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Original post by SantaClaws 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.

Can you describe how this worked a bit more? Did you just look in the direction of the creature and click? Was there any other gameplay or risk involved?

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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.

I definitely see this as a possibility, though maybe weird one as it may have you asking about the game's focus. But I do like the idea if mixed with limits which you overcome by buying better stuff (faster drives or a warp, as staaf suggested).

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

I tend to agree with this, which is why I'm a bit torn. My instinct says "fill the universe with threats." But lately that hasn't been fitting the design.

Consider this example: You're the first one off your planet in a rocket. Space is uninhabited and unexplored. You decide to land on a barren rock. You get out of your ship, walk around a bit, see nothing but low value iron, and think "why the hell did the designer include empty worlds?"

There are a couple of solutions here:

Maybe you just provide a static cutscene for empty worlds, something like "You land, you explore for awhile but find nothing, now you're back in orbit."

Alternately, every landing could be an opportunity to do something. Maybe there are repairs that can only be made in gravity? (Doesn't make sense, but I could invent some excuse).

If you make walking around in a spacesuit something like a minigame, then you risk turning things into a simulator which doesn't scale when you want to do combat.

The point of all of this is that you've only gotten into a boring situation because the game has planets which could turn out empty. Even if you could scan the planet and see that there's nothing there, I can see players still landing and being disappointed because they got into a boring experience. They would be of the mindset that the game should never let them get into any situation that's boring.

Wavinator,

Personally, I would want a world where I can go anywhere. If I stick a weight on the fly key for a day and fly through space to the outer reaches of the universe, I would expect for me to have to do the same thing on the way back. Would this bore the player? Certainly. Should it be that big of a deal? Not if its dealt with correctly. I think that having the player spend that amount of time serves them right. They weren't supposed to go there, so they have to suffer their way back! Of course, by chance they might hit a predefined script (or something) where they actually had something to do, so it works out in the end.

This actually happened to me in the Tie Fighter/X Wing games (I did this way too often). I would fly out to who knows where, and then 5 or 10 minutes later the opposing forces would strike and I'd have to fly that amount of time back just to fight them.

So to sum it up, I think it would be worthwhile to have the situation of B. They would learn not to do that the next time, and keep strict watch over what they were supposed to do (ie mission goals, places to visit, etc). Your writing the game so you do what you want, but thats what I would do in your shoes (or i should say thats what I would want out of a 'flying through the universe, and beating aliens, saving the princess, etc' type game).

-brad

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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?

I'll take some pages out of Star Control 2, IronSeed, and Elite for this one. No, not every planet needs to be filled with oodles of stuff, though it does depend on how many planets you have available. If there are over 100 planets in the game, the player will understand that not all of them could/should be filled with interesting stuff, and pending any options he could perform on said empty world will promptly move on to something more interesting, unless the world looks pretty and he feels like taking a walk. But if you have say, only a dozen worlds, then finding one with nothing in it, no enemies/minerals/anything would seem out of place and downright cheap.

Possible uses for empty worlds could be for repairs (kind of hard to fix hull/structural damage in space), mining/manufacturing, Xenobiological study (just because its empty doesn't mean you can't have a critter/plant/crystal somewhere), or maybe even the opportunity to build a new colony, thus turning an "empty" area into a populated area. He could also choose to hide in some canyon's/caves from enemy ships/fleets in the sector trying to hunt him down.

[Edited by - Gyrthok on April 20, 2005 6:50:19 PM]

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Original post by Wavinator Can you describe how this worked a bit more? Did you just look in the direction of the creature and click? Was there any other gameplay or risk involved?

You had to press a button on the gamepad to pull out the camera, then zoom and frame the creature to take a picture of it. The difficulty in doing this varied, as some creatures moved.

As for risk... some of the creatures you had to photograph were enemies, or were only present in areas full of enemies, so it presented a risk at times as you had to try to photograph it while things were attacking you.

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I definitely see this as a possibility, though maybe weird one as it may have you asking about the game's focus. But I do like the idea if mixed with limits which you overcome by buying better stuff (faster drives or a warp, as staaf suggested).

Note that I don't think that giving the player something to do should remove the possibility to skip it. If a player wants to go into stasis while he's traveling from one planet to another, he should be able to, but for those that want to wait it out (or haven't bought the equipment required to go into stasis), they should have something entertaining or interesting to do while they're traveling.

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The point of all of this is that you've only gotten into a boring situation because the game has planets which could turn out empty. Even if you could scan the planet and see that there's nothing there, I can see players still landing and being disappointed because they got into a boring experience. They would be of the mindset that the game should never let them get into any situation that's boring.

Starflight (an old, excellent game based on space and planetary exploration in a HUGE universe) had this same situation. They handled it by allowing you to scan the planet before landing on it, to see the concentration of minerals, life forms, etc. You could then decide whether to land on it and explore more.

I think the problem isn't whether or not the players have the opportunity to experience something which might be boring - the problem is whether or not they blame the fact that they're bored on you as the game designer, or if they blame it on themselves as the result of a believable choice that they made in your world. As long as you always give the player a way to get around something that could be considered boring, then I don't think that they will blame it on you.

Take the example of flying from planet to planet, for instance. If, when the player first purchases their ship, one of the options that you ensure will be affordable (but not required) is a stasis system, and the player opts to skip that system and get stronger weapons instead, I can't see a player blaming you because they can't go into stasis while they travel. It's something they chose, and you provided them with a way around it.

The same holds true with empty planets. A player should have the ability to scan the planet, and if they see it's empty and don't want to be bored, fly away. But, if for some reason, a player WANTS to go and explore an empty planet, I don't think you need to break the realism of your world in order to account for their obviously bad choice.

You should be able to explore barren planets, I think. Maybe there really is nothing there and you just enjoy yourself sightseeing (or get bored). Maybe there's a secret smugglers' base, or the player decides to set up their own secret base there.

An option to warp back if there's nothing interesting is useful, but it also could cheapen the experience a bit; it could serve as an escape from dangerous situations, which may not be desired. It could also be an attainable limited-uses bonus, though. Players could get them if they want to get back to civilization fast.

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Original post by nagromo An option to warp back if there's nothing interesting is useful, but it also could cheapen the experience a bit; it could serve as an escape from dangerous situations, which may not be desired. It could also be an attainable limited-uses bonus, though. Players could get them if they want to get back to civilization fast.

I don't think that a player should get an "easy out" if they make a mistake and do something that they shouldn't have (like fly halfway across the universe into the middle of nowhere). I think that they should suffer a possible penalty for making a risky decision, but they must have been provided with sufficient warnings that the decision could cause problems or they will blame it on the game.

This made me remember a neat thing that I liked in Starflight. They limited your range of movement by your fuel. You could upgrade your ship to get much better fuel efficiency and the ability to carry more fuel.

But, in the case that you went too far, or if your ship was disabled in battle but not destroyed, you could send out a distress signal and a ship would come and tow you back to the starbase for a charge. If I remember correctly, if you didn't have enough money to pay for the charge you went into debt to the bank and all the problems that went along with it started making themselves noticed.

They did a similar thing with your land vehicle used for exploring planets. It had a limited amount of fuel, and you had to take this into account when traveling away from your ship. If you ran out of fuel before you could get back to the ship, you had to start walking on foot - which could have very bad effects on the health of your crew depending on the distance they had to travel and the environments on the planet.

The guys who made that game had a great sense of humor about punishing the player for bad decisions.

Their copy protection was in the form of a code wheel. When you'd leave the dock, the docking crew would ask you for the security code response to a set of words, and you'd use the wheel (which was themed around the universe, of course) to determine the correct response.

At one point, I lost the wheel, and answered randomly. Much to my surprise, they let me out of the dock! My excitement was short lived, however, as not far from the dock (but far enough for me to think I was in the clear) I was stopped by the interstellar police. They promptly arrested me for piracy. Game over. :P

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Original post by SantaClaws At one point, I lost the wheel, and answered randomly. Much to my surprise, they let me out of the dock! My excitement was short lived, however, as not far from the dock (but far enough for me to think I was in the clear) I was stopped by the interstellar police. They promptly arrested me for piracy. Game over. :P

[grin]

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Original post by SantaClaws I think the problem isn't whether or not the players have the opportunity to experience something which might be boring - the problem is whether or not they blame the fact that they're bored on you as the game designer, or if they blame it on themselves as the result of a believable choice that they made in your world. As long as you always give the player a way to get around something that could be considered boring, then I don't think that they will blame it on you.

I think SantaClaws is right in this. I know for myself as a player that as long as I have the choice of doing a boring thing and there is a potential reward at the end of it, I will blame noone but myself for doing it even if the reward at the end turns out to be nothing. Frustration comes to me only when the designer forces the boring act upon me. And I think as long as the designer is aware of this problem it shouldn't be very hard to offer some alternative to the boring act.

Many good examples have been mentioned here: simulators, damage surveys, stasis sleep, etc. and as long as they don't begin to dominate the gameplay but stay as small interludes into the ordinary gameplay I think it will be fine.

I vote option C, but I think this thread is relevant.

Sure, if you're being repeatedly attacked by the same guys no matter where you go, then yes, it'll get very boring. The same guys look the same and act the same, so you beat them the same way.

Procedural content is the way to go. When arriving in a new region of space, generate a new alien race with new ships and new behaviors for you to get involved with.