“Given the Opportunity, Players Will Optimize The Fun Out of a Game”
d4 devs need to make sure they don’t go down this path again
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They have use their wits to craft fun that discourages this kind of sterile optimization. I’ll believe it when I see it
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Given what’s happening on the WoW forums over some of the stuff announced in the upcoming expansion, they need to not even begin going down this route again.
They took it too far in WoW and they’re trying to scale it back now, but people are throwing a fit over even things as small as spells not doing static damage and having a ~5% variance in damage dealt(like most attacks in RPGs have with a damage range).
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Fun? Who plays this game for ‘fun’? I play at maximum efficiency 100% of the time, living the grind. And once I’m done playing D3, I go to work to unwind and chill out.
They’ll never stop players finding and using the most optimal/fastest ways to play; that is legitimate fun for lots of players.
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I do.
Also true. Best way to figure out where paths should be, is to let people walk the route they feel is most efficient then pave that. Kind of human nature.
Then again I walk for fun/exercise, not efficiency so I might be a bad person to ask 
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When you’re competing to get the best items or xp in an rpg game, there will always be min/max… if it’s not for you, don’t play competitively or try another game.
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Sid Meier quote in the video: ‘Devs must protect players from themselves’ is very accurate. Exactly why trading should not be allowed for example.
Devs, including Blizzard, loves to say that the most fun way to play should also be the most efficient.
And that is completely true.
Yet they nearly always fail at it. So it is quite fair to blame the devs as much as the players here. The devs know what they need to do. But they dont do it, because they too believe that obsessive grinding should be rewarded. Heck, we have Blizzard stating, supposedly without a hint of self-awareness, that Diablo 4 needs an endless Paragon lvling system. And this time around, they will totally fix the unfixable issue with endless power grind. Riiight.
On the other hand…
It is also kinda important that devs dont take the wrong lesson here.
The solution to preventing people from taking the fun out of a game through min-maxing isnt to get rid of min-maxing. Min-maxing can be a lot of fun. Support peoples min-maxing, dont fight it.
As above, the goal should be to make the fun parts of the game be the same parts that leads to min-maxing.
In D3, the game should probably try much harder to reward people for not fishing GRifts as an example. Reward people for fighting through whatever the RNG gods have given them.
For A-RPGs specifically, make sure that min-maxing is not needed for end-game. Make it something you can do above and beyond what is needed. One of the things D2 managed quite well (even if it was likely by accident), and something D3 has failed quite horribly at due to the 150 GRift lvls.
Saw that post earlier today. people are seriously complaining about it?
(of course they are 
)
Also seems like they are having a fit over having to make an actual progression choice in Shadowlands…
Speaking of which… respec options. Maybe if people couldnt respec freely, they would also focus less on obsessive min-maxing? Yet another way to maybe save players from themselves.
And gear optimization. So many posts on this forums is about the difficulty of getting perfect gear, amulets or primals with trifecta stats. Maybe it should be a direct design goal in A-RPGs to try and make all items imperfect.
Settle for one of the imperfections. A bit like respec discussion actually. Your build cant be perfect at everything. Pick some strengths and weaknesses. Might be healthy if the game pushed you down the same path when it came to items. Grim Dawn kinda does that.
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Oh, please. Do we really need to go through another trading debate? 
This problem exists in games without trade ( 
Diablo 3?). You can’t just wedge anti-trading into every solution. Trading will amplify the experience, as it has in previous games, if they care enough about making it work: used item degradation, limited availability, item restraint, not easily viewable to everyone, and so on. If they just throw trading in willy-nilly again, as they also did with raining soulbound items down on players in Diablo 3 with no real other choice, it will be the second 
Diablo game in a row.
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Sure, but they wont to that. Would also be a very different kind of game if items broke down over time.
I’ll be the first to say that you can make interesting trading games. I would even be interested in playing such a game. I dont think you can make an interesting trading game that is also an A-RPG though.
Trading is a good example for the topic though. Trading is exactly the kind of activity that comes up when talking about saving players from themselves. Offering a shortcut through the game.
Indeed, which is way more likely to happen.
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Didn’t watch the full vid, as I already fully agree with this (it’s not something new either). It’s what I noticed throughout my whole gaming experience. Also, I believe it was TF2? Or maybe it was some other game. I didn’t play the game myself, but according to some who played the game, there was one game that went downhill, despite the success of the first, because devs listened to the playerbase too much. Playerbase farmed stuffs too quick, then don’t log in until there is a new content, farmed too quick again, log off again, repeat, making the game lose traffic.
This basically boils down to devs vs players debate, of who’s right or wrong, that devs don’t ‘listen’ to the playerbase. I often side with devs on this because I know the above quote and some situations. Blizz is somewhat known for not ‘listening’ to the playerbase. I agree with them most of the time, but I have to say it. Even by my standards, there are times when I think Blizz devs don’t ‘listen’ to the playerbase too much or act too slow, lol.
Trading will KILL the experience because you gear up that much faster, in a game where the main objective is the loot hunt.
It’s really that simple. Anyone with a functioning brain cell can understand that. Unless they’re item sellers, in which case the only thing they’re interested in is making that $$$.
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The first time I saw a guy being super efficient in a group, years ago I was blown away.
I never looked back.
I have lost friends over others inability to not waste time.
Yeah this was a complete non-issue back when we couldn’t freely respec. It only was “ruining the game” after they had already introduced free respeccing and tried to scale it back.
It’s gotten to the point where people respec for individual boss fights in raids, exactly like I was told wouldn’t happen in Diablo if they offered 100% free respec if I remember those threads right.
I’d really rather see Diablo about running into that problem.
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I think an argument against players optimizing might hold more weight in a game where not literally every decimal point is calculated and controlled tightly enough that the players have no other choice. There is a line to cross here, between something being advantageous or helpful when you do have it, and that thing being detrimental when you don’t have it. The example I use is the Demon Hunter “buff” Vengeance. So many builds strive to achieve 100% uptime because they know they can’t survive without it.
I think that part of the problem occurs when the developers plan for the presence of an item, buff, strategy, etc, when not every player or build will use it. They realized that 100% uptime of a buff was possible, so the immediate response was to normalize its presence and build around that, instead of allowing for the possibility that it may or may not be present in the build. We go from Vengeance being a buff when you have it, to being a debuff when you don’t. I don’t think that’s a particularly fun direction to go in, and I especially don’t think it’s very fair to blame the players for reacting to that realization by “optimizing”.
I’m still waiting on the version of this game which promised to end “cookie cutter builds” by allowing versatile adjustments. That was the story we got told in the beginning. Somewhere along the lines, somebody just said “Screw it: We’re going to adjust everything until there are X amount of ways to play, and anyone deviating from those exact setups just won’t make it.”
…and that’s the players’ fault. >_>
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I got a very similar conversation with my friend last night on this topic, but it is more focused on bug/exploit in a game.
I think exploit that give player a certain advantages, will make the player feel good for a time period. However, as time go player who exploit will start to feel burn out and stop playing. For new comers, they will feel discouraged and may drop the game really fast.
Cheating have a similar effect as well. Once you start cheating, all your achievement will means nothing. Just imagine beating dark soul with god mode vs completing the game slowly. Cheating not only ruin the game for you but also ruin other player game. People will feels that the game is not fair.
However, I don’t blame people who use exploit or cheat. They are the manifestation or something else. In fact, I think game with no exploit may sometime feels to be too grindly and boring. It is because a lot of game try to elongate the game with grinding.
I spend few hundred hours in monster hunter: world, I didn’t use any exploit while I am playing it. Yet, when monster hunter: iceborne come, I just play it for around 10 hours. Afterward, I cheated and increased the drop rate of the game by 10 times. Repeating the content over for improved gear is just boring to me. Grinding is fun only if it is rewarding. However, if what we earn can be invalidated overnight, it just feels punishing.
I think it is the job of a developer to optimize the reward/grinding system. Too high or too low are both damaging to the game.
In older MMOs, like Daoc, most people felt it was too much work/too expensive to follow the meta. We rarely had the ability to respec at all and leveling a new character was such a pain that you were better off just waiting for a balance patch. Sure, there was always a very small handful of elite players playing 20 hours a day that were able to stay ahead of the meta but most people often stuck with inferior classes/builds. I’d say probably 90% weren’t even aware their classes were inferior because the competition also didn’t switch, most the people you’d encounter in PvE/PvP were just as oblivious as you were about the meta and it was beautiful. It also helped that it was incredibly hard to measure what was the strongest combination of classes as well, there was 8 slots in a party and 30 different classes with hundreds of different specs.
Constant balance updates are also very important. You basically need a combination of balance updates and a large barrier for “optimizing” your class/spec. Too low of a barrier and you’re better off just switching to what’s best. You may end up with games like Overwatch, playing classes/heroes you hate in order to be competitive.
-Classic WoW had the problem of people already knowing the meta ahead of time and knowing that additional balance changes would likely never happen. In a traditional old school MMO setting this wouldn’t be the case, people instead stuck with their chosen class/spec in hopes that the next patch would save them.
Except people don’t really behave this way. Instead, you either paralyze people afraid to make a choice that can be markedly wrong or shift things even more full tilt into the spreadsheet mentality (or hoping others do it for you) to make sure you get it right the first time, presuming no bugs or later in-game adjustments. More relative to the respec topic as pertains to Diablo, it’s primarily why I say being so frugal and restrictive curbs experimentation. Simply looking at numbers doesn’t always reflect how fun something is to play. Personal anecdote here would be the old SMH DH FoK build that relied on the player constantly running around at critical HP. On paper, it might’ve sounded like awesome burst damage, but in practice, being a sneeze away from death and deliberately not investing in certain paragon trees is hardly a style for everyone.
Peer pressure is also a very salient element. In D3, it tends to manifest by gatekeeping through paragon levels or being very specific meta elements. For MMOs, it’s likely more tied to gear scorce/levels and/or linking clear achievements to “prove your worth” to PUGs or recruiters who don’t really want to do the work of teaching first-timers or those who just had bad luck with prior groups. As long as character growth is funneled into inflexible paths, there’s no getting around some people being elitist jerks. Especially if the game further demands doing those same inflexible paths repeatedly for months on end.
This is simply where I tend to say choice is good. I have no problem with raids giving out the best gear at the fastest rate, understanding the difficulty of herding the proverbial cats that are players with their miscellaneous schedules and the like. I do have a problem when raids are the only source of said gear, which tends to translate to crafting being cursed into mediocrity by default and world event systems shunned into obscurity “because you don’t need raid gear for those” and so rewards should never, ever, be comparable. What’s the player to do if they dislike raiding or don’t have a schedule that facilitates it? To be blunt, they’re boned. They don’t have to be, but it seems like the route the industry has been content in settling upon for the better part of 2 decades now. For me, it also highlights how there are systems out there that could be better, but aren’t because the gatekeeping has even crept back to the dev level.
Conversely, I also vehemently oppose things like forced level capping that basically translate to saying whatever progress a player has made past a certain point doesn’t count for whatever piece of content. Without some sort of ability scaling system at play, this risks players losing parts of their classes that make them more enjoyable to play. It disincentivizes people to help where instead of taking 5m to do something at their full power, it becomes 15m or more on top of likely added further LFG times.
I think we’ll otherwise agree that balance is a Good Thing™ in the grand scheme, so come endgame, you don’t have runaway best choices. Mitigating munchkin mentality is otherwise on the devs to prevent things like letting wall-to-wall dungeon pulls being possible (when of level) and encouraging people to help newbies through additional rewards at the end of a run. You won’t solve the issue of some people thinking content can only be beaten by very specific party formations because it’s the first video they saw on youtube, but assuming Balance™ has actually done its thing, the overall community should never actually degenerate to that point, with blind matchmaking and penalties for those who ragequit/get kicked doing the rest. Put another way, if players are jerks in a game, it’s because the game is designed to allow it on some level.
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I believe this is some sort of myth. I do not believe it’s the players, who take the fun out of a game.
I’d say it comes down to specifics. If the most optimal way to play a game is something completely inconsistent with the initial experience, to the point that you have to do it in order to get the most rewards out of the game and to not be left behind by other players, the fault lies with the devs, not the players.
Let’s make up a stupid example:
I make a game about jousting or fighting while being on a horse, you know… mounted combat… that’s what the game is about.
The game will have it’s audience, people that find that enjoyable and fun.
If it turns out, that the best way to play is to actually get off the horse and to walk around all slowly, but somehow you’re able to accomplish more on foot, when the entire point of the game is about you riding a horse…
well, that’s not the player taking the fun out of the game, that’s the dev lacking foresight and not fixing the game accordingly.
The moment you have that inconsistency, where the core and fun way to play is not the best way to win, that comes down to how the game was designed by the dev and having a fundamental flaw, not, that the player found the flaw.
Now to an actual example:
I remember back in early RoS when the best way to do Greater RIfts was for there to be a Witch Doctor support, that would keep monsters perpetually feared and rooted, effectively turning them into statues.
So we have like a D1, D2 and D3 vanilla, which are about monsters coming for you and attacking you, and then you have a game where you just walk around and you kill statues. And there is the inconsistency.
Now, is it the fault of the player for finding, that you can keep monsters in perpetual crowd control to the point, that they stay like statues?
Or is it the fault of the dev for lacking the foresight, that the various stats and items allow for a WD to turn everything into statues… I’d say it’s the devs fault.
Again, I don’t think there’s a big problem with players generally getting better at a game and raising the bar slightly. I think the problem is, when the best way to player a game is somehting, that does not match the original design and what people originally enjoyed about the game.
And even crazier made up example:
I make that game about riding horses. It get’s it’s dedicated audience over time.
Then in my infinite retardation, I get a license for the intellectual properties of Detective Comics and I introduce The Flash into the game as a new character…
he literally outruns any horse. The game is no longer about riding a horse, it’s about playing as The Flash…
Then there are the players, who really liked the game initially, but they are resentful, because of the fact, that they were bad at the mounted combat… or those, who never touched the game prior to Flash being introduced.
They start playing with The Flash and easily outperform everyone else.
Someone says “Hey guys, that doesn’t seem very fair… nor fun… and more than that, it literally changed the game into something it wasn’t meant to be, can we have the game be about riding horses again?”
And then he gets berated for daring to say, that the king is naked…
“Why are you such an elitist?” “Come on now, that makes the game more accessible to a newer audience.” “Riding horses and mounted combat was stupid anyways”…
Again, the way I see it the fault lies with the devs…
Yep.
In the end, devs are failing at this. They are the ones that have the tools to improve the situation.
It’s both imo, but I agree the devs are still at fault. It is their game.
And devs know this. Yet for some reason, they keep making the “not fun” ways to play the most efficient ways to play. Seems like they believe that is what players want. That players need to be rewarded for playing the game in a bad way, like mindless 10000 hour paragon grinds.
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