I keep reading about how things don't work with the game at present and I am not meaning bugs, but the gameplay itself. When I'm playing and something doesn't work as expected I make up some gumph in my head to get around it so that it won't grate on me. However, sometimes the game throws things at me which no measure of pseudo-technobabble or made up operational functionality can get around. With such instances I always find myself comparing them to real life and what I would expect to happen there. I've previously posted how exploration is poorly implemented (e.g. how can a star be annotated as "First discovered by..." when we already know it exists via the Galaxy Map?) and gravity is poorly implemented (it will have to be introduced eventually for planet landing but it's just a bad joke at present yet we could easily have a halfway house now). Here I'll look at another area of the game.
Imagine you're at a warehouse where mixed bundles of items have been brought in and stacked in one area. They need to be sorted before being either thrown away or shipped out (e.g. a charity with donated clothing items). You have two assistants, the first who is tasked with separating the mixed bundles into boxes of one item type and a second who is tasked with sorting those boxes ready for shipment.
Assistant one grabs a pile of shirts and asks you what to do with them. You say to put them in an empty box. A minute later the assistant is back with a few pairs of shoes. You give the same instruction. A minute later the assistant is back with more shoes. You look around at all the empty boxes waiting to be filled, but patiently give the same instruction. A minute later the assistant is back with a pile of used underwear. You say that they're an unwanted item so either put them in the discarded pile straight away or put them in a box so that we can easily discard those unwanted boxes later when we time. A minute later the assistant is back with more items. This goes on all through the working day and no matter how many times you tell the assistant what you want to happen you continue to suffer repeated interruptions to your own job, overseeing incoming and outgoing goods.
Assistant two is busy grabbing the boxes filled by assistant one and putting them in the area ready for shipping out. Some of the boxes contain items you know are not required so you remove them and place them in the discarded pile. No matter how many times you remove these boxes assistant two keeps fetching them back. You have to physically destroy the boxes yourself or take them out of the reach of the assistant (or worse, pause work and wait for the assistant's shift to finish). Of course, you could direct the assistant to an individual box which you know is ready for shipment, but after fetching it that assistant thinks the workday is over and buggers off, so you have to recruit another one.
In real life one or both of these assistants would be sacked, and if their positions were protected you'd have three options: carry on with increasing stress levels and anger management issues; become a broken, despondent automaton but carry on because 'it is what it is'; quit the job and find something else.
This is what I think mining is like at present. Assistant one is the refinery module, and assistant two is the collector drone. It's not a perfect analogy, but when I'm mining this is what pops into my head. Both problems could (should) be fixed if this game career is to become an enjoyable one (or at least, less tedious). I was wondering if anyone else does a similar comparison with game careers or areas of gameplay?
I expect that some people out there will chuck in the seemingly obligatory comments/suggestions of "Well, if you don't like it you don't have to do it" or "It's just a game, it doesn't have to mirror real life". To the former I would say that if I bought an integrated hifi system and its radio didn't work and the CD player would only play the first track, I wouldn't be thinking to myself that it was okay. If I bought a product which offered different features I would want those features to be usable. To the latter I would say that the comment is like ones I read so frequently on IMDB. I wouldn't expect a villain to escape James Bond's clutches through the use of a previously undivulged superpower, because the Superman world physics do not apply in a 007 movie. But, hey, you're comment still stands - it's just not worthy of consideration.
Imagine you're at a warehouse where mixed bundles of items have been brought in and stacked in one area. They need to be sorted before being either thrown away or shipped out (e.g. a charity with donated clothing items). You have two assistants, the first who is tasked with separating the mixed bundles into boxes of one item type and a second who is tasked with sorting those boxes ready for shipment.
Assistant one grabs a pile of shirts and asks you what to do with them. You say to put them in an empty box. A minute later the assistant is back with a few pairs of shoes. You give the same instruction. A minute later the assistant is back with more shoes. You look around at all the empty boxes waiting to be filled, but patiently give the same instruction. A minute later the assistant is back with a pile of used underwear. You say that they're an unwanted item so either put them in the discarded pile straight away or put them in a box so that we can easily discard those unwanted boxes later when we time. A minute later the assistant is back with more items. This goes on all through the working day and no matter how many times you tell the assistant what you want to happen you continue to suffer repeated interruptions to your own job, overseeing incoming and outgoing goods.
Assistant two is busy grabbing the boxes filled by assistant one and putting them in the area ready for shipping out. Some of the boxes contain items you know are not required so you remove them and place them in the discarded pile. No matter how many times you remove these boxes assistant two keeps fetching them back. You have to physically destroy the boxes yourself or take them out of the reach of the assistant (or worse, pause work and wait for the assistant's shift to finish). Of course, you could direct the assistant to an individual box which you know is ready for shipment, but after fetching it that assistant thinks the workday is over and buggers off, so you have to recruit another one.
In real life one or both of these assistants would be sacked, and if their positions were protected you'd have three options: carry on with increasing stress levels and anger management issues; become a broken, despondent automaton but carry on because 'it is what it is'; quit the job and find something else.
This is what I think mining is like at present. Assistant one is the refinery module, and assistant two is the collector drone. It's not a perfect analogy, but when I'm mining this is what pops into my head. Both problems could (should) be fixed if this game career is to become an enjoyable one (or at least, less tedious). I was wondering if anyone else does a similar comparison with game careers or areas of gameplay?
I expect that some people out there will chuck in the seemingly obligatory comments/suggestions of "Well, if you don't like it you don't have to do it" or "It's just a game, it doesn't have to mirror real life". To the former I would say that if I bought an integrated hifi system and its radio didn't work and the CD player would only play the first track, I wouldn't be thinking to myself that it was okay. If I bought a product which offered different features I would want those features to be usable. To the latter I would say that the comment is like ones I read so frequently on IMDB. I wouldn't expect a villain to escape James Bond's clutches through the use of a previously undivulged superpower, because the Superman world physics do not apply in a 007 movie. But, hey, you're comment still stands - it's just not worthy of consideration.
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