Hi, all!
What do you think about games where plot advancement depends on random outcome?
Like passing water minigame which depends on dropped air cans which are dropped randomly and often you end up dying because they are not dropped enough, and you have to repetitively replay this part until you can pass?
Or if game have these minigames as mandatory elements which you need to complete?
Or if mission completion depends on quality of controller used in game, speed of platform it is runing on and some random factors not under player control? So the basic thing is you have to repeat everything again and again until everything is right.
As I see the games which exploit such approach are Bully and GTA SA from Rockstar (I did not play their newer games to compare). So it is not just repetition, it is repetition of hundreds iterations at times to complete.
I asked some people I know who played these and they told me that when they were younger and had
a lot of free time they liked it, but now at 30+ these games are incompletable for them and they basically lose motivation half-way. But as I aked 16 year old group, they played Bully game and given it shitty rating
describing it is frustrating as game li interesting, but shitty minigames and “class” games are extremely stupid
uninteresting and unmotivating, and if not for humor and some interesting missions, game looks half-finished,
probably QA was not there when they released it. So both older people and youngsters did not like Bully,
however it is one of most popular games.
As for GTA, I think the missions were really made to annoy player, not entertain him, so people
prefer just to play sandbox activities (which are great) and only occasionally do missions only to do sandbox advancement (to have more nice sandbox activities). So GTA reward system forces player to do missions still,
so he can improve his in-game life, while missions are shitty and of random quality (very little are motivating by themselves), players still continue playing the game for rewards. But it looks like while having better overall plot, Bully
fails to reward player enough to motivate him to play the game.
So I wonder if adding such puzzles/minigames with adequate reward would actually improve UX (hate it but can’t stop),
or will worsen the game overall?
