Your perfect game formula

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

First off, hiyas! This is my first topic here on the forums of The Escapist, although I've watched ZP since late 2008. I have been a gamer for about 24 years now and I've often contemplated what "formula" would make the absolute best game. Granted, I'm more into RPGs than any other genre so my formula may be completely different than yours...or anyone else's for that matter. For me, my formula is roughly...

25% Story/Plot
20% Challenge/Difficulty
15% Music
15% Controls
10% Graphics
10% Freedom (That is to say, how open the game is or having many ways to reach the end of the game)
5% Comedy

This seems like a relatively intelligent gaming community here, so I thought I'd drop one of my all-time, thought provoking gaming questions as my way of saying "How are ya?".

 

[Tharwen]

Eh... I don't think making any area better necessarily means that the other areas have to suffer. For example, I think there is a definite cap on how good the controls can be, and there's also a limit on how bad they can be before it makes the entire game useless.

Also, extra difficulty is relatively easy to implement, whereas freedom takes much more effort and can't really be measured with the others.

[sub]Also, this should be in Gaming Discussion.[/sub]

As for me, I don't care so much about plot, but I love comedy in games. Things like the propagandist broadcasts in Just Cause 2, or (some bits of) the dialogue in Bad Company 2 make a game awesome in my opinion.

As I said before, I think the controls have to be at least adequate. They don't make a game, they just exist as a platform for the other parts of the game to work on.

Difficulty is a tricky one, since I like to feel like I'm being challenged without being forced to retry a mission without seeing any progress for hours.

Music is vital to me. Similarly, I think graphics make a game experience feel so much better. When combined effectively, they can set the atmosphere to feel nothing short of epic.

Freedom is another thing I love (Assassin's Creed, Rome - Total War and Just Cause 2 are some of my very favourite games). Finding several different ways of achieving an objective without all of the options feeling like they've been set up by the level designer is extremely gratifying.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

[sub]Also, this should be in Gaming Discussion.[/sub]

Good point. Ahem...*cough*

LF Mod to move this topic to Gaming Discussion, please!!! Thanks, and chocolate chip cookies, in advance.

And, perhaps to clarify, (unless I'm interpreting your post wrong, which is entirely possible) the percentages I used represent those values indicate the amount of relevance they should have when making the game, not their importance when compared to each other. Other than that, I was basically nodding in an agreeing manner while reading your post.

 

[Tharwen]

[sub]Also, this should be in Gaming Discussion.[/sub]

Good point. Ahem...*cough*

LF Mod to move this topic to Gaming Discussion, please!!! Thanks, and chocolate chip cookies, in advance.

And, perhaps to clarify, (unless I'm interpreting your post wrong, which is entirely possible) the percentages I used represent those values indicate the amount of relevance they should have when making the game, not their importance when compared to each other. Other than that, I was basically nodding in an agreeing manner while reading your post.

But changing a percentage always changes the other options! Otherwise, they wouldn't add up.

Also, yay agreement!