That's a really good talk. Ejoyed the whole thing.
Considering a number of Frontier's Devs are Magic the Gathering players (from what I've read anyhow), I'd be curious on their thoughts regarding those lessons and how they see Elite: Dangerous fitting in, both from it's current developed state, as well as being a completely different type of game (more on that later).
"It's not the player's job to find the fun." - Mark Rosewater (Lesson 13)
The funny thing about that statement is, that in a sandbox, one might expect finding fun to be the focus of the game. Where IMO it is the journey of discovery itself that should be fun to begin with. Otherwise you risk wasting your time searching for something you may never find (says the guy writing on a forum instead of playing the game).
The question remains however, what is "fun"? Taking into account that some people like gambling and view the risk of never finding anything fun to do as fun in itself, it is a difficult question to answer... Reminds me of one of my design classes: while every sixth person might like what you make, that still doesn't mean they are going to want it themselves.
Now "restrictions breed creativity" is something I can attest to, however I'd go a step further and state that consequences create the best experiences. The reason being that consequences can be a form of dynamic restrictions. As a direct response to one's actions, they can (if negative) impede a player's progression or (if positive) enforce them, yet may change depending on how the player deals with them and the game world reacts in turn. That is what makes them dynamic and potentially temporary restrictions that also act as feedback for the player ( = to confirm they are actually affecting the game at all). In sandbox games this often leads to experimentation, and Elite: Dangerous certainly nails this on the head with the hundreds of thousands of possible build variations via outfitting and engineering of ships.
The fact the game offers that much freedom in outfitting (and thus experimenting with the various consequences of specific ship builds), is largely the reason small ships remain viable for just about everything in the game to begin with. Unfortunately for the rest of the game that doesn't quite apply. There is no consequence outside of outfitting, as there is effectively no negative feedback from any activity, save earning less credits/hour (aside from death, but that largely equates to the same).
One thing I do want to stress though, Elite: Dangerous has a significant drawback compared to Magic the Gathering or even the original Elite: its persistence. It is an entirely different kind of game. That is to say, the game has no end and simply continues on. As humans are creatures of habit, players are susceptible to repeat the same actions over and over again, unless something forces them to act differently or stop. This ultimately causes the game to leave players behind, should they not be given guidance on what to do next.
Mark highlighted a very good point within the video when talking about the subject of player choice without direction:
knowledge = familiarity = preference = quality
Which is why a player who knows about that type of activity (ex. from playing other games) will likely engage in it if they previously associated such with enjoyment, therefore likely viewing that activity as "a sensible thing to do". They will then repeat that activity over and over again, up until the point the game (or another player) forces/suggests for them to do something different, or the player simply gets bored with it. In the latter case, the boredom acts as a restriction on the enjoyment factor, giving the player a nudge to try something else.
Contrary to common belief, boredom is not actually a negative thing, but one of nature's primary ways to ensure we eventually discover
new things. The issue within video games comes down to human perception: boredom is the opposite of enjoyment. Enjoyment equals good, thus boredom must equal bad.
Which leads to another aspect Mark talks about regarding players expecting a game to be "fun" and blaming game designers when it is not. Which is quite logical, given that many players will do whatever a game tells/allows them to, with the expectation that it must be fun, as the game told/allowed them to do it - AKA was designed that way. One should mention here, that there are exceptions to this rule - as the definition of enjoyment depends entirely on whether the game meets the player's expectations.
The point of playing is generally to learn, challenge, explore, or escape (and often a combination thereof). Which of those apply changes based on the current mood of all players involved.
Before I start diving off into the emotional side of gaming, I'll just finish here by saying: the 20 lessons in that video are a fantastic way to take a peek into the complexity "design" is really all about (which doesn't just apply to video games).
To steer this excursion back on topic: the game isn't finished. In fact, Odyssey was possibly originally intended to be released back around 2016 around the time multicrew was implemented. I highly suspect that technical issues were the reason Odyssey (and atmospheric planets) got pushed back so far. As a result, we have seen very little (or no) environmental changes to the game since the introduction of (the most basic) landable bodies. I know that I'm not the only user here thinking this to have been the case, and always welcome more communication. Hint, hint...
When I consider that CD-Project Red received a multi-million grant just a few years back, to research and develop various tech necessary to complete multi-story, open-world crowds and environments (among other things) for Cyberpunk 2077 - I wouldn't be surprised if Frontier developed some of their newer IPs like JWE as a means of exploring technical solutions that may potentially work for Elite: Dangerous. (Apart from expanding the company's financial backing and developer's expertise in general).
o7
![[VR] Bulbulunufus](https://d2aefvhu2f0gi9.cloudfront.net/data/avatars/m/261/261245.jpg?1671230473){kind=avatar}
