Hope you get well soon! And yeah I think there are some cases for making games that aren't as much your sort of thing. But as long as you understand what's fun about it, and what's optimal, and you can prove that optimal play is possible, then I think you can still make something great.
make the optimal playstyle intended play (aka make it fun and test for it) or don't actually worry about it for games don't need to last forever as a challenge to any individual player to be considered successful art. this also applies to ball or board games, really
If there's complexity to your game's mechanics that just makes the game less fun, simplify the mechanics. Remove things the player can do that aren't fun.
I don't know if you can, or even should. For some people, that optimization process is the most fun part. I guess you can try to add in options/modes/etc. that directly counteracts some of those optimization strategies, but plenty of people are just going to keep min/maxing everything anyways. I always thought the best solution was letting private servers moderate themselves to enforce the particular styles of gameplay that they enjoyed, but unfortunately the shift towards matchmaking over server browsers and community building has made that harder.
You don't, and you shouldn't. The phrase "Players optimize the fun out of the game" is stupid to begin with - People optimize their gameplay because that _is_ fun. If doing well and being good at something wasn't enjoyable, people wouldn't be doing it in the first place. By trying to stop that, you're trying to stop people from having fun, and nobody wants to play a game where they can't have fun.
Hope you get well soon! And yeah I think there are some cases for making games that aren't as much your sort of thing. But as long as you understand what's fun about it, and what's optimal, and you can prove that optimal play is possible, then I think you can still make something great.
In maybe the same ballpark, how can you fight against the human desire to optimize the fun out of things?
make the optimal playstyle intended play (aka make it fun and test for it) or don't actually worry about it for games don't need to last forever as a challenge to any individual player to be considered successful art. this also applies to ball or board games, really
If there's complexity to your game's mechanics that just makes the game less fun, simplify the mechanics. Remove things the player can do that aren't fun.
I don't know if you can, or even should. For some people, that optimization process is the most fun part. I guess you can try to add in options/modes/etc. that directly counteracts some of those optimization strategies, but plenty of people are just going to keep min/maxing everything anyways. I always thought the best solution was letting private servers moderate themselves to enforce the particular styles of gameplay that they enjoyed, but unfortunately the shift towards matchmaking over server browsers and community building has made that harder.
You don't, and you shouldn't.
The phrase "Players optimize the fun out of the game" is stupid to begin with - People optimize their gameplay because that _is_ fun. If doing well and being good at something wasn't enjoyable, people wouldn't be doing it in the first place.
By trying to stop that, you're trying to stop people from having fun, and nobody wants to play a game where they can't have fun.
SMOKER!