I think the reward of the action (actually healing someone) may offset the boredom one might eventually get from a simplistic or repedative puzzle, i mean how many times are you going to play the mini-game in a small party of adventurer's? and even if you do, its for a greater purpose (to heal them and keep on exploring/killing).
Quote: Maybe you can adapt the level of difficulty of the puzzle to suit the level of competence of the medic? like, maybe, when you are a beginning medic, brain surgery becomes a VERY difficult puzzle...
I think this could be done by not explaining certain game rules. If you start off with a bandaid, lets say you have to get 1 line in a tetris game. Now if you move up to brain surgery, its like playing magic tetris (with multi-colored blocks), you don't tell the player how to do it so he gets really disoriented and it will take him awhile to figure it out, since there's nothing to tell him about it. However, if he starts off slowly, moving from bandaids to bandages, and from bandages to stiching, etc. He'll slowly be introduced to the gameplay rules for brain surgery overtime, until he has a basic enough understanding and can try to perform it.
I think part of it too is you need to make sure the rewards match the difficulty. If its a highly complex minigame, you better be bringing a friend back from the dead...
making the minigame really hard is a difficult choice, because then less able player arn't allowed to play properly. it's kinda like putting a newbie to Quake III into a world class server and saying: "if you want to play the game properly, you have to beat the world champion". Also, people who are crap at logic/reflex games would have a dissadvantage. You might say that this could be a parralell of a character who is crap at medic activities but still wanted to be a medic - but medics would be trained.
I just think that to use mini-games, you have to be very carefull.
then maybe, the mini-game just gives a boost to both the amount of healing you can provide, or to the XP you earn in this respect, or whatever!! That's right, playing the mini-game should NOT be an obligation. But admit that if you did so, it would be better...
I concur, though, that some people, no matter what they do, will still be slower while playing the mini-game than people using the automatic medikits. But since they are TRYING to do things properly, they should be rewarded differently. As I said earlier, maybe you could present a puzzle which difficulty would be equal to level of gravity of wound, minus level of skill? This way, if you were a beginner in the field, and had to face a difficult task, it would still be possible, but definitely not easy, whereas, if you were an excellent medic, and had to face some minor scratch wound, you could heal it in seconds, without even taking out your bonus awarding medikit?
And, maybe, doin' it the way the designer intended it rewards you with a bonus of XP... Maybe if you play the minigame, you can add your score in the minigame to your skill XP pool, or double it, or whatever?
Please, don't be afraid to say what you think!!
There won't be medics only, in this game, probably, so people should be able to help themselves to some basic healing. But this basic healing should also be performed by medics, and they should get something out of it!!
You (collective) are right about mini-games' interest lying not in the actual fun of figuring out the challenge but more in how well you could do it. I still play "Bubble Trouble" on my phone when I am bored, even though the game is easy and I have played it a lot. I play it to beat my best time.
Perhaps having mini-games would be a good idea. Medics could have a rating where their best healing time is recorded. IMagine a scene like this
Quote:then maybe, the mini-game just gives a boost to both the amount of healing you can provide, or to the XP you earn in this respect, or whatever!! That's right, playing the mini-game should NOT be an obligation. But admit that if you did so, it would be better...
I like that idea for an RPG. I mean the core of an RPG (other than a story) is the skill levels of the player. If you require the player to complete the mini-game then you are relying on the skill of the player, not the skill of the character but if you make it a bonus system, then you can add the skill of the character (making this the minimum amount) and add the skill of the player. Possibly hard to balance though...
as soon as you put "skill of player" and "MMORPG" in the same sentence you get "undesirable people (ie: noobs)" fresh from WoW saying that it is unfair and they if they wanted player skill, they would play an FPS.
<quote>http://www.dnd-online.com/ I’m not very good at action games. Will I be at a significant disadvantage in DDO? No. While player skill is a significant factor in DDO, our combat system does not require the same level of reflexes and coordination that it takes to compete in a purely action-based game. As long as you’re comfortable with a mouse and a keyboard, you should be fine. </quote>
This is what players fear and watch the people at Turbine make sure they do not fall into this trap.
(Note: if it were me, I would say "all for it!" I like the idea of having to be skillfull to suceed instead of just putting countless hours in.
