beyondwudge
Posts: 74
Joined: 12/22/2020
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I think there is a clash between two paradigms here. By paradigm, I mean the ideas that are deemed important and should be revolved around by the different parts of the game.
One paradigm is of choice, customisation and personal preference. I can share an example I encountered just now. The animated emoticons on the left hand side of this 'fast-reply' GUI, at the bottom of the page as opposed to the separate post reply window, were distracting me. This is because I am on holidays and enjoying a relaxed day. I was irritated by the animation so I remembered that Vivaldi browser has an option to quickly disable looping animations. I found it (after some clicking on the status and address bars) and turned the animations off. I felt so relieved. I could now focus on my words, on how I might be read and understood by others, not on a cheap outlet for my emotions.
However, I then realised I could turn the emoticons off entirely. I just did so. I am even more relieved. Their bright colours were drawing my eyes to them, being recognised by my peripheral vision, causing me to find it difficult to just rest the centre of my vision on the word I was typing.
But, how extreme should I get about this? It is clear that I am tired and perhaps writing a structured response to a set of people, with a very vague constraint on their type and number, is not what I should do when I am feeling this way. The browser lets me turn the emoticons off. That power is making this so much more pleasant (I just put the zoom to about 180% on 1920x1080 screen as well). It is tangibly easier to maintain my focus and keep track of what I have written so far and what I am about to write, which I hope, makes it easier for you to read and understand as well.
Nevertheless, I can see the white blocks on the left hand side of my screen still. I notice them. Should I find a way to edit the page and remove them entirely? At this point I might as well open up a word processor and type my reply in an entirely separate application. If I do that then I have no need to change this forum page, no need for the power the browser has provided and no need for all that effort to make it possible for the images to be selectively disabled.
A small change on my part and the problem is solved. It might not be my preference, or choice, or desire but it is good enough for the purpose. Why would I make all of these other people work hard to fix an issue that I can fix myself?
This leads to the second paradigm: one about solving problems and creating clever solutions.
This game generates problems for you to solve. It is core to the game. This is why information is scattered across the UI and ‘hidden’ away in subordinate reports or within some kind of tool, like the various logistic view tools. Often it is simple to do an action in concept, but hard to do it with the game’s user-interface.
The difficulty can come simply from the breadth of options, toggles and sub-windows involved -- taxing your memory and endurance. It can also come from how narrow the solution must be given with tools that are rather blunt or limited -- you want to send just enough logistic points to an asset in the early game but the traffic signals don’t offer the correct blocking percentage.
The difficulty can also come from a lack of information. In a contrived way, the fact the admin level calculation doesn’t follow the stated formula caused me to have to experiment in order to fulfil a faction request for more admin level. That is a kind of difficulty, that creates a problem to be solved, that could be considered gameplay too. Many much older games were riddled with this sort of unintended gameplay.
The clash between these two paradigms here is simple. The first paradigm of preference-first would like a simple, signposted, fit-to-task solution to the problem of defending a hex or holding a contested border. The second paradigm of solving-problems wants the player to play with the system and observe that small MG units can easily create a front-line that will do the task.
The first paradigm would like to be able to reformat the game world so that any hex they found a city in can be surrounded by good hexes for defense (in this case with high max entrenchment values). The second paradigm would want the player to observe that the hexes contribute to the defense of a city and to be careful about where they place their cities, even determining that frontier cities should be put where the hexes have high entrenchment while inner core cities should be put where the agriculture, mining and city spread is most suitable.
You see, if the first paradigm of player choice and preference is always followed then many of the problems the game gives the player are removed or made trivial. The problems aren’t problems anymore and the game becomes more an activity to complete than a challenge. If the problem-solving paradigm is followed too strongly then the game becomes a chore and unengaging on an emotional level. There are many feelings that get squashed by the sheer labour of trying to make even a basic game concept actually work. The logistics system can be an example of this unless you dedicate a lot more than you might want of your asset budget to pumping trucks and trains in every direction.
In a clash like this, sometimes the game can’t be changed to suit everyone. There are veteran war simulator players who find the problem-solving component easy and can stay emotional about the game despite the unintuitive solutions the game requires. On the other hand, there are young players who can’t make the leap and stay engaged when the answer is “put mobile troops into a static role.” They don’t have the maturity to handle the disjoint between the two categories.
(For reference, I have attached two images showing what I did to the fast reply emoticons and then what kind of word processor I switched to for writing the rest of the reply.)
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< Message edited by beyondwudge -- 1/18/2021 5:10:26 AM >
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