NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 4222266" data-attributes="member: 537">Perhaps, but if several people's preferred playstyles lie outside the scope of that theory, that still calls into question the usefulness of the theory.I think the key attraction of adventure paths, and "storyline-heavy" games in general, is that people often don't want to write a story. They want to _experience_ it, or at least the broad outline of it, in the same manner as experiencing a movie or book. In particular, they want the richness and depth that usually goes with having things plotted out beforehand. Also, writing a story takes time and effort, and there's no guarantee that what you end up with will be interesting or meaningful as a narrative.That doesn't mean they want to be railroaded, by which I mean experience a story that isn't compelling, or which they have _no_ ability to influence. An adventure path (and CRPGs and JRPGs) has a fixed beginning and a fixed ending, but scope in the middle to do what you like. The freedom lies in choosing the path you take to the end, not necessarily in the ending itself. The art of good design lies in making invisible the constricting of options as you get closer to the end, so that players don't _feel_ like they're being forced to do stuff.(Well, technically, APs will usually have two possible endings, ie success and failure. CRPGs may have a variety of different successful endings, and the possibility of failure is eliminated by being able to save/reload. But the point is that you're still relatively limited compared to "real" roleplaying.)Heh. I'm an applied statistician. I just go for what works.</blockquote>

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