Why Cooldowns Aren't Compelling as a Mechanic, Continued
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One response made by Mark Venturelli refuted my point that cooldowns are a bad, unfun mechanic because I took them in isolation. He stated that all game mechanics can be fun given the proper context and that singling one out in such a fashion undermined its strengths, and, to a degree, you could micro-analyze just about any mechanic and reach similar conclusions.
This certainly seems to hold water. Most game mechanics, cooldowns included, aren't all that much fun when taken in isolation. Reloading a gun in a shooter, for instance, simply boils down to pressing one key or button - it's the act of doing it in a tense and stressful situation, and its relationship to the acts of shooting and taking cover that make the dynamic of a third-person shooter so thrilling. The question isn't "how much fun is it to reload?" but rather "how much fun is it to reload when you're under fire, down to a few bullets, and could give up a successful kill because of the time spent?" The cover-based shooter genre is founded almost entirely upon this dynamic - the games really don't need to be all that deep or complex because the questions posed by the shooting mechanics are always relevant and interesting.
Following the same logic, cooldowns can be consistently interesting when used in the right context. In a game like World of Warcraft, using an ability isn't just a matter of pressing a button that lights up - it's also a tactical assessment of the enemy's capabilities, the relative state of the entire battlefield and the remaining enemies on it, one's own other resources (health, mana, other spells available, items, etc.) and a question of whether using an ability now or later is worthwhile, knowing that the 20 seconds an ability is unavailable could mean the difference between life and death.
