But what is fun?
A question that has a multitude of answers because, in the end, it is opinion.
The latest from HBS_Kiva
- Thread starter Prussian Havoc
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
But what is fun?
A question that has a multitude of answers because, in the end, it is opinion.
For a commercial game, it is defined by the collective opinion of customers and potential customers, as expressed in their reviews & buying decisions. It isn't hard to quantify objectively.
If you see the game as purely commercial, then yes. That's how you get games like Battle Royale Simulator, Football Janitor 20XX or Call of Battlefields XXVII.
It's not how you get BattleTech.
Okay.
Sooo...BATTLETECH. Some like to just run through the main game. some like to build out a complete Merc Unit and travel all across the game world. Some like to mod and some don't. and some like a brutally hard game.
Or take the game Terraria. one person may enjoy it because they can build little towns for the NPCs. One person may enjoy it for building ridiculously amazing pixel art out of the landscape. Another person may enjoy it because the they like the combat.
Or Skyrim where some like to play through the main quest for fun only. Some like to scour the whole world completing everything. Some (like me) completely ignore the main quest and go do everything else. Some love to craft "all the things!" and would mod the game to a shop runner sim, and some love to mod the crap out of the game and play it like it's almost an entire other game while other like a vanilla experience.
While, yes, "this game is fun" can be quantified via reviews and buying decisions what makes the game fun to one person is not always the same, and is opinion.
Its a for profit video game, not high art designed for 5 people to like.
If the target audience are turned away from it, that is a bad thing.
@Timaeus
And the ability to a game to create various ways for people to enjoy it is able to be captured and measured in the type of metrics I referred to.
And the whole profession of game development is about finding ways of improving these experiences (like rebalancing skills with undesirable impacts).
This stuff isn't beyond objective understanding. Whole industries & careers exist because more or less fun are things which can be measured & changed.
And the ability to a game to create various ways for people to enjoy it is able to be captured and measured in the type of metrics I referred to.
And the whole profession of game development is about finding ways of improving these experiences (like rebalancing skills with undesirable impacts).
This stuff isn't beyond objective understanding. Whole industries & careers exist because more or less fun are things which can be measured & changed.
Ugh, still don't like the term opinion. It's so... final. In fact, most of the time if someone is saying "that's just an opinion" what they really mean to say is something like "I've run out of reasons to convince you one way or another": one person's opinion is another persons settled scientific question with evidence and argument to support it, so as a category opinion doesn't generally help us when we need it.
So we seriously need to default to something more descriptive and interesting than opinion. I'm going to suggest that it's safer to say there are some questions where it's reasonable to disagree, with the caveat that this is never a guarantee and it's always better to err on the side of demonstrating why rather than assuming that any particular question is that sort of a question.
That said, game development is an art form. The question should be "what are the Devs trying to express" and "what is the best way of expressing that". Game mechanics that are satisfying are simply mechanics which are good at expressing what the game is trying to express. In board games a great example is the way Vlaada Chvatil's designs often rely on the actions of other players to create drama in the game: the only timer in Pictomania is who puts their card down or picks up the bonus marker first; in Galaxy Trucker, how long you have to build is directly determined by how quickly everyone else is building. In both games he's expressed his goal well, party games are more fun if you're rushing and it's important to pay attention to other players, without needing to resort to artificial timers.
The question of what will make the game a financial success however has to be independent of any questions of expression: Don Quixote is one of the greatest works of Spanish literature, but seeing as I can't speak or read Spanish its virtues are kind of lost to me (except in translation, but let's put that to one side for now). Same thing happens with hip hop: I know there is a lot going on in the best hip hop, and I care enough about music to *try* to understand it, but the musical language of hip hop is still completely alien to me, no matter how hard I try. This isn't a matter of "taste" (a term that's frankly as useless as opinion), it's a matter of capacity to grasp hip hop, in exactly the same way as I can't appreciate Don Quixote *because I can't read Spanish*.
Mechanics can therefore be well designed (well expressed) entirely independently of the further metric of financial success, in the same way that a hip hop track can be a work of objective genius, without it being able to get me to shake my ass on the dance floor.
Bulwark and evasion are well designed (well expressed). Mechanically they're close enough that the difference doesn't matter, the maths really does bear out and that's not an accident, but they encourage different sorts of behaviours and so are appropriate in different contexts and to different play styles. The problem is that some people suffer from the equivalent of my tin ear for hip hop: they're convinced that one is better than the other because for one or another reason they can't see the reasons why that's not true. I'm in the exact same camp in this game when it comes to AC/20s. I don't trust them, they have an annoying habit of missing, and I'm pretty sure that's for bad reasons, but it's a feeling I can't shake so I'll be checking to see if I just need to ignore my inner Cassandra and start playing properly.
So we seriously need to default to something more descriptive and interesting than opinion. I'm going to suggest that it's safer to say there are some questions where it's reasonable to disagree, with the caveat that this is never a guarantee and it's always better to err on the side of demonstrating why rather than assuming that any particular question is that sort of a question.
That said, game development is an art form. The question should be "what are the Devs trying to express" and "what is the best way of expressing that". Game mechanics that are satisfying are simply mechanics which are good at expressing what the game is trying to express. In board games a great example is the way Vlaada Chvatil's designs often rely on the actions of other players to create drama in the game: the only timer in Pictomania is who puts their card down or picks up the bonus marker first; in Galaxy Trucker, how long you have to build is directly determined by how quickly everyone else is building. In both games he's expressed his goal well, party games are more fun if you're rushing and it's important to pay attention to other players, without needing to resort to artificial timers.
The question of what will make the game a financial success however has to be independent of any questions of expression: Don Quixote is one of the greatest works of Spanish literature, but seeing as I can't speak or read Spanish its virtues are kind of lost to me (except in translation, but let's put that to one side for now). Same thing happens with hip hop: I know there is a lot going on in the best hip hop, and I care enough about music to *try* to understand it, but the musical language of hip hop is still completely alien to me, no matter how hard I try. This isn't a matter of "taste" (a term that's frankly as useless as opinion), it's a matter of capacity to grasp hip hop, in exactly the same way as I can't appreciate Don Quixote *because I can't read Spanish*.
Mechanics can therefore be well designed (well expressed) entirely independently of the further metric of financial success, in the same way that a hip hop track can be a work of objective genius, without it being able to get me to shake my ass on the dance floor.
Bulwark and evasion are well designed (well expressed). Mechanically they're close enough that the difference doesn't matter, the maths really does bear out and that's not an accident, but they encourage different sorts of behaviours and so are appropriate in different contexts and to different play styles. The problem is that some people suffer from the equivalent of my tin ear for hip hop: they're convinced that one is better than the other because for one or another reason they can't see the reasons why that's not true. I'm in the exact same camp in this game when it comes to AC/20s. I don't trust them, they have an annoying habit of missing, and I'm pretty sure that's for bad reasons, but it's a feeling I can't shake so I'll be checking to see if I just need to ignore my inner Cassandra and start playing properly.
That's unfairly narrow of you.
- The thing that sells best isn't always the thing that's actually most enjoyable. As I hoped you'd gather from the ridiculous list of buzzwords I threw into my last post, there are plenty of ways to make a commercially successful game without any of the things that will make you look back in ten years and say "yeah, that was awesome".
- There are other reasons to make a game than because you want money or consider yourself some kind of artist. What happened to "I want to make this game because it's gonna be cool"?
If you're calling something settled while there's still room for argument, you're doing science wrong. Science is all about finding expensive and difficult ways to conclude that you still don't really know what's going on.
Last edited:
@ThatGuyMontag
I partly agree. In particular, I think you are right the design goals are important, in terms of assessing if a game is good or successful on its own terms. This game is of course a commercial one, aimed at a particular set of target audiences. Therefore I think its acceptance or rejection by those target audience is a relevant metric. A different approach would apply if we were talking about something created primarily for some other purpose.
I don't however agree that bulwark and evasion are well designed / well expressed just at the moment. In that, I am simply agreeing with the developers, who it appears are in the process of changing them.
On AC20s, I think there is actually a truth to your hesitation. Even assuming the hit chances are not bugged (and I don't feel they are), they are a weapon which puts you more at the mercy of RNG (i.e. as compared to the x number of medium lasers you otherwise carry for example). I can see people avoiding them from a quite reasonable desire to have greater tactical control (i.e. the same reason some prefer bulwark).
I partly agree. In particular, I think you are right the design goals are important, in terms of assessing if a game is good or successful on its own terms. This game is of course a commercial one, aimed at a particular set of target audiences. Therefore I think its acceptance or rejection by those target audience is a relevant metric. A different approach would apply if we were talking about something created primarily for some other purpose.
I don't however agree that bulwark and evasion are well designed / well expressed just at the moment. In that, I am simply agreeing with the developers, who it appears are in the process of changing them.
On AC20s, I think there is actually a truth to your hesitation. Even assuming the hit chances are not bugged (and I don't feel they are), they are a weapon which puts you more at the mercy of RNG (i.e. as compared to the x number of medium lasers you otherwise carry for example). I can see people avoiding them from a quite reasonable desire to have greater tactical control (i.e. the same reason some prefer bulwark).
The thing that sells best tends to be what the most people find enjoyable. For a more niche product like this, it is more about getting a favourable response from the particular target market rather than the public overall, but the principle is generally the same.
In terms of supply side assessments (i.e. an artist making a game for themselves), I personally don't find them particularly important. Gamers don't fund and buy games for the benefit of developer artists, but for their own enjoyment, so I think a customer centric understanding is more useful.
This is manifestly untrue. Even before we get into marketing (which is an enormous topic that has very little to do with what you're actually selling and how it compares to your competitors' products), people buy games that they think they will enjoy. The reality is often different, and only discovered after purchase.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that if everybody pre-orders the next Grand Theft Auto game (for example), that whatever Rockstar comes up with will automatically be good, even before it launches, just by virtue of the pre-release sales? What if GTA VI launches, and it turns out that 90% of it is the golf minigame?
Last edited:
We'll have to see what Kiva came up with, but psychology, and sadly a bit of groupthink, plays a role here. Every time the discussion gets raised, a loud handful of people say "Bulwark is OP" and "Evasion sucks" and then people like me poke their heads up and point out that they don't play all Bulwark games and are doing just fine: the only buttons I haven't pressed on my hard ironman run are the grind (5 pieces) and lethality buttons (I don't lose pilots, and the surivival rate if I ever do is low enough it's more of a fun surprise than a core mechanic). Still haven't lost either a mech or a pilot, and I'm not the only person playing that way and succeeding.
To top that off, people playing all Bulwark runs are often complaining about how boring it is to play that way, which is why it "needs a nerf", so it's not even as if the strategy is giving people what they want on top of that.
If the maths says one thing, other people's actual experiences are telling you the same, and your own experience is often telling you that there's something wrong with how you're playing the game, isn't it high time to start to wonder whether or not you've got enough reasons to change your mind? Sure, a redesign might save you the trouble of trying out the strategies that work so well for the rest of us, but I still find it sad that it may end up being necessary.
To top that off, people playing all Bulwark runs are often complaining about how boring it is to play that way, which is why it "needs a nerf", so it's not even as if the strategy is giving people what they want on top of that.
If the maths says one thing, other people's actual experiences are telling you the same, and your own experience is often telling you that there's something wrong with how you're playing the game, isn't it high time to start to wonder whether or not you've got enough reasons to change your mind? Sure, a redesign might save you the trouble of trying out the strategies that work so well for the rest of us, but I still find it sad that it may end up being necessary.
Then we will know people hate it by the two means I have mentioned, user purchasers and reviews. In such an example I suspect you would have lots of pre-sales refunded, post launch sales being poor and user reviews being terrible. The metrics hold good. Indeed, something like No Man's Sky shows it works just like that.
Evasion being feasible doesn't mean bulwark isn't OP. It just means the SP game really isn't that hard, even without either skill.
Yeah, that is why things being OP is bad. The game encourages you to do the OP thing (you get the rewards quicker), but the OP thing bores you. So you stop playing the game, buying new DLC etc. Nerfing the OP thing helps stop that.
I did a stock hard mode run which ignored bulwark - It isn't so good without the ability to max front armor. But self-imposed non-optimized play is in itself unfun for a great many people. It ruins the sense of achievement many people look to get out of beating a tactics or strategy game.
Evasion being viable could also mean Bulwark isn't as powerful as people think it is. They're in the same place I am with AC/20s, convinced that something works one way, but not really having any good reasons to think it is and them continuing to play as if it is, which is just the in-game equivalent of hitting themselves repeatedly in the face because they never bothered to ask if they should stop.
And the evidence this is true is there to be found. There was a post about a month after launch of someone who was really struggling, complaining that the maps were too small. After a couple of nudges, she stopped LRM-spamming and relying on Bulwark, started winning matches she'd been losing previously and explicitly said the change opened up the game for her in exciting new ways. This is a simple win that came as a result of people pointing out that other strategies were viable and that the meta on these boards is badly distorted.
As for the game nudging people to Bulwark, evidence from the streams suggests the opposite. I watched Beaglerush, Cohh and Bombadil before launch (and a bit after) and none of *them* found themselves forced into Bulwark tanking. In fact, the space where we hear the most people saying it's their dominant strategy, and complaining the most about it, is in spaces like this forum and Reddit, where there's a huge mass of people complaining how it's the only way to win and where people like me keep getting shouted down for saying silly things like "the maths doesn't show that" or "I'm on my third Ironman run and have yet to fail a run (or even lose significant numbers of mech parts or pilots): evasion strategies work".
I also don't appreciate those sorts of comments on the game's difficulty. Sure, *we're* not struggling, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with the various people who find the game hard. I played Battletech (badly) back in my teens, but have spent the past two years lurking on the forums, playing the beta and watching the streams. I had already picked up a lot of the basic advice that most other players are going to need to have explained to them. We are *not* typical players and pretending that our experiences are typical is doing a disservice to all those other people. We're especially doing those players a disservice if we just cave in to the hecklers-meta that's developed around this game.
Last thing to be said, self-selection is a thing. What people are saying on forums is very definitely not a good indicator of how things are actually going, not least because the vast majority of people in forums don't bother to post their thoughts and their feelings. What you get are the feelings of the particular group of people who are likely to want to say something about a subject in a particular venue and those are usually going to be the people who want to complain, whether they are justified or not. That's not to say it isn't suggestive, but the idea that it's the be-all and end all metric, barring further evidence, is a straightforward mistake and you don't have to take my word for it: screening for self-selection is a vital part of all social science research.
And the evidence this is true is there to be found. There was a post about a month after launch of someone who was really struggling, complaining that the maps were too small. After a couple of nudges, she stopped LRM-spamming and relying on Bulwark, started winning matches she'd been losing previously and explicitly said the change opened up the game for her in exciting new ways. This is a simple win that came as a result of people pointing out that other strategies were viable and that the meta on these boards is badly distorted.
As for the game nudging people to Bulwark, evidence from the streams suggests the opposite. I watched Beaglerush, Cohh and Bombadil before launch (and a bit after) and none of *them* found themselves forced into Bulwark tanking. In fact, the space where we hear the most people saying it's their dominant strategy, and complaining the most about it, is in spaces like this forum and Reddit, where there's a huge mass of people complaining how it's the only way to win and where people like me keep getting shouted down for saying silly things like "the maths doesn't show that" or "I'm on my third Ironman run and have yet to fail a run (or even lose significant numbers of mech parts or pilots): evasion strategies work".
I also don't appreciate those sorts of comments on the game's difficulty. Sure, *we're* not struggling, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with the various people who find the game hard. I played Battletech (badly) back in my teens, but have spent the past two years lurking on the forums, playing the beta and watching the streams. I had already picked up a lot of the basic advice that most other players are going to need to have explained to them. We are *not* typical players and pretending that our experiences are typical is doing a disservice to all those other people. We're especially doing those players a disservice if we just cave in to the hecklers-meta that's developed around this game.
Last thing to be said, self-selection is a thing. What people are saying on forums is very definitely not a good indicator of how things are actually going, not least because the vast majority of people in forums don't bother to post their thoughts and their feelings. What you get are the feelings of the particular group of people who are likely to want to say something about a subject in a particular venue and those are usually going to be the people who want to complain, whether they are justified or not. That's not to say it isn't suggestive, but the idea that it's the be-all and end all metric, barring further evidence, is a straightforward mistake and you don't have to take my word for it: screening for self-selection is a vital part of all social science research.
So, I think through my various beyond hardest possible campaigns that I am provably very good at this game.
I do not think that bulwark is boring to play, I actually felt like evasion was though, especially in RogueTech where evasion was stronger (it didn't decay, you could add modules that granted more of it later on, giving assaults great evasion too).
Maximum evasion plays out very simply. You fit at least 4 JJ and you JJ around constantly, generating 5-7 (up to 8 or 9 in RogueTech) evasion tokens. You get the perfect positioning and angle everytime, because your using jump jets. You have to account for a little bit more heat, but that's no biggie in your designs, since you'll account for it.
The A.I has no idea how to deal with really high evasion, though with the better A.I. mod it will try to melee you to get rid of it, which can lead to some pretty instant death if your not paying attention. But that's relatively easy a fate to avoid with 4 JJ.
It is the dicotomy between moving and having to stand still that makes bulwark an interesting choice for me.
So what's going on here?
You have a lot of newer players saying bulwark isn't good enough, you have mid-level players saying it's op, then you have top players saying bulwark is interesting and reasonably balanced against evasion and/or that it's interesting.
It's because of skill flooring.
So, in professional gaming the skill ceiling is how good something can be made, if you add player skill as a factor. Something with no skill ceiling is said to give a player more and more advantage the better they are (usually via micro).
The skill floor is the same concept, but it's how good you need to be to make something work or be good. You need a certain level of skill, for example, before you can play a sport like tennis. Below that, you always miss the ball and thus cannot use that key skill/item (the racket) to play/win the game.
Bulwark reminds me of this in that, at the highest level, I feel like it's a skill that benefits the most for the skill of the player using it. Knowing when to move and when not to move, when you are under fire and with who (and to where) is a very deep aspect of the games tactics layer. It has a skill floor, in that if you just sit there like a lemon, you won't get good benefit out of it, even though that's how it's activated. You'll let yourself get melee'ed, or surrounded, etc.
Evasion is by comparison, a very simple skill in my mind. You move as much as you can, every turn, while still having a solid/valid shot against the enemy. You do this running around dancing until they are dead. Jump Jets make this very trivial to do and much of your moves will simply be you jumpjetting away from the melee range of the enemy, repeatedly until they are dead. There is nothing to really think about. Max JJ jump, away from target and fire, then end turn. It's pretty much optimal every time, you don't even need squad cohesion.
The long story short is:
Bulwark is not overpowered, neither is evasion.
But evasion in my opinion is very one dimensional.
You really need a lot of tactical insight to get the most out of bulwark and IF you have that insight, it is far from a boring skill. It is probably the skill that makes you think the most.
My problem with Bulwark is not so much its OPness (it is OP against the AI, especially if you max-armor your tankiest Mech, stick it in front and let the AI blindly shoot at it) but that I can't picture how it works, it feels like my pilot is somehow making their Mech's armor stronger by sheer force of will. I'd rather have Bulwark be a 'rotating the torso' maneuver in which some of the damage (say 15%) gets evaded (lasers weren't on it long enough to do actual damage, ordnance hit at a bad angle and bounced off) but another part (say 55%) splashes all over the Mech... and then have it stack with cover. And let terrain features like bases and rocky ground grant a little bit of cover.
Okay, I'm interested, talk to me (if you have time), because I'm exactly the sort of player that you're describing. I'm really enjoying the game, I was a TT fan so I'm familiar with the basic setting and mechanics, I don't have a ton of time to play (maybe 5-8 hours a week), and so I've read a fair amount on the forums and that's influenced my play style.
I like to play a more maneuver-heavy style in TT, but in the computer game I've found myself leaning towards bulwark -- in part because, based on the advice on the forums, all my pilots have it, so it's always available. For some battles maneuver plays an important role, others are mostly stationary. I like to think that I'm capable of doing both tactically, but I'd like to get more familiar with the maneuver element in the computer game. That said, here are my observations (based on less playing time than most of the people in the thread, but reasonable success).
1) The battles in which I can mostly bulwark are much simpler and less mentally taxing than the ones in which I have to do both -- I think that's a big part of why people say that bulwark is OP. It makes some battles very easy. I don't love those battles, which are occasionally boring, but for now I still appreciate having some cakewalks here and there.
2) When talking about difficulty, and comparing the strengths of various play styles the biggest factor that doesn't get mentioned as often as it should, is how aggressive one is about the calendar. In general, taking more time and being more cautious about what missions one takes on can make things _much_ easier, and being quicker to do story missions and higher-difficulty procedural missions is more difficult.
3) When I'm slightly in over my head on a mission I feel like bulwark gives more margin for error. This is subjective, and I might be wrong about that, so I'm curious to know what other people think, but when I do play mechs that depend more on evasion for protection I feel like one turn of making way more fire than expected can quickly ruin my plans.
4) The one key to my strategy is "share your armor" and I find that easier to do when rotating bulwark mechs but, again, I may just not have developed the instincts for doing that with an evasion lance.
5) I have an impression that bulwark combines well with long-range tactics, and that evasion is better suited to short-range knife-fighting tactics (in part because the extra heat from a jump-heavy strategy makes the higher damage-to-weight ratio of short-range weapons more attractive). I like fire-support mechs better. Given the choice I'd have somewhere between 2-3 mechs who's primary weaponry is long-range (with a couple of medium lasers as secondary weapons), one mech with a good mid-range weapon (LL, etc . . .) and more short-range weapons, and 0-1 mech that's focused on short-range. That also inclines me to bulwark.
6) I think of initiative as one of the primary tactical elements. If there's a mech that I can knockdown or finish off before it moves then I'll try to go early in the turn, otherwise I'll often reserve all my mechs to the end of the turn so I can more effectively combine fire. With bullwark this means that I can time my movements so that I move at the end of a turn and then try to have that mech go earlier in the next turn (to regain guarded). With evasion I often find myself chosing which mechs to move based on who needs to refresh their evasion pips, and that takes away some of my tactical flexibility to reserve as much as I would like to.
I agree with that guy who did the AC2 campaign (enjoyed that btw, No have not tried it - but it did encourage me to try playing "ranged weapons") these are tools available to us to help in completing a task. Just because one does not know how to properly utilize a tool does not make it bad and you have the total opposite of that that your strategy revolves around it.
What I love about Battletech is that it does not force these things on you (unlike other games with the constant tweaking). Players already have the ability through mods to make the base game more to their liking.
- My suggestion is unless its a bug like gauss ammo exploding, devote time and effort fix it, but if its a preferential / opinion based leave it alone and concentrate on cranking out that content and my Maraud...er I mean other mechs.