Let's talk about replayability

[MineOrDie_]

According to my game design definition, a game has high replayability if and only if it follows one of the two following rules:
1. Each round or run brings something new/different (cosmetics, procedural generation, random generation, and so on)
2. The game never ends or ends after a long time (such as roleplays)

In other words, you need to bring novelty, creativity and/or evolution to your game (cf. Design doc - What Makes a Game Replayable?)

I've got multiple games ideas, but they always lack replayability. For the OGs out there, you may remember Mount Your Friends, Code or Explode and Dart n' Dodge. I ended up clearing them after a week or two because they lacked replayability. Now I've got some questions in mind:

1. How do you make a minigame replayable?
A minigame is always the same concept in general, so people might get bored after some time, right?

And 2. How did Murder Mystery 2 get played for so long?
What made it so people would keep playing?

 

[Jimmy_The_Knight]

1. I think there are two aspects of a multiplayer game that have to work together to create great replayability: the first one is randomness (like generating a different map every time and giving players randomized loot), and the second one is giving the players high player agency (basically a lot of ways they can interact with the game world). This is why the battle royale genre became so popular: players have to get the most out of their randomized loot to overcome (somewhat random) obstacles, like players with different types of weapons. Some even feature building mechanics that give players even more agency over the game world.

2. I have absolutely no idea that game is so effing boring lmfao

 

[SamMan_]

(cf. Design doc - What Makes a Game Replayable?)

hay thats not a proper citation! whree is it??

 

[MineOrDie_]

hay thats not a proper citation! whree is it??

There you go

 

[MineOrDie_]

1. I think there are two aspects of a multiplayer game that have to work together to create great replayability: the first one is randomness (like generating a different map every time and giving players randomized loot), and the second one is giving the players high player agency (basically a lot of ways they can interact with the game world). This is why the battle royale genre became so popular: players have to get the most out of their randomized loot to overcome (somewhat random) obstacles, like players with different types of weapons. Some even feature building mechanics that give players even more agency over the game world.

2. I have absolutely no idea that game is so effing boring lmfao

You're right
Also regarding question 2 DF game design and/or game popularity is a bit weird, I mean look at skyminers, there's absolutely no replayability yet the genre is popular

 

[ARMcPro]

- In king games, obviously, you can be king

cactus king

 

[MineOrDie_]

I think a concept that makes a game really popular (if not replayable) on DF would be the possibility of "control" or "power" over the game or other players.

I don't think it's about power at this point but more about who/which plot can fit for an audience of 10-13 year olds on average. Take a look at "super power training"; sure you could kill people but it gives/does nothing at all, the core game is a simple clicker/AFK game. Even worse, take a look at those skin/name comps: there's no game design nor power/control at all, besides I don't think we can call those plots low-effort anymore, those are rather super-low-effort plots as there's little to no build and little to no code (just like skyminers when you come to think of it). In skyminers you have a point playing as you gather resources and can kill people whereas in skin comps you just stand still and do nothing while you need to listen to some random child speak about his opinion about your skin.

 

[LooserRIP]

While I'm sure there's a lot of different factors that define player engagement, I think the most important one is possibility.

Let's take Among Us for example: the main engaging hook about Among Us is social deduction. This adds a lot of possible scenarios in the game, multiple scenarios of betrayal, allying, thinking about other players' psychology, pretty much anything people can think of.

Another example could be Terraria - while it possesses the same structure every run (and practically starts & ends the same way), It has different methods of progressing through the game, customizing your character's weapons, armor, accessories, etc. There's also random worlds which adds more possible scenarios for the player to experience.

The main thing you want is to give the player as many decisions as you can at the start of the game, so that those decisions could branch off to other scenarios, for example Bedwars starts the same way yet gives you a lot of control at the start (which base to go to first, collecting which materials, picking which defense, etc.) which later affects the entire game, and adds more possible scenarios for other players (Killing a team will affect the adjacent team's gameplay and plan)

 

[Pearlest]

Just giving the player multiple choices of what they can do gives the game a lot of replayability. It's not the biggest factor affecting replayability (Cactus King is sort of an example of this, still don't know what makes it so appealing even though it has a very linear progression path.), but no one want's to continuously play a game where not much changes in each playthrough,

Social Deduction games prosper in replayability because of the millions of possibilities of what could happen in every game, the chaos and randomness it persists are one of the reasons I think they are so appealing.

LAPGC4 is an example of a game with multiple choices though having not had much replayability, it's just dragging two elements on the screen and combining them which most of the df audience didn't find very appealing after some time (no offense to looser).

Replayability isn't the biggest factor that makes a lot of games fun according to me, genres have been built around games that focus on a linear story (games like Danganronpa and Fnaf have built huge fandoms around games that aren't very replayable.)

 

[LooserRIP]

Just giving the player multiple choices of what they can do gives the game a lot of replayability. It's not the biggest factor affecting replayability (Cactus King is sort of an example of this, still don't know what makes it so appealing even though it has a very linear progression path.), but no one want's to continuously play a game where not much changes in each playthrough,

Social Deduction games prosper in replayability because of the millions of possibilities of what could happen in every game, the chaos and randomness it persists are one of the reasons I think they are so appealing.

LAPGC4 is an example of a game with multiple choices though having not had much replayability, it's just dragging two elements on the screen and combining them which most of the df audience didn't find very appealing after some time (no offense to looser).

Replayability isn't the biggest factor that makes a lot of games fun according to me, genres have been built around games that focus on a linear story (games like Danganronpa and Fnaf have built huge fandoms around games that aren't very replayable.)

LAPGC4 lacks possibility - it has body (thousands of items) but no possibility for different scenarios, which is why in my opinion it gets tiring fast. I think you have misunderstood my message.
Cactus King has a linear progression yet is based on social roles (which adds more possible scenarios) and has different content leading to different possible playstyles, Alternatively, a boring king game with multiple progression branches wouldn't be as appealing.

while Replayability isn't the most important factor - it definitely eases the process of getting a popular game, especially on DiamondFire where you don't have a huge potential for a wide audience (there is a very limited amount of players who will ever be exposed to your game).
Danganronpa and FNAF have built huge fandoms due to the games making a memorable impression on the player and possibly engaging the player in thinking about them after finishing the game (For example, theories on what might've happened, piecing a coherent story of the game together, etc.)

 

[JustSticky]

I know this post is months old, but I want to comment on it:

People like to play games for achievements or other unlockable cosmetics. So, players will (probably) keep playing to unlock these to either:

1. Flex
2. To just have it

I know I play a few games like Sky Miners every now and then... They keep coming out with new ones which means that you can restart playing it. In other words, people like playing all of these Sky Miners to get better again. For the achievement to being better than other people.

Games like the king games (Melon King, Cactus King, ect.) are popular because people want to become the king and have the achievement of completing a game while king.

Other games that make no sense and most people don't play, play to see what's in it. I start playing some random simulator game... It starts off slow, but once I kept playing it, it was kind of fun.

Anyway... That's my comment on this. Again, I know this is old, but yes.

 

[algebrqic]

Idk if you make a skyminer or anything boring and grindy people will like it i guess