How to make a game fun?

I saw a thread a while ago about how to design good terrain. So my question, is how do you make a game fun.

one thing that usually makes a game fun is that it requires, or at least rewards good strategy.

tomes tend to take away fun in my experience...its better to have a lot of cool items instead

good plot

good dialogue

if it looks nice it helps

if its hard that sometimes makes it fun. Like Kaggz. the challenge made it addicting. It has replayablility.

unique maps are better than common ones.

fr0ggE

I personally hate maps where you just hack through the monsters with barely any plot. Have plot twists, puzzles, more than just the mindless slaying. Oh, and every good game needs a good villain.

I disagree. Hacking through monsters makes up 99% of most Warcraft games. Strategic creeping is cool.

its just that other stuff to support it like puzzles and a good plot and a memorable villain make the map as a whole a lot better.

fr0ggE

Well, it's always bothered me in RPG's it is just like "A big bad dude is here! Fight through his hordes of random monsters then fight him!" Of course slicing and dicing must occur, and lots of it, seeing as this is WARcraft. It just seems stupid if there is nothing else, and if it isn't even explained why there are mindless hordes of monsters out to be slaughtered by skilled groups of heroes.

conceded, it gets old. plot makes it "fresher", and more unique which a great thing. :D

fr0ggE

Sometimes little mini-side quests are fun too, get a special item by enduring some hard task (a hard task that is more than just killing a bunch of things :D ), and maybe minigames of a sort? I don't see those put in much.

if you make a survival map, dont make all the enemies just with 100 more hitpoints and 10 more dmg each lvl and let 20 run to the player(s) .. make them difficult to beat not throu hp+dmg, give them spells, aura units...
for example Smash TV sucks bad, it takes forever, you cannot heal between the rounds and you need to click 10000 times for all the tomes, while always 100 melee enemies spawn

If you make tomes buyable, then make the expierence rate VERY low and give the spells at higher lvl more dmg... cause when you have 100+ str, you dont really care someone casting deathcoil, cause every hit does more dmg..

Test the map again and again and again! nothing more worse than unusable spells, stuck enemies and more shit like this

and on my own, i dont like marines in a medieval world.

I'll second that. :D

I'll also agree with Bloodlust and fr0ggE on the tome subject, in my experiance of playing maps on b.net, I dislike maps like Aeon of Strife (OMFG PUMP UP ON TOMES TO KILL THE OTHER GUY!!!) but I like maps like Defense of the Ancients (Hmm... well, I suppose this Generator sounds good... 50% mana and life regeneration...)

Oh yeah, and definetly have some sidequests with powerful items nad such, those are really cool.

Yes, Defence of the Ancients is the only AoS style map I've truly enjoyed, and the sequel definately brings in a fresh approach finally.

My comments on a fun game align pretty much with what others have said. My advice is don't settle for mediocrity, add in things that no other maps to-date have. It doesn't have to be groundbreaking (although that would definately help), but it should capture the players' eyes and make them say "Hey, that's cool." A special system of leveling up, a game style that is either new, or dissimilar from the aging trends - anything that's new and refreshing is always a blessing in a map.

~kharma

hmm, well Defense of the Ancients is cool for all the new custom skills, definitely, but I find it lacking in gameplay terms compared to valley of dissent. In Valley, the cool hero towers kick ***, and between the towers,.the teleporters and obelisks there's lots of stuff to do everywhere.

My problem with Defense of the Ancients is that there are boring towers, and long walks which get boring.

And you say there's a sequel? I'd be interested it trying that.

fr0ggE

P.S. I do enjoy Defense of the Ancients, I just think Valley is better, more compact, so to speak

Yes, how could I forget Valley? :gsmile:

And ya, I have the DotA sequel on my other comp, so I'll put up a download for it in the retail maps section tomorrow.

~kharma

Minigames are truly one of the best things to add to a map to make it fun. Especially if there is some point where there might not be anything to do, such as in maps like cube defence where theres like 2 minutes between each wave..itd b nice if there was a minigame in there that you could continue at anytime, but when your busy you can always just "pause" the mini. For instance, way back in the good ol' days of starcraft, there was a map where someone made a maze and the others just sat there and played mini games. The map itself sucked, but the minigames were fun.....

Is there a way to make it so that when you get an item, you get a certain skill? Like you buy an item, and then you have, for instance, stasis trap.

Well instead of doing that why don't you give the item the statis trap ability with charges? If you have to carry an item around to do that anyway, you might as well not use up the ability slot and let the item cast the spell...Then again, items don't have cooldowns.

Speaking of which, if you make an item spell have a cooldown, will the item have a cooldown when casting it?

fr0ggE

P.S. yes, i can think of a way to do what you were originally asking with triggers, but its complicated