An option I haven't seen mentioned here is 'level scaling' based on time or story progress.
A kind of 'Darkness starts to fall over the world, and things that were once trivial now become dangerous' vibe.
So the goblin that did 10 in chapter one, does 15 in chapter 2, 25 in chapter 3, and so on.
Maybe even with some visual clues, like the game becoming darker in look, the midday sun now only as bright as early morning.
So the player can gain power, but is also on a ticking clock to outrace the darkening of the world.
I've actually seen this mechanic!
Steam has a game called "Ancient Domains of Mystery". It does this. You're trying to fight the Chaos creeping into the world. If you don't complete the game in a set amount of days, the world gets more dangerous since more Chaos has crept into it. Some enemies just scale up a little bit, but most enemies are simply replaced with stronger ones.
I think that's why it ends up working in that game. Low Tier enemies are replaced with stronger ones, and since you never leave the "Area" of the world the game takes place in, it makes sense. It basically breathes new life into old areas or renders areas you've cleared difficult again. But, you can also "outscale" the replacement enemies as well.
That doesn't necessarily mean the game features enemy scaling. It could be a damage formula with minor stat multiplication (10% of your actual gains, taking those numbers as an example). Or if it's a new enemy, they might just have resistance to whatever you're doing. Now, when the same enemies are actually starting to require more hits to beat after levelling up, then yes, you could safely assume it does feature scaling.
Pretty good point. I'm going to have to disagree for a few reasons, however.
1. The few examples of systems scaling your damage like that, that I've run into, actually tended to be worse systems than simply scaling the enemies, since it rendered all stat gains pretty worthless until you'd dumped a ton of stat points into something, at which point you hit the "end of the climb" and snowball into extremely massive gains the dev didn't plan for. 10% of what your stat shows would be on the very extreme end of these and would be frighteningly restrictive for pretty much any RPG you play.
2. In the end, even if you scale the formula instead of the enemies, the effect is the same. It just becomes figuring out that the damage formula is where the scaling takes place instead of with some other widespread system at large. Which... depending on how it's done, may make getting around that scaling harder or easier. Formulas tend to be harder to get around as the typical way to manipulate those is usually just "bigger number go brrrr". Making your formula that way also makes trying to "balance" the rest of your game... tricky. Means enemy stats will have to go up less in order to prevent most fights from becoming "hit sponges" as the game goes on. But, you'd also have to account for every single level the player has and stat point they've accumulated, so that the formula itself isn't exploited to such a degree that it breaks a lot of mid to late game encounters.
3. If the enemy has resistence to what you're doing as a player, that's also typically easy to check for. If hitting "Attack" doesn't do much more damage, do any of my skills do more damage than they were doing? If yes, probably no scaling going on. If no, it's more evidence for the pile. Most RPG's allow you a comfortable amount of "growth" in your damage numbers as you fight new monsters so that such monsters can be given more stats and gimmicks so that they last longer. Or, even, just on general principle of letting the player feel their gains and have a sense of progression. Those numbers not going up by very much is typically an indication of some sort of "scaling" going on.
10 minutes of grind nets you what... 2-3 levels in an average RPG? (Depending on how far in you are and how well EXP can be grinded, can vary greatly per game.) Even assuming level-ups grant enough stat ups to make a difference big enough to let the scaling kick in the first place, I put a big doubt on this. Not to mention you are still sinking in 10 minutes or more not enjoying the game just to figure out what it is doing.
Most RPG's, you don't even need to grind, they're so generous with XP. I haven't played many where I needed to stop and grind anything. Usually, just fighting every combat encounter there is, even if it's trash mobs I easily destroy, nets me enough XP for several levels beyond what most devs have decided I should have for the approaching challenge. Granted, that is "most" and not "all".
But, the point also kind of stands here. You've actually alluded to how it stands without realizing it.
"Even assuming level-ups grant enough stat ups to make a difference".
Bingo.
If the level ups and the stats they give don't make a difference, or much of one, then you can reasonably assume there's scaling going on. Might not be on the side of the monsters, but it's still there. Still has the same effect as scaling the monsters.
Hence why it's only about 10 minutes out of your way at most. Gain a level or two, see if any of your damage stuff shifts in any appreciable way, and if not, you're under the influence of scaling.
But, of course, 3 damage might be a big deal in the game, too. If the game is "low stat", and 3 extra damage is all you get for a couple levels, that might actually be a big deal. It's going to depend on how the overall combat experience is meant to feel. A game like Paper Mario, that 3 damage is going to be HUGE. A game like Final Fantasy X... it's pretty worthless.
As for "not enjoying the game". You keep operating on this premise of, "If you just played the game as intended, you'd be enjoying it!". It's a faulty premise to begin with. It assumes that my primary motivator in every game is just to intentionally break everything I see because it's the only way I have any fun with the game.
If I'm intentionally going out of my way to break your game, it's because it's already boring. It's because I'm already not having fun. I'm breaking your game so that the fun comes back. You're lucky I'm kind and forgiving enough to keep trying to play your boring-as-crap game rather than just shutting it off and leaving a bad review instead. Do you prefer I find a way to enjoy your game and finish it, or that I turn it off and never play it again the moment I get bored? Is it more insulting to you that I had to break your game to have fun, or that I don't break your game and write your game off as bad and boring and never finish it?
I pity the player who goes through all that trouble just to prove the game is now bad and that the developers should feel bad, while that time could have been spent playing the game as normal as even if the game featured scaling, the game would have been balanced around that fact and provided a smooth experience regardless.
It isn't done to prove the game is bad. It's done to make the game fun, when it isn't fun. Consider it a bit of mercy. I found a way to have fun in your game that is decidedly not fun. I rendered your entire workload on such a system absolutely worthless and useless and a waste of time, because your work on that system made the game "not fun". So, I stripped out the bits that weren't fun, so that I could enjoy your experience.
I simply get annoyed that I must rip out your systems in order to have fun in the first place. Especially since it is extra effort on my part to be able to ignore something in the game that is already boring, stale, or I'm "burned out" on. If your combat isn't going to engage constantly and remain fresh for the entire run, I'd rather you just let me break the challenge as easily as possible and steamroll your combat so I can get back to the bits I do enjoy.
I'm not going to dock a game for "boring combat" unless that "boring combat" also comes with heavy restrictions that forces me to engage with it more often than I want. Then, I'm going to ding you on bad design since you're now forcing me to be bored in an effort to stroke your own ego as a dev.
Every system and Feature you implement in your game should be Play Tested for "fun". Not tested just for functionality. It should be tested for FUN. If it isn't fun, and you can't figure out a way to make it fun, then you rework it or you remove it.
I'd rather play a poorly designed but fun game, than an overly designed but boring game.
Besides, you also assume that "a well balanced game from start to finish" is fun. Sounds like "a slog" to me. Sounds like mindless repetition to me. "Run and run as fast as you can, just to stay in place".
Honestly, if you want to "maintain challenge" throughout your game and have the best chance for your players to have fun the entire way... you're better off with gimmicks than scaling. The reason being that players who figure out and master the gimmicks will "feel smart". They will "feel accomplished", which is part of what makes such things fun. Portal capitalized on that design philosophy pretty heavily and that's why it's still pretty beloved. That moment the puzzle "clicks" for you drops in those hits of dopamine and make you feel good. They make you feel smart. Even some of the puzzles that you can solve in unintended ways makes players feel smart for having solved them. It's fun. If you bake those "aha!" moments into your combat as the means of challenge, it won't get stale as quickly. It will garner more positive feelings.
Even if a dev is some sort of savant and manages to create a perfectly smooth experience through scaling... that doesn't make it automatically Fun. In fact, it often makes it "not fun".
It's from Jurassic Park, but it applies to game design. "You were so preoccupied with whether or not you
could, you didn't stop to think about whether you
should."
First, and foremost, you are making a game. If the game is not fun, it's a bad game. A person can make a well-designed and perfectly formed pile of excrement and take the time to paint it gold... but it's still a pile of excrement and still smells just as nasty.
The problem we tend to have on these forums is that it's difficult to talk a dev out of designing something "not fun" for the player. You have to couch it in "it's bad game design". Because if you tell them "It's not fun", they'll immediately go into, "well, I like it and think it's fun" and begin trying to trot out outliers to prove what "fun" is. But, if you talk about something from a design standpoint and point out all its design flaws... they're much more willing to listen and even debate the actual merits of using something.
Even AAA Devs have this flaw.
I like to use XCOM 2 as the example. They mistakenly thought "Hey, if we add a timer to every single level, it will create a lot more moments of tension since the player will rush around and make mistakes and have to adapt! That's fun!". Except, no. They misunderstood the type of people who play such games. Yes, moments where you suddenly have to adapt to a crazy new situation are a lot of fun for that crowd... But, there's a reason they are. Such players derive their joy in a game from careful planning. That is to say, they want to plan everything down to the level they're comfortable with and mitigate as much risk as possible. What's really fun is when those well-laid plans sometimes go sideways and suddenly you've lost a couple guys and are now fighting for you life, trying to pick up the pieces of a failing operation and salvaging what you can. It needs to be infrequent enough for players good at planning, but also happen frequently enough to create harrowing and fun experiences. The Timer attempts to make the entire game into those harrowing experiences... so almost every player immediately modded those timers out in the game, and they later had to concede to increasing the stupid timers to placate a vast majority of players. They increased the timers without knowing why their game wasn't "fun". They didn't remove them. They just went, "people hate the timers because the timers are too restrictive, so let's just increase the timers". They didn't go, "players aren't having fun with these timers around, let's remove them".
Easier to get through to devs if you talk to them about how poorly designed their mechanics are, rather than tell them, "Yeah, that mechanic is just not fun in the slightest". Because devs tend to have the brains of engineers and don't know how to compute "game not fun" into something actionable. Or, at least, something actionable that isn't "you need to overhaul the entire game and render all your previous work pointless". They love that sunk-cost fallacy thinking as well.
You even have an example of that in the two posts you've made here. I said, "It's not fun" and your first and only reaction to that was "It's your fault you're not having fun". Blaming the player for not having a good time. Not blaming the dev, who's job it is, to provide a good time to the player.
It's not really a healthy way to approach game design... to blame the player for failings of the product. Or to blame the player for them not having fun. That's how you get those crazy devs who have public meltdowns on Twitter and YouTube where they blame the fans or their customers for their product failing.
If it hinders the majority of the players from breaking the game that otherwise would or might have, then they still achieved what they set out to do, following the same logic that games are designed to be fun for the intended target audience. You're never going to please everyone, but as long as you please the majority, then that's a win. Not a loss.
I argued that this type of player isn't the majority. It's actually about 2% of the playerbase. That wants that challenge all through the whole experience.
You're going to have to define "majority" for your argument to make sense.
I define it as "If 100 people play your game and 51 of them feel a specific way, that's the majority".
The way you've phrased things makes me think your meaning of "Majority" might be more along the lines of "who the game's target audience is", rather than "anyone who plays the game". But, I'm assuming here. You'll have to let me know what you're thinking in terms of how you want to define that "Majority".
From my perspective, you'd have to count anyone who "quits" playing your game as one of those who have "broken" the game. Because, rather than spend the time and effort and energy to get around such a hindering and restrictive system... they just quit playing the game altogether. They said, "nah, fam, I'm not tolerating your nonsense". They just decided to not give you the benefit of the doubt... while players like me give you that courtesy and continue to play, but we strip out the terrible parts to continue to give you that courtesy.
I wouldn't count "those players who quit and didn't try to break the system" as a "win" for the system doing what it is intended to do. Especially if we're factoring in "fun".
So going by that reasoning, why would it then matter to you if the game features scaling? If you have more fun "breaking the game" than playing it the intended way and it is the natural way for you to play games, why do you have a problem with scaling at all? If anything, shouldn't you enjoy game featuring scaling more than games that don't?
Not really sure how you missed the context, but you've missed what I said in its entirety.
If breaking the game is more fun than playing it normally, why would anyone ever play it normally?
You're presuming, "Oh, you just always play to break every single game and you can't ever have fun with a game the way it was intended!"
Yeah, no. Let's not mischaracterize me as a person or what I said, please.
If your game is fun without my breaking it, then I just play the game. If your game isn't fun unless I break it... then I break the game. Because, breaking the game would be more fun than playing it normally.
Scaling isn't fun. Never really has been in most games. There's a reason it tends to be avoided and games that render your power and progression pointless tend to get pretty bad reviews.
The natural way I particularly play games lends itself to inherently breaking the games unintentionally. If I'm enjoying the combat or want to grind out some skills or evolutions or something... now I've got extra levels the dev didn't intend me to have. I'm naturally analyzing every bit of data the game is giving me to extrapolate how things work so that I can play more effectively and efficiently (because I don't particularly like to engage in long bouts of struggling, or portions of gameplay that I don't find enjoyable and find remind me too much of working an unpaid job). I'm here to have fun. If your combat system is designed well and I have fun with it, then I'll just engage with it. If it's designed poorly and your game forces me into it constantly and it's a boring monotonous slog... I'll be thankful that I play efficiently so that I can bypass it altogether.
I do not set out to break every game I play. At least, not intentionally. It's just a natural consequence of my particular playstyle in most games. Partly because the games aren't designed all that well... and partly because the devs actually don't care if you break their games in that way.
I'm actually in the second camp as a dev. I don't care if a player breaks my game. At least... most of the time. Probably why I tend to design my games with natural ways for the player to just break things if they want to. I think it's fun when I can funnel the player into ways to break my games and then have thought up counters for those to mess with them. I'll lock off certain means to break my games and content, when it "defeats the point" of that content, but otherwise, I let it be broken.
What I'm arguing is that a game is designed to be fun for the intended target audience.
Is Scaling fun? You've yet to answer this question or provide a myriad of arguments to prove that it is fun.
"Challenge" might be fun, but I outlined under which circumstances "challenge" is actually fun.
If you're attempting to argue, "I really only want to cater to an exceptionally tiny minority of people in an extremely niche set of players", then I don't know what to tell you. You'll please those particular players, but not anyone else... and you probably won't make much money. Or get very famous. Or have your game get that popular.
If your target audience is 100 people out of 6 billion and you please all 100 people... then congrats, you've done what you've set out to do. But, I suspect most devs aren't aiming to please just 100 people. They're aiming for fame, recognition, popularity, money, and some way to change their hobby into a job.
But, the argument also has a major flaw. If you declare anyone who "doesn't like that particular feature" as "not your target audience", then you basically remove yourself from culpability. You avoid accountability.
If you only want to declare people who agree with your point of view as "the target audience" for your product, then you're simply living in a delusion in order to avoid the uncomfortable truth that you've probably "not done a very good job".
I have my preferences for MP management in battle that seems literally no other game dev is doing besides myself, yet I don't go around calling every RPG Maker bad because they don't cater to my specific and niche needs.
Not sure why you say this, unless you're trying to say that's what I'm doing. Which, is blatantly not true. I give my belief and then all the lines of logic to back it up. I even include data from the general populace of gamers that is garnered from game reviews and even gaming trends.
I hate MOBA games. I think they're awful. But, I understand how they work and what it takes to make one "good". I don't begrudge anyone for enjoying a MOBA. Kudos to them. I'm not going to tell them not to play a MOBA either.
The most I will do is cite the problems with gameplay that keep a wider audience from playing, or that keep a playerbase around for long periods of time. I'll cite all the pitfalls and reasons why those pitfalls happen.
It is up to you, as a dev, to work around the pitfalls. As well as be aware of what they are.
I know I'm in the minority when it comes to "random encounters". The only reasons I even tell people not to make "Visual Encounters" is because all they're doing is creating a visual version of the "Random Encounters", doing it in a very lazy and boring way, leaving in all the flaws, pitfalls, and problems, and then "calling it a day". I have a problem with that.
If you're going to implement a feature, at least do it competently. If you can't be bothered to do a competent job and try to get the player to have fun with the feature... then don't put it in the game. You're wasting your own time and the time of your players.
If potion chugging as the only means to restore MP is fun for 99% of the game's playerbase, then who I am to tell their game sucks?
On it's own, that's not really a fun mechanic. The "Fun" is going to largely come in how it's framed, minimizing pitfalls and issues with such a system, and ensuring that engagement for the system remains high.
I utilize this system, and it has lead to vast overhauls of combat on more than one occasion just to try to keep it "fun" and not "a slog". We're talking complete deletion of 50+ monsters on more than one occasion. We're talking complete skill reworks on 250+ skills at least twice. We're talking rebalancing of the consumables at least 4 times in the lifecycle of my project.
Complete breakdown of the mechanic has happened at least 3 times by now. It's been easy to exploit, it's been too restrictive to the point it soft locks players, and it's just been plain uninteresting.
Rework. Rebuild. Strip it out. In the name of ensuring the player has fun.
I will tell you, up front, that such a system sucks. It's a nightmare to deal with. It's a pain to handle. It's a lot of work most people would never want to engage in. But, I want to do it, because I think it can work, if I do it right. I think I can make it fun to a large portion of a potential audience. And, if someone comes up to me and says, "Your system is terrible and it wasn't fun", I will likely say, "I agree. Tell me which particular part of it gave you problems, I'll see if I can fix it."
But, that's likely the difference in someone who handles criticism well and someone who doesn't.
I went into game design under the assumption that no matter how good I think I am... my game is going to be extremely hot garbage that is liked by nobody. But, I want to figure out how to make it fun. I operate under the assumption that all the "new things" I'm doing that very few game devs have ever done before are going to be bad. I'm assuming there's a reason nobody does any of the things I'm doing in my game. Namely, they're stupid ideas.
But, they're my stupid ideas. I want to make them work. I want to refine them. I want to find the way to make them fun. I want to tread the path others don't walk, even if all I do is serve as the glowing example of why you don't do what I did.
I will be the first to recommend devs don't do any of the things I do in my game. Because, trust me, you don't want this crap.
So you choose to play a genre of games known to be grindy and then complain that they are in fact grindy. And then you use that as an excuse to play them outside of their intended ways because it is more fun to you, even when you claim those games are still bad. *Looks visibly confused.*
You're confused because you've decided you don't want to listen.
I don't play games that are grindy by nature. You might have missed the part where I said, "If your game
turns into grindy motonous nonsense, then I'm going to break it".
Words mean things, man. Take 3 deep breaths, clear your head, and actually read what I wrote. Suppress your desire to knee-jerk react, and just absorb it. Listen to what I'm telling you.
RPG's, by and large, aren't really "grindy", unless some dev decides that's the "best play experience" and deliberately designs it that way... or they have no idea what they're doing and accidently made their game that way (more often than not, it's accidental). I'm not sure if there's a third option for why a game is made grindy, but maybe there is? Perhaps to bilk people out of money for a season pass or battle pass or something? Or monthly membership fees?
If the game is bad, I just don't give up on it immediately, that's all. I paid for the game, after all. Seems silly to just quit a game I paid for and waste that money. So, I'll attempt to get what enjoyment I can out of it. If it gets grindy and turns into a second job, then I'll break the game in an attempt to make it fun again.
If it can't be made fun... then I just quit (Callisto Protocol is my most recent example of this... even figuring out how the dodge mechanic worked to the point I was basically invincible didn't make the game fun or interesting, so I had to quit playing and eat that loss of money).
I'm more lenient on crap games than most people. I try to find the fun, even if there isn't fun to be had. If I truly can't find anything enjoyable in the game... then I'm done.
So the only way for game developers to be considered good at their job (or hobby in RPG Maker cases) and deserving of even a tiny bit of praise for their efforts is to read into every player's mind, knowing each player's personal preferences and to alter their game on the fly to fit their every personal need and desire, to cater to their every whim 24/7. Heaven forbid they forgot to cut out a piece of content that they worked on for 100 hours straight and was well received by the majority of their playerbase, except for the one user known as Tai_MT who thought it sucked. Well, those developers must have been really bad at their job. How could they possibly not read into the mind of Tai_MT to know exactly that part wasn't something they enjoyed. How dare they even think to themselves they did a good job on anything. Their lives are utter failures and they should be ashamed for the rest of their pitiful lives. Bad dev!
You know very well I've never said such things, advocated for such things, or even believe such things.
This is unfair characterization that is pretty blatant slander and a personal attack. You know that it's wrong. I haven't treated you that way in the slightest and have given you a far higher level of respect than you've shown me thus far.
If you're that upset, you should probably take a break from the topic.
Because it is in fact not the first time I've seen you play the "game can be broken, therefore game bad" card.
Your problem is that I'm consistent in what I believe? Because you'll have to explain to me how that's a problem in any way.
It seems like every time you have a problem with a feature it is because something isn't fun to you personally and you use that as an excuse to "break the game" and proceed to claim the game is bad.
Incorrect. I tend to have problems with features because people don't think beyond the surface level of that feature and implement it as poorly as possible, which tends to ruin the overall experience.
Why would I spend time highlighting the exact problems any feature has and all the knock on effects of that feature that can contribute to a frustrating or boring existence?
If you think it's "to attack someone", then I don't know what to tell you, other than maybe you just can't handle criticism. Or, don't like having to face that the thing you enjoy has problems that need to be at minimum addressed before implementation.
It is bad design to implement a system with a myriad of problems and do nothing about the problems. That is in every single one of my posts. I don't just blanket "it's bad because I say so". I say, "It's bad for X, Y, and Z" and trust that most forum users are intelligent enough to go, "Yeah, I should mitigate those problems if I plan to utilize this system".
Your problem here is that you confuse actual professional developers with hobby developers who have no education in game design and only work on their games in their spare free time.
No, I don't. I make the distinction all the time. Hence why I spend time explaining things to users of the forums and running down lines of logic for absolutely everything.
You know, to teach hobby developers with no education in game design some "good practices". Or, even, useful ways to consider the things they're doing.
You expect people to work, as in actual work as if it was their full-time job for a salary, when in fact people are here to pass time in a way they enjoy.
No, I expect people who actually enjoy what they're doing to want to take some pride in their work. That is, want to make the best product they can, regardless of skill. That's all. I expect them to not "bite off more than they can chew" and to not just avoid basic issues that can crop up.
If you aren't going to take pride in what you're making, and want to do the best job possible, then I don't know what to tell you. Probably that you shouldn't listen to any criticism since you don't actually care about the quality of your game. If you just want to play around with the program and don't care about quality, then nothing I say should ever affect you in the first place. None of my opinions should ever get under your skin if you don't want to take pride in your product and do the best job possible.
You don't get to have it both ways. I'm sorry. If you care about your product, you should
want to put the work in to make it as good as you can. If you don't care about your product, then you shouldn't care what I have to say about it in the least.
You're also assuming and claiming they didn't put in work into their games just because their games didn't fit your specific, personal preferences for what makes a game fun.
Incorrect. There are obvious signs when "the work wasn't put in". Namely, if they did nothing to mitigate actual issues with implementation. It becomes pretty obvious who "cares" about their product by just playing it or looking at it for a little bit. You can see where care and attention were placed, even if they did a very bad job at it. You can see who WANTS to improve as well, since they'll go back and rework or fix things that end up being issues.
"Brigand: Oaxaca" is a literal mess and probably what many might consider "a dumpster fire". But, you can tell a lot of care and effort was put into it and continues to be put into the product. Problems are constantly fixed. Issues reworked. The "intended experience" even tweaked from time to time. There are points where the game is "not fun" and "punishing for no reason", but the dev cared and continues to care. They put a ton of work into the project even if they're not always very competent at what they're doing.
I give them points and the benefit of the doubt for going, "this is the game I wanted to make, and I want to keep improving it for everyone who wants to play it".
It's very easy to see who just went "good enough" on their project, especially when they're told there are problems with it and they go back and don't even bother fixing it, or put some band-aid in place to just hold it together.
There's a marked difference between those who accept criticsm and those who don't. Accepting criticism doesn't even have to be "I did all the things you suggested". It just has to be accepting that some player or players has some problems and you should do what you can to mitigate those problems without compromising your vision. Or, just outright state to the person leveling the criticism, "Yep, I understand the problems. However, I don't really care that they're problems. It's part of the intended experience." and just being done with it.
I agree with the fact scaling is generally bad, yes, and that I can't even think of legit positives to it. But not for the reasons that it can be broken. And nope, I'm having great days, I'm just replying because it's fun for me. That's my reason for being on these forums, just for fun. And I usually find your takes to be disagreeable - or if they're not, it's the way in which you present them that I disagree with.
Good thing my inital post listed at least half a dozen reasons why scaling is bad and not just "I can break the game", 'eh?
I don't know. I grew up with the 16-bit Sonic games and Dr. Robotnik always took 8 hits to defeat, with some of the end bosses requiring more. Yes, you can defeat him before he repeats his pattern multiple times if you're somewhat decent, but the same can be said for Hollow Knight. Sufficiently skilled players can combine their swordplay and magic skills to take out bosses before they can show you their full move set even once.
What can be accomplished and what will typically be accomplished by a first time player with no guide tend to be two different things. You can't really compare "someone who knows the game inside and out" to "a newbie who is touching it for the first time".
After all, you're talking about someone who is super heavily invested into the game already... and someone who hasn't yet decided if they want to be invested.
There's a reason "Pro Players" shouldn't decide what is reasonable or not in competitive gameplay modes.
The most obvious being that you don't want to alienate the vast majority of your audience to please the minority.
"Too long" is very subjective and there'll always be players who think stuff takes either too fast or too long. The best thing developers can do is find a middle ground that the majority of players can agree on to be acceptable.
"Too long" is subjective. But, the devs can take steps to at least make things
feel not very long. The problem isn't always "it takes too long". It is often, "It feels too long". "It feels tedious". Etcetera. But, that's part of learning to parse criticism. If a player says "It's too long", you look at the actual problem instead of the symptom. Why does the player think it's too long? What contributes to that feeling? That frustration? Can it be alleviated?
I don't know where it ever came from, but I remember Josh Strife Hayes on YouTube talking about "Quit Points" in games and I've had that in my brain ever since I heard it for the first time.
I think it's valuable information to take on board as a dev. What are Quit Points and how to avoid them?
@LordOfPotatos
I don't rant
I'm excessively verbose to the point of annoying absolutely anyone and everyone who isn't engaged with me in a conversation (and who has the same level of passion for it that I do).
Most of this isn't even "going hard" for me, which is probably the sad part. Most of this is "normal writing/speaking tendencies" for me.
Yes, it can get much worse. Much, much, much, much worse. I pity any person who ever has to read the nonsense I produce when I "go hard".
Heck, even
I get tired of writing long posts. About 3 days in and I'm just like, "I don't care anymore. It's not worth it anymore".
But, hey, that's why I have adopted the stance I have. I'm fine if you ignore me and never reply to me. Just think of me as the guy on the street corner yelling about aliens and government conspiracies. Just the local whackjob with his soap box and cardboard signs about the end of the world.
