Imagine that you're exploring space and decide to head out into the icy gulf between stars. The game doesn't stop you, but after awhile you're bored, so you teleport home. Once back in civilized space, you attend to the various death threats, revolutions, save the universe missions and occassional marriage proposals that have made life interesting... Who's responsible for the player being bored, the game or the player? IOW, should a game either A) limit you only to the places where there's action B) let you go into places where there might be nothing of consequence B1) same as above, but always give you a quick way out C) make it so that every place always has action, no matter how contrived that may be Most games adopt A, which is why you get tempting views guarded by knee high barriers you can't jump over. Option C sounds best, but makes world-design arbitrary: For instance, in Freelancer, ships will always spawn that attack you, even if you're going to the corner store for some milk. It gets silly and repetitive after awhile. I would personally favor B1, with the idea that as long as the player can always get to the action, they should be allowed the freedom to discover the game's world at their own pace. This is provided that the player has some way of finding the action space (ie, not searching aimlessly).

I would also use B1, just out of sheer pleasure. Let's use the Space avdenture game example for the sake of example.

I am space fighter, and have been assigned missions. Space is HUGE, hence the name. I may choose to use the cryogenics of my life supply system, so that there is a fade-to-black and fade-from-black that shows me the endless space from the point I specified in my settings (ie 5000km away, 50 km away, half a parsec away, anything), or I could choose to survey the whole mission, even if it includes remaining awake for the next 48 hours just staring at nothing while my ship silently drifts into nothingness.

On the otherhand, if I play a smuggler or a bandit, I may NOT want to let my auto-drive do the job, and be able to choose my routes on my own. I may want to survey if there is a ship to board in my zone. I may choose to wait in some areas and even go as a "blind bleep" in space, with all active systems shut off, except the life maintenance systems, like a drifting rock. But boredom should always allow me to turn this mode off to use cryogenics and go to sleep and just wake up when the goal is reached, or when I am being attacked, or when something enters my range of sensors, or anything...

I'm also going to say B1 is probably a good option, but perhaps with a little of C thrown in. It does get a bit boring, repetative and predictable if things happen constantly even when you're somewhere that should be relatively quiet, but from the sounds of what I've read you'll have a wide range of potential events that could happen; things on board the ship, enemy ships showing up, friendly ships showing up, wreckage being found or whatever - if you keep the occurance of the random events pretty low, and make sure there's plenty of variety to it, then you can have something that's a bit of option C without going over the top.

If they are getting bored because of long or repetative tasks you have placed in the game then its your fault they are bored.

With the journey to 'icy gulf between stars' example. You want the journey to long and difficult as a deterant, but not have the player sat there watching the emptyness of space for an hour. Why give them something to do, like playing a game holo-chess, practicing in the combat simulator or maybe just alow them to order the monthly shopping?

Keep the player distracted and on their toes.

What causes boredom? Thats a question I've been asking myself lately, and I have come up with what I belive to be the answer.

The more often the player has to perform the same task the fast it becomes tedius. The variety in instances of that task can increase the interest lifetime of that task. However, the smaller the diffrences in task varients the the the faster those varients loose their incientive value.

The more the player is challenged the more interested they become in the task. This however does not mean that binary win lose outcome for a task will provide added interest. Instead the diffrent degrees of both and the positive rewards experinced by the player will make the challenge interesting.

Keeping the player involved, the player should never feel they are not acchomplishing anything, or have nothing to do. This will make them loose interest very quickly.


So basically.

Shooting down the same type of pirate ships might be fun for an hour. Getting lasers to kill them with instead of missles might added another half an hour fun to the task. Getting phasers which are only slightly more powerful versions of laser might only add 10 minutes of added fun.

Like wise if the game consists of many hours spent moving my shi and becoming engaged in random pirate battles that just required me to hit the attack button to win, then I most likly won't find the game interesting enough to bother finishing.


As to your options I'd say B2 - same as B1, but with something always going on where ever I go. Not nessarily every second but I've journeying in the blackness of space between stars then I should aleast encounter the occassional object of interest. Whether it be a derilect vessel or mysterious rouge planet, there should at least be something out there besides me.

I think boredom is an important and powerful tool to make the interesting things even more interesting.

If you restrict the player to the action-packed areas there is a risk that the player will feel like it's all been laid out before him, which might limit the effect of the illusion (that is the feeling that this is a living world, not just a program on a computer). On the other hand if the player can explore the empty wastes at his own leisure, and after 30 min of fruitless travelling something interesting pops up on the scanner (assuming the Space Adventure example) then the player will be most excited to see what it is he has found.

Random events is something that easily become boring action, which I think is much worse even than tremendous boredom from inaction, I mean the action is what the player seeks when he sets out to explore and if the action he finds doesn't live up to his expectations then it would all have been a waste of time. Freelancer is an example of this. I grew tired of the random encounters outside civilized space very quickly and then it was just repetition, repetition until I took up the main storyline again.

Boredom due to long distance travel could also be used to emphasize the need for better and more powerful drives on the spaceship. For example if the player knows there is something exciting beyond the Foxtail Nebula but the distance through the nebula is vast. Sure he could just set the autopilot and fly fore some hours (IRL) to get there; hte game shouldn't limit him. But perhaps it would be wiser to do some local missions, gain some credits and buy some more engine power, perhaps even a primitive warp engine, which would cut the travel time down to a tenth of the initial time. In this way the player will not feel directly limited by the game but he must use some creativity to avoid the boredom of flying on cruise speed all the way. The boredom is used as a tool to make the player put some effort into the playing.

Anyway, to answer your question i think I'd go for B. [smile]

/Agree, option B>

Something to keep in mind though is that you can give the player the option of playing minigames to repair/calibrate/install components while in transit to give him something to do. If the player is given a more active role in the maintence and functioning of his ship, long distance travel might not be as boring as just sitting there and pushing the big red button like a good monkey and watching the stars go by. ;D

I would choose B. Different people find different things fun.

I once knew someone that would only play Doom if he had god mode on. Hours and hours and hours of shooting zombies with out the possibility of getting killed. He found that fun, I was bored with it in about 5 min.

Another game (mostly a flying/bomber game with tanks) made the bases really far from each other. Tanks were used mostly for defense, but if you had the patients to take a tank cross country (about 10 min real time) to another base, you could shoot the crap out of the planes before they even took off.

Just leave things open and make it clear where the action zones are. Some people will find fun things to do in the in-between space.
- Drop items that you hope no one else will find.
- Take the long way to get the element of surprise.
- Secretly meet up with someone in the middle of no where.

Personally I think that C is the right option. The thing is, it doesn't always have to be the same kind of fun - fast pased fighting action, etc. Gyrthok's example of ship maintenance is a good example of what could be fun for some players without having to always subject them to the same scenarios.

Another idea would be the ability to survey interesting objects near the route to their destination for money. Beyond Good & Evil comes to mind. In that game, a university in the world had tasked you in assisting them in visually documenting the species of the world and supplied you with a camera to do so. As I'd be running around the map on foot, or driving from my house into town, I found myself to always be alert and watching out for species to take a picture of. It broke up the mundane activies pretty well by keeping me active as a player.

One thing that could be fun is giving the player the ability to practice different activities in a simulator while in transit. It keeps the player immersed in the world, while letting them split up mundane activies with arcade type action, without having the stress of worrying about the long term effects of their actions on gameplay.

Why is option C better than option B1? The problem is having nothing to do... and while I think having the ability to skip over the slow parts to get to action is a viable option, I think that's leaving out the players that don't want to skip it - they just don't want to be bored.

Darn! No consensus. Glad I didn't bet money on this one. [smile]

Extending this idea further, which option would you prefer for exploring planets? Should every planet be filled with threats? Artifacts? Puzzles?

Consider landing on an airless moon in a new planetary system as an example here. It may not make sense that every airless moon has killer robots, alien derelicts or fiendish traps. Or does it?

---

For those who favor C (constant action) what do you do for areas that are civilized or where the player is superior to any challenge / danger? Considering combat only, you don't want pesky little fighters bugging the player when they're running around in a cruiser.

Now you could always scale the difficulty to match the player, but that would lead to a Final Fantasy type world (forget which game) where leveling is discouraged because the threats level up with you. (Although I admit the idea of the whole universe constantly leveling whether you do so or not is kind of interesting.)

Quote:

Original post by Gyrthok If the player is given a more active role in the maintence and functioning of his ship, long distance travel might not be as boring as just sitting there and pushing the big red button like a good monkey and watching the stars go by. ;D

Maintenence might work, especially if you can level the ship or repair stuff in an interesting way. Awhile back I did propose a Star Trek-ish idea a ship that flies either automatically, costing you a standard amount of fuel, or one where you could balance a bunch of different fields to be stealthy, or fuel efficient, or faster.

Unfortunately, this idea doesn't translate to walking around on the ground unless there are always monsters / enemies, or puzzles or whatever on every planet.