Should you make games easy or hard?
Repetition is a factor. If it's something that any competent player has to do a hundred times in a fight, it makes sense to automate it. Does it make the game easier? I suppose it would be easier for people who start after the automation is in place, but for the guys who already have the muscle memory to hit the key, all it does is save them a keystrok and some repetitive stress.
Just want to add my 2 cents about the difference between accessibility and difficulty.
The core of a game is the decision making. A game consists of a lot of decisions, making a game simpler often means to reduce the number of decisions you need to make in the same time frame.
So, when talking about accessibility you want to ease the handling and transparency of decision making, while to make your game easier you need to take decisions away. But be careful to not missunderstand the meaning of decision and variance. Choosing between an ice-spell and a fire-spell is only a true decision, when they have really different effects, i.e. ice will freeze an opponent and fire will apply a dot, but if they do only slightly different damage, then this is not really a game relevant decision.
The problem is, that making a game more accessible broaden the player base, while changing the difficulty shifts the player base. Really difficult games often have a much lower player base than really easy games (casual).
WoW, like many other games, try to make a lot of money, this motivation is often the fountation stone to optimize accessibility and difficulty. Easy games in the meaning of lesser decisions, attract often the larger player bases, therefore WoW is shifting the difficulty to attract more player.
The core of a game is the decision making. A game consists of a lot of decisions, making a game simpler often means to reduce the number of decisions you need to make in the same time frame.
So, when talking about accessibility you want to ease the handling and transparency of decision making, while to make your game easier you need to take decisions away. But be careful to not missunderstand the meaning of decision and variance. Choosing between an ice-spell and a fire-spell is only a true decision, when they have really different effects, i.e. ice will freeze an opponent and fire will apply a dot, but if they do only slightly different damage, then this is not really a game relevant decision.
The problem is, that making a game more accessible broaden the player base, while changing the difficulty shifts the player base. Really difficult games often have a much lower player base than really easy games (casual).
WoW, like many other games, try to make a lot of money, this motivation is often the fountation stone to optimize accessibility and difficulty. Easy games in the meaning of lesser decisions, attract often the larger player bases, therefore WoW is shifting the difficulty to attract more player.
Author
One thing I just thought about my last reply..
Shouln't it be pretty easy for someone to create a bot that does certain things for you..
like you can tell the bot to keep production of these units going..
then you don't have to do that multitasking anymore.. the bot keeps up production of units while you are out microing your units.
Gives a huge advantage.
you can make the bot automatically kite when getting attacked... now the bot is giving you another huge advantage.
Making the bot play the game for you is a lot harder though.
So you would still have to make the strategical decisions.. but that's 100000 times easier than what someone without this bot needs to do.
So it probably is a good idea to automate everything in the game that wouldnt be too hard to create a bot to do for you.
And nope, im not making a mmo.. just a multiplayer.
And I want it to be competitive.
Shouln't it be pretty easy for someone to create a bot that does certain things for you..
like you can tell the bot to keep production of these units going..
then you don't have to do that multitasking anymore.. the bot keeps up production of units while you are out microing your units.
Gives a huge advantage.
you can make the bot automatically kite when getting attacked... now the bot is giving you another huge advantage.
Making the bot play the game for you is a lot harder though.
So you would still have to make the strategical decisions.. but that's 100000 times easier than what someone without this bot needs to do.
So it probably is a good idea to automate everything in the game that wouldnt be too hard to create a bot to do for you.
And nope, im not making a mmo.. just a multiplayer.
And I want it to be competitive.
like you can tell the bot to keep production of these units going..
then you don't have to do that multitasking anymore.. the bot keeps up production of units while you are out microing your units.
Gives a huge advantage.
That's the reason there are cheating bots for many games available, but this is not game design.
So you would still have to make the strategical decisions.. but that's 100000 times easier than what someone without this bot needs to do.
That is what I mean to take away decision to make a game easier. In this case you don't need the decision any longer and you just need to play a fix animation to polish a simple game mechanism. Bots in this situation are only necessary if you want to cheat.
You can even go so far to remove all decision but one, like win, and watch the game play itself....wait... well, already existing, it's called dvd-player and they call the button play ...
So it probably is a good idea to automate everything in the game that wouldnt be too hard to create a bot to do for you.
And nope, im not making a mmo.. just a multiplayer.
And I want it to be competitive.
That can be a good idea, you probably have to give the player more high level strategic options if you do though to avoid making things too easy (and thus boring) (Compare the total war series to starcraft, the TW games have very little micromanagement but things like altitude, flanking, cover, exhaustion and morale plays a much larger role). Writing a good AI for the macro gameplay is far more difficult than writing one for the micro level though.
Author
[quote name='glhf' timestamp='1349090608' post='4985714']
like you can tell the bot to keep production of these units going..
then you don't have to do that multitasking anymore.. the bot keeps up production of units while you are out microing your units.
Gives a huge advantage.
That's the reason there are cheating bots for many games available, but this is not game design.
So you would still have to make the strategical decisions.. but that's 100000 times easier than what someone without this bot needs to do.
That is what I mean to take away decision to make a game easier. In this case you don't need the decision any longer and you just need to play a fix animation to polish a simple game mechanism. Bots in this situation are only necessary if you want to cheat.
[/quote]
It is good game design to remove incentive to cheat in games.
Why do you think its so rare to see a game that makes pitch dark nights a big part of the game..
Because light hack is probably the easiest cheat available to create.
Dayz made darkness a dominant part of the game but they they are just modders who made that and there's lots of cheating going on in dayz.
Just google for aimbots and light hacks and you'll find one to download in a few seconds.
Also, all AA mmorpg games have gone great lengths with removing incentive to play.. starting with WoW.
Before I looked into game development I was always annoyed why all games have to use that same friggin combat system and mechanics.. so sick and tired of it.. auto aim and all that smashing buttons as they come out of global cooldown yawwwn.
But it's because of removing incentive to cheat.
You can even go so far to remove all decision but one, like win, and watch the game play itself....wait... well, already existing, it's called dvd-player and they call the button play ...
Sometimes, when I hit the play button on a DVD player, I lose.
Why do you think its so rare to see a game that makes pitch dark nights a big part of the game..
Because light hack is probably the easiest cheat available to create.
Dayz made darkness a dominant part of the game but they they are just modders who made that and there's lots of cheating going on in dayz.
Just google for aimbots and light hacks and you'll find one to download in a few seconds.
There are ways to make "true", unhackable darkness. However, there are programming related reasons why they don't implement it.
Knowing a bit about the programming can help in the game's design. If you know unhackable darkness is viable in your game, you can incorporate it into your design.
Author
[quote name='glhf' timestamp='1349092035' post='4985723']
Why do you think its so rare to see a game that makes pitch dark nights a big part of the game..
Because light hack is probably the easiest cheat available to create.
Dayz made darkness a dominant part of the game but they they are just modders who made that and there's lots of cheating going on in dayz.
Just google for aimbots and light hacks and you'll find one to download in a few seconds.
There are ways to make "true", unhackable darkness. However, there are programming related reasons why they don't implement it.
Knowing a bit about the programming can help in the game's design. If you know unhackable darkness is viable in your game, you can incorporate it into your design.
[/quote]
Well, yeah.. There are ways you could make it unhackable like for example using onlive but it has way too much drawbacks so its not really possible in practise.
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