Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

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Skyrim: Fun vs Time (See below for voting definitions)

Parabola
2
8%
Inverted Parabola
2
8%
Exponential Dampening
3
12%
Logarithmic
4
16%
+Square Root
6
24%
Exponential
2
8%
Other (Specify in post)
6
24%
 
Total votes: 25

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Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Pandamatak »

For me, I always find the the beginning of the game more fun. How do I smith, where do I find this, where is this city, and who is this? I always like running into an enemy I never expected and getting killed by the enemy - while I'm standing and admiring the power of such a foe.

At low levels, there's the adrenaline rush of running from a bandit you know you can't kill, and the feeling you get when it's dark out and you come face to face with a necromancer.

Later, things start to get boring because I've memorised the map, I know most of the people in the game, and I've realised my limits.

Late game is the most boring - no challenges, quests tend to get tedious and you get the urge to fast travel since you've been on the roads so long you already know what's going to happen before it does.

For me, Skyrim is like a exponential damping function, The game starts of great, dwindles down until I create a new character, explore new combat styles, and go again. Each time I know more about the game itself so it becomes less fun overall.

Detailed Overview of the choices:
Parabola: Like a U shape - starts of fun, mid levels get boring, but then the game gets good again when you're at the high levels range

Inverted Parabola: Upside down U shape. The game starts of boring, and the mid levels are the best. But the game starts to go downhill from there when you reach the overpowered high levels

Exponential Damping: My experience as outlined above, sort of looks like a sin wave getting smaller and smaller. Each bump is a new playthrough, new DLC, or new mod.

Logarithmic: Starts of sort of boring until you discover more and more and the game keeps getting better and better but at a slower pace.

+Square Root: Sort of like the opposite of the Logarithmic view, the game starts off great, until you become an expert at it and nothing is new or you feel too overpowered. The difference between this and exponential damping is that creating a new character isn't going to fix the problem

Exponential: The game starts of sort of boring since everything is killing you, but the more powerful you are, the better. You reach the height of happiness when all your skills are maxed out and you can kill any enemy at the flick of your thumb.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by DorostheConqueror »

You forgot Waveform, like Cosine Wave or what have you: enjoyment oscillates over time, with patterns of peaks and troughs.

For me, games like Skyrim almost always follow an Inverse Sawtooth Wave form. Peaks are caused very rapidly on release, and on subsequent major revisions, like the release of a CK, new mods, and major DLC releases. These peaks usually top off at a very constant value, regardless of when in the sequence they occur. After each peak, it's a steady drop-off until I get bored and go back to playing EU3.

-edit- Oh, nevermind, you mentioned Exponential Dampening, which isn't quit the same thing, but hell, it's close enough.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by StinkyJozef »

Bethesda has a habit of making games where i sometimes feel like im actually in there. Skyrim has been the most immersive game ive played since residentevil4.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Will Zurmacht »

It's great fun until all the scripted content has been run through. Radiant quests get old after the first couple. Eventually, all the locales have been explored, the alignment gamut has been run, NPC personalities have been plumbed to their shallow depths, all plot twists have been found. Jadedness sets in. The game gets set aside to allow time for modders and DLC developers to create more content. Have a great few weeks with that, get bored, and the cycle continues.

Meanwhile, play around in the trivia thread and speculate about lore.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Pandamatak »

DorostheConqueror wrote:You forgot Waveform, like Cosine Wave or what have you: enjoyment oscillates over time, with patterns of peaks and troughs.

For me, games like Skyrim almost always follow an Inverse Sawtooth Wave form. Peaks are caused very rapidly on release, and on subsequent major revisions, like the release of a CK, new mods, and major DLC releases. These peaks usually top off at a very constant value, regardless of when in the sequence they occur. After each peak, it's a steady drop-off until I get bored and go back to playing EU3.

-edit- Oh, nevermind, you mentioned Exponential Dampening, which isn't quit the same thing, but hell, it's close enough.
I thought about it, but I knew it was impossible to achieve the same amount of fun each time. The moment you get the game and play it for the first time must undoubtedly be the best part of the entire sequence, no?
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by JamBS »

I have to go with +Square Root, but I've never created new characters so I haven't tested that theory. I just get bored and move on to a new game.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Narzul »

Works the same way for me. Right now I'm keeping myself enjoyed by trying out new styles of gameplay (I still haven't made a sneaky character yet so I have that to look forward to) but the content doesn't excite me any more since I've seen it all.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by DorostheConqueror »

Pandamatak wrote:
DorostheConqueror wrote:You forgot Waveform, like Cosine Wave or what have you: enjoyment oscillates over time, with patterns of peaks and troughs.

For me, games like Skyrim almost always follow an Inverse Sawtooth Wave form. Peaks are caused very rapidly on release, and on subsequent major revisions, like the release of a CK, new mods, and major DLC releases. These peaks usually top off at a very constant value, regardless of when in the sequence they occur. After each peak, it's a steady drop-off until I get bored and go back to playing EU3.

-edit- Oh, nevermind, you mentioned Exponential Dampening, which isn't quit the same thing, but hell, it's close enough.
I thought about it, but I knew it was impossible to achieve the same amount of fun each time. The moment you get the game and play it for the first time must undoubtedly be the best part of the entire sequence, no?
No. At least, not for me: if anything, the first time I make my OWN mod is the highest peak, and that usually doesn't happen until I've exhausted most of the vanilla release-day content. Otherwise, the peaks stay the same.

I will say that the time between peaks and troughs generally shrinks; not always, but usually. For example, when I got The Pitt DLC for Fallout, I was right back to being as obsessed with Fallout 3 as I had been on day one. Three days later, the buzz was gone again. More substantial DLC or mods can make the buzz last longer, maybe even as long as the core game, but the peaks are always sudden and dizzying.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Evil-i »

I guess I play in a weird and unusual way. I don't really care about quest lines or guilds or factions, I simply climb into the game world and spend most of my time exploring, constantly observing and trying to look behind the scenes, always asking "Why'd they do it this way, and not that way?"

For me, enjoyment of sandbox games tends to be a nearly constant flat-line thing, with the line intersecting the Y axis at whatever the enjoyment value is for that particular game.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Eltee »

Cosine Wave! Starts high, dips, jumps (to a point no lower than the initial high,) dips, crests. I am always rediscovering the game.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by RHMajic »

I do feel like that a lot, but what I do is just make a mage, why? I do it because there's so many different options for a mage, I read up how powerful Alteration would be if I used it more often, etc. The game is as fun as you want it to be my friend...
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Theificka »

In Oblivion, I had the +Square Root, but I could only make a new character after about half a year of not playing.

I've always had a problem with making a character I wouldn't usually play as, I just can't get into them.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by azuarc »

Exponential damping + logarithmic. Starts off very high, dips considerably, and then slowly starts to elevate if I continue to play. However, my experience with most games is that I just chronically restart after one play session and never reload that character for a day two.

So far I've stuck to my first character, but that won't last.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Dark Spark »

You've forgotten alcohol. Either because you've never played the game on a buzz, or you've played the game on far too much... :|
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Pandamatak »

azuarc wrote:Exponential damping + logarithmic. Starts off very high, dips considerably, and then slowly starts to elevate if I continue to play. However, my experience with most games is that I just chronically restart after one play session and never reload that character for a day two.

So far I've stuck to my first character, but that won't last.
Likewise for me, except with mods. I keep installing overhaul mods that require a fresh restart whenever I'm around level 5 or so (Oblivion). So I logged about 400 hours of gameplay but only made it as high as level 28 on a single character - the others were in the 3-8 range. Problem is that most of my mods would only be triggered mid or late-game.

Sometimes I feel like I spent more time modding that game to my tastes than actually playing it.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by OblivionDuruza »

Defs a Circular Function, maybe a Tan curve. They're a [&@%!] to sketch I can tell you. God I love whining about Maths :mrgreen:

In all seriousness, I think the Law of diminishing returns will always apply to video games, which is why DLC and expansions are important in keeping it fresh. What with such short questlines, there's only so many times I'll be able to reroll a character in Skyrim. Morrowind had an advantage there due to it's wide range of Factions, Oblivion was at a disadvantage because it gave the player very little choice. I think for me, a game's replayability relies heavily upon the Factions and questlines that it contains, because these story-arcs are what I find most important about a game.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Cemiboy_FB »

aaah, mathemathics, NOOOO!!!

anyways, mine is a linear thingy (y = x), it starts good and gets better and better :D
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Lord Cattow »

Horizontal linear to me. I liked it at the beginning, I liked in the middle and I like it at the end. Then I start over, but the fun doesn't change.

In maths: Y=100(%), X>0
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Pandamatak »

Lord Cattow wrote:Horizontal linear to me. I liked it at the beginning, I liked in the middle and I like it at the end. Then I start over, but the fun doesn't change.

In maths: Y=100(%), X>0
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Avron the S'wit »

Cemiboy_FB wrote:aaah, mathemathics, NOOOO!!!
This is exactly how I feel about this thread. Honestly. I have been trying to compute for days now. But I can't, so let me borrow other ideas that mirror me here, which is mostly a
Eltee wrote:Cosine Wave! Starts high, dips, jumps (to a point no lower than the initial high,) dips, crests. I am always rediscovering the game.
and the sudden realization that I really ought to try to not have
Dark Spark wrote:... forgotten alcohol. Either because you've never played the game on a buzz, or you've played the game on far too much... :|
But, really. These games are always fun for me, otherwise I wouldn't play them. When I'm bored, I stop, but truth be told it takes me a few weeks or months, and then I return to rediscover something brand new.
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Re: Skyrim: Fun vs Time Played.

Post by Dark Spark »

Avron the S'wit wrote:
Dark Spark wrote:... forgotten alcohol. Either because you've never played the game on a buzz, or you've played the game on far too much... :|
But, really. These games are always fun for me, otherwise I wouldn't play them. When I'm bored, I stop, but truth be told it takes me a few weeks or months, and then I return to rediscover something brand new.
I was discovering something new about Oblivion years after I first began playing it. Ghost-pirates and eavesdropping Dark Elves in the Waterfront.
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