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« on: September 07, 2013, 11:46:03 pm »
I understand it can be frustrating for some players, especially considering the lengths that modern games go to to ensure players experience little to no "friction" in their games. But to me, the potential for outliers is an important pact between the game and the player. I know, as a player, that I face a randomly generated challenge, that the game has jot been deliberately engineered to ensure I face only mild challenges, and that makes the victory mine in a way that I don't feel in other modern games. The peaks and valleys are an integral part of what makes a sandbox game meaningful. We already have some hard limits - the game can not sustain more than 8 missions on the roadmap at once, and will discard New spawns - but it's important to me as a gamer that the game does not "auto-tune" itself to safeguard me from outlier moments. In a game like this, where the narrative shape emerges dynamically from the unique circumstances of each campaign - and my own successes and failures - such outlier moments provide the game with the uncertainty and struggle which gives the game meaning. We can gate the experience and narrow the range of possibilities as mass-marketed games do, but in my view doing so undermines the power and investment that comes from forcing responsibility onto the player.