Should games take us out of our comfort zone?

We've had a lot of discussions on what makes for good gameplay lately, and one of the major points that keeps coming up is the belief that gameplay which takes us out of our comfort zone is inherently a good thing. My position on this subject ought to be pretty clear (I disagree), but my point in asking this question is a broader one. I feel this is an important question that needs to be broached to the playerbase at large, so as to see what other people think.

Now, in a way, I can kind of see logic behind this notion. If we never tried anything new and unknown, potentially "frightening" because of it, we'd never evolve and progress, and we'd never discover new and exciting hobbies, callings and even universal truths. In a game that seeks to have as broad an appeal as is reasonable, it makes sense to encourage people to try out all parts of gameplay, if for no reason other than to secure more potential hooks to keep people playing. After all, if a person like a great many things about a game, he is far more likely to stay with it even if one or two of those things start losing their lustre. By contrast, a person who plays a larger game for only one isolated reason will likely just pick up and go as soon as that one reason is no longer sufficient.

On the flip side - and this is where my disagreement comes in - getting people out of their comfort zone is not a pleasant experience for said people. While some may be adventurous and embrace such uncertainty, others prefer stability and security in their experience. I know I have personally been told the "try it, you might like it" line many, many times in my life, and I can honestly not recall a single instance when it was true from memory. I'm probably forgetting a few, clearly, but the point remains that I've grown to trust my ability to know what I'll like and what I'll hate.

Moreover, though, the "try it, you might like it" approach raises one particular question: If I don't like it, then what? Granted, one doesn't have to like every part of a game in order to play it, especially one as expansive as this one, but what makes the overall question of stepping out of your comfort zone relevant is that it seems to me people's response tends to be "Doesn't matter. Keep doing it anyway."

See, there appears to be this underlying sentiment that people don't know what they like and don't know what's good for them in a game, that they must be FORCED out of their comfort zone and forced to stay out of their comfort zone, until eventually they're numbed to the experience and their comfort zone expands. In fact, I remember Dr. Zeus expositing about how "teaming is like marriage" (yes, seriously) in that people are reluctant to commit to it until they do it, and only afterwards grow to appreciate its benefits.

Now, to sidetrack a tad into personal experience subject: Over the past few years, my character design tastes have expanded greatly. I used to HAAATE things like miniskirts and high heels for female characters, but have since found designs where these really work wonders. I used to make almost no female characters as I felt uncomfortable playing them, until Serevus exposed me to his marvellous designs, to the point where now my female characters may actually outnumber my male characters. I haven't counted. So, obviously, the notion of expanding horizons works, to the point where a person's entire preference system can be altered from finding something new and exciting that he didn't think I'd like.

That's the positive side. The negative side, however, is that forcing people out of their comfort zones often ends up breeding resentment. To go back to the aversion caused by "try it, you might like it" approaches, once a person realises he doesn't like the direction he is being taken out of his comfort zone in, he will recoil and stuck to fundamental values. However, the notion of dragging us out of our comfort zone kicking and screaming appears to suggest that we should be FORCED to experience those unpleasant (from personal perspective) experience until we like it. The "You will eat it and like it!" approach, as it were.

And I'm honestly not sure that this works. Moreover, even when and if it works, I'm not sure it's a good thing, strictly speaking. We like to think of ourselves as intelligent, independent creatures, but the truth of the matter is that we are entirely very suggestible, and things like peer pressure and conventional design are very strong suggestion tools. This tends to be one of the reasons I often cite as why it feels like all MMOs are made the same, but with different names - developers have been taught to make them like that because players have been taught to expect them like this. I'd really like to avoid designing games around acquired tastes as much as possible, personally.

On the one hand, this can be helpful in getting people to expand their horizons, assuming developers know what's good for the players better than players do. On the other hand, it can be quite hurtful when a person is well aware of his tastes and clear in his choices is still forced, overtly or subtly, to do unpleasant things "for his own good." It comes off as patronising more often than not.

So, my question is this: To what extent do you feel games should insist on forcing us out of our comfort zones? You let me know.

*edit*
To add a relevant lolcat:

Quote:

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.

IMO, it should very limited how far a game should "insist" us to go out of our comfort zone. You should be free to play and have the fun of finding out what the the game offers. I think that is what keeps a player around longer - answering those "what haven't I uncovered yet?" questions. If the game insist or forces you to something, for me that takes the fun out and I wouldn't be around long.

For example, trying out a new powerset and testing the limits. Maybe not best example. But right now I am leveling an /ele arm stalker. I already have a 50 /nin stalker and amazed at what I could do. My new stalker is much more different. My comfort zone on how I play is not with this new stalker. But I continue to level her because I am finding some new ways to play and finding out some new things about the game after nearly 7 years. If the game insisted I play this set earlier when I wasn't ready, I may have given up and not leveled a stalker.

A more provocative comfort zone example are children. Preamble - I am aware of the threads that people want this, I do not and find it offensive. I won't answer or debate this here since it is my opinion and people have their opinions. Anyhow, forcing or insisting a player like me out my comfort zone that far would end the game right there for me. The devs need to make a balanced game for a very broad customer base. Making the game with all kinds of content that pushes many players out of their comfort zones would just push more players away. The devs can have it that the current tools allows close to what some people may want (like short toons that look very closely like children). The game won't force you to do something out of you comfort zone, but you can explore.

I have to say, this is a thought-provoking question.

But for me, the question can't be answered without also asking, "How far out of our comfort zones are we being taken?"

It's all relative. If we're talking about a small nudge, it might be tolerable. A vast leap, on the other hand, is a different story altogether.

Consider, for example, ED. I'd say that pushed many, many people out of their established comfort zones. The initial uproar was nearly apocalyptic in its proportions.

On the other hand, Incarnate abilities lead us, in fairly small steps, to ever increasing abilities. But they require trials and taskforces to obtain. Nonetheless, they require you to step out of your established comfort zone.

Granted, this might be an apples and oranges comparison, but it's the best I could come up with at 8:50 AM before having downed ample quantities of caffeine. My point (which I am probably making very badly) is that it's probably acceptable for a game to push you outside of your comfort zone so long as it does so with your consent and so long as there's a compelling reason to do so and a tangible reward at the end.

Then again, I'm half asleep, and probably shouldn't be posting.

Dearest Samuel,

I believe that a game should be fun to play. When it ceases to be fun, it is no longer worth the effort, for me, to play. And it certainly isn't worth the money. If being forced out of your comfort zone makes the game no fun, then it's not worth playing.

If a game designer or developer sat down and looked at a game and said "How can I force these players to do what I want?", that would be a poor decision. My life as a nerd involves many pencil and paper games, and I have seen on a small scale what happens when the man or woman in charge forgets who the game is for, and runs it for themselves. In these small, not for profit gaming groups, it's all too easy for the power to go to ones head and end up creating a world where the players are mere pawns in the GM's grandiose plan.

However, in a large, for profit game world such as CoH, there should be a company wide push towards customer satisfaction. I do not believe anyone involved in content creation has ever sat down and thought, "Hmmmmm. How can I get these players out of their comfort zone?" Game design is not approached that way. Usually, it's approached with the questions "How can we get them to play more?" and "How can we keep subscriptions active while continuing to draw new players?"

The process of determining what will work to draw new players while keeping old players is, I'm sure, complex. I'm almost positive that making players uncomfortable is not a very high priority.

What's more likely is they understand that certain players will not like the changes. They have to weigh business priorities against player satisfaction. In this particular case, it does appear that they have decided that adding high end group content is going to provide the most bang for their buck. Of course, this hurts your playstyle. But, I don't think its an intentional slap at solo players. They had to pick a direction for this issue, and most likely, as a multiplayer game, they decided to add more multiplayer content.

Could they do both? Sure. Could they do better? Sure. Maybe they will add a solo path to incarnate content.

I don't think they are trying to pull you into group content. I think group content sells. Unfortunately, that puts you on the short end. So, in answer, NO it is not a good idea to force players out of a comfort zone. It's a bad idea. But every change made is going to make a certain percentage of players uncomfortable.

A very interesting question indeed Sam.
My opinion is that games should encourage us to try things out, but not force us to continue with a given activity should we decide we don't like it. In that regard multiple avenues to accomplish a given goal should exist. With regards to MMO's this just makes good business sense as it broadens the appeal of the game and keeps more subs active.

I play games to relax. Any game that I feel is trying to force me repeatedly to do something I don't like doesn't hold my attention (or my business) for very long.

I believe the answer varies by person. Some people seem to have a comfort zone which consists of having their cheese moved. Others want consistency, and enjoy that more than change/challenge. Obviously these people will want different things in regards to the question.

I think that all new video games need to move us somewhere out of our comfort zones, because they want to stand out from existing games. Likewise, any game that is evolving (as most MMOs do) probably needs to introduce some degree of drift away from comfort zones it established early on, to keep itself "fresh" in the eyes of both existing and potentially new players.

As others have said, if a new game or an existing one's internal changes shift comfort zones too much, I believe that more and more people will seek to avoid the change, either not playing that game (if new), or leaving an existing game or at least avoiding its new changes where possible.

Part of it depends on the kind of comfort zone we're talking about. Pushing people out of a moral comfort zone (such as putting children into the game to be victims) is riskier than pushing people out of a gameplay comfort zone (adding in new kinds of raids for the endgame).

Should a game do it? Sometimes, yes, if it has a good reason behind it. Westin Phipps's missions, for example, nudged some people out of their moral comfort zones, but in a good way. It was just enough to make them feel "evil", something many said most of the missions in CoV lacked.

As far as the upcoming endgame changes, I think the Devs have done it a bit backwards. I think they needed to introduce the new raid mechanics first, and let us use them for other things in the game, such as banners and Hami raids, and let us get used to them. THEN they could bring in the new raids, and it wouldn't be as big of a change. We'll see how it goes, though.

Battle Maiden's Big Blue Bombs are a comfort zone breaker

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rabid_Metroid As far as the upcoming endgame changes, I think the Devs have done it a bit backwards. I think they needed to introduce the new raid mechanics first, and let us use them for other things in the game, such as banners and Hami raids, and let us get used to them. THEN they could bring in the new raids, and it wouldn't be as big of a change. We'll see how it goes, though.

There aren't actually any "new" raid mechanics in the Incarnate Trials - at a basic level, they still work like the Halloween Banners or Hamidon raids - multiple teams needing to work together on various objectives, sometimes separately, sometimes as one big group.
There are a lot of new fetaures inside the Trials, with new AV powers, new temp powers, special AV defeat requirements and so on, but the actual "team one should do this, team two should do that" mechanic of multi-team content really isn't any different than the current multi-team content we have.

Well, truthfully, by the sound/reading of your post, it sounds like this is a "team" vs "solo" thing. Which, really, for an MMO, I think the fact that it has solo options to allow people to stay in their comfort zone is good enough.

Going into an MMO, one should expect to do some teaming. If they don't need to and don't care to, awesome. But it shouldn't be seen as the game forcing you out of the comfort zone, as people signed onto a MMO.

It's multipler for a reason more than using it as a 15 dollar a month play a game solo as you use it as a chatroom.

Now, not saying there shouldn't be solo content, but I don't think it should be the expected thing, everything must be equal thing.

And of course, if you don't like that aspect, don't play it. I hated RE's controls, so I ended up wasting some money, but I didn't feel like I got ripped off because I wanted to try it.

Bit different than buying a game and liking part of it, but not the other part, but it comes to about the same thing. Don't like teaming, don't team. Just don't be silly and complain about the major aspect of the game (teaming)

This is an interesting topic, Sam. What you're discussing is the very fundamental problem that all makers of video games face in terms of having a game that interests people, and it's not limited to just MMO's. Console games, strategy games, action games, puzzle games....they all have two paths that a player can take.

The first is the difficult route, where the player can engage with the situation and work through the problems or situations presented to them, and they will often involve things that will challenge the player, cause them to think, or in this specific case, take them out of their comfort zone. This is done to not only mark the game as not just something like all the other games, but also in order to try new coding or techniques the makers of these games have come up with for something that doesn't adhere to normal gaming tropes. To be fair, they're not doing this to discourage you from playing the game, quite the opposite. What they're trying to do is encourage you to try a new way of thinking and getting you to try and think outside the box by thinking through the parts of a puzzle, or in the Incarnate Trial's case, learn the pattern of the NPC's and come up with strategies to beat them.

However, this conflicts with the prevailing nature of gamers which is the second path, the path of least resistance. Just about every time, we gamers will want to get straight onto whatever the game's about and that involves something relatively straightforward and not too complicated. This isn't a shot at the intelligence level of gamers or even their ability to deal with new situations, but rather game psychology. We don't want to be taken out of our comfort zones, and we certainly don't like changing our patterns of behavior. The path of least resistance means just that, and changing that is something players generally don't like.

However, you'll find that the same people who enjoy PvP because of the challenge that it gives them are the same people who enjoy raiding and difficult content because of precisely that, the challenge. They don't like what they percieve as repetitive and 'easy' content and want something that tests them.

Really, this is a matter of personality. I like a good learning curve that allows me to fail and doesn't punish me too hard if I fail, but I also don't like something that continues to punish me even after I've learnt what I need to do to overcome the situation. Not having done the new TF's and Incarnate content, I can't say if they suit me. I think the short duration of them suits me; I've done raids and instances on fantasy based games and find them interminable. I don't see gaining aggro here or setting off a trap there as challenging as much as learning a pattern. That doesn't require skill, it requires you having a memory and teaching others what you've remembered.

You have to decide for yourself what your playstyle is, really. I think by and large CoH succeeds far more than it fails in this regard, and we'll have to wait and see if this endgame content is as the devs claim open to everyone.


S.

To make a long post short (I've been mulling this over): Play F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origins. If that game doesn't rip you out of your comfort zone nothing will.

You fight terrifying enemies, get the crap scared out of you, get shot at, get operated on, have your friends turn on you, watch your enemies get their flesh shredded right off their bones and eaten by an eldritch-esque horror, and at the end of the second game you're sexually violated by a psychic ghost in what is essentially the core of a reactor.

Surprisingly, I LOVED both games. I never knew I'd enjoy being scared ****less so much. If it's done right, being taken out of your comfort zone can be one hell of a cool thing.

The key word for me, that keeps coming up in this discussion, is the word "force".

A game should offer new experiences, and certainly it can require that new content involve those experiences. Overall, though, there should not be a "forcing" of players into a certain kind of gameplay that they won't enjoy.

City of Heroes manages that balance fairly well. Of those systems you mentioned, Sam, none of them are required for you to play the basic game and enjoy it. If you choose to experience them, and even embrace them, then you are making the decision for yourself that they are actually NOT outside of your comfort zone, at least to the extent that you are willing to participate in them.

Now, a lot rests on what you think "force" means. Issue 1 is, I think, one of the most noteworthy examples of CoH pushing people out of their comfort zone. Old-time vets will remember that CoH was originally designed with the Everquest model in mind - lots of spawns standing around waiting to be killed. The hazard zones are a tribute to the Everquest mentality (and Everquest was the WoW of its day, in terms of subscribers, so there was every reason to believe that it was delivering what players wanted).

When the game originally launched, missions were considered to be "color", not a legitimate way to level up. I know that sounds weird to people nowadays, but that was the thinking back then. For all of the innovative features of CoH, much of its design was still stuck in the EQ mold. Missions had tiny completion bonuses and generally speaking were seen as waste of time because you were deliberately slowing your XP gain per hour by running them, in comparison to street sweeping. (This was also back in the day when herding was the best strategy. In particular, sending a tank to grab a hundred NPC's and lure them all into a dumpster where a blaster would AOE them to death.)

All that changed when the devs decided that dumpster diving wasn't very heroic and that the back story ought to actually be something important to the game as opposed to leveling up to fifty and still having no contacts other than your newbie mission contact. Missions got massively increased completion bonuses, powers were adjusted, street sweeping XP was reduced, and suddenly missions made more sense as the most efficient leveling up activity.

Now, it wasn't just the game design that had large portions of it stuck in the Everquest mold. There were a lot of players around who were also stuck in the Everquest mold. It was what they'd "grown up" with and they assumed that all games should be the same way. Especially if it involved activities like herding that produced massive gains with little or no risk.

The day that change was made, a very large number of people were pushed out of their comfort zones and forced to consider a new way of playing the game.

Here, now, we come down to what "force" means - Nobody actually had to change their gameplay unless they wanted to. Those of us who had been doing missions despite it being a slower path, went right on happily doing them. Those who had been exclusively street-sweeping, could continue doing it if they chose to. They could still level to 50 that way. It just took longer to do it.

Players complained loudly, longly, and eventually when they saw that complaining was ineffectual, they adapted.

In this case, the players' own compulsion to reach the level cap in the shortest amount of time was really what forced them out of their comfort zone. The devs altered the environment, yes, but that is all they did. Topics like herding aside, they did not add any new paths to the game, nor did they remove any. They changed the balance and the players themselves then had to decide where their new comfort zone might be vis-a-vis the new balance.

Now, I don't see this kind of "force" as a bad thing. When a player decides that a reward is worth going through a certain kind of activity and a certain amount of work, then perforce that player is stating that the actions in question ARE within that player's comfort zone. It doesn't matter how boring or annoying or uncomfortable they may feel to the player. If he completes them, then by definition they are within his comfort zone.

Badges in PvP zones are an excellent example of the questions you have to answer about what constitutes a "comfort zone" and what constitutes "force". Nobody is required to collect every badge in the game, yet there are plenty of PvE badgers who feel "forced" to go outside of their comfort zone in order to fulfill their need to have a complete collection. Nobody is coercing them - the "force" comes entirely from inside of themselves.

If I truly feel railroaded into something I don't enjoy, I quit playing the game. A designer who took the attitude that he had to force me to undergo an unpleasant experience for my own good would be a designer who lost me as a customer. It would likely also be a game that was intended for a target audience that did not include me, so I probably shouldn't have played it in the first place.

tldr; Designers should offer choice and they should offer new experiences, but players and their competitive and emotional drives determine what a player is comfortable with and what actions he will take even in the face of unenjoyable gameplay in order to fulfill a drive or a need. Most players who feel "forced" into something really mean that they felt a compulsion to fulfill a drive or need and the only path to that fulfillment was one that involved unpleasant activities. The only coercion comes from inside of themselves. True coercion by designers (such as the unpleasant path being the only path to the finish of the game) generally results in player defection and is basically bad design.

Personally, I play new games because I wish to experience a new story - the game play is only a minor blip on the radar of why. Too often, games push game play into levels I'm not comfortable with (usually in favour of "difficulty", as such things exist in video games.) This means I often miss out on new stories, primarily because I'm getting older and don't have the same reflexes I did when I was younger, and thus cannot compete with the "challenges" presented in the game play.

This is not enjoyable for me.

Sometimes, especially in MMOs, stories just evolve in weird-*** ways that I can't accept. This is probably also why I stopped watching soap operas. Frankly, at some point, a story just has to end.

I don't see how a game can avoid creating content that doesn't push some people into uncomfortable choices. There is no content that 100% of the players are satisfied with, and no content that is 100% satisfactory to any one person, so the game evolves to try to get closer to that ideal. This game is an MMO, by definition an unfinished product, and therefore also has to evolve or die.

There are so many different groups/types of players in our "universe" that any nudge in focus in a particular direction will result in other groups getting their toes stepped on slightly, or more than slightly, depending on where they fall. The ideal situation would be for the Devs to be able to nudge content in all directions by some degree every time they put out major updates, but resources force choices on them: only so much time, only so many people, and the much bigger constraint of trying to keep everything germane to the over-arching story they're trying to tell.

I expect the game to evolve and change as I play it. The things I grew comfortable doing 5 years ago aren't the same as they are now, and that's alright. I'm not sure that the attitude of "give me a toy that I like and leave me alone, I'll play with this same toy forever" jives with the nature of an MMO, especially one where the leadership and majority of developers has changed over its lifetime.

So this is my first post ever so be nice - but really I'm confused by this topic overall. No one is forcing or asking anyone to do anything they DO NOT WANT TO DO.

So is this a question of whether the OP is getting forced out of his comfort zone? Or is it a question of something that he feels strongly about changing in a in which he cannot control?

I for one have no problem with either, but this post makes me think that the OP is as interested in pushing the status quo as much as he is accusing the devs et al of pushing change.

Overall change is change, if you prefer to stick with the way things are then do so and all the power to you; or if you prefer to go out and change things willynilly beacuse it makes you feel alive go for it.

The question here is, is the Op willing to spend $15 a month for something that seems to be bringing him more pain than joy - and that is up to him.