Why is "streamlining" games a bad thing? - Personal Rant
A complaint wandering about the MMO side of gaming is that such games are becoming "too streamlined" to be fun. Well, how is this meant? That's where it gets tricky to talk about, because lots of MMO's have done streamlining to their benefit. Others have fallen from grace in the eyes of many because of doing what they called "streamlining" the game. World of Warcraft, for instance, has become infamous for how it has toned down much of its content. But what does it mean to "streamline" something and how is it used for MMO gaming?
To streamline something is to, in this instance, make an operation, machine or system more effective and efficient by implementing faster or simpler working methods. In most instances, we would think of this as a good thing. Having a game flow faster as a result of having to think less about the mechanics and instead focusing more on the actual gameplay seems to be a common popularity trope within games. Games become more accessible when they're less mechanically challenging, allowing players to invest themselves in the game. However, this does come as a double-edged sword, so to speak. While more players are let in, the players who are willing to invest themselves in the game and learn its nuances feel like they aren't being challenged. When something isn't streamlined, it becomes more challenging to work with and, while it isn't friendly to newer users, may offer options to players who wish to use them that otherwise aren't there when streamlined, as they add no benefit to the flow of the game.
The question primarily comes to "is streamlining games a bad thing?" This depends on who you ask, of course, but I would agree that streamlining a game isn't the issue. Rather, I think the issue is that developer's get too carried away in the process. Making a game flow faster, especially at the start, can allow players to delve past the beginning content and get into the main game content faster. Having less buttons to worry about means that the game can be enjoyed all throughout rather than having to worry about compounding steps of your rotation with extensive dodging and remembering mechanics in a game. When there's too many different options available, it can get hard to work with. Unless I know how to hit everything on the hotbar with just my fingers and have it down to an art form, I spend more of my time looking down at my hotbar to ensure I hit the right buttons, rather than paying attention to what's going on up above. But I digress...
The biggest problem for me is when the streamlining has one thing of the game in mind: the "end game". For those who don't know, this means the content that is available to players at max level that allows for the hardest challenges and the most rewarding gear, from the high end raiding content to dungeons that are at high level and challenging in their difficulty scaling. Many games, WoW included, streamline with the intent of getting players to max level either as quickly as possible, or at an accelerated rate. To this end, questing is made simpler so that people aren't caught up as badly with questlines running them everywhere, experience gain is accelerated so skipping content is potentially possible, dungeons simply require going into "party finder" to find a group to run it in, skill trees are automatic so players don't have to concern themselves with it, etc. For players like myself, this is the wrong approach. Streamlining a game to allow it to become more playable is not a capital offense that should be punished. Having players be able to access a game more freely is always a fine idea, and I welcome safer ideas of that nature. However, streamlining a game to simply push players to the end game without giving thought to the rest of the game is never a good option. Too often, it leads to players skipping so much content in the game that there is no investment in the game itself. Players don't really care about the lore of the world and there's not a real sense of progression, or feeling like players are a part of the world, or that actions taken really do much of anything. WoW has managed to keep a small amount of that by refitting the story to fit the streamlining, but the original lore was grand and the original stories to be told were far better than the ones given now.
A fellow Lalafell on my server in FFXIV said something to the effect that games need to stop streamlining for a very particular reason. Streamlining games takes the adventure out of a game. When there's a struggle to get gear, when there's a struggle to learn the game, to face the content, to require grouping, there's a real sense of achievement and adventure. There are stories to tell about the great achievements that were made, the gear that was obtained that was just a random chance drop that happened to make all the difference, etc. When an MMO is streamlined in any capacity, you lose some of that. With every change to make a game more "accessible" by simplifying it, a game loses some of the adventure that "outdated" mechanics give. The original Everquest is still very popular because of this reason. There's a struggle, which means that there's a reason to learn it and become interested in it. Dark Souls, while not related to MMO gaming, fits this because of how much of a struggle it is. "Streamlining" it would have to be done right, otherwise it would just ruin the charm of the game.
In the end, what makes or breaks streamlining, for me, is whether the original "fun" is preserved. A good example of "streamlining" something would have to be how Metroid: Zero Mission streamlined gameplay from both Metroid Fusion and Super Metroid and combined great ideas from both in order to have a fast-paced 2D exploration Metroid adventure. While still hard to learn the mechanics, it was streamlined by allowing things to be done faster. There was enough streamlining done that it did not impede upon the game. Instead, the game became a phenomenal game instead, if just a bit shorter than what was hoped for. A game can be streamlined and, in most cases, should be streamlined to allow it to flow better. I guess it's a matter of what is called "polish" in gaming, streamlining otherwise awkward mechanics to allow them to flow better within a game instead of feeling "out of place". It's still streamlining, though, so does that make it bad? Do we want to see games that are mechanically difficult to learn and don't tell the player anything at all to help them along? I would argue that it's a bad idea to do that, even if it offers an "adventure".
To streamline something is to, in this instance, make an operation, machine or system more effective and efficient by implementing faster or simpler working methods. In most instances, we would think of this as a good thing. Having a game flow faster as a result of having to think less about the mechanics and instead focusing more on the actual gameplay seems to be a common popularity trope within games. Games become more accessible when they're less mechanically challenging, allowing players to invest themselves in the game. However, this does come as a double-edged sword, so to speak. While more players are let in, the players who are willing to invest themselves in the game and learn its nuances feel like they aren't being challenged. When something isn't streamlined, it becomes more challenging to work with and, while it isn't friendly to newer users, may offer options to players who wish to use them that otherwise aren't there when streamlined, as they add no benefit to the flow of the game.
The question primarily comes to "is streamlining games a bad thing?" This depends on who you ask, of course, but I would agree that streamlining a game isn't the issue. Rather, I think the issue is that developer's get too carried away in the process. Making a game flow faster, especially at the start, can allow players to delve past the beginning content and get into the main game content faster. Having less buttons to worry about means that the game can be enjoyed all throughout rather than having to worry about compounding steps of your rotation with extensive dodging and remembering mechanics in a game. When there's too many different options available, it can get hard to work with. Unless I know how to hit everything on the hotbar with just my fingers and have it down to an art form, I spend more of my time looking down at my hotbar to ensure I hit the right buttons, rather than paying attention to what's going on up above. But I digress...
The biggest problem for me is when the streamlining has one thing of the game in mind: the "end game". For those who don't know, this means the content that is available to players at max level that allows for the hardest challenges and the most rewarding gear, from the high end raiding content to dungeons that are at high level and challenging in their difficulty scaling. Many games, WoW included, streamline with the intent of getting players to max level either as quickly as possible, or at an accelerated rate. To this end, questing is made simpler so that people aren't caught up as badly with questlines running them everywhere, experience gain is accelerated so skipping content is potentially possible, dungeons simply require going into "party finder" to find a group to run it in, skill trees are automatic so players don't have to concern themselves with it, etc. For players like myself, this is the wrong approach. Streamlining a game to allow it to become more playable is not a capital offense that should be punished. Having players be able to access a game more freely is always a fine idea, and I welcome safer ideas of that nature. However, streamlining a game to simply push players to the end game without giving thought to the rest of the game is never a good option. Too often, it leads to players skipping so much content in the game that there is no investment in the game itself. Players don't really care about the lore of the world and there's not a real sense of progression, or feeling like players are a part of the world, or that actions taken really do much of anything. WoW has managed to keep a small amount of that by refitting the story to fit the streamlining, but the original lore was grand and the original stories to be told were far better than the ones given now.
A fellow Lalafell on my server in FFXIV said something to the effect that games need to stop streamlining for a very particular reason. Streamlining games takes the adventure out of a game. When there's a struggle to get gear, when there's a struggle to learn the game, to face the content, to require grouping, there's a real sense of achievement and adventure. There are stories to tell about the great achievements that were made, the gear that was obtained that was just a random chance drop that happened to make all the difference, etc. When an MMO is streamlined in any capacity, you lose some of that. With every change to make a game more "accessible" by simplifying it, a game loses some of the adventure that "outdated" mechanics give. The original Everquest is still very popular because of this reason. There's a struggle, which means that there's a reason to learn it and become interested in it. Dark Souls, while not related to MMO gaming, fits this because of how much of a struggle it is. "Streamlining" it would have to be done right, otherwise it would just ruin the charm of the game.
In the end, what makes or breaks streamlining, for me, is whether the original "fun" is preserved. A good example of "streamlining" something would have to be how Metroid: Zero Mission streamlined gameplay from both Metroid Fusion and Super Metroid and combined great ideas from both in order to have a fast-paced 2D exploration Metroid adventure. While still hard to learn the mechanics, it was streamlined by allowing things to be done faster. There was enough streamlining done that it did not impede upon the game. Instead, the game became a phenomenal game instead, if just a bit shorter than what was hoped for. A game can be streamlined and, in most cases, should be streamlined to allow it to flow better. I guess it's a matter of what is called "polish" in gaming, streamlining otherwise awkward mechanics to allow them to flow better within a game instead of feeling "out of place". It's still streamlining, though, so does that make it bad? Do we want to see games that are mechanically difficult to learn and don't tell the player anything at all to help them along? I would argue that it's a bad idea to do that, even if it offers an "adventure".
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