Make Your Own Fun With Optional Options

 

            Le sigh. After my last post I started doing what I said I would, I jumped off my seikret and started walking around the Scarlet Forest. I found some nooks and crannies, found a nice safe campsite behind a waterfall and was able to just look at the scenery. I got to an edge of the map and started fishing and noticed a lot of splashing to my right so I went over to take a look. It was like a fish feeding frenzy, for some reason, and there were a few of the small flying monsters diving in and catching some fish. I started throwing my lure in there and was catching fish after fish and a thought crossed my mind. “Imagine having to do this for materials.” Essentially living off the land, much like the older Monster Hunters and then it kind of occurred to me. This is Capcom’s way of saying “make your own fun” much like Ubisoft did with Breakpoint but actually good.

            At the end of my last post I had a link to a Reddit post about purposely taking things slow. I then had seen a couple other things, a thread on Steam and an online article and it started making sense to me. Some of us have complaints about the way Wilds initially introduces itself but we don’t HAVE to play that way. The seikret zooms you across the map, it makes traveling seem pointless; don’t use the seikret. There’s decorations and bugs on the wall to negate hot/cold climates, hot/cold drinks are pointless; don’t use the bugs or decorations. I hate running out of my food buff in the middle of the fight; remember to eat before every hunt. I can just go to my supply box and restock my potions, basically there is no threat of running out of items; don’t use your supply box. None of these things are a requirement; you don’t HAVE to do ANY of it if you don’t want. In Rise they got rid of the need for hot and cold drinks, kind of happy they did but now in Wilds I almost think that I SHOULD bring hot and cold drinks because it’s a small way I can make a game I think is a little easier then its predecessors just slightly more difficult. When fighting a monster and it runs away they don’t usually go all that far, mounting just to go to the next area seems rather frivolous. I was kind of thinking in the expansion or next game to legit work off the land, even going the extra mile and fishing for whetfish and not using the whetstones. If there was a way to start a new game and skip at least the beginning of the story I might even consider doing it now. The only thing with that is I don’t want to inconvenience my friends and hold them up because I’m choosing to make my life more difficult.

            Games have kind of been doing this for a while now, a “make your own fun” model that I don’t like personally. I don’t like having too many options because then I don’t know what to do with myself. How do YOU want me to play your game? How did you intend for me to interact with this stuff? I mentioned Breakpoint earlier and when they released the Conquest update it had all sorts of new options for players to make it as immersive as they wanted. There were plenty of options that could be changed when it released but now you could get rid of gear score. Originally weapons and even pieces of clothing you found would have stats on them, not something typical of a Ghost Recon game and most people hated it. But you could really customize your experience with getting rid of most or all of the robots in the game, have detection clouds on your minimap or not, when you reload your weapon do you keep all your bullets or lose what was in your magazine, all these different things and to me that is just lazy. “Play your way,” “make your own fun” is just dumb to me. That’s why Helldivers 2 is the best Ghost Recon game we are probably ever going to see. They don’t give you options. “This is our game and this is how you are going to play it.” If you’re going to make a single player game, sure, let there be options to customize your experience I guess. I’d still prefer the ol’ easy, normal, hard options but you do you. But when you’re making a co-op/multiplayer game, limit those options. It’s not a lot of fun when you’re playing with certain options off and a friend has them on or you’re trying to make both of your optional options the same. I get peoples frustration because I shouldn’t have to make my own fun but at least in Wilds’ case I think it is a good compromise.

            That’s it I think for this. Just wanted to get this out there. I do these in hopes that even just one of the game developers of a game I play happens to see this and maybe gets an idea for something to add or something. We all just want games to be the best they can be. Oh, one other thing, fighting in the arean is great, my FPS is pretty solid at 59-60 in there. Any where else I get like 30, even the last boss room, fighting that thing I was like “whoa, my game is running great right now, what the hell?” Okay, that’s it, bye-bye, do you make any optional options for yourself in Monster Hunter or any other game? Let me know! Byeeeee.

            @AztecSauce