2011-03-04, 12:42 AM
At least now you have some first-hand experience with game design.
I had my reasons for not joining this game from the start, but I didn't want to say because that might scare off players. But since the game is now over, here are some of the reasons why I didn't play:
--This is a whole lot like a board game. Putting it in forum mode multiplies the time it takes by 12-24 hours, making it super drawn out and boring. Stuff like "what happens when this guy gets the essence, and how do you stop him?" should be realized within a few games, or at least brought to light by hypothetical play scenarios. Add to the fact that this game has very simplistic rules, and it wouldn't take more than 30 minutes to figure out all the maneuvers.
--There's not a lot of incentive to teleport randomly, given that the reward is that you may possibly find the essence faster, but the risk is much more sure that you'll get whacked for a lot of HP, and unnecessarily. In a true random map, the fact that you can just move to an adjacent square for the lowest risk still lets you explore just as much as teleporting does. Of course, in true random, you could also be completely boxed in by rocks. But that would be really unfair. And in the case of using teleport to swap player positions, people will get into teleport wars or something once the essence has been found, and the whole luck factor due to the fact that EVERYONE moves at the same time makes things dicey. Yes, I recognize that a lot of board games also use dice, but it's just not the same level of fun playing online compared to playing in real life, even playing next to each other online.
I had my reasons for not joining this game from the start, but I didn't want to say because that might scare off players. But since the game is now over, here are some of the reasons why I didn't play:
--This is a whole lot like a board game. Putting it in forum mode multiplies the time it takes by 12-24 hours, making it super drawn out and boring. Stuff like "what happens when this guy gets the essence, and how do you stop him?" should be realized within a few games, or at least brought to light by hypothetical play scenarios. Add to the fact that this game has very simplistic rules, and it wouldn't take more than 30 minutes to figure out all the maneuvers.
--There's not a lot of incentive to teleport randomly, given that the reward is that you may possibly find the essence faster, but the risk is much more sure that you'll get whacked for a lot of HP, and unnecessarily. In a true random map, the fact that you can just move to an adjacent square for the lowest risk still lets you explore just as much as teleporting does. Of course, in true random, you could also be completely boxed in by rocks. But that would be really unfair. And in the case of using teleport to swap player positions, people will get into teleport wars or something once the essence has been found, and the whole luck factor due to the fact that EVERYONE moves at the same time makes things dicey. Yes, I recognize that a lot of board games also use dice, but it's just not the same level of fun playing online compared to playing in real life, even playing next to each other online.