I saw this question in a recent Tim Cain video. Well, it's a very good question.
Personally, I think that players don't know what they want, nor should they have to know. To truly know what they want, they would have to become experts in game design. And, that's not their job, that's the job of the game designer! It's like saying "do customers at a Michelin-star restaurant know what they want?". And the answer is obviously NO, they know what tastes good, but they don't know how to make the food taste good. That's the job of the Michelin-star CHEF!
An example from the Tim Cain video is "fast travel". He says players complain about it being in the game, and complain about it NOT being in the game. Well, have you considered that maybe players don't care about fast travel, but they care about deeper things like IMMERSION and TIME VALUE. Example:
Skyrim has fast-travel, but the game also makes you run from one end of the continent to the other constantly.
World of Warcraft does NOT have fast travel (well, it has flight paths and zeppelins and portals that get you around, but it's not the same as fast travel per se), but when playing the game you are NEVER more than a 5 min walk back to the town/inn/questgivers/shops/etc.
Fast travel breaks game immersion, it feels like you're META-gaming. But it's required by Skyrim because they made a poor game decision (IMO) to make quests send you all over the god's creation constantly. Ugh. It's really stupid. Todd should be ashamed lol But I digress...
Skyrim was based on a huge open world concept, but they should have made quests more local. Or locked continent-spanning quests behind more local quests, so they are later-game concerns. Also, quests should have more local endpoints. So if you delve into a dungeon and pick up a strange book, you shouldn't have to trek to the mage's guild to turn it in. Maybe a local outpost of the mage's guild will accept it and pass it along.
That's called valuing player's time, and also not breaking the immersion.
What do you think about fast travel, or what players want in general?
Personally, I think that players don't know what they want, nor should they have to know. To truly know what they want, they would have to become experts in game design. And, that's not their job, that's the job of the game designer! It's like saying "do customers at a Michelin-star restaurant know what they want?". And the answer is obviously NO, they know what tastes good, but they don't know how to make the food taste good. That's the job of the Michelin-star CHEF!
An example from the Tim Cain video is "fast travel". He says players complain about it being in the game, and complain about it NOT being in the game. Well, have you considered that maybe players don't care about fast travel, but they care about deeper things like IMMERSION and TIME VALUE. Example:
Skyrim has fast-travel, but the game also makes you run from one end of the continent to the other constantly.
World of Warcraft does NOT have fast travel (well, it has flight paths and zeppelins and portals that get you around, but it's not the same as fast travel per se), but when playing the game you are NEVER more than a 5 min walk back to the town/inn/questgivers/shops/etc.
Fast travel breaks game immersion, it feels like you're META-gaming. But it's required by Skyrim because they made a poor game decision (IMO) to make quests send you all over the god's creation constantly. Ugh. It's really stupid. Todd should be ashamed lol But I digress...
Skyrim was based on a huge open world concept, but they should have made quests more local. Or locked continent-spanning quests behind more local quests, so they are later-game concerns. Also, quests should have more local endpoints. So if you delve into a dungeon and pick up a strange book, you shouldn't have to trek to the mage's guild to turn it in. Maybe a local outpost of the mage's guild will accept it and pass it along.
That's called valuing player's time, and also not breaking the immersion.
What do you think about fast travel, or what players want in general?
