4 ms·

Really disagree with the hypothesis the author has, and especially don't think that the player experience is hindered (at all) by searching for things in an ext

Really disagree with the hypothesis the author has, and especially don't think that the player experience is hindered (at all) by searching for things in an external wiki. Most of the games I really like (Factorio, Dwarf Fortress, Subnautica, Valheim, Satisfactory, recently Shapez2 as examples) I enjoy partly because of the active community (and wikis are obviously part of that). I love seeing solutions that other people have found, and a big part of my enjoyment comes from comparing my own solutions with those from others in the community. In all of those examples I'm figuring things out myself and using a wiki and sometimes other community tools such as calculators etc. I would be really amazed if this person makes a good game when their focus is make players do A rather than B instead of "how do I make this game as much fun to play as possible". It's also likely that the gameplay systems are really shallow if they feel they would be harmed by people searching for information in a wiki.

fragmede 2y ago
Blame the dev all you want, something is lost by players cheating and just looking up the answer online.
- codetrotter 2y ago
  I’ve done both. I cheated my way through a single player game following a walkthrough all the way from start to finish. Only at the end did I realize that this took away a lot of the fun from the game. But I’ve also used a wiki to find crafting recipes for Minecraft back when I started playing. Looking up crafting recipes helped me find out what things I could craft. And it didn’t remove any of the joy I got out of playing Minecraft at all. And then there are other cases where I’ve looked at walkthroughs again but learning from my mistake I make a point of only looking when I’m really really stuck, and to only read as little as possible to get unstuck. So my opinion is yes it’s perfectly possible to ruin a good game for yourself by looking up info online. But if you learn from doing that to yourself you’ll probably learn to only use it when you really need it. And then the game remains fun to play.
- seanhunter 2y ago
  How is that cheating in a single-player game? What does cheating even mean in a single-player game. Seriously. The only rule in a single player game is you should do whatever seems like it would be fun for you[1]. For some people the fun comes in working things out, for others the fun comes from "making progress" (whatever that means in the game). For me personally it depends very much on the situation. It's not generally fun if you're just stuck banging your head against a wall so I totally get people looking up answers to things to get unstuck. From my perspective that's really fine. There have certainly been games (Subnautica is the most obvious example for me personally) where the sense of wonder and exploration was really a huge part of the experience for me so I didn't want to search external sources and spoiler it - I wanted to experience it all for myself, but even there if someone just wanted to have a map and know everything that was going to happen I would say that's fine let them do whatever they want to do. The dev should be focussing 100% on making the game fun. That's it. Focussing on preventing your players from doing something they want to do seems like a step back to the days where games had a single way to move forward and you had to do things exactly that way. That's definitely not a good way to design a fun game. [1] Multiplayer games are more complex of course because your actions affect other people so there is for sure cheating and other types of behaviour that I would personally consider unethical.
kruczek 2y ago
> I would be really amazed if this person makes a good game when their focus is make players do A rather than B instead of "how do I make this game as much fun to play as possible". Would you consider Terraria a good game? I think at one point it was the highest rated game on Steam. And yet that game is exactly this way - it makes players do A rather than B: it is pretty much impossible to play it WITHOUT the wiki, because of the design: there is no list of all craftable items in-game. And because of this I could never really get into it, because I had to tediosly collect all my resources and then go to each crafting station one by one, simply to see what I am able to craft.
- notTooFarGone 2y ago
  You entirely base your opinion about what you know the game CAN LOOK LIKE. If you don't have an expectation of Terraria, you don't know the depth and therefore play the game as it is. The only thing that is harming your fun is knowing how it could be by watching videos, streams whatever. Saying "it is impossible to play without a wiki" is entirely self inflicted by wrong expectation management. Of course people want shortcuts but a person without internet access wouldn't call Terraria unplayable without a wiki.
  - kruczek 2y ago
    You are partially correct - of course my expectations for Terraria were set partially by prior knowledge of similar games. But they were also set by Terraria screenshots, trailers and feature lists, where crafting was presented as one of the core features. Nowhere did they mention they are missing such a basic feature as a crafting list and I'd never suspect a modern game may be missing such a basic feature. So I don't really think it's unreasonable expectation on my part. A person who lived under the rock and found Terraria one day, probably wouldn't call it unplayable, having nothing to compare it against. I remember back in old days, where you'd have to figure out many cryptic mechanisms on your own in the old games. But yet here we are - decades later, and yes I do expect modern games would fully learn from mistakes of the past and provide such basic functionality as crafting lists in the game itself.
Arisaka1 2y ago
There's a category of games whose depth goes so hard that they assume engagement outside of the application, and then there's Mega Man games who were built under the assumption that the player will enjoy trial and error, and to attempt to push through making the wrong stage choice by learning how to dodge boss mechanics. I firmly believe that the internet normalized metagaming as a side-effect (guides, talk to friends online, etc.) and that in turn affected the way games designed, and that's a hill I'm willing to die on. The vast majority of games should never, ever be designed under the assumption that the player has access to Google, and by extend ease of access to stuff like "the most OP Gundam parts", "most OP weapon for Elden Ring", etc.
- haunter 2y ago
  >The vast majority of games should never, ever be designed under the assumption that the player has access to Google Yet in the 90s/2000s we had games coming with full manual books with all the info printed, an offline wiki. Like HOMM2 my all time favorite http://homm2.free.fr/dl/pdf/Heroes%20of%20Might%20and%20Magic%20II%20-%20Gold.pdf http://homm2.free.fr/dl/pdf/Heroes%20of%20Might%20and%20Magi...
  - b112 2y ago
    I think that all this really depends upon the game. Some are indeed designed to be more complex, yet in a good way. And there is a bit of a difference between a printed manual, and a wiki. I find that wikis often have solutions you're supposed to hunt for, where as a printed manual may tell a "story" of the land, and just give more generic "how to play" hints. In this context, I am very much mystified by "I played through game Y in 2.5 hours!". Uh, what?! I just paid for this game, and my goal isn't to run directly to some arbitrary finish line. I want to see things. Explore things. Learn the story that is presented around me. And I'm not referring to side-quests, although those are fun too. I mean, I've been in some games where there is just "stuff" in the world around me, and you can explore and find random info. I'm referencing games such as "The Last of Us" re: PS3/2013 version, where you could look at newspaper boxes and make out headlines, something that didn't make it with the same legibility into the PS4 remake. (Newspapers were still to be found in the PS4 remake, but a lot of places where there were papers in newsboxes had legible headlines in the PS3 version, and just blurred stuff in the PS4 version). To run a max speed through a game with all sorts of side-info, is like watching a plot laden movie at 5x on mute. What a waste of money, and joy. Another example is Horizon Zero Dawn, where there were all sorts of interesting recordings to be found, and just random info to be gleamed about "what happened", regardless of other main/sub plot info. Again, to fast forward "yay I did this in 2 hours!" is madness in the extreme to me. My point in the above is, that any sort of wiki requirement for these games is a solid ruin. What a way to reduce fun, if everything about the game, and things such as "how this world came about" is just laid out in a wiki. Yet at the same time, I don't want all puzzles to be so easily solvable. I don't want my hand held. Imagine playing God of War, with all puzzles solvable in 1 second. Why even bother? I wonder, there is often talk of great 'apathy' today in youth. Games are a part of youth. An example is 'hide and go seek', which in the real world teaches one how to be sneaky, how to think as another trying to hunt you, how to be clever, and just how to play with others. This game is teaching you to hunt, and to escape when being hunted! Video games of my youth taught me puzzles, were difficult, required fast reflexes, and by no means did I think better gear was the answer to issues I was having. Now games are often one dimensional. People look for the solve online before even playing. People have issues and 1 minute later are looking for a work around. When I was a kid, maybe I could find help by phoning a friend, but talk about embarrassing! Yet with puzzles comes satisfaction when there is a solve. And with easy answers, comes an empty feeling. So back to the wiki or not, I really think there should be no wikis, because the potential for lost joy is massive.
thih9 2y ago
Agreed. In my case I enjoyed Vampire Survivors on iOS and my way of playing was 75% figuring out things on my own and 25% using the wiki. The wiki-friendly community was a big plus to me, it let me adjust my gaming experience to what I felt comfortable. Without that it's likely that I would consider the game too difficult and I'd stop playing. As it is now, I completed the game and I recommend it to others (available on other platforms and Apple Arcade too).
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Yeah I think VS is a good example. I did a similar thing - just discovering some things, and having the wiki as a reference for others.
tetha 2y ago
In my personal experience, it strongly depends on both the genre, and also if it is the first playthrough. For example, for a point & click adventure, external knowledge can destroy the immersion and overall spell of the game very quickly. I just get yanked out of the atmosphere and the puzzle solving mode and then the spell tends to be gone. One of the reason why one of my barely moving side projects would be a minimal spoiler hint system for games like these. On the other hand, games like DF, Technical Minecraft, more complex modded minecraft and such live and honestly thrive with the community, tooling and the wiki around. And it is no drawback - it makes it more fun and interesting. There are just so many mechanics in DF or in Gregtech to keep up with. And then there are more middle-ground-ish games, like Terraria, Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon. Entirely playable and winnable without external information, but in a second run or after a certain amount of time, adding in external information can open your eyes to new levels of hilarity you never knew existed, or guide you towards the obscure niches of completion.
- jajko 2y ago
  I am currently playing the masterpiece Baldur's gate 3. You can totally do it without any prior knowledge, not looking at tips or how to solve some quests. But - you can easily mess up things for good in the story, sometimes its not clear in dialogs how big consequences may be, sometimes decisions from far past affect matters and story will go in directions you don't want. Its absolutely massive game in terms of decision trees and consequences. And without any prior knowledge one will miss many if not most not-in-your-sight mechanics and connections. The creativity with ie various fighting approaches you can find in reddit is mind-boggling. Seeing some characters die because you missed something is pretty common too and it pisses me off. Some people love playing it 3x through, or even more, getting better, playing with 1 character only. I have family, work, tons of passions so this is just a small time effort for me, I will never spend enough time to get really good at 3rd playthrough, I just grew up from such gaming and found more interesting stuff in our very short lives, to not end up later with deep regrets. Larian studios were smart enough to offer very generous saving system (heck you can save even mid fights, generally unheard of) and overall there is a lot of confidence their gameplay is very robust regardless how casual / hardcore gamer are you. And it works, dammit it works so well, no matter the approach. This is mechanics I can totally respect. In contrary, when authors force me to play only how they want and punish or block you for everything else, it shows me how shallow and unbalanced gameplay is, how little they trust it. Not everybody can do games like Larian, but sure as hell I wish they could.
xaitv 2y ago
I feel like one of the most "extreme" examples here can be Path of Exile. Complexity there is high enough(I can't really think of a more complex game from the top of my head) that planning out how you're going to play(making a build) using external tools can be a whole game in itself. Some people really like to go in depth on mechanics, look up every little mechanic on the wiki and optimize their build. Other people just copy what someone else did and mostly just play the actual game. Both are totally valid ways to play as long as you're having fun. If I think about how the devs could've designed their game so these tools aren't needed I feel like that'd be nearly impossible without a massive time investment to bring basically those exact tools ingame. The easier path would be to reduce complexity which would make the game appeal less to players who play precisely because they like the complexity. So an external wiki and external tools seems like the right solution here to me.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
really depends on the game. I don't think I should need to resort to a wiki/guide to find some random missable in an RPG because I didn't talk to this exact random NPC in this very narrow time slice, as an example. >I enjoy partly because of the active community I wouldn't conflate community with guides. Community are people sharing expriments, tricks, and optimizations within each other. guides is some lurker googling a speciic issue, finding that info, and going their merry way. I interpret the author aiming to address B. Because you can't control A no matter how good your game is. Sometimes the community of this cult classic RPG community is mostly 2-3 people digging deep and 10 other people clapping in awe.

fragmede 2y ago

Blame the dev all you want, something is lost by players cheating and just looking up the answer online.

codetrotter 2y ago
I’ve done both. I cheated my way through a single player game following a walkthrough all the way from start to finish. Only at the end did I realize that this took away a lot of the fun from the game. But I’ve also used a wiki to find crafting recipes for Minecraft back when I started playing. Looking up crafting recipes helped me find out what things I could craft. And it didn’t remove any of the joy I got out of playing Minecraft at all. And then there are other cases where I’ve looked at walkthroughs again but learning from my mistake I make a point of only looking when I’m really really stuck, and to only read as little as possible to get unstuck. So my opinion is yes it’s perfectly possible to ruin a good game for yourself by looking up info online. But if you learn from doing that to yourself you’ll probably learn to only use it when you really need it. And then the game remains fun to play.
seanhunter 2y ago
How is that cheating in a single-player game? What does cheating even mean in a single-player game. Seriously. The only rule in a single player game is you should do whatever seems like it would be fun for you[1]. For some people the fun comes in working things out, for others the fun comes from "making progress" (whatever that means in the game). For me personally it depends very much on the situation. It's not generally fun if you're just stuck banging your head against a wall so I totally get people looking up answers to things to get unstuck. From my perspective that's really fine. There have certainly been games (Subnautica is the most obvious example for me personally) where the sense of wonder and exploration was really a huge part of the experience for me so I didn't want to search external sources and spoiler it - I wanted to experience it all for myself, but even there if someone just wanted to have a map and know everything that was going to happen I would say that's fine let them do whatever they want to do. The dev should be focussing 100% on making the game fun. That's it. Focussing on preventing your players from doing something they want to do seems like a step back to the days where games had a single way to move forward and you had to do things exactly that way. That's definitely not a good way to design a fun game. [1] Multiplayer games are more complex of course because your actions affect other people so there is for sure cheating and other types of behaviour that I would personally consider unethical.

kruczek 2y ago

> I would be really amazed if this person makes a good game when their focus is make players do A rather than B instead of "how do I make this game as much fun to play as possible". Would you consider Terraria a good game? I think at one point it was the highest rated game on Steam. And yet that game is exactly this way - it makes players do A rather than B: it is pretty much impossible to play it WITHOUT the wiki, because of the design: there is no list of all craftable items in-game. And because of this I could never really get into it, because I had to tediosly collect all my resources and then go to each crafting station one by one, simply to see what I am able to craft.

notTooFarGone 2y ago
You entirely base your opinion about what you know the game CAN LOOK LIKE. If you don't have an expectation of Terraria, you don't know the depth and therefore play the game as it is. The only thing that is harming your fun is knowing how it could be by watching videos, streams whatever. Saying "it is impossible to play without a wiki" is entirely self inflicted by wrong expectation management. Of course people want shortcuts but a person without internet access wouldn't call Terraria unplayable without a wiki.
- kruczek 2y ago
  You are partially correct - of course my expectations for Terraria were set partially by prior knowledge of similar games. But they were also set by Terraria screenshots, trailers and feature lists, where crafting was presented as one of the core features. Nowhere did they mention they are missing such a basic feature as a crafting list and I'd never suspect a modern game may be missing such a basic feature. So I don't really think it's unreasonable expectation on my part. A person who lived under the rock and found Terraria one day, probably wouldn't call it unplayable, having nothing to compare it against. I remember back in old days, where you'd have to figure out many cryptic mechanisms on your own in the old games. But yet here we are - decades later, and yes I do expect modern games would fully learn from mistakes of the past and provide such basic functionality as crafting lists in the game itself.

Arisaka1 2y ago

There's a category of games whose depth goes so hard that they assume engagement outside of the application, and then there's Mega Man games who were built under the assumption that the player will enjoy trial and error, and to attempt to push through making the wrong stage choice by learning how to dodge boss mechanics. I firmly believe that the internet normalized metagaming as a side-effect (guides, talk to friends online, etc.) and that in turn affected the way games designed, and that's a hill I'm willing to die on. The vast majority of games should never, ever be designed under the assumption that the player has access to Google, and by extend ease of access to stuff like "the most OP Gundam parts", "most OP weapon for Elden Ring", etc.

haunter 2y ago
>The vast majority of games should never, ever be designed under the assumption that the player has access to Google Yet in the 90s/2000s we had games coming with full manual books with all the info printed, an offline wiki. Like HOMM2 my all time favorite http://homm2.free.fr/dl/pdf/Heroes%20of%20Might%20and%20Magic%20II%20-%20Gold.pdf http://homm2.free.fr/dl/pdf/Heroes%20of%20Might%20and%20Magi...
- b112 2y ago
  I think that all this really depends upon the game. Some are indeed designed to be more complex, yet in a good way. And there is a bit of a difference between a printed manual, and a wiki. I find that wikis often have solutions you're supposed to hunt for, where as a printed manual may tell a "story" of the land, and just give more generic "how to play" hints. In this context, I am very much mystified by "I played through game Y in 2.5 hours!". Uh, what?! I just paid for this game, and my goal isn't to run directly to some arbitrary finish line. I want to see things. Explore things. Learn the story that is presented around me. And I'm not referring to side-quests, although those are fun too. I mean, I've been in some games where there is just "stuff" in the world around me, and you can explore and find random info. I'm referencing games such as "The Last of Us" re: PS3/2013 version, where you could look at newspaper boxes and make out headlines, something that didn't make it with the same legibility into the PS4 remake. (Newspapers were still to be found in the PS4 remake, but a lot of places where there were papers in newsboxes had legible headlines in the PS3 version, and just blurred stuff in the PS4 version). To run a max speed through a game with all sorts of side-info, is like watching a plot laden movie at 5x on mute. What a waste of money, and joy. Another example is Horizon Zero Dawn, where there were all sorts of interesting recordings to be found, and just random info to be gleamed about "what happened", regardless of other main/sub plot info. Again, to fast forward "yay I did this in 2 hours!" is madness in the extreme to me. My point in the above is, that any sort of wiki requirement for these games is a solid ruin. What a way to reduce fun, if everything about the game, and things such as "how this world came about" is just laid out in a wiki. Yet at the same time, I don't want all puzzles to be so easily solvable. I don't want my hand held. Imagine playing God of War, with all puzzles solvable in 1 second. Why even bother? I wonder, there is often talk of great 'apathy' today in youth. Games are a part of youth. An example is 'hide and go seek', which in the real world teaches one how to be sneaky, how to think as another trying to hunt you, how to be clever, and just how to play with others. This game is teaching you to hunt, and to escape when being hunted! Video games of my youth taught me puzzles, were difficult, required fast reflexes, and by no means did I think better gear was the answer to issues I was having. Now games are often one dimensional. People look for the solve online before even playing. People have issues and 1 minute later are looking for a work around. When I was a kid, maybe I could find help by phoning a friend, but talk about embarrassing! Yet with puzzles comes satisfaction when there is a solve. And with easy answers, comes an empty feeling. So back to the wiki or not, I really think there should be no wikis, because the potential for lost joy is massive.

thih9 2y ago

Agreed. In my case I enjoyed Vampire Survivors on iOS and my way of playing was 75% figuring out things on my own and 25% using the wiki. The wiki-friendly community was a big plus to me, it let me adjust my gaming experience to what I felt comfortable. Without that it's likely that I would consider the game too difficult and I'd stop playing. As it is now, I completed the game and I recommend it to others (available on other platforms and Apple Arcade too).

robertlagrant 2y ago
Yeah I think VS is a good example. I did a similar thing - just discovering some things, and having the wiki as a reference for others.

tetha 2y ago

In my personal experience, it strongly depends on both the genre, and also if it is the first playthrough. For example, for a point & click adventure, external knowledge can destroy the immersion and overall spell of the game very quickly. I just get yanked out of the atmosphere and the puzzle solving mode and then the spell tends to be gone. One of the reason why one of my barely moving side projects would be a minimal spoiler hint system for games like these. On the other hand, games like DF, Technical Minecraft, more complex modded minecraft and such live and honestly thrive with the community, tooling and the wiki around. And it is no drawback - it makes it more fun and interesting. There are just so many mechanics in DF or in Gregtech to keep up with. And then there are more middle-ground-ish games, like Terraria, Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon. Entirely playable and winnable without external information, but in a second run or after a certain amount of time, adding in external information can open your eyes to new levels of hilarity you never knew existed, or guide you towards the obscure niches of completion.

jajko 2y ago
I am currently playing the masterpiece Baldur's gate 3. You can totally do it without any prior knowledge, not looking at tips or how to solve some quests. But - you can easily mess up things for good in the story, sometimes its not clear in dialogs how big consequences may be, sometimes decisions from far past affect matters and story will go in directions you don't want. Its absolutely massive game in terms of decision trees and consequences. And without any prior knowledge one will miss many if not most not-in-your-sight mechanics and connections. The creativity with ie various fighting approaches you can find in reddit is mind-boggling. Seeing some characters die because you missed something is pretty common too and it pisses me off. Some people love playing it 3x through, or even more, getting better, playing with 1 character only. I have family, work, tons of passions so this is just a small time effort for me, I will never spend enough time to get really good at 3rd playthrough, I just grew up from such gaming and found more interesting stuff in our very short lives, to not end up later with deep regrets. Larian studios were smart enough to offer very generous saving system (heck you can save even mid fights, generally unheard of) and overall there is a lot of confidence their gameplay is very robust regardless how casual / hardcore gamer are you. And it works, dammit it works so well, no matter the approach. This is mechanics I can totally respect. In contrary, when authors force me to play only how they want and punish or block you for everything else, it shows me how shallow and unbalanced gameplay is, how little they trust it. Not everybody can do games like Larian, but sure as hell I wish they could.

xaitv 2y ago

I feel like one of the most "extreme" examples here can be Path of Exile. Complexity there is high enough(I can't really think of a more complex game from the top of my head) that planning out how you're going to play(making a build) using external tools can be a whole game in itself. Some people really like to go in depth on mechanics, look up every little mechanic on the wiki and optimize their build. Other people just copy what someone else did and mostly just play the actual game. Both are totally valid ways to play as long as you're having fun. If I think about how the devs could've designed their game so these tools aren't needed I feel like that'd be nearly impossible without a massive time investment to bring basically those exact tools ingame. The easier path would be to reduce complexity which would make the game appeal less to players who play precisely because they like the complexity. So an external wiki and external tools seems like the right solution here to me.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

really depends on the game. I don't think I should need to resort to a wiki/guide to find some random missable in an RPG because I didn't talk to this exact random NPC in this very narrow time slice, as an example. >I enjoy partly because of the active community I wouldn't conflate community with guides. Community are people sharing expriments, tricks, and optimizations within each other. guides is some lurker googling a speciic issue, finding that info, and going their merry way. I interpret the author aiming to address B. Because you can't control A no matter how good your game is. Sometimes the community of this cult classic RPG community is mostly 2-3 people digging deep and 10 other people clapping in awe.