A collection of things as random as my mood and personality.
Game-time "extensions"
Posted 11/14/2010 at 20:00 by Vaidas B
Everyone knows that almost every “casual” gamer has the attention space of a baby rabbit, something shines, and it has our already-divided attention. So I’m going to talk about some of the most common game distractions that are used to keep players playing longer.
The first “distraction” is core-gameplay, the two most popular game leveling types are quest based, and grinding based leveling.
The first one keeps us on quests and quests only. Games like “Battle of the immortals” are only quest based, meaning that killing monsters without a quest will get you nowhere, and your exp bar will not move. But if you keep on the “right track” of doing quests you will reach level 30 in one day/a few hours.
The second one is grinding, in case you don’t know what grinding is, I’ll explain: grinding is constant monster killing, you log-in, grab your weapon and start the bloodbath. Such games lack quests in almost all possible ways. Quests don’t have rewards that are worth the effort, or the quest selection is not that big.
Both of these keep my gameplay hours growing every day, but that’s not enough, this stuff gets boring really fast, so what’s next?
Flashy skills, although we don’t get blurry vision from casting a skill at level one, but more advanced players can get a real light show in most games. When we are starting a new game, we often jump onto Youtube, or go out on a hunt for highly advanced players to see some skills, what should we expect, and what do we want.
Group activities, that’s something that attracts a lot of players at once, instance dungeons, guild wars, mass pvp tournaments, and daily events. These are the four things that I always usually look forward to in a game. They are fun, fast in action, and always rewarding. But there is a trick to this thing, if a team/player fails any of these activities, they have to start over, meaning he will waste the same amount of time trying to get to the point where he died.
The last two that I’ve noticed are gambling and mini games/quests, though very rare, they are making their way into more and more MMO RPG/FPS games. Mini quests are great distractions from the main-flow of the game, they are random and often very rewarding/punishing. Gambling can also be found in most games, but not always in the form of playing with money. Have you ever thought about strengthening your weapon as gambling? Take a look at it this way: you win – you get a powerful weapon, you lose, everything you worked for goes to waste. Sometimes games let you collect in-game items that are used to gamble for buffs, the more you play, the better the buff, the means more power in the game.
Maybe you’ll find these things un-noticable but they do exist, and they are fun distractions that pull us away from the main goal, thus greatly extending the time we play.
Conclusion: ever game can have some great detours that keeps a game fun for hours, I have taken only a few things and used them as examples, every individual game has its own ways of keeping its players happy at all times.
Thanks for reading,
TheConArtist
The first “distraction” is core-gameplay, the two most popular game leveling types are quest based, and grinding based leveling.
The first one keeps us on quests and quests only. Games like “Battle of the immortals” are only quest based, meaning that killing monsters without a quest will get you nowhere, and your exp bar will not move. But if you keep on the “right track” of doing quests you will reach level 30 in one day/a few hours.
The second one is grinding, in case you don’t know what grinding is, I’ll explain: grinding is constant monster killing, you log-in, grab your weapon and start the bloodbath. Such games lack quests in almost all possible ways. Quests don’t have rewards that are worth the effort, or the quest selection is not that big.
Both of these keep my gameplay hours growing every day, but that’s not enough, this stuff gets boring really fast, so what’s next?
Flashy skills, although we don’t get blurry vision from casting a skill at level one, but more advanced players can get a real light show in most games. When we are starting a new game, we often jump onto Youtube, or go out on a hunt for highly advanced players to see some skills, what should we expect, and what do we want.
Group activities, that’s something that attracts a lot of players at once, instance dungeons, guild wars, mass pvp tournaments, and daily events. These are the four things that I always usually look forward to in a game. They are fun, fast in action, and always rewarding. But there is a trick to this thing, if a team/player fails any of these activities, they have to start over, meaning he will waste the same amount of time trying to get to the point where he died.
The last two that I’ve noticed are gambling and mini games/quests, though very rare, they are making their way into more and more MMO RPG/FPS games. Mini quests are great distractions from the main-flow of the game, they are random and often very rewarding/punishing. Gambling can also be found in most games, but not always in the form of playing with money. Have you ever thought about strengthening your weapon as gambling? Take a look at it this way: you win – you get a powerful weapon, you lose, everything you worked for goes to waste. Sometimes games let you collect in-game items that are used to gamble for buffs, the more you play, the better the buff, the means more power in the game.
Maybe you’ll find these things un-noticable but they do exist, and they are fun distractions that pull us away from the main goal, thus greatly extending the time we play.
Conclusion: ever game can have some great detours that keeps a game fun for hours, I have taken only a few things and used them as examples, every individual game has its own ways of keeping its players happy at all times.
Thanks for reading,
TheConArtist
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