Middle-Earth Online Site Update
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 920
On one hand, I don't ever want a player to be standing around wondering, (What do I do next?) It is never fun to have no idea what to do; this is never an acceptable situation. This is the kind of frustration that simply makes a game feel like a chore and results in people looking elsewhere to spend their entertainment dollar (the only real proof that a game is truly great is that people are playing it).
On the other hand, there are big downsides in being too helpful. For one thing, the economics of time becomes a concern. The easier we make it for you to find content, the faster you will burn through that content; the faster you burn through that content, the faster you run out of things to do and quit the game. This is also unacceptable.
So we have two extremes that both lead to you not playing anymore, therefore the answer lies in striking the appropriate balance between fun, pacing and immersion. Fun is impossible to quantify; as designers we simply have to trust our own gamer instincts. Pacing (not in the story sense that is a different dev diary) is a question of content delivery vs. consumption; what is the acceptable rate at which you are engaged in the game and we are able to stay ahead of you with new content? That is also very black and white in philosophy (though the most challenging thing in reality; no amount of content is ever (enough)). Immersion. well, that is a balancing act all its own.
