Loving the Limits

There is an annoying trend in gaming lately, and that is giving me too many options.

Huh?

Back in the old days, things always had a meaningful choice. In games like Call of Duty, you had 3 types of perk bonuses to choose from, and you could never choose multiples of them. In RPGs you would choose a class and be locked in to that option. If a game required you to collect materials to build items (a la Dead Space), you had to choose carefully because you wouldn't be able to build every weapon or upgrade, and you risked wasting your materials.

Now to a degree, this can be awful. A wrong choice could forfeit hours upon hours of gaming as you hit a certain point and realized that a decision you made in an early part of the game has screwed you over 15 hours later. It's also painfully easy to get bored with what you're locked in to, even if those decisions weren't necessarily bad.

This probably sounds insane coming from me. I hit max level on almost every class in Warcraft. I have far too many Warmachine armies. I usually had to lose my Gameboy before I could stop playing Pokemon because I had to catch 'em all. Why would I, a Renaissance gamer, complain about too many choices?

This came up last night when I was making my classes in Call of Duty. Rather than having 3 slots with unique perks in each, you now have a buffet of options. With every option worth a number of points you can even forego a sidearm and grenades to load up on perks and a main weapon. As I sat there trying to go through everything, I found it nearly impossible to decide what to keep and what to cut, because almost any perk would be useful in a variety of situations!

Even when I made my decision, I didn't feel settled. Without being a master at the game, I was left making classes the same way I had to do algebra homework - guess and check. I could literally spend an hour or two trying to systematically build a single class because there are so many options to weigh against what I know of the game and my playstyle.

So why am I so miserable? Because I usually don't want to spend hours agonizing over a gameplay decision. I love having a select number of options to choose from, because it removes the chore of second-guessing myself and over-analyzing each decision. Tell me I have 5 options and I'm golden. But this game has something like 50 perks, along with various lethal/tactical grenades, weapons, and score streaks. This isn't CoD 4 where class builds were a matter of preference and the rest was left up to skill. Now the success of an entire game can hinge on whether I'm putting every single option to good use.

That's why I enjoy things like theme forces in Warmachine. Building a Warmachine list is like picking perks - the combinations are metaphorically infinite, and in a given game you can always find yourself saying "Oh if I'd only brought _______ I could have ended this game!" But with theme forces you can only take a handful of models and units listed, and in exchange you get different in-game benefits. I love it because my pool of choices in that particular instance are narrowed, making it easier to see everything I have to work with and knowing that I can rest easy in most of my choices.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this should always be the case. If I were to play CoD Ghosts for a year I know I'd love the freedom of choice because I'd have a deep understanding of the game. If I played Warmachine more than once a week-ish I'd have a better understand of what works. But when I just want to sit down, relax, and play a game, I really don't want to have access to every minute option possible. I don't always want to maximize my choices so that I can perform 2% better than someone else.

Of course I realize I don't have to do this. I could just have fun and not worry about making the best choice possible, but that's not me. I make it a general rule to never regret my decisions in life, and that has annoyingly seeped in to my gaming as well. I want to be able to have all my options and make sure I maximize my choice so that I'm not left wondering "what if?" When I make a sound decision in life I stick to it, but since gaming is meant to be entertaining I have a hard time not trying to maximize my fun by using all the options available to me.

That's why I just want to sit down, spend a few minutes designing, and never have to look back.


See you tomorrow!

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