The spitemaster wrote:
2. This is a game that revolves around stats. If you make the game not have any choices than the game is not fun. I know that a choice is harder to produce than some people think, and that is O.K. This game will be different and harder for producers as much as it is for the players. For example, a choice between a gel baby and a roach is not a choice if you cannot defeat a gel baby. A choice is when you can only chose between attacking two different spiders and there is a key and defense behind one and a key and attack behind the other. Also in this case you can only attack one of them and then you have to move on. That is what makes it fun. Not just walking along and making sure that you don't kill yourself on someone you can't attack yet.
In original DROD I was never much of an optimizer, but of course RPG is all about optimizing, and I did have much fun with that. That said, what I'd like to point out is that I do need a certain incentive to optimize, and while the obvious one, i.e. being able to complete the hold, certainly serves its purpose, finding the one solution that works is potentially frustrating.
In the other extreme, if multiple solutions work, and the only effect different choices have are different scores when completing the hold, I don't really feel like going back just to obtain a better score.
What both parts of Tendry's Tale and Paycheck do very well is offering both a basic walkthrough, that gives a certain sense of accomplishment, and an advanced walkthrough, that leaves you with the feeling of "
now I've seen it all"
.
I really wish that future holds will also use choices in that way (the better your choices, the more you will have seen of the hold once completed, which really makes me want to optimize), and not solely as a means to determine the score or your ability to conquer the hold at all.
/dy
