifice in the initial intrinsic motivation to be able to provide more activity to more people. People who, because they didn't even realise that those goals could be constructed, might have left the game otherwise.

If they don't realize it, and they leave the game, they are not the type of people who would want to take on these challenges in the first place. It's like the saying in advertising - "If you see it, then it's for you".

I feel like there's an assumption, maybe more than one, behind you saying that, and I don't know if it's true. Also I haven't heard that saying before so maybe you should say what it means or what it means to you.

Besides, you really think all your gaming goals are wholly self-directed? You didn't invent speed running, Cody. You merely adopted it. Remember Twin Galaxies? You're so obedient to others Cody. And you didn't even get the reward! Did you end up having fun doing it anyway? Do you look back on it as a worthwhile accomplishment? No? Are you a robot?

There is a huge difference between adopting goals created by people who love the game, goals which net you no reward other than the fun of doing them, and adopting the goals of the developers who want to keep you playing / paying which reward using in game means.

So SLASO in Halo is fine but plain Legendary is horrible? Also, developers can't love their own games?

I hate locked items with a passion.

I worked to get the black visor in Reach and the experience convinced me that I never want to do anything like that again. I stopped playing Reach once I got the visor

why? the stuff after this I get, but for that, why?

Deej should tell me about threads like this one. Good times.

So that you know where to target ze missiles?

Again, in real life we call folks who have no goals or are unable to form goals 'losers'. Why do we not tolerate it in life, but suddenly do in leisure activity?

Oh, Cody.

A lot of people actually really suck at creating their own goals. It is much easier to adopt one. That's not 'obedience' because in games you can still fully choose not to do it.

Again, in real life we call folks who have no goals or are unable to form goals 'losers'. Why do we not tolerate it in life, but suddenly do in leisure activity?

You give people too much credit. Most of the goals people have are merely adopted.

You said in another post that your ideal game would have a strong community that self-generated the goals.

In a game that had a strong community, the goals would still be adopted the overwhelming majority of the time, just from a different source. You think game developers (at least some of them) don't love the game they're making and want to share the many activities and fun things to do with their players? Bungie explicitly say 'we make games we want to play.'

As I said, it's a sacrifice in the self-generation in order to give it to more people. That knowledge-sharing is something innately human. Forcing kids to study math may make some of them hate it, but it will still be useful to them and others become physicists and mathematicians.

You really think many people want to spend their leisure time doing research to try and find what the fuck you can do with this game they've bought?

Many people are quite happy to have the game suggest something for them. They either accept or decline, and can get on with shooting aliens to get there.

Besides, some types of goals are either impossible or made difficult without in-game technological support. Or are made more rewarding with the in-game immediacy.

Time Attacks / Speed Running, for example, is much easier with an in-game timer and replay system. Just ask every racing game player ever.

If they don't realize it, and they leave the game, they are not the type of people who would want to take on these challenges in the first place.

Ridiculous. Ignorance of some activity does not mean you would not want to do it. That just means you're ignorant.

There is a huge difference between adopting goals created by people who love the game, goals which net you no reward other than the fun of doing them, and adopting the goals of the developers who want to keep you playing / paying which reward using in game means.

And the purity was sacrificed as soon as games were made to make money. No shit. There are ALWAYS going to be trade-offs between profitability and just 'making a good game.' Unless you become a billionaire and can finance the games entirely yourself, this is something you're going to have to accept to some degree. Where the line in the sand is drawn is going to be different for different games, but it's still there.

I think your points were very well made. On a different end of the spectrum I still don't really understand why some people had issues with the progression system in Reach. If you don't enjoy playing the game, which you have to to unlock armor, then why are you playing the game to unlock armor to use in game?

Looking specifically at Halo Reach you can see where the problems might start, and that is the combination of an arbitrary ‘currency’ attached to items, along with a gated ranking system. To earn a given item, you have to reach the prerequisite rank and also earn enough of the currency to buy the item. Usually if you set out to get a given item, these happen together, but depending on the item (and your past purchases along the way) it might require more grinding.

But once you get past the first few trivial item upgrades and set yourself a more lofty goal (the inclement weather effect, for example) the amount of currency required is manifestly so large that any potential shortcuts to reaching that goal become very worthwhile to explore. At this point you're not playing the game itself (Halo Reach) so much as the meta-game of ‘earn 2 million credits’, and so you may end up undertaking less enjoyable paths within Halo Reach's multiplayer (say) to earn the points faster that you wouldn't otherwise do.

Another example of this kind of mechanic is the ‘Insane in the Membrane’ feat of strength achievement in World of Warcraft. To complete this feat of strength you have to earn Exalted reputation with a number of factions who it is very difficult to earn reputation with (or at least they used to be very difficult to earn rep with — I think they changed it to make it somewhat easier since I completed it). Some of the tasks you had to complete (over and over again) to get there were quite mind-numbingly boring, but since I valued completing the achievement I carried on regardless; it encouraged playing the game in a way that might otherwise have not been something players would actively seek out.

The Insane in the Membrane achievement may be a special case (after all, even the name of the achievement underlines the point that this isn't something most people would want to do) but the message is still the same: meta-game achievements or grinds tend to encourage play that players wouldn't actively seek out otherwise, in order to earn some reward. My preference is for rewards to be balanced carefully such that players don't feel compelled to do things just for the reward, but at least in part because they enjoy the activity too.

Many if not most of us agree that a progression system should not, and cannot, be the focus of a game. That developers should entice players to play with fun and with interesting gameplay. They should not rely on the grinding of x to get achievement y to be the thing that brings player back. Gameplay, and immersion, and wonder should be king, not some progress bar that advances a little each time you do some minor thing. We agree with you on that.

But then you just keep going and keep going. Soon, according to you, any hint of stat tracking or handing out rewards for anything becomes something that ruins games, full stop, no debate allowed. You've said, paraphrasing of course, that Destiny itself, the game we know almost nothing about, will not be worth playing if it has any kind of progression or investment system. It gets to the point that players who enjoy it when developers include challenges for them to accomplish, regardless of how good or bad the rest of the game is, are called losers by you.

You start more or less in the right place, but your apparent need to go to such extremes combined with your "my way or the highway" approach to definitions and points of view makes it an absolute pain to read your posts much less try and discuss or debate with you. And that's a shame, because your core arguments are, as I said, something I think many of us agree with.

Connect the dots. It's all related.

If you were actually able to freely choose which challenges to undertake, then a player investment system is not necessary, and no damage is done to the game.

But you aren't really able to freely choose, since ingrained player investment systems tie into your ability to play the game and must be undertaken in one form or another since they themselves become part of the mechanics. Achievements are mostly harmless since they truly can be ignored, but what's being built for Destiny isn't.

I'd love to be a game developer, creating all the elements necessary so that every possible player interaction would lead to every possible outcome so that players could decide whatever they wanted and they'd always have an interesting experience and the game would be super fun. That would be neat. Cody would be so proud.

But then he'd just troll about something else though, I guess. :(

You are either stupid, or you are deliberately misunderstanding my point. Fine I get it. I'll stop talking here.

Connect the dots. It's all related.

If you were actually able to freely choose which challenges to undertake, then a player investment system is not necessary, and no damage is done to the game.

But you aren't really able to freely choose, since ingrained player investment systems tie into your ability to play the game and must be undertaken in one form or another since they themselves become part of the mechanics. Achievements are mostly harmless since they truly can be ignored, but what's being built for Destiny isn't.

I'd love to be a game developer, creating all the elements necessary so that every possible player interaction would lead to every possible outcome so that players could decide whatever they wanted and they'd always have an interesting experience and the game would be super fun. That would be neat. Cody would be so proud.

But then he'd just troll about something else though, I guess. :(

Again, in real life we call folks who have no goals or are unable to form goals 'losers'. Why do we not tolerate it in life, but suddenly do in leisure activity?

Ah, so it is a matter of apparent hypocrisy. IMO, most people are inherently hypocrites, even only superficially.

If they don't realize it, and they leave the game, they are not the type of people who would want to take on these challenges in the first place. It's like the saying in advertising - "If you see it, then it's for you".

I agree, but...

There is a huge difference between adopting goals created by people who love the game, goals which net you no reward other than the fun of doing them, and adopting the goals of the developers who want to keep you playing / paying which reward using in game means.

...what if the game is open to such, well, open-mindedness while also providing goals and rewards for people less imaginative? Do you think the openness would be compromised, necessarily?

I invested a significant amount of time, energy, thought, and passion into that world; and even though I found my experience satisfying, I didn't feel a need to do it again. However, I'm still an avid and frequent player of the MP for ME3. Go figure.

I have significant curiosity about how Bingle aims to keep me engaged for the next ten years.

~M

So you'd suggest something more similar to how custom challenges were handled in Reach, post-turnover?

I think ideally I'd want a game created without any achievements / challenges / player investment systems, but have a strong community from which ideas for new ways to play are generated.

So essentially like custom challenges, but not having any explicit in game rewards.

Sounds like how most people play Minecraft.

A lot of people actually really suck at creating their own goals. It is much easier to adopt one. That's not 'obedience' because in games you can still fully choose not to do it.

Again, in real life we call folks who have no goals or are unable to form goals 'losers'. Why do we not tolerate it in life, but suddenly do in leisure activity?

Too often, yes, it is not presented by developers or seen by players as a choice to adopt the goals or not. They seem coerced too heavily. Too often, the goals they provide are not interesting.

But the goals are there, ready and waiting for you. You can choose to adopt them, and you can end up having fun during the pursuit of it.

It is a sacrifice in the initial intrinsic motivation to be able to provide more activity to more people. People who, because they didn't even realise that those goals could be constructed, might have left the game otherwise.

If they don't realize it, and they leave the game, they are not the type of people who would want to take on these challenges in the first place. It's like the saying in advertising - "If you see it, then it's for you".

Besides, you really think all your gaming goals are wholly self-directed? You didn't invent speed running, Cody. You merely adopted it. Remember Twin Galaxies? You're so obedient to others Cody. And you didn't even get the reward! Did you end up having fun doing it anyway? Do you look back on it as a worthwhile accomplishment? No? Are you a robot?

There is a huge difference between adopting goals created by people who love the game, goals which net you no reward other than the fun of doing them, and adopting the goals of the developers who want to keep you playing / paying which reward using in game means.

Noticed he said can be fun. Obviously he finds it fun and you don't.

Eh, that's not the point.

Chasing after a goal can be fun.

That's the whole point of these 'investment' systems: providing goals for you.

See: flow theory.

That's not fun, that's obedience. Bleep Bloop achievement unlocked. Congrats on doing exactly what you're told.

Noticed he said can be fun. Obviously he finds it fun and you don't.

Eh, that's not the point. Imagine living your life where you never made your own goals, but instead tried only to meet goals set by others for you. What kind of life would that be? So why do we accept that when we play video games for fun?

A lot of people actually really suck at creating their own goals. It is much easier to adopt one. That's not 'obedience' because in games you can still fully choose not to do it.

Too often, yes, it is not presented by developers or seen by players as a choice to adopt the goals or not. They seem coerced too heavily. Too often, the goals they provide are not interesting.

But the goals are there, ready and waiting for you. You can choose to adopt them, and you can end up having fun during the pursuit of it.

It is a sacrifice in the initial intrinsic motivation to be able to provide more activity to more people. People who, because they didn't even realise that those goals could be constructed, might have left the game otherwise.

It may not ever reach the highs that you dream of Cody, and more complex, higher-skill and creative in-game goals are to be encouraged. But not everyone is there yet or will ever get there. But it is ultimately their leisure time to do with as they wish. If that is low-skill repetitive actions towards an adopted goal then - make them aware of the alternatives - but leave them to it. They chose video gaming when others vegetate on the couch watching TV. There are degrees of fun.

Besides, you really think all your gaming goals are wholly self-directed? You didn't invent speed running, Cody. You merely adopted it. Remember Twin Galaxies? You're so obedient to others Cody. And you didn't even get the reward! Did you end up having fun doing it anyway? Do you look back on it as a worthwhile accomplishment? No? Are you a robot?