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[PATV] Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 6, Ep. 3: Differences in Scale vs Difference
@likalaruku If you're experiencing that much shooting in GOD of war I think you're playing it wrong.
+3
DickjutsuThe Bruce Lee of Dickery.Registered Usernew member
edited March 2013
Look at the old Oregon Trail for a good example of Changes in Kind. If you just watched a wagon move for two hours you'd never play it. But you've got a shooting gallery-style hunting minigame, fording rivers, negotiating with traders and Native Americans, and even random bouts of dysentery.
Even if you go a step before that...to all-text adventure games. If you just moved around from room to toom you'd hate it. But you start off in a house, then you open a chest, then you have to manage your inventory. Admittedly small, but still subtle changes in kind; without them it would hardly be a game.
Going along with EC's Final Fantasy reference you could even call the Pause Menu a change in kind. You roam the land, fight in battles, but you have an entire Party Management Sim in the pause menu of each Final Fantasy game!
Hah, You've just got to adjust your countdown clock for EST. PAX AUS time next!
On topic though, not sure that differences in kind are as important in a multiplayer game. Or at least, not developer created ones.
Let's take CoD again because whatever. Team Deathmatch. You've got the start of the round, everyone's on equal footing, you select your loadout, and you get to shooting. A couple of deaths in someone else gets a killstreak, and unleashes a bonus and you're on the back foot. Then you go on streak and you get a bonus and you feel all empowered. But then you glance down at the points to win left, and one team narrows on victory, so you focus all your attention on pushing your team over the line for that final victory.
All of this, including class changes etc, becomes boring. The thing with a multiplayer game, and single player games too, is that the more you replay the game, the more you can predict the thematic shifts in the experience, and the less ability the game has to throw you. It's not entertaining if you can always predict how the game's going to go from the outset because you've played it so many times.
Instead, the main thing that drives a multiplayer game's differences in kind should be the players. A good tense firefight between two evenly matched teams is entertaining because it could go either way at any moment. Whereas a steamroll is fun for neither team most of the time.
A multiplayer game should be focused around providing the most balanced playing field with the largest array of tactics it can, because the players are never going to get tired of playing against interesting opponents.
You can go the other way and make a multiplayer game with a lot of interesting different kind dev created experiences, and it will get a lot of new players in who will find it entertaining whilst learning. But I'd much prefer it if we didn't all get to a spot really quickly where most of this content is ignored for the optimal path.
So I prefer the longer-lived path of interesting and different player-player interactions over a mish-mash of different player-environment interactions in a game I'm likely to play over and over.
I actually disagree with your analysis here. God of War IS worse if the puzzles are just something you have to get through to get to the next fun part of the game - indeed, you pointed this out in your own episode, that you want players to be engaged at all times.
Many games have very little in the way of this. One really clear example of this is fighting games. In fighting games the action is very continuous, and players will often be fighting for quite some time with little break between them - this is especially pronounced when playing them single player, but even when playing them against other people, oftentimes you will play the game and nothing else for several hours, with no real difference in kind. Its not like RTSs where there are phases to the game - you're really fighting all the time, or nearly all of it.
This actually helps to establish flow in players, which not only allows them to perform better but sort of gives a certain extra quality to the experience. A game like Bioshock is really terrible at establishing flow, whereas a fighting game or especially a game like Super Hexagon allows you to enter a flow state quite readily.
They are important for SOME experiences, but I feel that a lot of games actually lose out because they try to throw in things that are half-baked and thus degrade the overall quality of the gameplay experience for it.
While stuff like this is very important to understand and know about, and I think that differences in kind are vital to many types of game... on the other hand, they aren't always essential, and can actually detract from the overall experience. I suspect this partially has to do with how important exploration and spectacle are to the gameplay experience relative to other needs.
So fighting games don't have difference of kind in them? I disagree. The situation is very different if both players are on their last health compared to full HP. When opponent is comboing you and the other way around? Relative positions in the arena is also a change in kind. In fighting games the change in kind is much quicker than in some other genres.
Long time viewer, but this episode was fantastic enough that I just had to make an account and add a comment.
Minecraft is amazing for this, given not only the variety of things to do, but (generally) the freedom to do what you want when you want to. Want to go fight monsters? Done and done! Want to explore? Check! Want to dig around and unwind in a cavern? Cool. Simply want to throw out all this other nonsense and build? We've got that on tap!
My mind also goes to LittleBigPlanet and Dishonored though, which mix things up really well without losing the elements that make them unique and interesting games.
On topic though, not sure that differences in kind are as important in a multiplayer game. Or at least, not developer created ones.
Let's take CoD again because whatever. Team Deathmatch. You've got the start of the round, everyone's on equal footing, you select your loadout, and you get to shooting. A couple of deaths in someone else gets a killstreak, and unleashes a bonus and you're on the back foot. Then you go on streak and you get a bonus and you feel all empowered. But then you glance down at the points to win left, and one team narrows on victory, so you focus all your attention on pushing your team over the line for that final victory.
All of this, including class changes etc, becomes boring. The thing with a multiplayer game, and single player games too, is that the more you replay the game, the more you can predict the thematic shifts in the experience, and the less ability the game has to throw you. It's not entertaining if you can always predict how the game's going to go from the outset because you've played it so many times.
Instead, the main thing that drives a multiplayer game's differences in kind should be the players. A good tense firefight between two evenly matched teams is entertaining because it could go either way at any moment. Whereas a steamroll is fun for neither team most of the time.
A multiplayer game should be focused around providing the most balanced playing field with the largest array of tactics it can, because the players are never going to get tired of playing against interesting opponents.
You can go the other way and make a multiplayer game with a lot of interesting different kind dev created experiences, and it will get a lot of new players in who will find it entertaining whilst learning. But I'd much prefer it if we didn't all get to a spot really quickly where most of this content is ignored for the optimal path.
So I prefer the longer-lived path of interesting and different player-player interactions over a mish-mash of different player-environment interactions in a game I'm likely to play over and over.
I don't think differences in kind have to mean setpieces. These differences can be player-driven but intentional from a development standpoint. I'd say the best example of a multiplayer game with changes in kind and tone is the MOBA genre like League of Legends. Throughout the game, the focus and pace changes. Farming a lane is slow, especially if you're not intending to advance, but just gather gold and experience. As you level up you start taking popshots at enemies. At some point you'll push a tower, maybe alone or maybe with friends. Maybe a big teamfight will start. Depending on your character you may head to the jungle. Every now and then you head back to back and muck around with the store. By the end you're frantically defending your base or assaulting the other. There's no set timeline for when these changes occur, and they are different from game to game depending on the players, but they're still definitely put in there intentionally by the developers.
I actually disagree with your analysis here. God of War IS worse if the puzzles are just something you have to get through to get to the next fun part of the game - indeed, you pointed this out in your own episode, that you want players to be engaged at all times.
Many games have very little in the way of this. One really clear example of this is fighting games. In fighting games the action is very continuous, and players will often be fighting for quite some time with little break between them - this is especially pronounced when playing them single player, but even when playing them against other people, oftentimes you will play the game and nothing else for several hours, with no real difference in kind. Its not like RTSs where there are phases to the game - you're really fighting all the time, or nearly all of it.
This actually helps to establish flow in players, which not only allows them to perform better but sort of gives a certain extra quality to the experience. A game like Bioshock is really terrible at establishing flow, whereas a fighting game or especially a game like Super Hexagon allows you to enter a flow state quite readily.
They are important for SOME experiences, but I feel that a lot of games actually lose out because they try to throw in things that are half-baked and thus degrade the overall quality of the gameplay experience for it.
While stuff like this is very important to understand and know about, and I think that differences in kind are vital to many types of game... on the other hand, they aren't always essential, and can actually detract from the overall experience. I suspect this partially has to do with how important exploration and spectacle are to the gameplay experience relative to other needs.
I think you want players to be engaged all the time, but not equally engaged. Any emotion sustained, whether positive or negative, diminishes if notbeing broken up. Interestingly, all of the "low interest" points on that Star Wars graph were my favorite moments. But either way, I think sometimes the fights are more engaging when you're relieved to get back to them after a slower puzzle segment. Now, it would be better if the puzzles were good, but I'd agree that it's still better than nothing but fights.
But this, like any art aspect, is a matter of opinion. I can't stay with fighting games for long because, as an improficient player who hasn't grasped the nuances that add variety, the game seemed like more and more of the same. Even games where I really liked the combat, like The Force Unleashed, I only stuck with for a few hours (when I usually finish games I start) because it just got so monotonous. I loved the Wild West shootout and the carriage chase scenes in Twilight Princess. I love going through towns and managing my party in RPGs.
I think their point here is that variety is important, but the variety you need is change in tone, not just backdrop and not necessarily controls. QTEs aren't the way to go, nor is changing the controls every two minutes like BLOPS2. COD4 was the same game throughout that whole level, but the pacing and tone changed to keep you interested even though you were essentially still in the tutorial.
League of Legends and Starcraft actually have some of the best-defined tonal shifts, due largely to their resource systems. Early phases of the game where you're building your infrastructure or item builds and trying to eke out early advantages to exploit in the late game are very different than later periods of the game where you've got a vast array of options, but your vulnerabilities are spread further across the map, meaning teamwork and situational awareness become the more important skills.
An even better example is Warcraft 3. In addition to similarities to Starcraft, the hero units added a lot of differences in kind. Early on, hero units are fairly weak and need to be nurtured and carefully fed experience points. Late-game, hero units are juggernauts that can make your armies very hard to kill or tear through regular units at a startling clip. Not only does this add further levels of micromanagement, but the fact that you can have multiple hero units at once (and as you grow used to the game's rhythm, there are times that naturally lend themselves to the hire of additional heroes) completely changes the game from one ten-minute chunk to the next.
The news of my impending death came at a really bad time for me.
League of Legends and Starcraft actually have some of the best-defined tonal shifts, due largely to their resource systems. Early phases of the game where you're building your infrastructure or item builds and trying to eke out early advantages to exploit in the late game are very different than later periods of the game where you've got a vast array of options, but your vulnerabilities are spread further across the map, meaning teamwork and situational awareness become the more important skills.
An even better example is Warcraft 3. In addition to similarities to Starcraft, the hero units added a lot of differences in kind. Early on, hero units are fairly weak and need to be nurtured and carefully fed experience points. Late-game, hero units are juggernauts that can make your armies very hard to kill or tear through regular units at a startling clip. Not only does this add further levels of micromanagement, but the fact that you can have multiple hero units at once (and as you grow used to the game's rhythm, there are times that naturally lend themselves to the hire of additional heroes) completely changes the game from one ten-minute chunk to the next.
The news of my impending death came at a really bad time for me.
Bioshock infinite's my example of this. One second you're on a roller coaster surround by sunlight, the next you're in a blood soaked pub with flickering lights and a vox populi code scrawled in the bathroom with blood.
One second you're escaping a falling building, the next you're on a beach thousands of feet in the sky.
Just as a side note: I wanted to thank James for taking the time to address fan questions after the time allotted for the Extra Creditz panel ran-out at PAX East this year.
Community members had some awesome questions/comments and the insights were great as usual. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.
I don't think differences in kind have to mean setpieces. These differences can be player-driven but intentional from a development standpoint. I'd say the best example of a multiplayer game with changes in kind and tone is the MOBA genre like League of Legends. Throughout the game, the focus and pace changes. Farming a lane is slow, especially if you're not intending to advance, but just gather gold and experience. As you level up you start taking popshots at enemies. At some point you'll push a tower, maybe alone or maybe with friends. Maybe a big teamfight will start. Depending on your character you may head to the jungle. Every now and then you head back to back and muck around with the store. By the end you're frantically defending your base or assaulting the other. There's no set timeline for when these changes occur, and they are different from game to game depending on the players, but they're still definitely put in there intentionally by the developers.
It's a bit sad that spoilers don't work under the video, but anyway...
I'd say that all those changes, when you push, when you fall back, when you gank, etc, these are all player driven shifts, and do not stem inherently from the game itself.
For example, I could design a really bad character. He's a nuke, and if his team survives 45 minutes on the map, he goes off and wins it for that team, but otherwise he contributes next to nothing to group fights and so his team has to play 4v5 for 45 minutes to pull off the instant win. Now this provides some opportunities for differences in kind. The initial game is easy for the enemy team and hard for the nuke's team, but as the timer ticks down and a big red LED display descends from the top of the screen to count off the remaining 10 minutes, things get frantic and tension builds as the enemy suicides on the nuke's towers in a last ditch attempt to win the match.
Why is this hero so bad? Well aside from it breaking the general structure of heroes by not needing any levels (easily remedied by weak abilities, and nuke being level 3 ulti), it is incredibly binary. Either the hero does nothing or it wins the game. The entire tone of the match is set by this one mechanic instead of the actions of the players. So while the silent ticking down of an inevitable doomsday device might be fun (if Evil Genius has taught me anything), it's only really fun the first time. If you had multiple games all dominated by this mechanic, then the difference of kind goes out the window, because every single game is the same as every single other game.
Instead, and I think the MOBAs do this well, if you focus on making no one mechanic dominate the game, then the players can be more fluid in their gameplay. They are forced to adapt to whatever strategy the opponent is running, because there are multiple ways of winning and no clear consensus as to which is the most efficient. This, coupled with the large amount of viable starting positions, means that you will see all this variation happening in combat. And that is what keeps it interesting. If you had 90 heroes but only 5 were viable and a mixed team was best and it's always 1-2-1 in the three lanes and 1 jungler, then the game wouldn't be as fun, no matter how slow it is at the beginning, or how it changes pace in the push/pulls, or how much effect the river glyphs have.
Many games have very little in the way of this. One really clear example of this is fighting games. In fighting games the action is very continuous, and players will often be fighting for quite some time with little break between them - this is especially pronounced when playing them single player, but even when playing them against other people, oftentimes you will play the game and nothing else for several hours, with no real difference in kind. Its not like RTSs where there are phases to the game - you're really fighting all the time, or nearly all of it.
This actually helps to establish flow in players, which not only allows them to perform better but sort of gives a certain extra quality to the experience. A game like Bioshock is really terrible at establishing flow, whereas a fighting game or especially a game like Super Hexagon allows you to enter a flow state quite readily.
They are important for SOME experiences, but I feel that a lot of games actually lose out because they try to throw in things that are half-baked and thus degrade the overall quality of the gameplay experience for it.
Sounds like you haven't played very much Super Hexagon. If you had, you would have realised that even though the central theme is to keep from crashing into the walls, and you can do this with straight reflex if you want, the best way to play is to memorise the patterns. Within each level there are only so many preconstructed patterns that get thrown at you (along with the one exit hexes put somewhat randomly in to throw you off between these sequences). Super Hexagon becomes a game of remembering and defeating these patterns individually so that you may navigate them successfully in sequence. And each of these patterns is different.
As a result, it very much has its own difference in kind rhythm. You will be better at some sequences than others, and you will dread coming across another R R L L L instead of a straight easy spiral. There are points at which you can infer that not much is going to happen, so yes it is appropriate to blink now. If it were just a straight game of navigate the arrow to the random open side of a hex, it would not be nearly as much fun as it is. This is without even mentioning that, once you get past 60 seconds, the level generally changes dramatically, and forces you to play a faster level with new patterns (more often than not; as far as I can tell, not much difference between Hyper Hexagon/Hexagoner and Hyper Hyper Hexagon/Hexagoner besides a complete palette change) and different tricks (rotation/cursor rotation/screen tilt).
Even Tetris has differences in kind with marked differences in the level of frantic block direction between a full/cleared screen and lower/higher levels.
Getting into the flow of a repetitive task is boring. Every game has to offer up differences in kind to avoid being relegated to chore. A story driven single player game generally only has to do this once though. A multiplayer game generally has to rely on the changing player component to keep it fresh.
Except now I have no idea how that squares with a multiplayer Tetris (Tetris Attack for simplicity). I'm probably just looking at two different ways to introduce variation (humans + RNGs) into an otherwise static frame to keep the differences pumping.
Maybe it's just gotten to the point where I am a ridiculous fanboy of the Extra Credits series, but damn near every week I find myself with a game design dilemma that is somehow magically correlated to something you guys go over in detail and give me a new healthy perspective on.
In short, thank you. And please, keep up the fantastibitchinfuckyeahawesome work.
Easiest demonstration: download Ridiculous Fishing. The increasing depths and numbers of fish? Differences in scale. All the crap you can buy? Differences in kind.
I'd say that all those changes, when you push, when you fall back, when you gank, etc, these are all player driven shifts, and do not stem inherently from the game itself.
Players drive when they happen. The game design ensures they do. Obviously the game designers know how the course of a standard game will flow, and even without something as extreme as the "nuke character", LoL and DotA have huge fluctuations in pacing and in what your priority is. Heck, even something as simple as, "sometimes it's good to kill minions and push forward, other times it's not" keeps the game from being the same the whole time. The game doesn't just ramp up in power (difference in size) but organically changes what it's all about.
Nice lesson!
The subject matter can be summed up as "Pacing".it covers nearly everything.
But your angle was necessary to convey the finer mechanics.
Good work
When I think of this, I think Dark Souls did this very well with sections of relative safety and just overall a different feel to each area.
The big reason I wanted to comment though was from the comments on fighting games. While the discussion seemed to be centered on the actual "Gameplay" itself, a difference in kind within those games seems to occur.. to me at least during the loading screens and other other pieces that show up between fights. When playing with others especially there's a bit of an anticipatory calm that occurs while players are choosing characters and such before the actual fight kicks in.
I feel like differences in kind occur whenever the player begins to think in a different manner, even if making use of similar mechanics like they discussed with the different firefights in COD.
Well my examples
*Castlevania: This game have this thing, yeah you make the same actions like a lot...but not all the sections are difficult, in reality some sections are REALLY easy, and others are PLAIN HARD, like the Death passage, and the previous section for example. That was make you challenged..but interested in the game even is one of the most hardest games of that generation. One example of the opposite???, Castlevania III, if anophter hard section, follow for another hard section, and another, and another....And is Freaking frustating and really not so fun like the original. Because...there are not differences in kind
*Super Metroid: You have sections you need to only walk and jump, other you need to blast your way out, other only explore some things, and other blast the boss, and some really hard encounters too. This variety of pasing in sections of the map, make kill the boss at the end MORE enjoyable.
*Metal gear solid: well this game explain by itself, there are sections of pure stealth, othr of pure actions, and other of puzzle resolve and cut scenes...Evrybody know how GREAT is this game, because you dont need to "stealth" all the time. You sometimes need to kick some asses, or solve some logical problems.
A good Example is the professor Layton series, i think. Even the puzzles are of different tone. Then you have the coin-hunting which is an exploration of the surroundings, the main storyline with its mysteries and twists and minigames. Granted, some puzzles are woven into the story rather clumsily. I encountered several players playing this game for different reasons. Some wanted to have the highest amount of coins in the end, others skipped storyparts to do the riddles.
One Game that really failed in this was Broken Sword III. I was a great fan of the series and Broken Sword I and Two are good old (suspense/mystery/comedy) Point+ and Clickadventures. There is nothing wrong with putting in something to change up the "game feeling" (not just the tone). But in III suddenly there where Box-Moving Puzzles that did not scale up in difficulty. They designers put in more boxes which did not make this more challenging. I play Myst or Sokoban for this and the great final riddle was a move-the-boxes riddle that took extremely long but was not challenging. One of the reasons to play adventures is to solve riddles and puzzles and insulting players like this drove me off the series.
Also - the quicktimeevents where with the game from part 1, but in part 3 (that was in 3D), they happened while the player had to handle 3D-chasing scenes, that felt like an action game. So it was not conflict-dialogue with live-depending choices - it was a chace scene that had not been practiced before. I was terrible at that and could not control the character. And when i finally beat that stupid scene, the newly mastered skills did not have to be put to use again. sheesh!
Players drive when they happen. The game design ensures they do.
I disagree, and think that, if the multiplayer design ensures anything, those things it does ensure become the most stagnant parts of the game.
What the game design needs to do is open up an array of tactics that the players can exploit, whilst ensuring that no single tactic becomes dominant. Or use an RNG to keep gameplay fresh. Or both.
You have to give the players control over their own highs and lows, otherwise you're only entertaining people who are learning the game.
Doesn't mean you can't build some awesome tools for players to use, or make specific actions rewarding of themselves, but these aren't going to keep delivering consistent highs and lows to experienced players. The meta will do this instead.
So fighting games don't have difference of kind in them? I disagree. The situation is very different if both players are on their last health compared to full HP. When opponent is comboing you and the other way around? Relative positions in the arena is also a change in kind. In fighting games the change in kind is much quicker than in some other genres.
Its not a change in kind, though. Its all part of a single experience. You're trying to stretch the definition to the point where it becomes meaningless.
Its not like SC2, where there is basically a "super build up the economy" at the start, which is basically a single player game, followed by "building and fighting at the same time" phase.
I think you want players to be engaged all the time, but not equally engaged. Any emotion sustained, whether positive or negative, diminishes if notbeing broken up.
I disagree, actually. If you play a game like Super Hexagon or SSF2T or SSBM or similar for a long period of time, it actually can make the experience much better because you enter a flow state where you see thngs differently. The state of flow is actually a very distinctive sensation where your perception of the game changes. You play the game better and your reaction speed increases.
When you jerk players around too much it can pull them out of this state of flow. Now flow isn't something you want in every game necessarily, but I think when you mix things up too much it really can detract from the experience. In their example, for instance, while the mission changes from moment to moment, you're still immersed in the same thing the whole time, the experience of raiding a ship; when you do a random puzzle in God of War, it pulls you out of what you're doing, is a very different experience, and reminds you that it is a game.
I think a lot of games try too hard to incorporate this precisely because some successful games have done so, but its really not for every game. Sometimes there is a core gameplay experience you're shooting for, while in other cases you're aiming for something else.
And yes I do recognize that Super Hexagon is pattern recognition, but of course, ALL games ultimately are pattern recognition; you don't really beat games, you solve them. Contra is an example; I have a cousin who can beat that game without dying. Why? Because the game is predictable.
Ultimately any game wherein you are facing a computer rather than a player is pattern recognition, and even against players there is some pattern recognition involved.
But Super Hexagon didn't have to be about pattern recognition. And most of the clones popping up aren't and are worse for it.
For example, you can make a Super Hexagon game where you always just seek out the one side of the hexagon that's not a wall. It would be a far worse game than Super Hexagon is even if it were harder, and had the same music / visuals. Without changing the game further (making it speed up through out the level, say, which is something Super Hexagon doesn't do) there wouldn't be any difference in kind to make the game exciting, and most Super Hexagon players would find the clone boring once they became proficient enough at beating the random hexes. The only reason speeding the level up as the game continued would improve the clone is that it would reintroduce the difference in kind that had been removed in the first place.
These different patterns, easy left spiral, hunt and find hexes, quick sequence with only one solution that you need memorised and identified as you enter, these are what make Super Hexagon a great game to play.
I'd say that when you get into the 'flow' of Super Hexagon, aside from just having the raw technical skill of being able to see and play the game, you are really just adapting to these changes on the fly. Without the changes, there would be no flow, because there would be nothing trying to throw you off your streak in the first place.
Really REALLY surprised they went with CoD instead of HL as the go to example, considering how superficial the differences being presented actually were.
Players drive when they happen. The game design ensures they do.
I disagree, and think that, if the multiplayer design ensures anything, those things it does ensure become the most stagnant parts of the game.
What the game design needs to do is open up an array of tactics that the players can exploit, whilst ensuring that no single tactic becomes dominant. Or use an RNG to keep gameplay fresh. Or both.
You have to give the players control over their own highs and lows, otherwise you're only entertaining people who are learning the game.
Doesn't mean you can't build some awesome tools for players to use, or make specific actions rewarding of themselves, but these aren't going to keep delivering consistent highs and lows to experienced players. The meta will do this instead.
I'm not sure we're understanding each other. My point is that the varied types of play in LoL: laning, jungling, pushing, ganking, etc, are determined by the players as to when in a battle you use them. You may not use a particular strategy at all or you may change your strategy throughout the game. In fact the leveling mechanic ensures that you will, because the things you do in endgame are simply not possible for level one champions. But types of play like pushing a lane are not some strange thing the meta came up with that took the developers by surprise--it's the entire point of the game. Multiplayer games, ideally, don't have anything scripted, but neither do they merely drop a bunch of players into an empty room with no tools. The map, objectives, and leveling mechanics ensure that the gameplay varies throughout a match. That's certainly intentional on the part of the developers.
@RatherDashing89
See, I'd say the various types of metaplay, laning, jungling, pushing, etc, these are all controlled by the players, but more importantly invented by the players.
For example, you could derpify some unwitting LoL players and sit them down to a game. I guarantee that these brain dead individuals would not think of mixing up their playstyle, much to the disappointment of whoever is trying to play them. The game is not forcing them to play in any particular fashion aside from pushing up some lane in hopes of destroying the ancient at the end. And so they will not gank, nor deny, nor jungle. At best they will move with their creeps and be farmed (at worst they mill around their spawn).
A better example would be AI vs human players. Once you understand how the AI is playing, the game loses much of what makes it fun. Human players are capable of changing their strategy if they are being consistently beaten, and this provides the difference in kind that keeps the game worth playing, even against the same opponents (within the same skill bracket).
The meta of a multiplayer game is all entirely up to the players. And I'd argue it is this meta that makes the game different in each run through. As a developer, you cannot control the meta directly. What you can do instead is modify mechanics so as to limit the amount of stagnant meta in the game. Whether that's through direct nerfs/buffs to offending heroes or adding additional ways of detecting/avoiding frequently used attacks depends on the situation.
But this is often very hard, since the brute force of your playerbase will seek out the min/max routes of winning to the exclusion of all else. So to keep everything balanced all the time is nigh impossible. But once again, this is all up to the players, so often the players will pick and choose a ruleset that provides the most opportunity for variance in gameplay and then make that a competitive standard. It's often better to just support this behaviour from the start, and give the players full reign over the ruleset from release, rather than try to desperately keep all the content balanced the meta evolves around it.
So while I'd agree that the various types of play that arise in LoL may not have come as a big surprise to the developers, they cannot force the meta, and they cannot create it either. All they can do is rely on a player's desire to win, and hope through making different options more attractive in different situations that maybe the players will learn how to use the alternate strategies and provide the differences in kind for the game. But they can't just magically stop feeders from creating a steamroll.
TL : DR version:
The devs can make the tools, but they can't specify how the players use them nor how frequently. Often the best games are where the players use the tools in a completely unintended fashion. And the differences in kind that I see keeping multiplayer games fresh are the ones that arise from different players using these tools with different frequencies in different situations and to different effects.
The tools themselves are relatively boring, and do nothing to drive any differences in kind beyond player familiarisation with the tools themselves.
Would you say TF is Call of Warioware? Each class uses unique mechanics to accomplish the same goal. The maps and gameplay isn't unique with each scenario/map pulling aspects of the others.
@discrider Not attacking a Nexus at level one isn't player created meta. It's an obvious result of the leveling system put in by the developers. I wasn't referencing player defined strategies, but stuff as simple as "you're stronger at level 15 than level 1 so you can accomplish different things" or "when you're at max level you don't need to farm experience because you are at max level". I'm not denying that players are a major source of the variety in a multiplayer game. I'm just saying the developers are too. The only way the developers would have no input on the level of variety in the game is if the game were the exact same throughout. The mere presence of objectives, rather than the gametype being sudden death, already satisfies that condition. It's entirely possible for multiplayer developers to include mechanics which lend to "difference in kind" without having to shoehorn in setpieces.
@RatherDashing89
What I'm trying to say is this: In a multiplayer game the objective and the mechanics stay the same within each game, or at least within each game mode. Any variety within these is completely exercised within the first couple of playthroughs. Then the only reason the players keep playing the same maps under the same ruleset for eternity is completely due to the variety the players inject into the game themselves. All the rules can do is encourage or discourage variety through nerfs or buffs to dominant (and therefore stagnant) strategies.
I'd say games evolve to accommodate the meta (or they die as everyone uses the same weapon/hero/ability over and over and over), instead of the meta evolving from the game.
So, yes, the game design does define some basic momentum shifts in LoL. But after the first couple of games, the player learns that these patterns will be inherent in every game, and so these patterns quickly fade into the background and don't induce any difference in kind pacing. What pushes the game from there is the meta that is built off these supports, and not anything that the dev can build directly into the game.
@RatherDashing89
What I'm trying to say is this: In a multiplayer game the objective and the mechanics stay the same within each game, or at least within each game mode. Any variety within these is completely exercised within the first couple of playthroughs. Then the only reason the players keep playing the same maps under the same ruleset for eternity is completely due to the variety the players inject into the game themselves. All the rules can do is encourage or discourage variety through nerfs or buffs to dominant (and therefore stagnant) strategies.
I'd say games evolve to accommodate the meta (or they die as everyone uses the same weapon/hero/ability over and over and over), instead of the meta evolving from the game.
So, yes, the game design does define some basic momentum shifts in LoL. But after the first couple of games, the player learns that these patterns will be inherent in every game, and so these patterns quickly fade into the background and don't induce any difference in kind pacing. What pushes the game from there is the meta that is built off these supports, and not anything that the dev can build directly into the game.
I gotcha. You're definitely right there. From game to game the only difference is defined by the player. I guess that's where the miscommunication was, because I was just talking about within a single game. Fighting games and arcade shooters don't hold me because matches are so short and seem the same throughout. But I like MOBAs because even if every game were exactly the same, within the course of the 45 minute match the game changes. But you're right, from game to game any variety is that injected by the players.
So to make everything concise:
The only difference in kinds that drive the replayability of any game are
1) Randomness (random map gen, random enemy gen, random resource gen, etc.).
2) Competition against yourself or other people, as different strategies and different circumstances force you to change the way you play.
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Even if you go a step before that...to all-text adventure games. If you just moved around from room to toom you'd hate it. But you start off in a house, then you open a chest, then you have to manage your inventory. Admittedly small, but still subtle changes in kind; without them it would hardly be a game.
Going along with EC's Final Fantasy reference you could even call the Pause Menu a change in kind. You roam the land, fight in battles, but you have an entire Party Management Sim in the pause menu of each Final Fantasy game!
On topic though, not sure that differences in kind are as important in a multiplayer game. Or at least, not developer created ones.
Let's take CoD again because whatever. Team Deathmatch. You've got the start of the round, everyone's on equal footing, you select your loadout, and you get to shooting. A couple of deaths in someone else gets a killstreak, and unleashes a bonus and you're on the back foot. Then you go on streak and you get a bonus and you feel all empowered. But then you glance down at the points to win left, and one team narrows on victory, so you focus all your attention on pushing your team over the line for that final victory.
All of this, including class changes etc, becomes boring. The thing with a multiplayer game, and single player games too, is that the more you replay the game, the more you can predict the thematic shifts in the experience, and the less ability the game has to throw you. It's not entertaining if you can always predict how the game's going to go from the outset because you've played it so many times.
Instead, the main thing that drives a multiplayer game's differences in kind should be the players. A good tense firefight between two evenly matched teams is entertaining because it could go either way at any moment. Whereas a steamroll is fun for neither team most of the time.
A multiplayer game should be focused around providing the most balanced playing field with the largest array of tactics it can, because the players are never going to get tired of playing against interesting opponents.
You can go the other way and make a multiplayer game with a lot of interesting different kind dev created experiences, and it will get a lot of new players in who will find it entertaining whilst learning. But I'd much prefer it if we didn't all get to a spot really quickly where most of this content is ignored for the optimal path.
So I prefer the longer-lived path of interesting and different player-player interactions over a mish-mash of different player-environment interactions in a game I'm likely to play over and over.
Many games have very little in the way of this. One really clear example of this is fighting games. In fighting games the action is very continuous, and players will often be fighting for quite some time with little break between them - this is especially pronounced when playing them single player, but even when playing them against other people, oftentimes you will play the game and nothing else for several hours, with no real difference in kind. Its not like RTSs where there are phases to the game - you're really fighting all the time, or nearly all of it.
This actually helps to establish flow in players, which not only allows them to perform better but sort of gives a certain extra quality to the experience. A game like Bioshock is really terrible at establishing flow, whereas a fighting game or especially a game like Super Hexagon allows you to enter a flow state quite readily.
They are important for SOME experiences, but I feel that a lot of games actually lose out because they try to throw in things that are half-baked and thus degrade the overall quality of the gameplay experience for it.
While stuff like this is very important to understand and know about, and I think that differences in kind are vital to many types of game... on the other hand, they aren't always essential, and can actually detract from the overall experience. I suspect this partially has to do with how important exploration and spectacle are to the gameplay experience relative to other needs.
So fighting games don't have difference of kind in them? I disagree. The situation is very different if both players are on their last health compared to full HP. When opponent is comboing you and the other way around? Relative positions in the arena is also a change in kind. In fighting games the change in kind is much quicker than in some other genres.
Minecraft is amazing for this, given not only the variety of things to do, but (generally) the freedom to do what you want when you want to. Want to go fight monsters? Done and done! Want to explore? Check! Want to dig around and unwind in a cavern? Cool. Simply want to throw out all this other nonsense and build? We've got that on tap!
My mind also goes to LittleBigPlanet and Dishonored though, which mix things up really well without losing the elements that make them unique and interesting games.
I don't think differences in kind have to mean setpieces. These differences can be player-driven but intentional from a development standpoint. I'd say the best example of a multiplayer game with changes in kind and tone is the MOBA genre like League of Legends. Throughout the game, the focus and pace changes. Farming a lane is slow, especially if you're not intending to advance, but just gather gold and experience. As you level up you start taking popshots at enemies. At some point you'll push a tower, maybe alone or maybe with friends. Maybe a big teamfight will start. Depending on your character you may head to the jungle. Every now and then you head back to back and muck around with the store. By the end you're frantically defending your base or assaulting the other. There's no set timeline for when these changes occur, and they are different from game to game depending on the players, but they're still definitely put in there intentionally by the developers.
I think you want players to be engaged all the time, but not equally engaged. Any emotion sustained, whether positive or negative, diminishes if notbeing broken up. Interestingly, all of the "low interest" points on that Star Wars graph were my favorite moments. But either way, I think sometimes the fights are more engaging when you're relieved to get back to them after a slower puzzle segment. Now, it would be better if the puzzles were good, but I'd agree that it's still better than nothing but fights.
But this, like any art aspect, is a matter of opinion. I can't stay with fighting games for long because, as an improficient player who hasn't grasped the nuances that add variety, the game seemed like more and more of the same. Even games where I really liked the combat, like The Force Unleashed, I only stuck with for a few hours (when I usually finish games I start) because it just got so monotonous. I loved the Wild West shootout and the carriage chase scenes in Twilight Princess. I love going through towns and managing my party in RPGs.
I think their point here is that variety is important, but the variety you need is change in tone, not just backdrop and not necessarily controls. QTEs aren't the way to go, nor is changing the controls every two minutes like BLOPS2. COD4 was the same game throughout that whole level, but the pacing and tone changed to keep you interested even though you were essentially still in the tutorial.
An even better example is Warcraft 3. In addition to similarities to Starcraft, the hero units added a lot of differences in kind. Early on, hero units are fairly weak and need to be nurtured and carefully fed experience points. Late-game, hero units are juggernauts that can make your armies very hard to kill or tear through regular units at a startling clip. Not only does this add further levels of micromanagement, but the fact that you can have multiple hero units at once (and as you grow used to the game's rhythm, there are times that naturally lend themselves to the hire of additional heroes) completely changes the game from one ten-minute chunk to the next.
An even better example is Warcraft 3. In addition to similarities to Starcraft, the hero units added a lot of differences in kind. Early on, hero units are fairly weak and need to be nurtured and carefully fed experience points. Late-game, hero units are juggernauts that can make your armies very hard to kill or tear through regular units at a startling clip. Not only does this add further levels of micromanagement, but the fact that you can have multiple hero units at once (and as you grow used to the game's rhythm, there are times that naturally lend themselves to the hire of additional heroes) completely changes the game from one ten-minute chunk to the next.
One second you're escaping a falling building, the next you're on a beach thousands of feet in the sky.
Community members had some awesome questions/comments and the insights were great as usual. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.
It's a bit sad that spoilers don't work under the video, but anyway...
I'd say that all those changes, when you push, when you fall back, when you gank, etc, these are all player driven shifts, and do not stem inherently from the game itself.
For example, I could design a really bad character. He's a nuke, and if his team survives 45 minutes on the map, he goes off and wins it for that team, but otherwise he contributes next to nothing to group fights and so his team has to play 4v5 for 45 minutes to pull off the instant win. Now this provides some opportunities for differences in kind. The initial game is easy for the enemy team and hard for the nuke's team, but as the timer ticks down and a big red LED display descends from the top of the screen to count off the remaining 10 minutes, things get frantic and tension builds as the enemy suicides on the nuke's towers in a last ditch attempt to win the match.
Why is this hero so bad? Well aside from it breaking the general structure of heroes by not needing any levels (easily remedied by weak abilities, and nuke being level 3 ulti), it is incredibly binary. Either the hero does nothing or it wins the game. The entire tone of the match is set by this one mechanic instead of the actions of the players. So while the silent ticking down of an inevitable doomsday device might be fun (if Evil Genius has taught me anything), it's only really fun the first time. If you had multiple games all dominated by this mechanic, then the difference of kind goes out the window, because every single game is the same as every single other game.
Instead, and I think the MOBAs do this well, if you focus on making no one mechanic dominate the game, then the players can be more fluid in their gameplay. They are forced to adapt to whatever strategy the opponent is running, because there are multiple ways of winning and no clear consensus as to which is the most efficient. This, coupled with the large amount of viable starting positions, means that you will see all this variation happening in combat. And that is what keeps it interesting. If you had 90 heroes but only 5 were viable and a mixed team was best and it's always 1-2-1 in the three lanes and 1 jungler, then the game wouldn't be as fun, no matter how slow it is at the beginning, or how it changes pace in the push/pulls, or how much effect the river glyphs have.
Sounds like you haven't played very much Super Hexagon. If you had, you would have realised that even though the central theme is to keep from crashing into the walls, and you can do this with straight reflex if you want, the best way to play is to memorise the patterns. Within each level there are only so many preconstructed patterns that get thrown at you (along with the one exit hexes put somewhat randomly in to throw you off between these sequences). Super Hexagon becomes a game of remembering and defeating these patterns individually so that you may navigate them successfully in sequence. And each of these patterns is different.
As a result, it very much has its own difference in kind rhythm. You will be better at some sequences than others, and you will dread coming across another R R L L L instead of a straight easy spiral. There are points at which you can infer that not much is going to happen, so yes it is appropriate to blink now. If it were just a straight game of navigate the arrow to the random open side of a hex, it would not be nearly as much fun as it is. This is without even mentioning that, once you get past 60 seconds, the level generally changes dramatically, and forces you to play a faster level with new patterns (more often than not; as far as I can tell, not much difference between Hyper Hexagon/Hexagoner and Hyper Hyper Hexagon/Hexagoner besides a complete palette change) and different tricks (rotation/cursor rotation/screen tilt).
Even Tetris has differences in kind with marked differences in the level of frantic block direction between a full/cleared screen and lower/higher levels.
Getting into the flow of a repetitive task is boring. Every game has to offer up differences in kind to avoid being relegated to chore. A story driven single player game generally only has to do this once though. A multiplayer game generally has to rely on the changing player component to keep it fresh.
Except now I have no idea how that squares with a multiplayer Tetris (Tetris Attack for simplicity). I'm probably just looking at two different ways to introduce variation (humans + RNGs) into an otherwise static frame to keep the differences pumping.
In short, thank you. And please, keep up the fantastibitchinfuckyeahawesome work.
Players drive when they happen. The game design ensures they do. Obviously the game designers know how the course of a standard game will flow, and even without something as extreme as the "nuke character", LoL and DotA have huge fluctuations in pacing and in what your priority is. Heck, even something as simple as, "sometimes it's good to kill minions and push forward, other times it's not" keeps the game from being the same the whole time. The game doesn't just ramp up in power (difference in size) but organically changes what it's all about.
The subject matter can be summed up as "Pacing".it covers nearly everything.
But your angle was necessary to convey the finer mechanics.
Good work
The big reason I wanted to comment though was from the comments on fighting games. While the discussion seemed to be centered on the actual "Gameplay" itself, a difference in kind within those games seems to occur.. to me at least during the loading screens and other other pieces that show up between fights. When playing with others especially there's a bit of an anticipatory calm that occurs while players are choosing characters and such before the actual fight kicks in.
I feel like differences in kind occur whenever the player begins to think in a different manner, even if making use of similar mechanics like they discussed with the different firefights in COD.
*Castlevania: This game have this thing, yeah you make the same actions like a lot...but not all the sections are difficult, in reality some sections are REALLY easy, and others are PLAIN HARD, like the Death passage, and the previous section for example. That was make you challenged..but interested in the game even is one of the most hardest games of that generation. One example of the opposite???, Castlevania III, if anophter hard section, follow for another hard section, and another, and another....And is Freaking frustating and really not so fun like the original. Because...there are not differences in kind
*Super Metroid: You have sections you need to only walk and jump, other you need to blast your way out, other only explore some things, and other blast the boss, and some really hard encounters too. This variety of pasing in sections of the map, make kill the boss at the end MORE enjoyable.
*Metal gear solid: well this game explain by itself, there are sections of pure stealth, othr of pure actions, and other of puzzle resolve and cut scenes...Evrybody know how GREAT is this game, because you dont need to "stealth" all the time. You sometimes need to kick some asses, or solve some logical problems.
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God damn, that was funny.
One Game that really failed in this was Broken Sword III. I was a great fan of the series and Broken Sword I and Two are good old (suspense/mystery/comedy) Point+ and Clickadventures. There is nothing wrong with putting in something to change up the "game feeling" (not just the tone). But in III suddenly there where Box-Moving Puzzles that did not scale up in difficulty. They designers put in more boxes which did not make this more challenging. I play Myst or Sokoban for this and the great final riddle was a move-the-boxes riddle that took extremely long but was not challenging. One of the reasons to play adventures is to solve riddles and puzzles and insulting players like this drove me off the series.
Also - the quicktimeevents where with the game from part 1, but in part 3 (that was in 3D), they happened while the player had to handle 3D-chasing scenes, that felt like an action game. So it was not conflict-dialogue with live-depending choices - it was a chace scene that had not been practiced before. I was terrible at that and could not control the character. And when i finally beat that stupid scene, the newly mastered skills did not have to be put to use again. sheesh!
I disagree, and think that, if the multiplayer design ensures anything, those things it does ensure become the most stagnant parts of the game.
What the game design needs to do is open up an array of tactics that the players can exploit, whilst ensuring that no single tactic becomes dominant. Or use an RNG to keep gameplay fresh. Or both.
You have to give the players control over their own highs and lows, otherwise you're only entertaining people who are learning the game.
Doesn't mean you can't build some awesome tools for players to use, or make specific actions rewarding of themselves, but these aren't going to keep delivering consistent highs and lows to experienced players. The meta will do this instead.
Its not a change in kind, though. Its all part of a single experience. You're trying to stretch the definition to the point where it becomes meaningless.
Its not like SC2, where there is basically a "super build up the economy" at the start, which is basically a single player game, followed by "building and fighting at the same time" phase.
I disagree, actually. If you play a game like Super Hexagon or SSF2T or SSBM or similar for a long period of time, it actually can make the experience much better because you enter a flow state where you see thngs differently. The state of flow is actually a very distinctive sensation where your perception of the game changes. You play the game better and your reaction speed increases.
When you jerk players around too much it can pull them out of this state of flow. Now flow isn't something you want in every game necessarily, but I think when you mix things up too much it really can detract from the experience. In their example, for instance, while the mission changes from moment to moment, you're still immersed in the same thing the whole time, the experience of raiding a ship; when you do a random puzzle in God of War, it pulls you out of what you're doing, is a very different experience, and reminds you that it is a game.
I think a lot of games try too hard to incorporate this precisely because some successful games have done so, but its really not for every game. Sometimes there is a core gameplay experience you're shooting for, while in other cases you're aiming for something else.
Ultimately any game wherein you are facing a computer rather than a player is pattern recognition, and even against players there is some pattern recognition involved.
For example, you can make a Super Hexagon game where you always just seek out the one side of the hexagon that's not a wall. It would be a far worse game than Super Hexagon is even if it were harder, and had the same music / visuals. Without changing the game further (making it speed up through out the level, say, which is something Super Hexagon doesn't do) there wouldn't be any difference in kind to make the game exciting, and most Super Hexagon players would find the clone boring once they became proficient enough at beating the random hexes. The only reason speeding the level up as the game continued would improve the clone is that it would reintroduce the difference in kind that had been removed in the first place.
These different patterns, easy left spiral, hunt and find hexes, quick sequence with only one solution that you need memorised and identified as you enter, these are what make Super Hexagon a great game to play.
I'd say that when you get into the 'flow' of Super Hexagon, aside from just having the raw technical skill of being able to see and play the game, you are really just adapting to these changes on the fly. Without the changes, there would be no flow, because there would be nothing trying to throw you off your streak in the first place.
Break the mold, so I'm told, or it's all old hat.
I'm not sure we're understanding each other. My point is that the varied types of play in LoL: laning, jungling, pushing, ganking, etc, are determined by the players as to when in a battle you use them. You may not use a particular strategy at all or you may change your strategy throughout the game. In fact the leveling mechanic ensures that you will, because the things you do in endgame are simply not possible for level one champions. But types of play like pushing a lane are not some strange thing the meta came up with that took the developers by surprise--it's the entire point of the game. Multiplayer games, ideally, don't have anything scripted, but neither do they merely drop a bunch of players into an empty room with no tools. The map, objectives, and leveling mechanics ensure that the gameplay varies throughout a match. That's certainly intentional on the part of the developers.
See, I'd say the various types of metaplay, laning, jungling, pushing, etc, these are all controlled by the players, but more importantly invented by the players.
For example, you could derpify some unwitting LoL players and sit them down to a game. I guarantee that these brain dead individuals would not think of mixing up their playstyle, much to the disappointment of whoever is trying to play them. The game is not forcing them to play in any particular fashion aside from pushing up some lane in hopes of destroying the ancient at the end. And so they will not gank, nor deny, nor jungle. At best they will move with their creeps and be farmed (at worst they mill around their spawn).
A better example would be AI vs human players. Once you understand how the AI is playing, the game loses much of what makes it fun. Human players are capable of changing their strategy if they are being consistently beaten, and this provides the difference in kind that keeps the game worth playing, even against the same opponents (within the same skill bracket).
The meta of a multiplayer game is all entirely up to the players. And I'd argue it is this meta that makes the game different in each run through. As a developer, you cannot control the meta directly. What you can do instead is modify mechanics so as to limit the amount of stagnant meta in the game. Whether that's through direct nerfs/buffs to offending heroes or adding additional ways of detecting/avoiding frequently used attacks depends on the situation.
But this is often very hard, since the brute force of your playerbase will seek out the min/max routes of winning to the exclusion of all else. So to keep everything balanced all the time is nigh impossible. But once again, this is all up to the players, so often the players will pick and choose a ruleset that provides the most opportunity for variance in gameplay and then make that a competitive standard. It's often better to just support this behaviour from the start, and give the players full reign over the ruleset from release, rather than try to desperately keep all the content balanced the meta evolves around it.
So while I'd agree that the various types of play that arise in LoL may not have come as a big surprise to the developers, they cannot force the meta, and they cannot create it either. All they can do is rely on a player's desire to win, and hope through making different options more attractive in different situations that maybe the players will learn how to use the alternate strategies and provide the differences in kind for the game. But they can't just magically stop feeders from creating a steamroll.
TL : DR version:
The devs can make the tools, but they can't specify how the players use them nor how frequently. Often the best games are where the players use the tools in a completely unintended fashion. And the differences in kind that I see keeping multiplayer games fresh are the ones that arise from different players using these tools with different frequencies in different situations and to different effects.
The tools themselves are relatively boring, and do nothing to drive any differences in kind beyond player familiarisation with the tools themselves.
Just kidding another great show guys & girls
What I'm trying to say is this: In a multiplayer game the objective and the mechanics stay the same within each game, or at least within each game mode. Any variety within these is completely exercised within the first couple of playthroughs. Then the only reason the players keep playing the same maps under the same ruleset for eternity is completely due to the variety the players inject into the game themselves. All the rules can do is encourage or discourage variety through nerfs or buffs to dominant (and therefore stagnant) strategies.
I'd say games evolve to accommodate the meta (or they die as everyone uses the same weapon/hero/ability over and over and over), instead of the meta evolving from the game.
So, yes, the game design does define some basic momentum shifts in LoL. But after the first couple of games, the player learns that these patterns will be inherent in every game, and so these patterns quickly fade into the background and don't induce any difference in kind pacing. What pushes the game from there is the meta that is built off these supports, and not anything that the dev can build directly into the game.
Man that level was awesome.
PSN: ShinyRedKnight Xbox Live: ShinyRedKnight
I gotcha. You're definitely right there. From game to game the only difference is defined by the player. I guess that's where the miscommunication was, because I was just talking about within a single game. Fighting games and arcade shooters don't hold me because matches are so short and seem the same throughout. But I like MOBAs because even if every game were exactly the same, within the course of the 45 minute match the game changes. But you're right, from game to game any variety is that injected by the players.
So to make everything concise:
The only difference in kinds that drive the replayability of any game are
1) Randomness (random map gen, random enemy gen, random resource gen, etc.).
2) Competition against yourself or other people, as different strategies and different circumstances force you to change the way you play.