Paradox in the game: Pursuit and boredom

A lot of video games, especially time billing games, such as "World of Warcraft", for the vast majority of players, in the game is the pursuit of growth-higher character levels, better equipment, higher output, higher achievement points and so on. Players want to be more powerful, so they can do it with the most efficient means, because the only cost the player has to devote to the game is time. This is true of almost all MMO games, and players are pursuing higher efficiency. Later, free game, paid players to improve the efficiency will be higher, free players are lower, unlike the traditional time billing as everyone's efficiency is almost, more clearly highlighted the pursuit of this aspect of the player.

At such times, the paradox arises-the player pursues higher efficiency because it is more interesting to play the game, and the higher efficiency consumes the game content faster, thus speeding the game to its end. We can imagine that you have not played a new game, and then tell you to press a key can unlock all the ability to reach the level of unattainable, with flowers spend endless wealth ... So the game becomes boring.

How can we solve this paradox? "World of Warcraft" and most MMO practices are inflation, regularly opening up higher levels, giving players a new growth target, and compressing the property in a comprehensive way when inflation is excessive. There is no doubt that if you do well enough, the player is buying it. The same goes for free games.

At first glance, there are two ways we can solve this problem:

Provide endless content for players to consume, such as Diablo 2, EVE.

Let the player not to pursue numerical growth, such as "League of Heroes", "My World".

Here is the idea, separately.

Endless content

The two games, Diablo 2 and EVE, represent the endless PvE games and PvP games. Roguelike games can also represent an endless pve of content. According to the general development cycle, there is no game to play to provide a 10-hour content experience development cycle of at least 10 months, so the endless content of the PvE game to find a way to solve this problem of total income.

So, how can the low investment in the case of creating a huge game content? I think there are three main methods:

Hyperinflation

Randomness

User generated content (UGC)

Hyperinflation game

Hyperinflation refers to a steady exponential growth that stimulates the player to pursue it. There are 100 fighting time on the pursuit of 110, 1000 combat when the pursuit of 1100, and so on. This kind of game is represented by "Cookie Clicker", which ironically points out the weakness of human nature. The mobile phone of "The foolish", "Inflation rpg", "Tap Titans" and other games are "Cookie Clicker", and even every piece of World of Warcraft is doing similar things, but because the system is rich and not appear so naked.

The hyperinflation game actually supports the player to play is the special node which produces the qualitative change, the player after playing for a period of time after the slow growth of the insignificant has no longer cared, therefore this inflation game must refer to the number level growth. Take "Cookie Clicker" as an example, the ability to afford a new type of building is much more appealing than building a whole bunch of old buildings, and Tap Titans is fortified in this way, with each player who automatically plays the geek to unlock a particular skill at a certain level, So that the hierarchy itself produces a lot of meaningful nodes.

However, the design node is actually still a "total income" development approach, so the hyperinflation game, although it seems that the number of growth in the game life is very long, but the player in a very short period of time to consume all the meaningful nodes, so the game life is not so long, and the general game is no different.

Randomness

Roguelike games such as "The Dwarf Fortress" are an excellent example of randomness, but because the roguelike game is similar to board games, it is a inning rather than a continuous form of play, so the meaning of reference is limited.

What is useful is the Diablo 2 game, which is similar to gambling, where players are constantly randomly acquiring trophies and expect to be able to improve their operational efficiency and continue in this pursuit. Because of the randomness of the player's growth rate is greatly slowed down, so the value of inflation is not a simple hyperinflation game serious-although with the local, the player is still slowly reaching the theoretical ceiling, but the life cycle is much longer, Getting loot at random can provide enough drive for players not to give up the game very early. "Every day hangs the machine" and so on the game is this aspect example. In fact, all the hang-game gamers are in the habit of developing, but some are random, some are not.

Think of the slot machine, a random growth-oriented game in which the player pursues the highest efficiency and has nothing to do but gamble.

It's easier to add a pay point to a game of randomness to develop the core players can spend money on operating probabilities (such as roll items in World of Warcraft, which will undoubtedly be designed as paid props in a free game), or buy more random times (like the Copy CD in World of Warcraft), It is also often designed for free games to increase the number of weekly challenges. Either way, it is the same as paying for higher efficiency.

Incidentally, "World of Warcraft" CD is a delay-waiting mechanism, the free game of money to buy challenges, money immediately completed and so on the function is about this design. Because the relationship with randomness is not big, no longer repeat.

User generated content (UGC)

I am not quite sure about the definition of UGC. We can think of two things:

The player picks up 5 teams from the 100 heroes that the game offers to play.

Play the home level editor to create a checkpoint, uploaded to the server for other players to challenge.

Essentially, players are "creating" something and are based on what the game provides. The first is a simple combination, we can call it "build", or "Custom play", and the second one feels like it's a bit more advanced than the first, as if it were UGC. So what is the difference between the two?

I think it might be a simple technical distinction: whether the player has volunteered to upload something. If the player simply saves the configuration, the player's archive size is fixed. And if the player can create content, then the size of the player file will become larger. But according to this definition, the second is only level configuration information, and the first difference is not.

Then perhaps the focus is not here, but on the purpose of the player creating content. The purpose of the simple can be divided into two kinds, the first is based on the goal of the game design to adjust the configuration to achieve a more strategic, that is, improve efficiency. The second one gives yourself a goal and completes it, and the player is self-realization, not utilitarian.

From this point of view, the fortress system of World of Warcraft is not UGC, and the world I build is UGC. But there are also problems with this line. If the system requires the player to upload a picture from the hard disk, although the player himself got the picture, but it has nothing to do with the game, neither the first purpose nor the second purpose, it is not UGC, just personalized settings. For example, the "Cleopatra icon Warrior" game, players can drag each file in the Windows system, the file's icon will start fighting, players can also draw their own icon to throw in to fight, but because the goal is to defeat each other, create more powerful icons, so according to this definition this is not UGC, And intuitively I think it seems to be UGC.

I think that in the pursuit of growth in the game, even if there is a certain UGC play, can also be reduced to efficiency, such as the "Cleopatra icon Warrior" Player is not to draw an icon to draw an icon, but to try out the strongest icon to draw the icon, once a player in the forum to give the strongest icon of the painting, Everyone would do that, and UGC would lose its meaning. How to solve this problem, but also need more in-depth discussion.

Not to pursue the growth of the game

Another idea is how to keep players from pursuing simple numerical growth. And as an example of the League of Heroes and my world, they can all correspond to other games prior to the advent of video games, which are similar to chess games, which are similar to blocks and have considerable gameplay, but the former are based on PvP, which is based on creative play (or PvE).

This kind does not pursue the growth the game, often will not be favored by the distributor. The former is more likely to raise questions about the ability to charge because money cannot improve efficiency, while the latter cannot exploit human weaknesses and have shorter life cycles. "Analog City" is such an example, it was originally a very high pay game of the traditional, mobile version of the pursuit of the growth of the free game, so the design of the pursuit of growth must be in a long period of time will still be the industry's mainstream design method bar. Not to pursue the growth of the game, a period of time estimates can only be paid in a large game or independent game to see!