My Gaming Philosophy
I recently started playing Heroes of Might and Magic V again. I picked up the game some time ago and played it a little bit, but I wasn't quite enraptured with it, in part because I was initially comparing it to Heroes IV and was missing some of the things I had really liked about its predecessor. Heroes V also used to crash on occasion, which was irritating, but since I just got a new desktop (i.e. my brother's old desktop), it seems to be a bit more stable, at least as far as I've seen. Since I didn't play the game a whole lot before and haven't been playing it for very long now, I'm still in the "it's so new and shiny" phase of video game obsession, so my interest may still wear off in a bit of time. Nevertheless, I think I'm enjoying the game a bit more than I did before, so I'm glad I've given it a second chance (though I had been planning to do so at some point anyway).
From my recent playing of Heroes V, I did, however, come to a revelation... and that revelation is that I suck at the Heroes of Might and Magic games (and in fact, just about any strategy game, which perhaps is the reason why I play so few of them to begin with). This comes from the simple fact that my preferred strategy is not very conducive to winning the game. The obvious follow-up to this would be, "Then you should change your strategy." And my reply is that I don't want to change my strategy because I don't actually play to win.
I usually have an extremely non-competitive attitude when it comes to gaming and I am not a completionist by any means. There are probably some gamers out there who would think I'm absolutely insane for playing games without beating them (and not particularly caring that I never beat them), but I do it with extreme frequency. Even when it comes to RPGs, my favorite and most-played genre of games, there are more games that I've played and haven't finished than ones which I have. In fact, the most common scenario with me and an RPG is that I will make it to the very end of the game, where all I have left to do is a few sidequests and the final dungeon/boss, and somewhere at this point, I will lose interest in the game and stop playing. By the time I find myself wanting to play the game again, it's been so long since my last playthrough that I can't really bring myself to pick up where I left off and just finish it up; I want to start the game from the beginning to remind myself of what's happening and to experience it again. There are also games which I have beaten once or twice and which I like to replay on occasion, and I often will play them to some point near the end and stop without beating the final boss.
Thus, when it comes to video games, I really do have a philosophy that can be summed up as "it's about the journey, not the destination." I get the greatest joy in video games from two things: starting new games and new characters (in games where you can play different classes and character specializations, I like to try lots of different things) and building those characters up in levels. This is why I much prefer the early and mid-game to the end. At the beginning of a game, characters gain new levels and new skills and equipment much faster than they do later on. As you play the earlier parts of the game, you get a good feel for the progression of your character's strength. Toward the end, leveling slows down and you eventually get most or all of the new skills or good equipment that you can get, so there's very little change going on with your characters, and that is the point where I often begin to lose a lot of interest. I also don't get quite as bored as some people do of doing the same things over and over again, which is why I can sometimes play many different new characters in succession without being completely annoyed by the fact that I'm playing the same game from scratch countless times. But this also depends on the game.
So here is how I play a typical Heroes of Might and Magic game. I find a map in which I am isolated enough from the enemy heroes that I can play for a while without encountering any of the computer opponents. I enjoy my solitude and gradually build up my town and army, explore the nearby areas of the map, fight the stationary monsters, and power up my hero. Eventually, the enemy finds its way to where I am. Because the computer generally employs a strategy that is more aggressive than mine, his army tends to be far more powerful, and the most likely scenario is that as soon as he starts attacking me, he readily dispatches my poor hero and I quit and start a new game. On the off-chance that I get lucky enough to build up a strong army and can take out any assaults from the enemy as they come, I can stay in the scenario longer and get my hero to a very powerful level. Sometimes I will actually start to attack the opponents myself and aim for victory. More likely, however, I simply get a bit bored by the fact that I have no new types of troops to create, and that I'm gaining levels very slowly, that and I have so many good artifacts that I rarely change equipment, and that I have all the powerful spells that I'll ever want. So I quit and start a new game.
Honestly, the ratio of times I've won a Heroes scenario compared to how many I've played in total is probably so low that I should be embarrassed to even discuss it. And my track record against the computer opponents is so terrible that I'm quite glad I don't play these games against actual people, because then I'd probably get killed so fast that I wouldn't even have time to enjoy myself. But the fact of the matter is that I honestly don't care about actually winning in these types of games, and I doubt that changing my play-style in order to win more often would actually give me much more satisfaction. Since I picked the game back up, I've played about 5 scenarios (actually the same map, but playing as different factions) and I haven't won any of them. And yet, I'm still thoroughly enjoying myself and happily playing the game over again... and enjoyment is the most important thing about gaming.
EDIT: So I actually just won one scenario, because necromancy is crazy powerful.
From my recent playing of Heroes V, I did, however, come to a revelation... and that revelation is that I suck at the Heroes of Might and Magic games (and in fact, just about any strategy game, which perhaps is the reason why I play so few of them to begin with). This comes from the simple fact that my preferred strategy is not very conducive to winning the game. The obvious follow-up to this would be, "Then you should change your strategy." And my reply is that I don't want to change my strategy because I don't actually play to win.
I usually have an extremely non-competitive attitude when it comes to gaming and I am not a completionist by any means. There are probably some gamers out there who would think I'm absolutely insane for playing games without beating them (and not particularly caring that I never beat them), but I do it with extreme frequency. Even when it comes to RPGs, my favorite and most-played genre of games, there are more games that I've played and haven't finished than ones which I have. In fact, the most common scenario with me and an RPG is that I will make it to the very end of the game, where all I have left to do is a few sidequests and the final dungeon/boss, and somewhere at this point, I will lose interest in the game and stop playing. By the time I find myself wanting to play the game again, it's been so long since my last playthrough that I can't really bring myself to pick up where I left off and just finish it up; I want to start the game from the beginning to remind myself of what's happening and to experience it again. There are also games which I have beaten once or twice and which I like to replay on occasion, and I often will play them to some point near the end and stop without beating the final boss.
Thus, when it comes to video games, I really do have a philosophy that can be summed up as "it's about the journey, not the destination." I get the greatest joy in video games from two things: starting new games and new characters (in games where you can play different classes and character specializations, I like to try lots of different things) and building those characters up in levels. This is why I much prefer the early and mid-game to the end. At the beginning of a game, characters gain new levels and new skills and equipment much faster than they do later on. As you play the earlier parts of the game, you get a good feel for the progression of your character's strength. Toward the end, leveling slows down and you eventually get most or all of the new skills or good equipment that you can get, so there's very little change going on with your characters, and that is the point where I often begin to lose a lot of interest. I also don't get quite as bored as some people do of doing the same things over and over again, which is why I can sometimes play many different new characters in succession without being completely annoyed by the fact that I'm playing the same game from scratch countless times. But this also depends on the game.
So here is how I play a typical Heroes of Might and Magic game. I find a map in which I am isolated enough from the enemy heroes that I can play for a while without encountering any of the computer opponents. I enjoy my solitude and gradually build up my town and army, explore the nearby areas of the map, fight the stationary monsters, and power up my hero. Eventually, the enemy finds its way to where I am. Because the computer generally employs a strategy that is more aggressive than mine, his army tends to be far more powerful, and the most likely scenario is that as soon as he starts attacking me, he readily dispatches my poor hero and I quit and start a new game. On the off-chance that I get lucky enough to build up a strong army and can take out any assaults from the enemy as they come, I can stay in the scenario longer and get my hero to a very powerful level. Sometimes I will actually start to attack the opponents myself and aim for victory. More likely, however, I simply get a bit bored by the fact that I have no new types of troops to create, and that I'm gaining levels very slowly, that and I have so many good artifacts that I rarely change equipment, and that I have all the powerful spells that I'll ever want. So I quit and start a new game.
Honestly, the ratio of times I've won a Heroes scenario compared to how many I've played in total is probably so low that I should be embarrassed to even discuss it. And my track record against the computer opponents is so terrible that I'm quite glad I don't play these games against actual people, because then I'd probably get killed so fast that I wouldn't even have time to enjoy myself. But the fact of the matter is that I honestly don't care about actually winning in these types of games, and I doubt that changing my play-style in order to win more often would actually give me much more satisfaction. Since I picked the game back up, I've played about 5 scenarios (actually the same map, but playing as different factions) and I haven't won any of them. And yet, I'm still thoroughly enjoying myself and happily playing the game over again... and enjoyment is the most important thing about gaming.
EDIT: So I actually just won one scenario, because necromancy is crazy powerful.