Ok, I will try to explain what's the thing about 2238 Stockholm Syndrome, as I interpret it in Nice_Boat's post.
But first, let me show the difference between good quest design and bad quest design.
To understand this, we need to understand what computer games are about, why they are fun, and why people are playing them.
It's all about dopamine. Completing a challenge and getting a reward. But it has to be a particular kind of challenge.
An example of good quest design is the Mutant quest you proposed to get nerfed.
To complete the quest player prepares, getting good armor, weapon, and a bunch of super stimpaks. Then the player goes into the cave, shoots everything and gets a reward. But this is not the whole story. It's not the same as going into a mine, digging rocks by clicking on them, and getting a reward. It's completely different, because digging rocks is automatic. It's a great thing for autoclickers and other kinds of bots, but not for humans. Shooting the mutants is not (so) automatic. You have to be careful, position yourself well, decide when to spend AP to shoot and when to use a stimpak, run away when it's necessary. For best results, try to take out one mutant at a time. You actually have a challenge that's fun and interesting, and after you kill all the mutants and loot their bodies, that feels good, man. Shooting the mutants and then looting, that's when the dopamine is released. And you just love the quest and you want to do it again tomorrow.
An example of bad quest design is the Junktown Telltale dog quest.
You get the quest, but you switch to Turn-Based before of course, because you'd die in 20 seconds otherwise. You go into the location, and shoot the dog. Walk away. Shoot the dog. Walk away. Oh, the dog approached you. Now go to the grid. Waaalk to the grid. Next turn, waaalk to the grid. Slowly, because turn-based mode is so fucking slow. Next turn... You're out. Go to the location again. Shoot the dog. Walk away. Shoot the dog. Walk away.
The dog has fucking 3000hp and it takes forever.
Is this a challenge? Kind of... Do you see the difference between this challenge and the previous one? I hope everyone does. This really feels like digging rocks. From a programmer's point of view, you can easily write a bot for this one, but not for the previous one (where you would actually have to implement some kind of smart tactics). Really, this quest is for computers, not for humans, again.
And after I kill the dog, I feel like I did nothing. And I loot a shitty Sniper Rifle. Yawn, time to turn this game off. No dopamine. Zero.
Oh, and also the Mutie quest is nothing like placing a NPC at your tent that gives you stuff because this also gives zero dopamine. Zero challenge, no reward (getting stuff for nothing is NOT a reward). NPC giving stuff is actually like the second quest!
Now, 2238 was all about grinding. Grinding, grinding, grinding, where you feel like you're doing nothing. How I interpret Nice_Boat's post, is that people playing 2238 got used to the slavery of grinding and now they actually miss it when it's gone. That's what's called Stockholm Syndrome. And maybe that's why the caravans and Telltales got nerfed, so we can grind floaters and centaurs?
Maybe your proposed nerfs are different kinds of nerfs. But what's wrong here is that we're thinking about nerfing (making the game LESS fun) instead of buffing (making the game MORE fun).
edit: the problem with Mutie quest is not that it's OP. It's a logical first conclusion when you see that this is the only quest worth doing. But when you dig deeper, there's a different problem there. The problem is that the other quests are shit. And this quest is simply OK. It's just the only thing we have now.
Topic: Some thoughts (Read 4188 times)