Reply to Re: Dmod preferences
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This is a very interesting thread; thanks for asking the question. 
Things I like:
- An interesting storyline that develops as you play. As part of this, (possibly long) cutscenes are welcome.
- Philosophy. For example, in Friends Beyond 2, there's an optional scene where a kid dies and Dink ponders the meaning of life. Or the ending of Solstice. I love that.
- Secrets, if there's something to find so I feel like it was worth searching for it. That something may even just be a message telling me how great I am, as long as it feels like Dink would believe it. The point is that it should make Dink feel good about himself.
- Variation. That can take many forms. Allowing different paths to the goal; having different goals; playing with different abilities; people saying different things when you talk to them. Those kind of things. I like Cast Awakening for this (among other things), for example.
- Clever fights. The boss with the wall in three amulets is my favorite: I have to think about how to beat him, then it's a slight challenge to actually do the things I thought of, and once I got it figured out, it doesn't take too long to actually kill him. Perfect.
What I don't like:
- Seemingly endless fighting. Fights should be interesting; just doing the same thing all the time is no fun. This is about an army of low power monsters like pillbugs, as well as a boss that is just the same all the time.
- Useless walking: searching a large area for something, or walking between two places that are far away with no action in between (repeated fights do not count as action). If there are large distances to be walked, I want herb boots. Better yet, give me herb boots and keep the distances short anyway.
- Empty places. This includes the useless walking thing, but also houses you enter when nothing there can even be examined.
- Long cutscenes in a boring story. Cutscenes make the game a bit like a movie. I want it to be a good movie.
- Weird things without an explanation. The explanation may come later (in which case Dink should wonder out loud that he doesn't understand what's happening), but just "this is weird, because it is" annoys me. I want the world to be potentially predictable; if I can't predict it, it must not be because things are just crazy, but because I didn't know about something that caused it.
- Grammar and spelling errors. I'm not a native English speaker, and I don't blame people for bad writing if they can't help it. But it does bother me. Intentional errors, for example from goblins, don't bother me, but also don't really add value to the game for me.
Things I like:
- An interesting storyline that develops as you play. As part of this, (possibly long) cutscenes are welcome.
- Philosophy. For example, in Friends Beyond 2, there's an optional scene where a kid dies and Dink ponders the meaning of life. Or the ending of Solstice. I love that.
- Secrets, if there's something to find so I feel like it was worth searching for it. That something may even just be a message telling me how great I am, as long as it feels like Dink would believe it. The point is that it should make Dink feel good about himself.
- Variation. That can take many forms. Allowing different paths to the goal; having different goals; playing with different abilities; people saying different things when you talk to them. Those kind of things. I like Cast Awakening for this (among other things), for example.
- Clever fights. The boss with the wall in three amulets is my favorite: I have to think about how to beat him, then it's a slight challenge to actually do the things I thought of, and once I got it figured out, it doesn't take too long to actually kill him. Perfect.
What I don't like:
- Seemingly endless fighting. Fights should be interesting; just doing the same thing all the time is no fun. This is about an army of low power monsters like pillbugs, as well as a boss that is just the same all the time.
- Useless walking: searching a large area for something, or walking between two places that are far away with no action in between (repeated fights do not count as action). If there are large distances to be walked, I want herb boots. Better yet, give me herb boots and keep the distances short anyway.
- Empty places. This includes the useless walking thing, but also houses you enter when nothing there can even be examined.
- Long cutscenes in a boring story. Cutscenes make the game a bit like a movie. I want it to be a good movie.
- Weird things without an explanation. The explanation may come later (in which case Dink should wonder out loud that he doesn't understand what's happening), but just "this is weird, because it is" annoys me. I want the world to be potentially predictable; if I can't predict it, it must not be because things are just crazy, but because I didn't know about something that caused it.
- Grammar and spelling errors. I'm not a native English speaker, and I don't blame people for bad writing if they can't help it. But it does bother me. Intentional errors, for example from goblins, don't bother me, but also don't really add value to the game for me.
