The modeled quests described (ever-escalating series of crafting better items) is reminiscent of those found in traditional MMOs like World of Warcraft. And those quests aren't fun, and the "grind" is regarded as an antiquated game mechanic, even in the context of Minecraft. (of note, WoW recently introduced a weekly "quest line" which is all complete-10-generic-quests/kill-100-demons/etc grind and no plot. Players are not happy.)
those quests aren't fun, and the "grind" is regarded as an antiquated game mechanic
The approach I'm working on for my game, is to allow the player to optimize a growing "economy." I personally find watching, guarding, and optimizing to be far more fun than grinding. There will be threats nipping at the edges of this infrastructure, or interdicting its transportation, however. Seeing those off will be one kind of "quest."
Superficially, it looks like an 80's Asteroid type game connected to a vast procedurally generated universe, with a SC2 style hyperspace. But I want to emphasize things that can produce emergence. Like procedurally generated tech trees:
I want to implement an artificial life simulation system to produce an ecology/ecosystem on which the economic system will be based. There will be trading, but instead of trucking the goods yourself, you'll be nominating and paying for others to transport it. (But if you come along and "ride shotgun" and win battles, your piracy losses will decrease.) I want to let users craft and script everything, then sell/license those to other players.
The power of the players will increase exponentially as they go off into space, but the power of enemies will also increase exponentially, with a larger constant. The leaderboards will be based entirely on how far out in unknown space you can camp and survive.
Have a look on your favourite app store for "idle games". They're literally games where you just tap the screen for hours at a time. "AdVenture Capitalist" is a good example. What some people think is fun is weird, but you can't really say they're not enjoying it.
They are, however, also working within the confines of Minecraft. The grinding-progression mechanic is probably the most desirable within the game systems since Minecraft only begrudgingly offers combat and other systems, emphasizing find, fetch, and make. That's its bread and butter, so I'm not surprised they built up using that technique.
That's fair. (I'll admit I don't 100% understand the appeal of Minecraft and other survival simulators)
What may also be interesting is looking at the systems of periodic quests with high rewards, such as the daily quest system used in games like Hearthstone, the secondary purpose of which is to encourage diversity of play, which keeps players from being burnt out. These quests are typically drawn from a list instead of being algorithmically generated, which seems like a missed opportunity...
> I'll admit I don't 100% understand the appeal of Minecraft and other survival simulators
Survival games have the same draw as entrepreneurship; they're "bootstrapping simulators."
A survival game starts off risky, with a "runway" of finite starting resources, and then—through efficient and well-timed cleverness—you operationalize a process that gathers resources more quickly than you can spend them, putting you "in the black." Likely, the tools you use to do this increase your needs, which pushes you into dealing with higher-level concerns—but, while these are more complex, and you find yourself juggling more concerns at once—you're usually under less risk of everything toppling than you were at the beginning. As you progress through such a game, complexity goes up but risk goes down.
Because of this—and just like with real founders—if you're "in it for the game" of bootstrapping, you'll probably get bored and quit once it gets to the stable point, and start all over again at bootstrapping something else.
There is just something so simple and basic about Minecraft. To me, it has the same appeal as cracking open a SNES emulator. It is an accessible platform for ages 4-120. I can play and build with my kids. I can show them little tricks with logic gates. I can indulge in a Lego-like simplicity of building something for the sake of building it. It is just a nice, easy, distraction that has massive appeal (due to the range of audience). It is like the Lego block of its gaming Era.
In Overwatch, this takes the form of weekly "gimmick" game modes.
I think Riot (League of Legends) was the first company I saw really embrace and explain secondary game modes by introducing limited-time-only featured game modes. On the one hand, they wanted to offer novelty to players, and also to their designers by letting them create wacky stuff and see how it played out, but on the other hand they did not want to dilute their primary game mode, nor did they want to allow the gimmicky secondary game modes to become worn out and trite. And so their solution grew out of their holiday event game modes into a deliberate full-time policy.
It was literally a paper that talked about creating a graph of all the craftable tools in the game. Not to downplay the merit in the methods used, this is extremely uninteresting and just bad game design.
Getting lost without purpose is often a trap I fall into with open world games. However, probably the two great things that open world games can achieve is a sense of place and wonderful emergent stories in gameplay. And this reminds me that I've still to make the plunge into the as-"real"-as-it-can-get-in-games world of Dwarf Fortress. I love reading about the development and the truly astounding stories that happen while playing, which might be nearly as good as actually playing.
