I think a very underrated aspect of player motivation is context. >Why am i doing this? >What is my motivation in the story?Even a game with shitty gameplay can pull a lot of people in if they are given an interesting goal to complete. So what games would you say have interesting contexts?
genshin
>>719312898You're describing jankcore, basically. A lot of straight up broken games get a pass because of interesting art design or story or what-have-you. See E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, STALKER, Pathologic, you know the type.
soulsborneI actually hate the controls throughout and barely understood shit about the story, but the atmosphere was compelling enough to make me want to explore
>>719312898Good example is difference between fallout 1 and fallout 2.fallout 1 throws you into a dangerous mysterious world and tells you to fetch a mcguffin to save your group from a crisis, but manages to keep everything abstract and mysterious, you never interact with the group or never get details about the crisis so it works better because your imagination can fill in the blanks and you're free to make up your own reasons, as a result the mcguffin also feels more mysterious.fallout 2 tries to do the same thing but fucks it up severely by forcing you into a lame origin story, you interact with tribes people but they're all boring shit npcs, and you couldn't care less about helping them, and the mcguffin feels overly convoluted instead of evocative, it gives you a lot of context but fails at making you care.even worse in shithesda fallout because they tried to over explain lore backgrounds and tie quest to some emotional family storyline and lost family members, which works on storytime-brained normies but is garbage by rpg standards and kills any sort of mysterious atmosphere.new vegas is the second best at this because it understood 1's principles. motive is self-interested and evident (you were left to dead, and if you so desire, can get revenge, or not) and the mcguffin is adequately abstract and intriguing (you know it's valuable enough that someone tried to kill you for it but you were just a delivery man, so it's a neutral start without made up drama bs trying to make you care about a faction or characters you have no reason to care for)
>>719312898I like Drakengard for its simplicity. You're doing whatever you need to do to stop the end of the world, and on a smaller scale you just really like killing things.
>>719312898Most survival horror games of the golden age, especially Silent Hill, absolutely capture players with their mysterious premise and context.Death Stranding does something similar, with a completely different gameplay style.Neither group has what I'd call "bad gameplay", but they're clearly a bit too slow burn for some people. >>719313070>See E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, STALKER, Pathologic...I have put tens of THOUSANDS of hours in to all 3 STALKER games, with and without mods, these past 18 years. The gameplay is stellar, and always the main attraction. The setting does crown the experience though.And the little I know of the other titles, I can confidently say the same of 'em. Once again, I think that the wider audiences are too accustomed to the modern, streamlined action game formula, to appreciate and put some effort into learning some truly different kind of experiences.
Rapelay.
>>719312898Kenshi, dwarf fortress, starsector, elite... and other cyoa games>Why am i doing this? Because I want to>What is my motivation in the story?idk, I'm bored or somethingYour hypothesis sinks easily.
