Creating your fun

[Xcalibur]

Don't know if it was discussed before, if so, then, do the usual which is to be 353 posters telling me one by one.

I am of the old generation of gamers, those that were little kid when the NES came around (even had a coleco before) and grow older seeing all the new consoles and games.


I always had the NEWEST COOLEST console first in my town, even if it meant paying it 2 times its original value and that was really something back then.

I remember counting all my quarters and my dimes and so on, man, the bag they were in was SO heavy.


That being said, the fact that I payed ALL my consoles, all my games, all my accessories made me developped the rare syndrome of: Challenge is everything even if it means being impossible.

Let me explain with a popular game.

Dynasty warrior 3, you know, hack and slashing every damn ennemy soldiers with a patheticly too powerful general.

Before buying it, I, like always, checked internet for its revue, for the critics of others, gameplay, you know, the whole damn thing.

What surprised me was seeing SO many people ADVISING others to start the game at EASY for a couple of stages, then moving to NORMAL for a long time and finally when your character was COMPLETED (maxed), moving to hard to get his final weapon.

WHAT????

So I tried playing Easy with someone that is normally too strong, Guan Yu (for those knowing him).

Man, even if my character was new, I kicked the butt of everything/everyone.

Didn't save. Satisfaction level for me was around 2/100.

I reseted and started anew, but this time at HARD.

I got my butt kicked then 6 times. The 7th, I was close to the end but a mistake of mine made me killed.

Since you can save in the game, I, the 8th time, saved a bit before the final commander. I spent like 40 minutes trying to beat him and finally got him.

Satisfaction level was around 98/100.

So all in all, I play ALL my games, at first or not, at the hardest level or somewhere along those lines.

For civilization, it's the same damn thing. For around 200 games I played at civ3, I won like 10. Was it fun? Oh damn yes.

Is it fun to always pwned the computer 100% of the time AND feeling the same way, which is that you won because the computer was too weak, you had like 10 times the number of his troops, you knew where his vital point was, et cetera.

I know that the first 2 hours I will be playing civilization 4, I will be excited about its new aspect.

But by reading a lot of comments and critics of others, I am a bit worried about it but I know that if the game is NOT easy (by putting the difficulty high and not cheating), I'm going to enjoy it because I won't be a God among mortals.

That is another point... cheating. Cheating means destroying the fun of playing.

The point of playing, for me, isn't to win, it's to have fun.

You?

 

[Piemaster]

I am like you in some ways but not other. I also like a challenge and would never cheat at computer games. On the other hand I tend to always start at the easiest difficulty setting. Then when I have beaten that I move onto the next one, then the next one and so on, continually challenging myself.

I am also old.

 

[CVDon]

Absolutely. I get so angry when I am struggling to keep up with the AI Civs and then the damn cheating computer swarms me with raging hordes of barbarians, often with better Tech than I have. As if I didn't have enough trouble. I have to shift resources, train troops I did not want, guard farms and mines .... all the while hoping I can gain the next important Tech and build an occasional Wonder (often losing it by one or two turns!!!!!).

Then ... FINALLY ... I gain the upper hand and send my armies to obliterate the barbarian homeland. NOW THAT'S SATISFACTION!!

Meanwhile one of the AI Civs win the game. So I lose. But I had fun.

 

[Thalassicus]

I was really turned off to cheats when I was reading strategy for Myst and accidentally came across the code for the Fireplace. Code + white page = you win, ruined the game for me

The reason I like playing at a normal difficulty in Civ is that you don't have to find all sorts of little ways to exploit the game just to win. It's why I didn't care for high-level Warcraft III competitive play, especially in solo games: the difference between a good player and the best players was often knowing the most little exploits. I enjoyed playing more at a normal level in team games where I could just have fun.

 

[MeteorPunch]

To me civ is not a game to start at the harder level because it is so complicated. You will learn something (or two) new everytime you play so the working your way up is best to me.

FPS on the other hand are great to start on the hard level. They are simple to learn and you can only play it though the first time once, and that makes the first time a fun and challenging experience.

 

[Mmmm Butter]

Like an above poster said, I play on easy-to-normal difficulty when I'm new to a game, then eventually move up in difficulty.

I agree that it's more satisfying winning a hard-fought game on higher difficulties, but by the same token, I'd rather win a game of Civ4 on noble than get slaughtered on Deity. Even losing by a small margin bothers me, I guess I'm competitive. As long as I'm still learning something, I'll stick with noble.

It has something to do with Civ being a long, drawn-out strategy game. I hate to put in all those hours of gameplay only to lose. On the other hand, I play Madden 2006 on the hardest difficulty, and always lose a couple games every season. I don't mind losing those because a game only takes about a half hour.

Oh, and I agree about cheating. I don't understand how some people can get satisfaction from that. As an example, an old friend of mine used to love playing Madden and filling his team with a bunch of superhuman create-a-players, then playing through a season and putting up astronomical stats. Never got bored with it. Never learned how to play the game too well either.

 

[Pentium]

Oh, how many Sid attempts did I make (and none succeded, but I did beat Civ3 Deity)

I like playing high difficulty level (I play Civ4 Emperor now even though I haven't even tried Monarch), but not only because of fun, but to prevent bad habits. Chieftain or even Noble need different strategies than Deity, and if I learned the lower ones, I'd have to change my playstyle, which is a slow process.

I rather get killed in the first few games and then learn to keep the pace.

 

[Psyringe]

Depends. I find it impossible to answer to the poll.

Sometimes I want to relax. Sometimes I want a really tough challenge. When I was younger (I'm 36 now and started with proprietary consoles which came out even before the Atari 2600, so I've spent enough years playing to look for a trend), I always upped difficulty to the max. I wanted to *beat* the game. I remember playing Civ1, or Castle Wolfenstein, or Doom, on the highest difficulty settings, and it was fun.

Some years ago, my focus started to shift however. I don't get my enjoyment so much from "beating" the game, but more from "playing" itself. In Civ3, I never went for the highest difficulty because I felt I had to resort to an obscene amount of AI exploits in order to win there. But I don't want to use these, exploiting the AI is not fun to me. Also, giving the AI vast bonuses (higher difficulty level) to a degree that you then have to perform absurd exploits to beat it, is a little pointless anyways. I find it more satisfying to play the game without using these exploits, even if this means that I won't beat the highest difficulty level.

The same goes for RPGs or action games I play. I don't find it fun any more to beat the highest level if this means to save/reload every minute, or running 50 times against one enemy until I finally beat him. This isn't fun, it's frustration. I don't even feel satisfaction after beating an enemy when I needed 50 attempts to do so, because this usually means that I needed a vast amount of luck to win. I don't feel satisfied if I was just lucky. Actually I don't feel I *deserve* such a win, I feel like I cheated. This would be different if, after 50 attempts, I finally found a non-exploiting way to *reliably* beat that opponent. That would be an achievement, and I might feel satisfaction because I developed some skill. But blindly running against a wall in the hope that I will hit the one loose brick just doesn't cut it any more.

Usually, I try to find a difficulty level where I have reasonable chances to win and to lose, and where I can play the game without having to resort to exploits. That's where the fun is, at least for me.

 

[Shillen]

Like an above poster said, I play on easy-to-normal difficulty when I'm new to a game, then eventually move up in difficulty.

I agree that it's more satisfying winning a hard-fought game on higher difficulties, but by the same token, I'd rather win a game of Civ4 on noble than get slaughtered on Deity. Even losing by a small margin bothers me, I guess I'm competitive. As long as I'm still learning something, I'll stick with noble.

It has something to do with Civ being a long, drawn-out strategy game. I hate to put in all those hours of gameplay only to lose. On the other hand, I play Madden 2006 on the hardest difficulty, and always lose a couple games every season. I don't mind losing those because a game only takes about a half hour.

Oh, and I agree about cheating. I don't understand how some people can get satisfaction from that. As an example, an old friend of mine used to love playing Madden and filling his team with a bunch of superhuman create-a-players, then playing through a season and putting up astronomical stats. Never got bored with it. Never learned how to play the game too well either.

I'll add my agreement to this line of thinking. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have any representation in the poll so I didn't vote.

 

[m15a]

with civ, which is the only game that's really relevant for me, i've had a gradual push up in level since civ I. (i played chieftan/warlord and finally prince in civ i, started at 3rd level-ish in civ 2, started at 4th level in civ 3 . . * ) i like to know that i've really won a level before moving on. and by winning, i mean being able to win all the time. i will sway back and forth a little when i want to try something new (a lower level with a wacky strategy or a higher level with its implicit challenges).

* civ 4 has been different so far. i've been playing lower levels than civ 3 and still get destroyed most of the time. but i really appreciate that fact at this point.