Games you hate, yet everyone else cherishes.

[Tai_MT]

"Playing as a team" is one thing.  But cutting you off from content because you don't have a team is rather malicious and somewhat silly in terms of design.  If it was "run the raid/dungeon a couple times and you've got the gear", it would be one thing.  But, when you're doing it hundreds of times to get a single piece of gear you want, it's not a good design decision.  My personal opinion on having to group up with people doesn't really apply to whether or not it's a good idea (some MMOs actually do not cut you off from content if you don't team up, or they let you get your gear after only 10 or so runs so you're not wasting a large chunk of your time on grind.  This means you would be playing because you enjoy the game, not because you have to grind for a piece of gear).

Here's what I mean about "poorly designed".  The point of an MMO is to keep people playing it for as long as possible while also raking in money in other ways (hence why most have memberships or cash shops or advertisements).  That's it, that's all it's supposed to do.  Bring in lots of players, keep them playing as long as possible.  In that way, it's like television or radio.  The longer you stay, the more likely you are to spend money or earn money for the company with the game.  So, you fill the game with content.  That content has to be largely based upon actual proven human behavior in order to maximize profit.  As in: risk/reward ratios, frustration/fun ratios, content/time ratios, etcetera ad nauseum.  When something you design breaks what your game is meant to be accomplishing it is poorly designed.  If an MMO requires you to spend 3000 hours of playtime to get to Level 2, you know it's not "broken", but "poorly designed".  Such a design implementation would basically mean the dev team had no idea what they were doing or they didn't care.

The worst thing MMO developers forget is the "time spent to reward earned" ratios.  A player doesn't like to spend a lot of time doing something for zero reward or a really bad reward.  It's bad design and poor design decisions that lead to these kinds of problems in an MMO.  When you approach the design of an MMO, you must always consider "is this content worth the time investment required to get to it?".  If the answer is "no" or even "maybe", it needs to be redone.  Likewise, if a series of events is too frustrating to really deal with for a good chunk of players, it's also poorly designed.  While it may be important to have some things behind "walls" to make sure endgame places or equipment remains valuable (which means your staff can take a break and you don't have to pay them for new content for a long time), it is also important to make what you are putting behind the "walls" worth the time and frustration.  Most MMOs do something silly with their design and think "the more grind there is, the less chance anyone will run out of content and quit playing!".  While, this may be true to an extent (it certainly plays to OCD crowds well), it doesn't do much for people who have jobs, social lives, significant others, and other games to play.  These crowds wont' spend much cash on your game because it's too time consuming to get basic or midlevel stuff.  Likewise, they might also decide the endgame content isn't worth the time sink either and quit playing long before hitting the "end of content" barrier.  Usually, this is why such things as "auction houses" and "global trade systems" exist.  They give those casual players without much disposable time a chance to get the endgame content without the massive time sink.

Here's why I say FF11 is a poorly designed game:  25+ hours to get a single character to level 10 and there isn't a whole lot for that character to do when they start out except grind on the first three monsters of the game.  If the game was DESIGNED that way, then it's even worse than if it was an ACCIDENT.  If it took less time to get to level 10 and the time investment became much more as you gained level while also improving the payoff for a level up, it would keep the interest of most players far longer.  In most MMOs, the time it takes to obtain level 10 is somewhere in the 3-5 hour range.  Depending on how scaling works in the MMO, later levels can be much faster or much slower.  I've played games where getting from 10 to 20 took upwards of 25 additional hours on top of the 5 hours I just spent.  Likewise, I've also played games where it took no more than another 10 hours on top of those initial 3 to get to 20.  The point is you don't want significant time investment for minimal payoff.  To do that is poor design.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

MMO's are just either: Spend LOTS of time, or SPEND LOTS OF MONEY... period...


that FF11 comment is still subjective to your own opinions...


there are players like you who want to have significant benefit versus time allotted...


and there are players that actually like it more if the game took more time for them because maybe it makes them feel more rewarded...


So for you it was poorly designed, for others it is not... see how it's subjective? you judge it based on what you think is good/bad... that is subjectivity my friend...


In my experience... for MMO's that have a fast level scale, getting top level is quite a normal and expected thing... for MMO's that have a slow level scale, getting to top level becomes a great achievement...


and no one can really argue if it's bad or good, since it's subjective... which is why I never said you were wrong in saying that it was poorly designed because it's level scaling for example is quite slow...


What I was pointing out is simply that you kind of don't seem to want to accept that it was a subjective thing...

 

[Galenmereth]

"Playing as a team" is one thing.  But cutting you off from content because you don't have a team is rather malicious and somewhat silly in terms of design. 

No, because that's why it's an MMO. The whole game is built around playing with others, and while it could be possible to create all content solo-able, it's not feasible in most MMO's because the core design principle is that it's a Massively Multiplayer Online game. It would be bad design in a singleplayer game with an online component, but that's not the kind of game it is. It even says so on the box of these games.

If an MMO requires you to spend 3000 hours of playtime to get to Level 2, you know it's not "broken", but "poorly designed".  Such a design implementation would basically mean the dev team had no idea what they were doing or they didn't care.

Not if those 3000 hours were enjoyable for people. Barring hypnosis, nobody forces a player to play a game. If people play it and enjoy it, then it's not bad design just because you don't enjoy it.

The worst thing MMO developers forget is the "time spent to reward earned" ratios.  A player doesn't like to spend a lot of time doing something for zero reward or a really bad reward.  It's bad design and poor design decisions that lead to these kinds of problems in an MMO.

Correction: You don't like to spend a lot of time doing something for zero reward or a subjectively bad reward. It's not bad design. Some people will farm hundreds of hours to get a specific super rare mount in WoW that is a reskin of another mount. It does nothing new, all it has is a different texture and perhaps a sparkly effect. Is it bad design? No, because some people find that to be a good use of their time. Do I enjoy it? Hell no. But it's not bad design; it's actually excellent design because it keeps a player hooked for insane amounts of time for a virtual item, because of rarity.

The point is you don't want significant time investment for minimal payoff.  To do that is poor design.

The payoff is subjective. I levelled to level 25 in FF11 before I got bored; up until that point I absolutely LOVED my time in it, even the grind. I played with a group of random people and it was so much fun chain-grinding mobs. The most fun I've had in any MMO ever. I can't really explain why, but it was truly fun and a completely new team experience for me. It took me 400 hours to get bored of that game. You may hate it, and it definitely had a TON of issues (the interface was a huge problem), but it was not a badly designed game. In fact, it was one of the better MMO's out there, and still is, and its longevity proves that without a doubt it is not a badly designed game. It's just not your kind of MMO, and that is fine.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

The only problem here I believe is that you try to say that it is poorly designed in a general way ("that people think like that too"), rather than accepting the fact that it was indeed your own subjective idea... and after all, this thread is for GAMES YOU HATE... you hate it, we know it, and we won't contest it, just don't generalize your judging thinking that others think like that too...


like here:

The point is you don't want significant time investment for minimal payoff. To do that is poor design.

It should have been like

The point is I don't want significant time investment for minimal payoff. To do that is poor design for me.

I played quite a lot of MMOs... both fast level and slow level ones... but up until now I enjoyed Ragnarok the most, which leveling to the upper levels take days, really... it just feels so rewarding for me when you finally get to the max level...

 

[Tai_MT]

-_-" It amazes me constantly how people think psychological facts about the human brain and behavior are "subjective opinions".

While yes, there are "exceptions to every rule", a poorly designed game only caters to the few rare exceptions and not the vast majority of the populace.  Fact.  There are people out there who can have fun banging their head against a wall.  Doesn't mean a vast majority of people enjoy the experience, or even that the experience is a good one.  It just means some individuals enjoy it for whatever reason while others understandably do not and would never enjoy it.  The beauty of the human condition is that while there are "generalized standards" for human behavior, tolerances, etcetera...  There are exceptions that can be less than the standard or more than the standard.  Because of this aspect of biology, evolution, and human behavior we have things like artists and athletes.  It is through this that we can have saints and psychopaths.

The argument we're currently having isn't "is the game fun?".  You two seem to be equating "fun" with "well designed".  Just because you're having fun with a game, does not mean it's well designed.  All it means is that you're having fun with a game.  If that's your thing and you can look past or even ignore the design flaws, then have fun, go nuts, enjoy.  It seems silly to me that we can have a topic about "games we hate" and yet people in the topic will not admit that games can EVER be "designed poorly".  Oh no, no such thing as "poor design" only such a thing as "you aren't having fun" and so it's subjective personal opinion.  Heaven forbid someone should have to think a game they enjoy may be actually poorly designed.  That somehow puts down the person who likes the bad game!  The worst thing that can ever happen is for us to not realize we are playing poorly designed games and thus settle for lower standards in gaming.  So, how do you like all those really terrible movies these days?  Enjoying the endless sequels, remakes, and adaptations?  I sure don't.  I'd like some higher standards in my movies.  Unfortunately, someone decided to convince the world that "subpar movie quality is okay as long as you're having fun".  So, we jumped down the slope and here we are and endless sequels, remakes, and adaptations.  So, gone are the classic horror movies, the interesting plots of detective movies, the clear motivations of villains in action movies.  Gone are the movies that used to be classics because of how clever they are.  There's no way a "The Breakfast Club" would ever be made in today's Hollywood.  There's no way a "Citizen Kane" would ever be made either.  I wouldn't like to see this same thing happen to video games.

But, if you'd like to go back to my actual opinion on Final Fantasy 11, we can do that too:  I did not enjoy my time with the game because it held no interesting or unique features worth sticking around for and much of the content that is fairly basic in every other MMO ever created was locked behind massive time sink walls or poorly designed sections of the game.

My reflection of whether or not a game is "fun" has zero to do with whether or not it is "designed well" or not.  I play Runescape.  It's freakin' grindtastic and boring to no end.  Most of it is designed so poorly that it's fairly annoying to play.  But, I still manage to have fun with the game in grinding out skills, doing quests, and exploring the world.  I ignore or avoid the parts that really annoy me (or are really designed poorly... like combat) and go about my way to have fun.  Runescape, designed by absolute idiots, but I still enjoy the game.

It just so happens you think my dislike of Final Fantasy 11 has something to do with my "poorly designed" comments.  The two are separate issues entirely.  The fact that the only arguments I've received in favor of "designed well" is "well, some people enjoy that kind of thing" is kind of an indicator that there really are no arguments to indicate it HAS good design.  So, the argument has turned into thus:  "Final Fantasy 11 is poorly designed because of x, y, and z.", "That's just your opinion, some people have fun with it!".  Seriously, it's kind of baffling.  No responses as to how those things could be wrong.  No examples as to how they could be wrong.  Just "that's your opinion" and I'm expected to just back down because you've decided to suddenly declare something I've said as "my opinion".  People these days really don't know what the word "opinion" actually means and it's kind of frustrating.  Opinion stems from personal biases and not from examples or proof.  Opinions are things that cannot be proven.

EDIT:  You know what?  Let's just leave it at you think I'm being stupid and trying to pass off my opinion as fact, and I think you guys are being silly in trying to pass off facts as opinions.  These posts have dragged the topic really far off its original intention and really aren't serving any sort of actual purpose anymore.  If you guys would like to continue the discussion, we could take it to a private message of some sort.  Otherwise, I think we should just let it die and declare ourselves the winners in order to move on.

 

[Dark Phoenix]

That is to say, they are people who didn't discover much better MMOs,

A polished turd is still a turd.  MMO's tend to be terrible in practice; I for one intentionally avoid them.

 

[Tai_MT]

Yeah, most MMOs do tend to suck in my opinion as well.  They just usually aren't my thing either.  Though, I do still dabble in a few here and there and enjoy my experiences with the ones I do play.  They could definitely use some work in most instances though.

 

[kerbonklin]

I definitely agree with Tai here. I still play Grand Chase, a terribly designed MMO with a very unbalanced PvP system that also has many design flaws. But I still have a blast PvPing for hours on end. (at least on a competitive level, playing casual is not fun for me, full of nubs that depend on equipments to win their matches instead of real skill)

 

[Berylstone]

Well I tend to side with Galen and Adik on this.  Though Tai makes a lot of great points and his opinions make perfect sense.

But the simple truth is - unless it's a mechanical flaw like a a bug that prevents intended game play or something along those lines - what constitutes good design vs bad design is very subjective and rooted in personal preference.  

But I have no desire to stir this pot again.  I just felt like I had a moral responsibility to chime in here since it was my post they were defending so I would consider it bad form not to lend my support

 

[Darkanine]

Correction: You don't like to spend a lot of time doing something for zero reward or a subjectively bad reward. It's not bad design. Some people will farm hundreds of hours to get a specific super rare mount in WoW that is a reskin of another mount. It does nothing new, all it has is a different texture and perhaps a sparkly effect. Is it bad design? No, because some people find that to be a good use of their time. Do I enjoy it? Hell no. But it's not bad design; it's actually excellent design because it keeps a player hooked for insane amounts of time for a virtual item, because of rarity.

I can relate to that.In Team Fortress 2,theirs a rare item called the "Three Rune Blade",its just a reskin of a common (and pretty bad) weapon called "The Boston Basher",but cause its the only sword for The Scout,it has a bit of a awesome edge to it,the item isn't gonna be worth it,but I'm still grinding up to get a chance of getting it.Weapons and Hats can also be "Unusual' which does nothing but add a particle effect,but extremely rare and expensive.

I enjoy good MMOs,but the only one I really put effort into was Grand Fantasia Online and Dreamworld,Dreamworld being pretty bad but a nice relaxing time sink,and I only liked GFO cause several of my good friends loved the game to death,only MMO I got a fun raid in.

 

[Galenmereth]

This discussion actually reminds me about a topic that arose when I studied graphic design; we were studying nazi propaganda posters, and typography and layout. There were quite a few people in the class who couldn't accept that these posters were well designed due to their own feelings about the context and nazi history. However, from a designer perspective, the posters on hand were meticulously typeset, used grids to amazing results and overall were just really well designed. The message was offensive, but execution was great.

Good design can sell an eskimo ice. It's not ethical, but it is good design when it performs its purpose well.

 

[Tai_MT]

@Galenmereth

Now that would've been an interesting course to take in school.  I think I would have gone to college if they had offered such things at the schools that were offering me scholarships.  Did you guys also study how Communism was marketed (propagandized) in Soviet Russia?  It's amazing what "great design" and "good marketing" can do, and how it actually affects people.

Good Design:  Vast majority of people play your game and enjoy it with little or no complaint.

Poor Design:  Vast majority of people play your game for a little while, then leave and never return while also having lots of complaints.

The point of a game is to draw in as wide of an audience as possible to get people to play it (or to spend money on it).  If it fails to do draw in a very significant portion of the populace, it's usually because it's "designed poorly".  Poor design usually stems from "why do the players not like the game" and "why do they play it so little?".  It's fairly basic.  I was honestly getting frustrated trying to explain that to people and having them throw it back in my face and say "that's your opinion!" just because they were equating "fun" with "good design".  If lots of people have fun with it, then it's designed well.  If lots don't, then it's designed poorly.

 

[kerbonklin]

Good design can sell an eskimo ice. It's not ethical, but it is good design when it performs its purpose well.

That's racist. =x

(Seriously, in case you didn't know, it's considered a racial slur now, lololol)

 

[Galenmereth]

I'm pretty sure my monitor is starting to become racist with its white to black pixel ratio these days...

 

[Touchfuzzy]

Mass appeal does not necessarily map 1:1 with good design.

There are plenty of things in life that were designed for a niche that are designed superbly for that niche. Just because its a niche market doesn't mean that all things that fit that niche are badly designed.

 

[Galenmereth]

That's what I've been trying to say with my walls of text Design is relative to what you set out to achieve, and it's not something you can judge out of context. Context is everything when it comes to design, whether that be graphics, audio or interaction. You cannot judge it like an objective checklist of features.

 

[Tai_MT]

Even if you design it for a "niche", you're still aiming to get as many people from that niche as possible.  The problem I'm seeing is that you guys are thinking I mean only "the more money you make, the more well-designed it is".  While, yes, there is some context there as for what you might want to achieve, you're also somewhat setting your bar low if all you want is to cater to a single niche.  Plus, even if you're not trying to earn money (you're trying to get recognition or send a message or just give enjoyment to players), you need a wide audience base for that as well.  Why?  Well, if your game is designed exactly the way you want it and only 4 people ever play it, your recognition, your message, your goal of giving enjoyment is lost.

Presentation matters.  That's what Design is.  Without good design, your game may as well not exist because it certainly isn't going to be doing anything you ever intended it to do.  You can write all the books in the world containing all the wisdom of the world, but if your message is worded so poorly and your book is designed so counter-intuitively, nobody will ever read those books and nobody will ever know what you want to tell them.

Without an audience (even an sizable one), everything we do here is purely academic.

 

[Galenmereth]

You're oversimplifying this. Again, context is everything. If you make a magazine for readers 50+, that's your target audience. You will have to use font sizes that are far larger than younger readers prefer; you'd need to use color schemes that speak to 50+ people - and the generations they hail from - which would probably not be enjoyed by younger readers either. Photos need to be presented differently, contrast needs to be adjusted a lot. Not to mention that layout needs to be more "boring", because older people have trouble focusing when pages are full of excerpts and highlights. You would design a magazine that would be disliked by most people younger than your target audience, but if it works really well for the intended audience, then the design is good.

If I design a game that I like to play, that I enjoy a lot, and it turns out only ten other people in the world enjoy it too, it's not necessarily a badly designed came. It can be, but it's not a given. The size of the audience is only relevant in terms of intended audience.

 

[Tai_MT]

Again, you're kind of making my point for me.  You're aiming at a specific demographic.  Companies do this all the time.  They can see revenue streams with specific demographics, so they target those for maximum effect.

Here's the real issue though:

You're talking about targeting a specific smaller demographic that is already within a larger demographic.  We make RPG games, right?  Or games in general, right?  So, we're already trying to cater to the "Gaming" demographic.  Then you have the stories or systems within your game that you want to use, which will obviously determine age groups (another demographic) that will play your games.  Then, there's also trying to cater to other demographics (some games do this in the form of genders, sexual orientations, race, or even religion) within those age groups.

So, with your demographics already decided on, you're saying that simply making the experience enjoyable for that small audience is enough.  Okay, fine.  Some people out there like to set a bar fairly low.  Some authors do that ("If I can just get one person to purchase and read my book, I will be happy!") as well, before they figure out that wider audiences mean more money, more recognition for work, and greater challenges.  A small audience by itself doesn't always mean "poor design", true.  However, a small audience does often mean "mediocre design" at the very least because if it was designed fantastically, word of mouth would be helping you reach larger audiences.

What happens when you, as a player, find a game you really enjoy playing and think is designed in an interesting way?  You try to get your friends to play it too.  You talk to others about it and try to convince them to give the game a chance.  If you play a game and it has little impact on you (usually because it's designed so poorly that it's fairly bland and uninteresting), you really won't make much mention of it to anyone else.  This is marketing and human nature at work.  People naturally want to share their positive experiences with everyone they know and care about.  If something is also a significantly bad experience, we want to tell those same people to avoid it.

A "well designed" game doesn't stick with an audience of 4 players for very long, even without a dedicated marketing division.  That number will grow, and quite rapidly.

Now, does that mean that "popularity" of a game determines if it's "well designed"?  Well, yes and no.  Let's take a look at WoW for a second here.  About the only thing in it that's well designed is the combat system.  It's quests are a boring jumbled mess, it's hotbar interface almost doesn't need to exist, the crafting professions don't really serve much point, and the "two warring factions" doesn't serve a whole lot of purpose either.  But, it's still wildly popular.  It's popular because what it does well, it does extremely well.  It does those things enough that an audience continues to come back and pay the fees month after month.  It also helps that it's the most well-known (advertised! marketed!) MMO on the market and most other MMOs have become rather subpar in general.  A game doesn't really have to be "really great" if all it does is fill the void in a genre where the competition is worse than your already poorly designed game.

So, what have we determined?  Popularity =/= Well Designed/Poorly Designed.  "Niches" that are catered to with well designed games will naturally and easily move above 4 or fewer players as people will spread word about their experience to friends/family.  Targeted demographic makes all the difference in the level of popularity.

Well Designed/Poor Designed are a combination of your game doing what it has set out to do and accomplishing it.  That is, it achieves a level of "success" and even "spread" among general populace, as well as its systems all make sense, work well, and its gameplay is intuitive.  Poorly Designed games almost never gain really massive fame and popularity, but they also rarely work as intended.  Well Designed games tend to gain a lot of popularity and most of their systems work flawlessly as well as intended (with no unplanned side effects or drawbacks).

 

[Galenmereth]

[...] So, with your demographics already decided on, you're saying that simply making the experience enjoyable for that small audience is enough.  Okay, fine.  Some people out there like to set a bar fairly low.

Look, I agree with most of what you're saying here. But sentences like that generalizes a bit too much; if I design a game for a small audience, it isn't necessarily "setting the bar low", but rather that the bigger your target audience, the more people you need to please. And the more people you want to please with your game, the less it can deviate from norms. The less it can experiment with ideas and concepts. Sometimes you can hit the jackpot and make a game in a niche that turns out to pull in all sorts of people you didn't plan for. Like Minecraft or WoW. Minecraft started out as a continuation of another niche game (Space Miner I think it was) that got cancelled; Notch really enjoyed that game, and wanted to refine the concept so he could continue playing its multiplayer mode with people. His original goal wasn't to please anyone but his own curiosity and his own desire to play a game that fixed the bugs and flaws in a cancelled indie game. WoW's original goal was to make a good MMO set in the Warcraft universe. The game idea surfaced because many of Blizzard's designers were huge fans of EverQuest and played it a lot, and they wanted to see how they would do at making such a game. They designed it for people who enjoyed EverQuest, like themselves.

If you stretch yourself too thin when it comes to what you want to achieve, and who you want to please, you will most likely end up falling flat. Look at all the immitators that fell flat trying to copy WoW's success by trying to please that same enormous spread of demographics. Sure, most of these were of poor quality, but not all of them. Good design is about knowing your limitations, knowing what you want to make and for what purpose, and executing it well.

I'm designing my game first and foremost for myself – it's a game I'd like to play. Since it's an RPG without combat and stats, I'm excluding a huge demographic right there. And I don't care; I'll design it to the best of my ability to do what I set out to do. If it ends up as a well designed game or not is way too early to tell, but this is the same outset that a ton of popular games share. Pokémon was made as a simple RPG for the GameBoy because the company that made it (Gamefreak) were on the brink of bankruptcy. So they decided to give it one last shot, and make a simple and focused game that they wanted to play, because the team felt RPG's were growing too superficially complex. It ended up a success. Far more projects with similar stories probably failed; sadly you seldom hear about those. But I think it's still an important point to be made; don't worry about mass appeal, but rather make sure your game is focused on doing what it sets out to do well. Trim the fat, cut features, and polish it until it sparkles. And then trim some more.

If it's one thing video game history has taught me, it's that if you try to cater to everyone, you will end up pleasing noone.