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1. I just like the genre. I remember playing the very first Tower Defense games in Warcraft 3, and something about it just caught my interest. So the genre itself, I've just found enjoyable.
2. DW specifically: I love Physics-Traps in TD games, and pushing enemies off into pits in Dungeon Warfare and hearing the distressed WAAAAA that follow was always greatly amusing.
3. Setting up combination chains and figuring different kinds of trap synergies for each map. I know in some TD's in the past there seemed to be a "One True Combination" that just dominated every encounter and you were indirectly punished for trying to be creative. DW2 has something like that with %HP traps but the game doesn't force you to use them and I've had plenty of success without ever touching the traits.
Or just as bad to me, "Yeah you have exactly three types of traps and one upgrade path each". Those TD's I rarely play for long because the lack of variety just makes it so... Boring?
3b - DW2 went wild with the Variety, which is part of what makes it so hard for me to play the original anymore. There's so many different combinations you can make and the Skill Tree and Equipment just take that even further. If Dungeon Warfare stripped all of that away, It'd still be fun no doubt about it, but I'd personally lament the loss of variety offered.
It's kind of like how I felt going from Monster Hunter Generations into World: It kinda sucked losing all of those gameplay options in the form of Hunting Arts and Styles but the core of the gameplay remained the same overall, so it was still an enjoyable experience.
That last part is what made DW2 remain a fun game to me: The core of what made DW1 so good was still there. Anything I disliked about it ultimately was a side-note and not a major drawback.
I'm really glad you like the topic and I hope others enjoy it too.
challenging ...but fun ;)
I personally really love 'golfing' stuff. I had a blast with Opus Magnum (zachtronics)
just getting my designs as ideal and minimal as possible and I love that some of that exists in DW games as well. Just testing a strategy, making observations, redesigning and testing again is a major source of enjoyment for me , specifically because nobody is telling me "You have to do THIS and you have to do it THIS way".
If I am creative and very clever I will be rewarded for it, and that is what I think turns testing crazy ideas fun.
IMO "Fun" is a 'way' of doing things a lot of the time.
it's like mystery in a sense.
in the early days of FF every item has some special effect and there were SO MANY that not even the developers could have ever known what all the possible combinations might be, this overwhelms the mind and a sense of endless possibility is created, that feeling is priceless, it's the reason that starting a new mincraft world is always exciting; because you know...maybe nobody has ever seen it before.
DW games have a bit of this too because the number of ways a player might decide to play the game is really quite a few.
DW2 didn't to me have many standout maps in the same way since you had a lot more tools to deal with your problems. If I had to pick one off the top of my head that did come off as being difficult, Obstacle Course maybe. The surge of Flying Machines...
I felt a little confused when I saw threads in the DW2 forums asking about Tribal Plaza being difficult and I felt almost dumbfounded about that (And their answer was "your only solution being to grind") since I never felt it was that hard nor did I ever feel that DW2 gated your progress by NOT grinding. Which goes back to what I said before: Each of us finds something hard or harder, that someone else found quite easy or didn't think much on.
not everyone is able to step back, look at the big picture and visualize the solution emerging in their mind's eye, that's just kinda how it goes. for a lot of players DW seems to be purely a numbers game... I don;t really roll like that personally but if they are having fun playing that way then I'm glad they are having fun.
Challenge is some amount of some kind of struggle that must be overcome and stands between a player and an emotional reward.
Simple.
But you have gamers who are enjoying that struggle (if the designer has made the struggle at all enjoyable) and you have gamers who would prefer instant gratification with no effort expenditure at all. In spite of the fact that there are basically two camps on this issue simply keeping the struggle proportional to the sense of reward satisfies both types so that's the principle. never make anything SO hard and the reward SO small and so distant that only the ONE kind of gamer will maybe enjoy it and you'd be good to go.
You have games like "Getting over it", I'm not sure how many people really would call that "fun", that is just a very simple, very frustrating game and the only emotional satisfaction anyone gets from it is from them because the game it's self really doesn't offer very much and that means there's really only one other place the satisfaction could come from, of course the player, but only one KIND of player.
I don't know what you are referring to but...it does sound entertaining. ;)
'Play' is distinguished from 'Labor' by 'Obligation'.
'Play' is ' voluntary'. 'Labor' is 'Obligatory'.
No 'Play' is ever obligatory, if you make play obligatory then it becomes 'Labor' and since game-play accomplishes nothing in reality it is aimless labor that the player KNOWS, will accomplish nothing.
so although challenge is integral to engagement (through investment), if the upward curve of investment (from challenge) were to spike too sharply outside the range of voluntary involvement then the game would stop being a game and becomes instead a kind of mildly entertaining, aimless, busywork.
The DW franchise has so far done an excellent job of leaving the degree of challenge up to the player and although I don;t think many players stop to think about it , this is a foundational part of why the games are so fun.
there is never a point in the DW games where the player is obligated to engage in more challenge that they are interested in and at the same time, there is always as much potential challenge there for the player as they might want.
it's a pretty insightful design philosophy and larger game devs could stand to learn a lot from it.
So, while this doesn't pin down 'Fun', it's getting closer. One could have fun engaging in labor (you can make anything fun) one doesn't labor at a game unless one is the creator of that game. For the player(s), a game is play and the function of play is the pursuit of the elusive 'Fun'.
it might be argued that 'Fun' is always created by the player but that the creator of a game is responsible for the potential and opportunity to do so.