> Number 3: collection. You collect items or upgrades or in game currency that help you later.
You mean you like hoarding? That's one of the most annoying parts of many games, managing endless inventories and collecting stuff for the purpose of having more. It distracts you from whatever goal the game might have.
> Number 4: human adversaries. Playing against AI or against some in game metric (e.g. get X amount of people in your rollercoaster park) is not very fun. Playing against human opponents is much more fun because they are unpredictable and intelligent.
Really ? You have a strange conception of gaming then, because your world of gaming has basically started only with online games. There's tons of great solo games out there that require absolutely no one else but you to appreciate their depth. If you subject the definition of great gaming to human adversaries, then the issue is that you don't always find worthy opponents to play against, and the necessity to have people to play with. That's why great solo games never get old while MMORPGs and online games come and go and disappear forever.
> Sadly rts appears to be a dying genre...
Well RTS have been about micro-management for far too long, and that's just grinding when it lasts forever. There's not so much you can do about it unless you make the genre evolve, and it did not evolve much.
So what? there were not the only games out there. I enjoyed playing Civilization, Colonization, Dune, Half Life, Ultima for hours and hours without having the need to play with anyone. Human opponents are not necessary to have great games.
I'll agree you do not have to have humans to make an interesting play experience. However, the addition of human opponents creates almost infinite replayability. I probably had two, maybe three runthroughs of Half Life, with as many as two hundred hours of gameplay. It was an excellent game, superior to any other FPS I had played upto that point, and I enjoyed it greatly. However, I am not sure I would even want to calculate the amount of time I spent in the Counterstrike mod during the same period even if I could. Thousands of servers, millions of unique opponents? It was a daily ritual of my early twenties, often a few hours a night to relax after work.
Yeah, both were great games. But one was a great game that never seemed to end.
I kind of feel the opposite. Yes, with CS there are thousands of people to play against and so on, but how different are the bouts from one another really?
I much prefer linear, narrative-driven single-player games, if they're done well - on the ninth or tenth play through of HL1, Deus Ex, Vampire: Bloodlines or whatever, I still feel like I'm noticing new details; the world feels more 'alive' to me without thousands of other normal human beings getting in the way and ruining the suspension of disbelief. It's like going back to a great film or novel.
It's a matter of taste, of course, but I in no way feel MMO games and such are more 'advanced', as some people in this thread seem to think. There's a particularly grouchy film critic over here who likes to ask, "would Citizen Kane be better in 3D?" Likewise: would FF7 be better with a million 14 year olds running around telling people they got pwned?
I agree with you about preferring immersive single-player to multiplayer a lot of the time. But "would Citizen Kane be better in 3D?" is such a weird question -- it's hard to recognize it as such now, as much of what it does is now commonplace, but it's such a pioneering film in how it uses technology, and there's a lot of special effects in it. Who's to say Orson Welles WOULDN'T have found a use for 3D if it had been available to him?
This is exactly what I mean. Bomberman is actually a dull game if you play it against the AI, but I've had way more fun playing bomberman with friends than other games just because of the multiplayer aspect.
Hoarding is what you get if you take this as far as you possibly can to make a game addictive. Cookie clicker is the ultimate version of this. The fact that you get a mindless grind if you take it as far as you possibly can doesn't mean that a little bit of collection can't be fun. e.g. picking up a new weapon in a FPS.
> Really ? [...]
Compared to playing against human adversaries, I find playing against AI or in game metrics less fun. I realize it's heresy because many classic games are single player. YMMV.
> Well RTS have been about micro-management for far too long
I agree, but on the other hand most other genres are even more about micro management and less about decisions. The situation has actually improved. If you compare Starcraft with a modern RTS like Forged Alliance you have far less micro management nowadays because of UI improvements. Starcraft 2 on the other hand, even though it is a newer game than Forged Alliance, has a lot more micro management and fighting against the UI instead of against the opponent.
The best option I have seen for/against hoarding is "drop all" (Jagged Alliance 2 v1.13) on enemies. Basically every time you kill someone in the gameworld they drop ALL the items they were using/carrying.
You might try hoarding for the first 10, maybe first 50 enemies, but at ~100 it becomes unmanageable and you are forced to stop hoarding, or stop progressing in the game.
There is an idea floating around out there that boardgames are becoming more popular recently because of the social gap left behind when multi-player video games went online, removing the need to physically be in the same room as your friends.
Online games have existed for a while. I played Worms 2 online in 1997, over dial-up. Before that, various games over LAN (Snipes!). It's absolutely true that Human vs Human adds an entirely new dimension, even for games that are otherwise pretty simple.
You mean you like hoarding? That's one of the most annoying parts of many games, managing endless inventories and collecting stuff for the purpose of having more. It distracts you from whatever goal the game might have.
> Number 4: human adversaries. Playing against AI or against some in game metric (e.g. get X amount of people in your rollercoaster park) is not very fun. Playing against human opponents is much more fun because they are unpredictable and intelligent.
Really ? You have a strange conception of gaming then, because your world of gaming has basically started only with online games. There's tons of great solo games out there that require absolutely no one else but you to appreciate their depth. If you subject the definition of great gaming to human adversaries, then the issue is that you don't always find worthy opponents to play against, and the necessity to have people to play with. That's why great solo games never get old while MMORPGs and online games come and go and disappear forever.
> Sadly rts appears to be a dying genre...
Well RTS have been about micro-management for far too long, and that's just grinding when it lasts forever. There's not so much you can do about it unless you make the genre evolve, and it did not evolve much.