Do we want what's familiar or what's different?

I realise that you may well be getting tired of me making these "question threads" and for this I apologise. This is just how my brain works. In my spare time, I wonder about things. Abstract things, basic concepts that sometimes don't really have much to do with the subject which inspired me to wonder about them. But at the end of the day, I still feel that the conclusions derived from these questions still have an actual impact in real practice.

I want to avoid the latest "that's what players" expect argument just because we already did this, like, yesterday, but this concerns the question of player expectations nevertheless. Quick question: Try to think back and count how many times you've heard the phrase "it's like this in comic books" or something to that effect on these forums. Go on, I'll wait... ... ... I'm guessing "a lot," but I can't really speak for everyone. The thing is, that's not actually something wrong to say. People like comic books, they come to a game that's ostensibly inspired by and modelled after comic books, so naturally they expect and want what's in the game to be like what's in comic books, to the extent the genre can support it. And that's perfectly fine.

Then, however, there are people like me, and to sidestep the argument of comic books let me give a different example - the common fictional representation of sexes (side-step into a pit, but roll with it). Watch any trailer for any game which gives you classes and lets you pick your character's gender and you'll almost always see big strong men serving as the warriors, tanks or heavy infantry while women serve as mages, archers, marksmen (marks...women?) techs, scientist and anything else that's seen as less brutish and physical. I really don't want to challenge popular preconception here at all, that's not my point. But to me, this is the "base," this is what's expected. So when I sit down to make characters of my own, I start to think what I could do that HASN'T been done before. Yes, cute bruisers, matriarch and so forth have been done in the past, but they are significantly less common in fiction, and as such they draw my attention.

This presents me with something of a dichotomy, even if it's never as binary as I may end up presenting it as. On the one hand, we have this draw for everything that's familiar to us. I'd call it "nostalgia," but it goes beyond simple affinity for the past. In the very simplest of terms, people like what they like, and they will naturally tend towards the things that they have already known before and that they have already found to like. A comic book fan who chooses to branch out into video game will naturally prefer a comic-book-like game. That's really perfectly natural.

However, on the other hand, you have people who actually reject the things they are familiar with. Call it short attention span, call it easy boredom, call it an adventurous spirit, it doesn't matter. The simple fact, however, is that some people just don't want to keep repeating the same experiences over and over again and instead always look for new ones. Always that new sound, always that new idea, always that cool new game that does things completely differently. In this day and age saturated with dirt brown and gunmetal grey hollow shooters, it would be natural for a long-term shooter fan to throw his hands in the air and look for something completely different that isn't a shooter at all just to rekindle his love of games in general, is it not?

This is the duality of wanting something that's familiar and wanting something that's different. To prove that my own dichotomy isn't as binary, allow me to use myself as an example. Speak with anyone who's ever trolled my posts and they'll tell you that I'm pretty much the most conservative, static person in the game. I don't like change, I don't like new systems that weren't needed, I don't want the game to be anything other than what it already is. So on the one hand, I hold onto what's familiar with a dead man's grip. When it comes to concepts, however, things are completely the opposite. In terms of character ideas and designs, I'm always looking not just for something new, but intentionally and specifically for something I don't like.

For instance, I never really liked the classic tights super heroes. Just not my thing. Nevertheless, on a whim one day, I went ahead and made one anyway. It was a challenge - how could I take this thing I don't like and make something I like out of it? The "how" is complex and not very interesting, but the result was a success. Not only had I made a tights super hero, but I had expanded my own horizons and the boundaries of my own preferences. Having forced myself to experience a new idea that I wasn't comfortable with, I gained new skills and new likes. This trend has repeated over the years, expanding my horizons into many different concepts that I could never have dreamed of.

Back in 2004, I only really had two or three real characters because I simply didn't have ideas for any more than that. Everything else seemed dumb and uninteresting. Come 2011 and I have 50. To most of you, that may not seem like much when some have hundreds upon hundreds. However, each of my characters represents a wildly different idea, and each and every single one represents one more step in expanding the field of characters I can work with. Even to this day I still look for more character concepts that I haven't done before and possibly that I don't like to continue this process.

At first, it may seem like asking whether you prefer things that you're familiar with or things that are different isn't much of a question. However, think about this for yourselves, look at the history of your hobbies and your desires and you may find more patterns there than you suspect. Those are what I want to know about. Obviously, all of us prefer a little bit of both. I just want to know where that boundary lies for you.

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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.

I'm much like you in that regard, Samuel. I don't want change coming to my basic gameplay. Now, if we're talking easy to learn steps that are used in a zone event, boss fight, or something else temporary, great! Anything that makes an event more exhilarating is fine in my book.

When it comes to character costumes and concepts, people might complain that all of my characters look "the same", but that's because they're all me. Same face, same hair, same build, but the costumes they wear all follow a unique theme. For example, I could be a simple street fighter, or a Victorian-esque Grim Reaper that shoots blood at people.

I love this game.

Samuel, what you're discussing is covered in media theory under "The Other", and is about embracing those elements that go beyond your world-viewpoint, or exploring issues and physical facts that aren't yours (or aren't the mainstream).

It links back to several other topics about how society works, hegemony and power structures.

It's something inherent in the human psyche, and I could go on at length about it's affect on media and our understanding of what is "okay", what is "desirable" and so forth.

It can also be used to help explain why people choose certain options in character creation because of cultural background and pressures. Something that is subconciously influencing what a player likes, and what they find enjoyable.

I don't know if you are familiar with this avenue of media/cultural theory, or if you've stumbled upon it. But if you are interested I do think you should take a look around for some information on "The Other" (as vague as that name sounds). I'd start quoting authors/theorists, but I've not got any of my reference work handy.

I dont want basic gameplay to change overall. Quality of Life changes are ok. New content is ok so long as fundamental behavior in the game isnt changed or superceeded. I do like things that are different, and when I want that, I play a different game.

In most media, I like there to be a Core of the familiar, surrounded by as many flights of wierd fancy as possible.

Here is what I mean:

I love the fact that in City of... you have a basic 'generic hero world' that resembles DC and Marvel just enough that the comic book geek in me feels right at home...yet i am not restricted to only making four-color spandex types. There was enough wiggle room provided in the storyline and fluff that I can play someone outside that genre, like characters based on horror movies, anime, history, or whatever.

When I pick up a series of novels or watch a television show, I prefer the kind where there is an "over arc" dealing with the nature of the world, or the history of the main character, but it is not 'locked into' that story so deeply that the individual stories can't also be 'problems of the week' or wander off into bizarre territory.

For instance, I like shows like "the 4400", "Heroes" and "Dexter" that have a main character or few, but also strong side characters and side stories that were tangental to the main story but also fascinating. Shows that get too deep into a single story to the point that they become an eternal miniseries dealing with one subject or pure problem-of-the week fluff ("Psyche") turn me off.

This also extends to things like individual characters.

I like to be able to encapsulate a character in my mind quickly and easily "Inara is a classy courtesan with a heart of gold", and yet know/beleive that the character is also much deeper and more complex than that. Things like Inara's training in various combat arts and her complex (borderline abusive) relationship with Mal (when it was clear she didn't need him in any financial or physical sense) in Firefly really made her fascinating.

You can apply the same to settings (I loved the fact that Deep Space 9 was essentially a captured enemy station with potential secrets of its' own), themes...the list goes on.

Give me more of the same, but with more and more optional twists as things progress.

Would I want City of... to force me to play a driving minigame? No. Would I love the option to play a driving minigame inside City of...? Yes!

The tech we are getting that allows us to make meaningless but fun conversational choices in missions? LOVE IT! I'll love it more when those choices more often lead to alternate story options and resolutions.

There should always be a 'standard progression path', but there should also be side paths to take.

I tend to think that female toons who don't have physique and waist both fairly far up look... really disturbingly unhealthy.

Problem is, a lot of female jacket pieces then bulge noticably outwards around the still-not-bulging actual torso, and nearly all the belts clip badly.

So I use a small number of belt pieces nearly all the time on female characters, because everything else clips badly.

I don't think the two are necessarily contradictory. The human mind is very adept at finding patterns. That's what we're doing when we solve puzzles and learn game mechanics-- we're identifying the patterns that make things work.

We gain satisfaction in the discovery process and a different kind of satisfaction in that familiarity of really mastering the puzzle (Raph Koster uses the term "groking" for this level of mastery, after Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange land).

So, both discovering and groking give us pleasure. We can keep moving forward, enjoy discovering new things, and enjoying all we grok, and all is well.

The only conflict is when the thing we grok is taken away from us (changing what was once known to us). It might be ok to add a new layer atop the old one... to give us more to discover and enrich the grok, but never outright remove the original pattern.



I like playing the board game Axis & Allies. When I want to experience something new, I'll try Risk or Monopoly or Life or Shogun or some other board game. I expect A&A to play more or less the same when I go back to it though (plus or minus a new house rule or two).

I've stepped out of my norms (spandex superheroes) for a few characters.

Saw a catboy vampire character once, and I thought, I want one of those, but want to add the Fairy Wings and OMG I loved the look of the character, and so my Catgirl Fairy Princess Vampire was born!

Only reason I don't play her anymore is I RPed her as extremely violent and that didn't sit well with some people as being very heroic >_> RPing putting an Outcast through a woodchipper does not make for some happy RPers.

Though OOCly I got quite a few who liked the fact that she stabbed people with straws and drank their blood.

Obviously, outside my norm of Spandex Superhero. Though now that I think about it, I bet she and Deadpool could be BFFs! Hard to say if she didn't conform to the spandex superhero rule, as she wore buckled leather tights...not spandex, but pretty close.

I also have a tendancy to use the same costume pieces, body sliders, and made a new character that stepped away from all that. No body slider was the same as my main, and only three costume items where the same, Top: Tight Sleek (different design however), Bikini Bottoms and Spiked Collar (though in my defense I tend to use the Spiked Collar on all characters as a way to better seperate the neck/body that always seems off when no neck piece is there.

Loved how that character came out in looks. I think my only complaint is the domino mask (please devs make it so the eyebrows don't show through).

My Crab also stepped out of the norm of my usual spandex hero/villain, but she I think was meant to be more akin to some of the Batman style villains of civvie clothes, psycho personality.

That's the second of my six exceptions to the spandex route (if we count buckled leather as not spandexy).

My other is two that used tucked in pants, and the other was a sailor moon-esque outfit, while the fifth is my namesake who originally used baggy pants, but that was more because of how I introed her into the world of City of Heroes, more than anything else (RPer on Virtue here), in useing the same outfit as one of my first two that used tucked in pants.

So, I'm not afraid of going out of my norm, I just prefere not to, as I picked up CoH specifically for my love of Marvel/DC/Image Comics.

You bring an interesting perspective to the 'cosmetic' decision-making process. I had always thought that without consequences, a decision was often equal to coin flipping (NOT in my personal case, since I tend to RP these decisions myself).

When a decision has a consequence, and you choose the less advantageous (by whatever metric) consequence purely because "that's the decision x would make", to me, that is the epitome of role playing.

But the idea that a decision having little or no mechanical consequence making it MORE indicative of a character's personality? That seems newish and rare to me.

My hope is that newer missions offer more of these dialogue choices, so that more 'character voices' can be served.

Being able to decide between:

- By your command.
- Eh, whatever, okay.
- Only because it serves my purposes.
- On it!

In a lot of situations would be fun and great to me, whether or not it loaded points onto some invisible 'relationship meter'.

If I could wave a magic wand and make it happen, a lot of 'The Sims' and perhaps The Elder Scrolls would end up in City of in terms of ways you can interact with NPCs.

This is a perspective on game design that I had not deeply considered. Thank you.

I want different things that fall within the arbitrarily-determined comfort zone of familiarity.

I guess I design characters to be sort of neo-spandex. A nice, cleanly designed suit without being monochrome. I like using white as a contrast/filler/variety colour. It brightens the suit up without being visually filling. I prefer to use the slightly more muted colours without getting dark. Classic superheroes without being too colourful, I guess. You could probably figure out a style from seeing ten costumes I made without any gimmick to them.

I did decide to see what you could do with the baron jacket the other day. I'm more or less planning on a plant/storm wizard for when I21 hits and had serious trouble coming up with a costume. I wanted something that wasn't too druidic but still nature-themed if only in the abstract and had little luck with it. Combining nature wizard and superhero was just a bit tough. Using a white occult baron jacket with black trim looked great and only got better when I realised that the high collar mantle doesn't have to be the same colour as the cape so I just gave him a regular deep red cape. Black Resistance pants and black baron boots completed the look. In the end, he looked incredible. Not remotely like a nature wizard, though. Still, I went for a look I never thought I would care for and ended up with great results.

Similarly, I made a specops costume for my Night Widow when I got Mask Presence, just as a gimmick. I don't care for normal soldier suits but it still ended up good.

Depends. Change can be good or bad, it's useless to say unless you know what's it going to change into. Give me a good change and I'll take it, a bad change and I'll complain, it's that simple *shrugs*.