Knowing someone designed the game is prior knowledge. So each element of the game probably has a purpose. So you just use them and it becomes a habit which rationalizes itself if needed.
I have indeed also met WoW players who reasoned something like this: if X ability exists in the game, it must have a purpose! It can’t be the case that it is useless and not worth using; why would the game designers do that? Therefore, the people telling me not to use it must be incorrect.
Of course, this reasoning is incorrect (I leave off the full, general justification of why it’s incorrect), but one may legitimately hold the opinion that it points to a failure of game design. After all, shouldn’t all abilities given to the player be useful? Shouldn’t the aforementioned reasoning work? Why give me a button if I’m never to press it?
Well, there might be several reasons. The more fundamental one is what Monte Cook has called “ivory tower game design”: a design wherein the optimal way to play is non-obvious, is possibly obscured or obfuscated by the fact that the purpose of abilities the player gets is not stated outright (only what the abilities do is stated), and further muddied by the presence of options that are not even intended to ever be optimal (“trap” options, or, less disparagingly, “flavor” options).
Ivory tower game design is usually written about derisively, but I am a fan of it. In gentler incarnations, it adds much-needed cognitive challenge to a game (and Blizzard’s quest to strip the ivory tower out of WoW entirely has contributed much to the game’s sharply decreased attraction for me).
Another reason one might be given a button that one is not expected to use is situational appropriateness. There may be abilities that are useful when e.g. fighting a monster solo, by yourself, but not appropriate when you’re teaming up with other people. Other examples abound. Expecting every button to find an application in every situation is unreasonable.
Finally, it may be that whatever the game designers intended, what turned out was something else. A game like WoW is a very complex system. It’s difficult to predict the effects of all variables, even when you have huge design teams and vast playtesting resources at your disposal. And so: the only-Steady-Shot rotation, designer intent notwithstanding. Believing that anything that exists in the game must have been deliberately thus designed is akin to another, larger example of teleological reasoning...
Knowing someone designed the game is prior knowledge. So each element of the game probably has a purpose. So you just use them and it becomes a habit which rationalizes itself if needed.
I have indeed also met WoW players who reasoned something like this: if X ability exists in the game, it must have a purpose! It can’t be the case that it is useless and not worth using; why would the game designers do that? Therefore, the people telling me not to use it must be incorrect.
Of course, this reasoning is incorrect (I leave off the full, general justification of why it’s incorrect), but one may legitimately hold the opinion that it points to a failure of game design. After all, shouldn’t all abilities given to the player be useful? Shouldn’t the aforementioned reasoning work? Why give me a button if I’m never to press it?
Well, there might be several reasons. The more fundamental one is what Monte Cook has called “ivory tower game design”: a design wherein the optimal way to play is non-obvious, is possibly obscured or obfuscated by the fact that the purpose of abilities the player gets is not stated outright (only what the abilities do is stated), and further muddied by the presence of options that are not even intended to ever be optimal (“trap” options, or, less disparagingly, “flavor” options).
Ivory tower game design is usually written about derisively, but I am a fan of it. In gentler incarnations, it adds much-needed cognitive challenge to a game (and Blizzard’s quest to strip the ivory tower out of WoW entirely has contributed much to the game’s sharply decreased attraction for me).
Another reason one might be given a button that one is not expected to use is situational appropriateness. There may be abilities that are useful when e.g. fighting a monster solo, by yourself, but not appropriate when you’re teaming up with other people. Other examples abound. Expecting every button to find an application in every situation is unreasonable.
Finally, it may be that whatever the game designers intended, what turned out was something else. A game like WoW is a very complex system. It’s difficult to predict the effects of all variables, even when you have huge design teams and vast playtesting resources at your disposal. And so: the only-Steady-Shot rotation, designer intent notwithstanding. Believing that anything that exists in the game must have been deliberately thus designed is akin to another, larger example of teleological reasoning...