Wipes should not exist
Let's talk about wipes. They should not exist. Because they are just a mechanism to cover up a symptom of a flaw in the game.
That flaw is predictability. Predictability is the enemy of excitement. All video games use the idea of intermittent treasure some various degrees to keep players entertained. And the genre of the game does not matter. Here is an example:
RPG:
- Player finds a monster's cave.
- Player fights the monster.
- Player kills the monster and loots its corpse, or its valuables, which might be contained in a treasure chest.
- Now this is the important part: The player does not know exactly what is in that chest.
Every RPG game has some monster you kill for a reward, which is randomized within certain brackets. If you turn that corner and sneak through a hallway in a horror game, you don't know if the alien/werewolf/werehamster will attack in that situation.
So how does that relate to EFT? In EFT you kill monsters (other players and scavs) and loot the treasure they carry or guard (guns, ammo, armor, medical items). But this uncertainty of what you find also carries over to a strategic (or "meta" as the kids call it) level. But this is a bit more abstract. When you find a shotgun in EFT, does that excite you? It propably would 1 hour after a wipe. It can be sold or used for combat. But a bit later, shotguns are considered useless by most players.
Would finding an AK-74N excite you? I would assume it woul be moderately exciting, regardless of how "late in the wipe" you find it. It is a solid weapon for any situation.
So let's establish that an assault rifle is more exciting than a shotgun. So how about we guarantee you as a player to get an AK-74N for every scav you kill. Would that be exciting?
It would be for a short time. But then the problem of predictability will deflate all the excitement. Imagine you would know exactly what stuff you will find in a raid. If every loot container, be it a corpse or wooden crate, would carry very specific and predetermined loot. Imagine, you shoot 3 scavs, you get 3 AK-74N. You open a wooden crate, you get a handguard, and so on.
That would be boring. Because our minds crave that excitement of finding something uncertain. Let's bring this thought to the strategic layer of the game. It is late in the wipe, you just got out alive of Interchange with 150k worth of loot. What will you do? Use that loot? I guess you won't, instead you might sell it all to liquify that gear into cash and then you will buy exactly what you want. No improvisation, managing of shortages, making due with what is available. Straight conversion to money, and then to the favorite gear. And what is that?
It is predictable.
This is why we get bored "late in the wipe". Because loot becomes a liquid substance, easily converted into cash by AI traders that happily provide stable inflated prices to items no player would ever buy for that price. A guaranteed, safe income.
And not dynamic.
Dynamic. That sounds very exciting.
"Adapt to the economy". That is what the game promises on the features list. That should fix all the problems with predictable gear. Yes it should and it would have. But then this happened:
What game should be is a dynamic market where every day is unpredictable, then there is no need for a wipe. That means there has to be a completely dynamic market where prices can very violently increase to a level where players are forced to either pay a lot of money for what they want or be forced to find the item themselves.
- Totally dynamic market, no regard for "fairness" (weak players who demand equal chances against someone who spent more money on gear.
- Remove the supply from traders, and put it into the maps as loot to find.
- Remove ability to sell guns to the AI, only allow selling to other players.
The game is still in Beta. They are using wipes to adjust the leveling up/money making process. There will not be wipes when the full game is released.
AntwortenLöschenAs a game-dev I can say that unpredictability surely plays an important role in excitement but it's not the main one. Sense of achievement through input of effort and overcoming obstacles is what generally makes a game interesting. Balance between abilities, effort and obstacles. Excitement is directly related to the most important game law: interesting game is possible only with a player having a clear goal, and having a balance between players abilities and the obstacles the player encounters towards his goal such that obstacles are be slightly higher players abilities and the goal always reachable. In more details there should be sub-goals to the main goals, and these sub-goals must have great variety, they must not be identical. Tarkov lacks that, partially because it's beta and you don't get to have the main goal of escaping the city, the goals you have are escaping the raid alive with some new gear. That goal is the same for every raid and it gets boring because there's no variety to goals for the player. The other part of what makes Tarkov lack excitement is absence of balance between obstacles and abilities.That includes being level 4 in the same raid as level 40 player, and have scavs shotgun-sniping your legs from across the map. Tarkov should have more variety in subgoals on maps (not just tasks for traders to bring 10 bullshit items stolen from under a dragons ass) They did a great job with the lab map. Extractions that require some sort of effort to leave. The other thing they can do is have more random weapons and armor spawned on the map, so every lvl 4 player can have equal abilities with level 40. The market can be as crazy as devs or players want. NO mater how hard-core or realistic or being more of a simulator that a classic MMO shooter, Tarkov is always a game, so if it doesn't follow the law of a game, it will be anything but exiting and interesting.
AntwortenLöschen