#okay well I've decided that the far more interesting gameplay loop is [z] and you preventing me from doing that makes the game worse

[waffliesinyoface]

actually, tangentially related to that last minecraft post, im thinking about like. farms. and why they're so satisfying to make.

any time i see a minecraft video about whatever type of automated farm, be it an iron farm, a slime farm, a gunpowder farm, a raid farm, or even like, a villager trading hall, there's always someone in the comments section complaining that the person isn't playing the game right, and that they're abusing game systems, and that they're taking the fun out of the game by automating it because the game is ABOUT exploring and mining and whatnot, and they should just play in creative mode if they want infinite amounts of [x] item.

but for me it's like... "breaking" the game is the entire point of the game. that's the fun part to me. i love when games have restrictions in place but also let you bypass those restrictions, whether that's intentional¹ or via exploit². (also why i dislike exploits getting patched. i don't care that it's breaking game balance, i'm doing it because its fun.)

¹ stardew/story of seasons making you water plants, but later giving you the ability to make sprinklers, atelier ryza's item replicator, etc ² automated minecraft farms that rely on weird spawning rules, the fortify restoration potion glitch in skyrim, item duping in any game.

will i ever need an infinite supply of iron? no. will a farm's production output outpace the same amount of iron you could get if you spent the same amount of time mining with Fortune III? probably not.

but that doesn't matter. the point of it isn't "get more iron", the point of it is seeing a game mechanic (iron golems dropping ingots on death), seeing another game mechanic (villagers spawn iron golems when they are scared and don't already have one), combining those two mechanics, and then scaling it up to absurd levels.

the limitations of "you need iron to craft certain items" and "you need to go dig a hole to get iron" have both been beaten. the puzzle has been solved. so now I can move on to the next project of "using the vast quantities of iron produced by this system to construct a storage system to hold all of my iron" (which will get interrupted partway through by me realizing that i need more wood to build all these chests and oh hey, you can make wood out of bamboo so let me go build a farm for that-)

[waffliesinyoface]

#minecraft#the reason fallout 4 and starfield are bad isnt because theyre bad games (well; they are)#the reason theyre bad is because bethesda saw people doing stupid exploitative stuff with the enchantment system and went#''how do we stop people from doing that'' and then they added MORE limitations that the game won't let you break#''we've decided our gameplay loop is [x] and any attempts to circumvent that are Counter to the Intended Experience''#okay well I've decided that the far more interesting gameplay loop is [z] and you preventing me from doing that makes the game worse

ANYWAYS. the point of all this is that friction in video game systems where the game tries to push back against you is good, but having a wall that completely stops the player is bad.

Skyrim giving enchantments a soft cap that means you can't go above certain values is fine, because that means they can go "okay, the average player will only ever be THIS strong, so we can design the difficulty curve around that, and occasionally have special items that break these rules."

But the fact it's only a soft cap, and not something impassible means that it is possible to break through and do some ridiculous shit. I know that making a ring which reduces all spell costs to 0% is completely broken. However, I am roleplaying an Evil Wizard, and i'm specifically using the black soul gem that i filled by ritualistically sacrificing a man in the middle of the night to make it, so maybe let me have my fucking philosopher's stone, okay?

actually, tangentially related to that last minecraft post, im thinking about like. farms. and why they're so satisfying to make.

any time i see a minecraft video about whatever type of automated farm, be it an iron farm, a slime farm, a gunpowder farm, a raid farm, or even like, a villager trading hall, there's always someone in the comments section complaining that the person isn't playing the game right, and that they're abusing game systems, and that they're taking the fun out of the game by automating it because the game is ABOUT exploring and mining and whatnot, and they should just play in creative mode if they want infinite amounts of [x] item.

but for me it's like... "breaking" the game is the entire point of the game. that's the fun part to me. i love when games have restrictions in place but also let you bypass those restrictions, whether that's intentional¹ or via exploit². (also why i dislike exploits getting patched. i don't care that it's breaking game balance, i'm doing it because its fun.)

¹ stardew/story of seasons making you water plants, but later giving you the ability to make sprinklers, atelier ryza's item replicator, etc ² automated minecraft farms that rely on weird spawning rules, the fortify restoration potion glitch in skyrim, item duping in any game.

will i ever need an infinite supply of iron? no. will a farm's production output outpace the same amount of iron you could get if you spent the same amount of time mining with Fortune III? probably not.

but that doesn't matter. the point of it isn't "get more iron", the point of it is seeing a game mechanic (iron golems dropping ingots on death), seeing another game mechanic (villagers spawn iron golems when they are scared and don't already have one), combining those two mechanics, and then scaling it up to absurd levels.

the limitations of "you need iron to craft certain items" and "you need to go dig a hole to get iron" have both been beaten. the puzzle has been solved. so now I can move on to the next project of "using the vast quantities of iron produced by this system to construct a storage system to hold all of my iron" (which will get interrupted partway through by me realizing that i need more wood to build all these chests and oh hey, you can make wood out of bamboo so let me go build a farm for that-)