One Reason People Get Bored: A History of Instance Palettes
By
Anti_Proton,
Posted on: 2010-04-04 10:56 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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You are, of course, free to do with your game as you see fit. No argument there. But it makes my skin crawl to listen to you describe all that horror |
Originally Posted by Creole Ned
Sam, you seem to approach the game as a kind of 'comfort food'. I like a little more variety, so I'm willing to try something spicy, even if it means it may not agree with me.
To each his own.  |
Basically, for me it comes down to "things I don't want to do." Things I don't want to do include, but are not limited to:
*Looking for stuff with no feedback as to the progress of my search. Are the correct enemies around the next corner? No. Are they around the next? No. Are they even in this area? I don't actually know...
*Fighting things so tough they cheap-kill me a lot of the time. Dying is never exactly fun, but if it was my fault because I screwed up, I can just wave my hand and accept that that's just how things are. Getting cheesed by high-level enemies because my mission is dumb enough to put me up against things the developers keep insisting I shouldn't be fighting is much harder to handwave.
*Dead-air travelling. I don't mind travel IN GENERAL. I grew up as a kid doing massive road trips annually, and I still like a nice car, bus or plane ride. But when it's basically minutes of dead air, not seeing anything interesting, not DOING anything interesting, it's pointless. It's a loading bar in all but name. I'd sooner fight stuff while travelling even if it takes longer than having to suffer through dead air.
*Wasting my time with malicious design. Crimson in PI sending me to Kings Row, having to go back to him, only for him to send me back to Kings Row, only for me to have to go back to him again IS A WASTE OF MY TIME. It adds nothing to the game that I couldn't have done my swivelling my chair around to watch Crime.inc on Viasat Explorer (I need to switch cable providers).
I don't mind variety, especially not on principle, but things seemingly custom-designed to piss me off... Well, piss me off. I like my games to keep a consistent pace of involvement. That doesn't have to mean a FAST pace, just as long as they don't sit me down listening to static for five minutes at a time.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Really? Huh... My response to that kind of question would be "Really? That... That's your only reason for hating it? Just the same old instances?" People, for the most part, tend to elaborate past that, at least when there's something to elaborate on. When there isn't, it's basically "I just don't like it."|
Originally Posted by DKellis
When I get that One Single Thing response from people, I find, after further questioning, that it's because it's the first thing that came to mind, and they actually had more complaints.
They just mention that one thing because they assume I'm not the sort to drop whatever I'm doing at the moment just to, as it were, explore the conversation tree for as many Codex Entries as I can find. |
But again, singular reasons like that just confound me. You log into a game you haven't played in a long time. What do you expect to see? Me, I'd expect to see all the things I recognise. Where does this expectation that everything will be different come from?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I'd say that you may be a very odd human being(and I may be too). It takes very little for most people to be put off by something. To put it another way, it only takes one thing that rubs a certain part of most folks the wrong way for them to get annoyed with something.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
You know, I hear this from time to time, and it's the sort of thing that makes me want to punch people. This overfocusing on one specific aspect of the game just gets under my skin. When I hate something (and it takes quite a bit for me to HATE it), I have a whole laundry list of things to hate bout it. But just that one thing? You'd think the entire game were nothing BUT looking at the inside of an instance, ignoring the fact that there are enemies in it, that you can make your own characters with your own look and your own power selection. No. None of that matters. I want to look at different interiors. Ugh...
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In the type of society that we have to day, not getting what you want even just a little bit is often enough to make even grown people throw temper tantrums.
Getting back to the topic at hand though, is that what he's related is not that uncommon when people give their opinion of COX.
We often seem to forget that the parts of COX that are most lauded are the front loaded aspects of it. Character customization is achieved when you first make your toon. You spend your time getting the look and size of your avatar just right and now your powers as well...but then you have to step into the gameworld and play the game.
For some people, just being able to play the game with a character that looks just how you want and has the the exact type of powers you want is the major selling point, and will keep them going forever as long as they can keep customizing new toons or changing looks with each costume slot.
The reality is that people get more mileage out of different things.
Even if you could clone yourself a million times and go around the world punching every person who thought that COX reused the same interior warehouse maps too often and were put off the game by it, it wouldn't change the fact that there is a bit too much repetition in maps.
Going a step further though, is that I think that what people may be trying to say, and not doing it very well, is that there is no real variety in gameplay no matter what map you're on. A warehouse littered with crates, barrels and bits and pieces, offers no more real opportunity to change your combat strategy than if that warehouse were featureless and empty and those crates and barrels were represented by unidentifiable gray lumps.
Perhaps I'm being spoiled by the games that I'm playing these days, but I'm finding less and less reasons to fire up COX(and apparently more to post on the forums).
In the end, I personally think that there are areas that are very lacking in COX that more powersets, costume parts, pool power customization(if it ever comes) and new enemy groups won't fix. While those things haven't made me quit yet, I think that they are some of the things preventing people from coming back and definitely stopping new people from trying out the game due to word of mouth about things being too repetitive.
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Post on Forum: "Hey, I haven't played this game for a long time, since Issue (some low number). What's different?"|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
But again, singular reasons like that just confound me. You log into a game you haven't played in a long time. What do you expect to see? Me, I'd expect to see all the things I recognise. Where does this expectation that everything will be different come from?
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Forum replies: "Everything! It's like a brand new game!"
I think that is a part of it, at least.
Current main:
Schrodinger's Gun, Dual Pistols/Mental Blaster, Virtue
Avatar: Becky Miyamoto from Pani Poni Dash. Roulette roulette~
Something that simultaneously intrigues and bugs me, especially with the lowbie game, is that there are a lot of "generic" maps we actually don't have. We have tons of convoluted offices but no actual house, apartment, or hotel interiors despite seeing those exteriors all over the place. We have warehouses but no stores except for the two or so pawn shops. The only hospital is Mayhem's Asylum which is sometimes inappropriate and gets overused in the Mission Architect for lack of actual options.
Also, I think more missions with variety would help despite limited maps. Timed missions with a higher chance of failure. Rewarding the actual use of stealth. A couple more missions where you need to defend/protect things.
It is funny to see how much use the dev's can actually get from one office layout. Some mish'es you enter from another door, but it's the same layout. They may have you start out on the 5th floor instead of the 1st floor to change things up a bit, but it's still the same layout. I would have to agree that if I ever did get bored with this game, it would be the monotony of the environment. Maybe i17 Dark Mirror will add a tiny bit of shine to what we already see. Then of course, like most things in life, I think people become bored very quickly if you don't give them some kind of variety within the game. 
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I used to have a wife like that.|
Slashman knows they exist: I'd say that you may be a very odd human being(and I may be too). It takes very little for most people to be put off by something. To put it another way, it only takes one thing that rubs a certain part of most folks the wrong way for them to get annoyed with something. In the type of society that we have to day, not getting what you want even just a little bit is often enough to make even grown people throw temper tantrums. |
Used to.
Dec out.
They just mention that one thing because they assume I'm not the sort to drop whatever I'm doing at the moment just to, as it were, explore the conversation tree for as many Codex Entries as I can find.
Current main:
Schrodinger's Gun, Dual Pistols/Mental Blaster, Virtue
Avatar: Becky Miyamoto from Pani Poni Dash. Roulette roulette~