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Or perhaps people get quickly tired of the same formulaic garbage. Endless superhero movies in every scene that go exposition, cgi action, witty one liner. Re

Or perhaps people get quickly tired of the same formulaic garbage. Endless superhero movies in every scene that go exposition, cgi action, witty one liner. Repeat. That nearly every 3 minute pop track follows the same formula as the scenes in every James Bond movie. Some things are just popular. Snakes and ladders technically isn't a game. You have ZERO agency in the outcome of events but it's based upon a game that's been played at least since the Indus Valley Civilisation 3000 BC. It's when committees and statisticians get involved that the fun goes away. Hence the endless reboots and sequels of exponentially more funding yet almost always fall short of the originals.

nonbel 9y ago
>"Snakes and ladders technically isn't a game. You have ZERO agency in the outcome of events but it's based upon a game that's been played at least since the Indus Valley Civilisation 3000 BC." I have to wonder if that was true back then. Did they have "fair" dice, or was there room for influencing the results or otherwise benefiting from knowledge of the imbalance? This could be either by choosing between dice for each roll, betting on the outcomes midgame, or getting the desired roll more often than usual.
scottLobster 9y ago
A lot of strategy games and RPGs suffer from the same. Starcraft II for instance was a lot more fun IMO when it was new and the strategies hadn't been refined. I remember wasting a ton of time/resources turtling, building a giant mass of carriers and then steam-rolling the map, just because I could and thought the visual of a dozen carriers sweeping the map would be awesome (it was). Good luck doing that now in a public server. Too many games have obsessive fans that are hell-bent on discovering the mathematically perfect way to play a game, and once the one or half-dozen working formulae are discovered, that's it. No one else can play any other way and hope to win, and that really takes the creativity and fun out of it. I'm not sure where these people come from, I got into video games as a distraction from math homework, not an extension of it. :P
- nickpeterson 9y ago
  Yeah, I remember when StarCraft 1 was newer and playing online was always weird experiment. There was an odd satisfaction to being beaten by something you'd never seen before after a hard fought 2 hours on a map draining all the minerals. Never has a 'GG' been so genuine.
- soylentcola 9y ago
  This is typically what keeps me from playing/enjoying multiplayer games. This isn't meant to be a "final judgment" on all MP games, but in general, the tendency seems to be toward min/maxing which leaves a lot less room for the experimentation and occasional accidental lucky breaks you catch where everything just falls into place. I don't mean to suggest that for a lot of people, discovering and testing these min/max strategies isn't fun and satisfying (like solving a puzzle with the "perfect" solution) but it's not really for me.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  See also: diablo 3. There are only a handful of combinations of gear that enable actually being able to kill stuff in a reasonable amount of time + survive on the highest torment difficulty. Most of those end-game builds with high enough damage + survivability don't even use the unique play styles of the characters -- necromancer and witch doctor don't use pets. I guess climbing a top100 ladder (or even top 1000) is, for some, also a game, and maybe just one I don't particularly enjoy. I see this in Overwatch too -- there are particular team compositions which work well in certain scenarios (mostly informed by the pros), and deviating from one of those cookie-cutter strategies will get you a tongue lashing on voice chat. The fixed 6v6 teams and smallish chokepoint-centric maps make it possible for one good player on one team to "carry" that team to victory and subsequently make the game pretty unfun for the other team. If your team comp is poorly-chosen (let's say you're attacking and two players want to play snipers), you likely will not win and your team will be frustrated the whole time. Conversely, the opposing team will have an absolute field day pounding you into a fine mist. The game is way too fun to win lopsided matches in. The teams are too small and inflexible to tolerate average players. The matchmaking, despite having a very large pool of active players, is frequently very wrong at making even matches. There are no mods supported, and a server browser (to browse only official servers, mind) is a recent addition, as others also tired of the small choice of variety in game modes (previously just public "screw around, rage quit, throw a match because someone is revealed to be female" or competitive "ultra salty tryhardathon"). I go back to TF2 and have fun for hours not caring about my win:loss ratio. I also previously had tons of fun and a great community in a Quake 3 mod for class-based, red vs blue CTF with large teams (16vs16). I die laughing messing around in Blackwake. I even grind for hours with friends in Diablo. Nothing makes me rage like Overwatch. I usually just get frustrated and stop playing.

nonbel 9y ago

>"Snakes and ladders technically isn't a game. You have ZERO agency in the outcome of events but it's based upon a game that's been played at least since the Indus Valley Civilisation 3000 BC." I have to wonder if that was true back then. Did they have "fair" dice, or was there room for influencing the results or otherwise benefiting from knowledge of the imbalance? This could be either by choosing between dice for each roll, betting on the outcomes midgame, or getting the desired roll more often than usual.

scottLobster 9y ago

A lot of strategy games and RPGs suffer from the same. Starcraft II for instance was a lot more fun IMO when it was new and the strategies hadn't been refined. I remember wasting a ton of time/resources turtling, building a giant mass of carriers and then steam-rolling the map, just because I could and thought the visual of a dozen carriers sweeping the map would be awesome (it was). Good luck doing that now in a public server. Too many games have obsessive fans that are hell-bent on discovering the mathematically perfect way to play a game, and once the one or half-dozen working formulae are discovered, that's it. No one else can play any other way and hope to win, and that really takes the creativity and fun out of it. I'm not sure where these people come from, I got into video games as a distraction from math homework, not an extension of it. :P

nickpeterson 9y ago
Yeah, I remember when StarCraft 1 was newer and playing online was always weird experiment. There was an odd satisfaction to being beaten by something you'd never seen before after a hard fought 2 hours on a map draining all the minerals. Never has a 'GG' been so genuine.
soylentcola 9y ago
This is typically what keeps me from playing/enjoying multiplayer games. This isn't meant to be a "final judgment" on all MP games, but in general, the tendency seems to be toward min/maxing which leaves a lot less room for the experimentation and occasional accidental lucky breaks you catch where everything just falls into place. I don't mean to suggest that for a lot of people, discovering and testing these min/max strategies isn't fun and satisfying (like solving a puzzle with the "perfect" solution) but it's not really for me.
seanp2k2 9y ago
See also: diablo 3. There are only a handful of combinations of gear that enable actually being able to kill stuff in a reasonable amount of time + survive on the highest torment difficulty. Most of those end-game builds with high enough damage + survivability don't even use the unique play styles of the characters -- necromancer and witch doctor don't use pets. I guess climbing a top100 ladder (or even top 1000) is, for some, also a game, and maybe just one I don't particularly enjoy. I see this in Overwatch too -- there are particular team compositions which work well in certain scenarios (mostly informed by the pros), and deviating from one of those cookie-cutter strategies will get you a tongue lashing on voice chat. The fixed 6v6 teams and smallish chokepoint-centric maps make it possible for one good player on one team to "carry" that team to victory and subsequently make the game pretty unfun for the other team. If your team comp is poorly-chosen (let's say you're attacking and two players want to play snipers), you likely will not win and your team will be frustrated the whole time. Conversely, the opposing team will have an absolute field day pounding you into a fine mist. The game is way too fun to win lopsided matches in. The teams are too small and inflexible to tolerate average players. The matchmaking, despite having a very large pool of active players, is frequently very wrong at making even matches. There are no mods supported, and a server browser (to browse only official servers, mind) is a recent addition, as others also tired of the small choice of variety in game modes (previously just public "screw around, rage quit, throw a match because someone is revealed to be female" or competitive "ultra salty tryhardathon"). I go back to TF2 and have fun for hours not caring about my win:loss ratio. I also previously had tons of fun and a great community in a Quake 3 mod for class-based, red vs blue CTF with large teams (16vs16). I die laughing messing around in Blackwake. I even grind for hours with friends in Diablo. Nothing makes me rage like Overwatch. I usually just get frustrated and stop playing.