Should games take us out of our comfort zone?

Bit of a hijack, but you are aware that the Black Isle guys worked on Fallout: New Vegas, right? It's the same gameplay as FO3 (with a few changes), so that might still be a deterrent, but the story and the setting are very true to the original games.

I wish I had some insight on the main topic, but other than to point out that 'going out of your comfort zone' and 'keeping at something you don't like until you like it or at least don't mind it' are two different things, I got nothin'.

You're referring to the /pizza command in another quest-ful MMO, aren't you?

Au contraire, I think it has direct bearing on whether the game will be fun or not. Do you like being confronted with new experiences and challenged on emotional and mental levels? If so, then a game which takes you out of your comfort zone may be just the ticket. If you prefer "more of the same," then such a game wouldn't be much fun for you.

And in this you are wrong. Completely. I've explained why that's not what I'm talking about, so I don't feel the need to repeat myself.

In fact, I find it hugely disappointed that you can't look past current events and see only loaded questions when I specifically explained that that's not what I'm talking about, and have not used that as an example anywhere in the tread at any point.

This is both incorrect and terribly one-sided. Games pushing us out of our comfort zone, or indeed not doing so, is a design decision, and one which plays quite a crucial part in a game. Look at the literal metric ton of Modern Warfare sequels, spinoffs and knockoffs. Their entire goal, stated or otherwise, is to give players very much exactly what they expected, just more of it. They play to their genre, they play to their theme and they play to player expectations. These games are literally built on the assumption that this is what people want, so changing as little as absolutely necessary about them is the winning strategy.

Now take something completely different - an FPS game without the S part: Portal. When this came out, it was pretty damn revolutionary, and indeed set something of a precedent, despite one not really having been followed (outside of Darksiders). These days, most people wouldn't describe Portal as a First Person Shooter, largely because it helped legitimise its own genre of first person puzzle games, even though such existed even before. However, when it came out, it was very much out of the comfort zone of most FPS players. But it was good.

Contrast this with Mirror's Edge. This game really isn't a First Person Shooter, either. To be honest, I don't know WHAT it was trying to be. However, it pushed FPS players out of their comfort zone, and into a zone that... Frankly, I don't think many were OK with. I know it got critically panned, and I know it ended up quite awkward, as a First Person Parkour game just doesn't flow as well as a third person one, especially when all you see the bulk of the time is a face-full of wall, hence the majority of its problems.

If Modern Warfare was an example of keeping people in their comfort zones, then Portal is an example of getting people to expand their comfort zones and Mirror's Edge is an example of getting people to recoil from the uncomfortable. That, in a nutshell, is what I'm talking about.

P.S. You'll note I didn't mention the Incarnate system in any of the examples above.

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.

I believe it was that no major changes were part of Trials of Obi-Wan. And the NGE incident was within weeks of release which really sucked. I think that was a good example of too much change, and the problems involved with using another company's IP franchise.

Interesting sidenote though. NGE is a good example of the game itself changing to try to be more in line with the broader audience's comfort zone. There are very few skill-based MMOs in the market [Eve and someother superhero mmo come to mind].

All said, NGE was a very unique instance due to other factors in play that resulted in a situation that really wasn't beneficial for the players at all.

True, true, no game can match all of its players' expectations perfectly, that much is a given. But that's not really what I meant in this case. It's more a general attitude towards... Let's say "getting" its players to expand their playstyles and try out new things.

Again I keep coming back to Bulletstorm, because it's a perfect example of this. The game is a very decent shooter, but it comes appended with that irritating "skillshot" system and the tagline "kill with skill," which serves to do little more than make the basic act of killing something far more complex and more involving than it needs to be. Is that a good thing? I don't know. What do you want out of a shooter? Do you want to just shoot things dead and not get killed? If so, Bulletstorm is out of your comfort zone. Are you tired of just straight-up semi-cover-based shooters and want a game which challenges you to play in a new and unique way? Then you'll feel differently.

Specifically on the topic of the Market and Inventions, as that keeps getting brought up, it's a bit of a special case. The running mentality is (or at least was) that if you don't like the system and don't feel like going out of your comfort zone to engage in a system you don't like, you don't have to. The problem is that it has become impossible to ask for build advise without writing an essay about why you're not going to use Performance Shifter or Numia's Paizuri or whatever else may be expected of you, and why you don't have multiple hundreds of millions banked on your character. Because this has become expected of people.

As well, as new content is created and people clamour for it to be more difficult, the argument for that is that we're so much stronger now that we have inventions, neglecting the fact that "we" not always are. I'll grant you that to a large extent where the "pressure" to step out of my comfort zone on the subject comes from the players, themselves, rather than from the game's specific direct design, but it's there nonetheless.

To be fair, that's not to say I'm being forced to do something I don't like - I'm not. Far from it. I still play the game as I did before this whole thing, or at least a lot like it, and I still keep away from the system lest I make the game unfun for myself. However, this does beg the question - is it right for people to expect me to step out of my comfort zones and use schoolyard taunts to mock me for choosing not to? Because that's happened. Is it right from a game design standpoint? I don't know. I personally don't like it, but again - I'm biassed. That's why I'm posing this as a question, not giving an answer.

I see your point. This was something of a realisation for me way back when - that it's not a matter of gritting my teeth and getting it over with so I can go back to "the rest of the game," because that was missing the point of the system. Inventions are not a means to an end, they are an end unto themselves, a system intended to be entertaining and engaging in itself so that people will want to engage in it and keep engaging in it for the long haul. To treat it as a gate is just missing the whole point.

That in itself, however, presents a problem, in that the whole system then becomes extraneous if one doesn't enjoy engaging in it. Unlike a bit of content which can be played past and forgotten (say, defeating 100 Overseers) but which would leave you with a reward that outlasts the pain, Inventions really are a gameplay style choice more than anything else. For those whose playstyles fit that regardless, I'm sure this is a great boon, but for those whose playstyles don't work that way, it... Isn't. So then the question becomes - how much should the game do to get me out of my static comfort zone and teach me to like Inventions?

As it turns out, not much, not in this game, for which I'm thankful. But again, not all actual players appear to agree with the game's "if you want" approach, which, again, is where the thread's central question becomes relevant.

I want to be entirely subjective for a moment here, just to provide a bit more context:

I have to disagree with you almost completely on this point. I don't question what you like and dislike - I respect your preferences. I just want to explain that I really don't share them.

When a game is trying to "teach" me something, it brings to mind your typical Kung Fu movie of the wise teacher trying to instil some humility into his arrogant student, an make him understand that he knows nothing. I'm sure this is true in real life, but coming from a game I chose to play, it usually comes off as patronising. "You don't know how to have fun, young grasshopper. Forget what you've learned and do as I say, and I shall teach you how to have real fun." No, thanks, sensei. I'm pretty sure I already know enough.

Now, that's not to say I won't give a new game or a new addition to an old game a chance, but by the same token, I won't give it endless credit and endless time. If it doesn't catch me before I run out of patience, it doesn't catch me. I don't care if it would have taught me the meaning of life; I'm not putting myself through unfun gameplay with the promise of providence.

---

Completely separately, I just thought of something to say on the subject of "providence." I can't speak for anyone else here, but I can divide my experiences of new "things" in two categories: 1) Meh, what is that now? and 2) Holy hell! Why didn't I think of this before?!? In a lot of cases, I don't mind my comfort zone challenged, provided it's being challenged by something which inspires me right off the bat. I'm not sure I can even call it a comfort zone challenge at the point, actually, since it just demonstrates to me that my comfort zone was larger than I was previously aware.

However, that's only with response number 2). With response number 1), my charity is far more quickly drained, as I essentially find myself doing something unpleasant and hoping that it will either end or get better soon. Not only is that not a good experience, but it has the potential to be a remarkably BAD experience once I realise I was barking up the wrong tree all along and said experience will NEVER get any "better," because I was already experiencing the "good" part and just being unable to appreciate it.

As I understand it, Black Isle went under and were bought up by... Someone, I forget who. And either way, Fallout: New Vegas isn't a game in Black Isle's iconic style, it's a mission pack for Fallout 3.

True, true, they're not the same thing. However, the former here assumes, as I mentioned before, that you can go out of your comfort zone, but then go back into it soon thereafter. Such a slight excursion is really not something I think games can, or indeed even SHOULD avoid, as it's not a big enough problem, I don't think.

The latter, on the other hand, assumes that one either change his tastes or otherwise suppress them for long periods of time. My opinions on the matter have been made clear, so I'll instead say that this is precisely what some people have advocated to me, in pretty much those exact words. Comparisons have been to real-life military service, real-life sports and even real-life martial arts, which tells me some feel quite strongly about it.

If you ask me, there's really no doubt as to the answer of the question. But I'm not an important guy, which is why I don't want to impose my own answer to people, but instead hear people's answers from their own reasoning.

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.

As someone else said, incremental changes are the way to go here. You can't forsake what made you popular, but at the same time you have to realize that palette-swapping mobs every other issue will only go so far.

I like the way the devs handled the alpha slot TFs in I19. The Apex TF tried new ground and was successful at opening up many players to the idea that movement had a role in combat. Plenty of players voiced displeasure at the mechanics of Apex, but those players could content themselves with the Tin Mage TF, which was basically a shiny new coat of paint for traditional content.

How dare you, Dino Crisis 2 was brilliant.

The fixed camera angles added cinematic tension, the movement and targeting functions were limited to add to the difficulty (they weren't unresponsive), there was a quick-turn button in DC1, and DC2 even added an evasion button. L2P OMG

You've summed up my take on this very well.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

THIS.

One thing I'll note is that there are different types of games for different types of people. (Which is why I don't take nearly as much offense to the comment of "if you don't like the changes you can play another game" as some folks might. However the question then becomes if everyone who doesn't like them quit, what happens to the game in question? See also: SWG NGE)

Chess: I sure as hell expect it to push me and help me build skill, etc.

A beat-em up like Streets of Rage 2: I'll take some challenge to a certain point, but it's still a beat-em up. I'm not playing it to learn about martial arts, i'm playing it to beta the ever living crap out of everyone.

No an even better example:

Street Fighter IV vs. Marvel vs Capcom 3.

In SFIV I'm playing it to be challenged and I'm fine with having to do thumb busting combos to succeed against the computer. In MvC3 no, I'm playing it just to have fun and expect to do fine button mashing. (In fact they recently added a dumbed down mode where you the controls are even simpler). I would not expect either game (nor demand) to dumb down (in SFIV's case) or come up/aka "man up" (MvC3's case) as it were.

I think where games (both mmos and single player) get into trouble is when they start trying to add TOO MANY features that try to cater to everyone. I think this has the potential to be a huge mistake.

There is also from the player's perspective of trying to advocate to turn a game that was one thing into something they like. I think that's fine to advocate as such but at the same time has the potential to alienate everyone who DOESN'T like that new thing.

No game can please everyone who likes every genre. Designers NEED to be careful that what folks expect from their game is what they get, as they add new features. Adding that new feature may attract/retain one or two or 50 new players, but the question has to be asked: Was it worth it alienating those 500 hundred players to get them?

Bringing it back to this game, I think this relates to the problem with the I13 PVP changes.

As I said above how drastic the changes are (and how fast) are also an issue.

After reading your response to Sam, I find that I have not the slightest clue what you're going on about, except that none of it seems to have anything to do with the topic and all of it seems to be personally aimed at Sam.

I think that in this case you read too much into his original question and that you let your apparent annoyance at some previous threads by Sam to color your response to this one.

Take a deep breath, tell yourself that "Not all game design questions come with an agenda" and then re-read the OP with a fresh eye and respond as if it's a comment/question about game design in general and not something complaining about CoX or its developers.

New Vegas bears little in common with Fallout 3 in terms of how alive the game-world feels and how much they give you to do. It's very, very like a number of the Black Isle games of yore story-wise (especially in the way it just sprawls out and throws myriads of weird little mini-quests at you).


Mechanically it's the same, but the story and setting are streets ahead of Fallout 3s curiously sterile efforts (Oblivion has the same issues, it's like being in a world of androids)


Which isn't surprising because quite a few people who worked at Black Isle on Planetscape, Fallout and Fallout 2 now work / run Obsidian (including the CEO).

Yes. I'm puzzled by the apparent belief that the company is something more than the people who worked there. Black Isle may be gone, but the people who made Fallout what it is are still around. FONV is as much a mission pack for FO3 as Planescape: Torment was for Icewind Dale.

Anyway, sorry. This is really getting off topic.

I like my comfort zone. It's warm and fuzzy and brings me... well... comfort. I tend to play in my comfort zone for most of my time in CoH. But still, I like to adventure out a bit. This sometimes means running a new TF, such as the Apex TF. This was one I had avoided because my understanding was that it was different from other TFs I had done and thus out of my comfort zone. But in practice, once enticed to do it, I found I enjoyed it quite a lot and ran it multiple times on a couple characters.

I also engaged in a Hami Raid for the first time "recently" (within the past couple months). That was one activity that was also out of my comfort zone, yet once I did I found that it was actually enjoyable. And while I understand that the leadership in that particular Hami Raid is what made it run so smoothly, I gained a new respect for the content. I haven't run one since then, but it is now more within my comfort zone then before and I would be willing to run it again.

PvP is also something I avoid like the plague, yet when I built up my Warshade to be my main Badge Character, I had to go in there and run missions and explore. So I decided to PvP a bit while there, and managed to get the 100 Rep badge. That was well outside of my comfort zone, but I found I didn't hate it as much any longer. I still won't participate without incentive, on any character, but it was fun to step out of my comfort zone for the time.

All in all, I suppose I'm the target for these incentives for people to leave their Comfort Zone. And I guess you can partially blame me for the Devs continuing to use these techniques, because they work so well on me.

Which isn't to say the divide is unbridgeable. Among game designers, there's a sweet spot to aim for: "easy to learn, difficult to master". It holds true in varying degrees for hits from Starcraft and Angry Birds to chess and go.

Designing toward this goal for MMORPGs is an even bigger challenge than in other video game genres because of the variety of playing styles and the necessary richness of a virtual world worth staying in. Aside from a certain 800-lbs. gorilla that has introduced soccer moms to orcs, most MMORPGs tend to try either appealing to certain types of players or offering something for everyone. (CoH probably falls in the latter category, pace pvpers, but the OP evidently feels uncomfortable with being compelled to participate in gated content.) The flip side is, of course, "Please all, and you will please none".

I think the best response I have to this is to point out that you're conflating "challenge" with "discomfort" when that's not universally true. For example, I don't mind being challenged. Game challenges do not make me uncomfortable, and thus they do not by themselves throw me "out of my comfort zone." My comfort zone doesn't require a lack of challenge. In fact, the total lack of challenge can be itself slightly uncomfortable, because it makes gameplay perceptually more tedious.

Because players like and dislike different things, "comfort zones" aren't bounded by difficulty levels precisely. They are in some cases, where players define their comfort zones by levels of difficulty. But I think most players do not do so strictly.

Should games deliberately remove people from their comfort zones? Well, if they signal up front that they are that kind of game, sure. Just like there are movies that pretty much signal right up front that they are intended to make the audience squirm. That's legitimate when its honest. But it is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. Its a thing, like choosing superheroes or orcs, instancing or shared zones, gear or no gear, leveled or levelless combat. Its just another decision to make in terms of the kind of game you want to make.

However, there is a caveat. There are some things that a good game should do, if it aspires to be a game and not just a past time. *Some* gameplay challenge is embedded in the very definition of a "game." When that coincidentally violates some players' comfort zones, that's unfortunate but also should not impede the progress of the game development. There is a balance between what the players want and what the game developers want to make. If this game decides to be a superhero game and not a fantasy orc and elves game, that's not up to a vote. Similarly, if this game chooses to pick a spot between Sandbox and Fear Factor and decides that's the appropriate challenge spot for the game, then while that is partially negotiable I think at some point the developers of the game have to make a decision and stick with it. Waffling is penalized far more harshly in the long run than almost any disagreeable decision alone.

Perhaps it isn't universally true but it might be true for him. "Comfort zone" and "discomfort zone" are inherently personal and like everything we can parse it infinitely. "Being challenged" may be dead center of your comfort zone but it may be the essence of Sam's discomfort zone.

I like this summation. Bait-and-switch annoys customers.

I apologise for the mixup of terms. I have no good structure for clearly denoting what's pure personal opinion on my part and what's more general uncharged contemplation. In my case, as Ironic points out, "challenge" is indeed a source of discomfort. Or more specifically, challenge over a long period of time such that a single-time action of adaptation does not solve it.

To bring this back to City of Heroes, the game is by far and away not easy (despite what people may claim), but a lot of its difficulty can be overcome once you know how to do so. I have no problem with this kind of challenge, as it's a solvable problem. This is as opposed to something like Quake 3 Arena, where the "challenge" is the skill level of other people which will ALWAYS be a challenge no matter how long you play, especially if you suck - and I do.

In general, when it comes to challenge, I prefer the kind that's "solvable" or "fixable," as it were. By contrast, I had a friend who wanted - in his own words - for every battle to be a boss battle. He wanted to be challenged all the time. It made the times when I teamed with him kind of... Awkward.

The way you phrased it reminds me of what may well be the best example of a game which is deliberately designed to push people past their comfort zones: Eve Online. In the pase, Eve has been described as "legitimised griefing," and the few stories about it that made headlines (Internet headlines, that is) had to do with grudges, griefing and outright dickishness between its players, and sometimes even between players and developers.

This is the kind of game that haunts me in my nightmares, and when I see elements that remind me of it, it sends chills down my spine. It's a game that's designed to be uncomfortable, from what I can tell, and this is pretty much the polar opposite of what I want to play.

And yet, Eve Online remains one of the more successful MMOs out there even today, with still a solid player base last I checked, and represents a concept that draws quite a few people to it. Clearly, the prospect of creating an inherently unpleasant, uncomfortable world is still to some people's tastes, hence why I wanted to hear from others about it.

I agree with you there. City of Heroes has been both blessed and cursed with a very communicative development team, which has historically entered into dialogue with the players far more often than any other I'm aware of. This means, on the one hand, that people more often feel their voices are being heard, and so are generally happier even with aspects of the game they may dislike. The flipside of that coin, however, is that people also feel that they HAVE to be heard, and as such will be much more persistent in voicing their complaints, and at times even praises. Like so many things, it's a double-edged sword.

To the development team's credit, though, they have historically done well enough to incorporate user feedback into their development cycle, even if it usually takes them a few years to do so. The pot of gold is there at the end of the rainbow for the exceptionally patient.

Though, to be on-topic: I agree with you. A game does indeed need to follow its own design goals, and not constantly waver back and forth trying to guess what its players want, and I'm obligated to say that City of Heroes has occasionally been guilty of that, as evidenced by the list of abandoned features. So, yes, I agree with your assessment.

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.

I'm long aware of Sam's general viewpoint on this subject, but I think when it translates to the general question: should games take us out of our comfort zone I think Sam is talking about the idea generally applied to all players, and not just himself personally. Its unclear if Sam is asking the question "should games be occasionally uncomfortable" or "should games be occasionally challenging" and its not clear if Sam's definition of "challenge" itself includes the notion that to be challenging something must be at least a little uncomfortable. Not everyone agrees with or is even aware of that particular definition of challenge.

So there is the potential for a semantic blurring here. If Sam is asking whether games should take us out of our comfort zone as individual players define their comfort zone for themselves that's one question. If Sam is asking whether games should do what it does when it happens to remove Sam himself out of his comfort zone, that's a different question, but not the question I think Sam is ultimately asking.


Also, asking "should games take Samuel_Tow out of his comfort zone" is a much stranger question to put up for discussion. Although EvilGeko would probably say "yes."

And I wouldn't know.

Again, though, I apologise for mixing the terms up. My preferences are not very important to the meat of the topic, and I should not have brought them up as prominently as I did.

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.

My tl;dr answer is: It's okay for a game to encourage you to step outside your comfort zone, but I don't think it should force you to.

This mainly applies to changes made to an already existing game. For a game that's brand new, as long as it delivers what it's advertising, then I'm fine with pretty much anything. If the game takes you outside your comfort zone, then just don't buy it. Not all games are designed for everyone.

You yourself gave the answer that I was going to give. When the developers gave us the invention system, they gave out lots of encouragement to use it, basically in the form of the ability to make our characters FAR more powerful than we could without them. They didn't try to force people to use it though. Nothing in the game was made more difficult to compensate for the fact that we could make more powerful characters. I'm okay with that.

Well, no, I don't think it's right for people to make fun of you for not using the invention system. It's your $15 a month, you should play in whatever manner is fun for you.

On the other hand, you can't really blame that on the game design or the developers either. They have no control over what the players do, and that includes pressuring you to use a system that you don't like.