The 8 Kinds of Fun (Rank 'Em!)

Yimh

Step One: Check this article- https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/

Step Two: Rank 'Em! - Where do your priorities lie as a player when it comes to how you get your fun?

Step Three: Unlock Rare: [Yimh's List]!

Cubey

First of all, Angry GM is good stuff. I don't agree with everything he writes, but he often writes good, concrete, no-bullshit advice.

Now, you want me to rank these? That's not easy because I value different things depending on what kind of game I play. But generally, in roughly ascending order of importance, it goes like this:

8. Submission/abnegation: Don't care. Bores me.

7. Discovery: Not a priority - it can be done well and I have my fun when it happens, but this is not generally what I play a game for.

6. Fellowship: Low priority but with an addendum. Making sure that everyone is having fun, that there's no dickery, no players ruining each others' experiences, no spotlight stealing, no drama, etc (or even worse, when things are obviously not right but people stay silent "so as not to rock the boat") - all of that is very important for me. Other than that I don't care much for social aspects of the game, just give me enough other players to be able to clear group content.

5. Narrative: I enjoy a good story but it's not a necessity for me, and I'd rather take no storytelling or a minimalistic story than a bad one. Sadly I experienced too many of the latter, even from games that are supposedly so great with their storytelling.

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BIG GAP

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I mean it, 1-4 are all very close together.

4. Sensory pleasure: Very important for me. I want my games to look nice, to have great aesthetics, to sound nice. It's not a necessity - after all I'm here on a forum for a text-based MMO, but even this I enjoy for how neat Nexus's interface looks like, and it's very easy to turn me off a video game if the aesthetics are ass-ugly.

3. Expression: Almost all my characters are based on some kind of concept and I want to express it well, and I'm interested in other folks' concepts as well: When I play tabletop, I'm always more interested in player characters' individual storylines than the overarching metaplot. The important thing to remember is not to step on others' toes and force your expression down their collective throat (see fellowship above) but as long as everyone's being fair, this is some good shit.

2. Fantasy: I play games for escapism and I can't express my characters well unless I understand how they feel. Fantasy being high on the list is a no brainer.

1. Challenge: Needs another addendum. In some games, for example tabletop - I don't give a crap about challenge. We're all on the same side, the game master included, and besides IMO GMs who describe themselves as "tough but fair" often tend to be tryhards whose games require a level of optimization that is detrimental to players' expression and escapism. Doubly so for rules-less freeform RP - playing to win here just makes you look like a desperate tryhard and yes, I know people who did this. All of that said, though? In video games, I breathe challenge. This is my shit. I play to get better, to overcome obstacles, to measure myself against others. I need to be top DPS in raids, the best PvPer around, the player who knows all the meta. Game mastery is extremely important for me, especially in MMOs.

Jerom

The first two could almost share the same rank as they are both the aspects I look forward to.

1. Narrative : Stories are often the part I remember first when thinking of a title. They are what hooked me in the game in the first place and what will make me play successive playthroughs in one game. See Baldur's Gate 2 or The Witcher 3.
2. Fellowship : Only concerns MUDs in my case as I don't really play multiplayer games. But when Starmourn open beta started, this was one of the aspect I was looking for. What kind of community would we have? Would I know some players from other IRE games I played? Would I have a nemesis? A close ally?

3. Sensory pleasure : For me, this aesthetic concerns mostly video games. After the story, it is the original art of a game and its soundtrack that I will remember.
4. Fantasy : Like Cubey said, I play games to escape reality, so this has to be in the top half.
5. Submission : It is sometimes fun to shut down my brain for a while, as long as it is done in moderation. Otherwise, not a fan of grinding in general.
6. Discovery : Not an explorer. Never was and never will be.
7. Expression : I never have any concept or plan in mind when I create a character. I just create it and go with the flow. Events will shape him or her accordingly.
8. Challenge : Turn-off. Sure, sometimes I may be tempted to optimize my stats for an easier playthrough but that's all. If I want challenges, RL will take care of that. Hard difficulties will simply make me ragequit.

Lhundrup

1. Discovery: I love to explore and find new and interesting things in games.

2. Fellowship: I enjoy interacting with the various types of characters in the world, listening to their stories, telling them my own...

3. Submission: I love to lose myself in a simple activity, that's why my primary concern in Starmourn is mining.

4. Fantasy: It's an escape - A place I can forget my RL struggles and pain, if only for a little while.

5. Expression: I like creating my character's story as I go along. It's been an interesting experience.

6. Challenge: I do enjoy a modest challenge to overcome; though, I get no pleasure in overcoming and conquering a challenge just to say "I did that"

7: Sensory pleasure: I still play games such as Nethack.

Lhundrup

Oh I forgot narrative... probably tied with expression: Story is good, but I tend to skim through most of it.

Ikchor

Highest to lowest:

#1) Fantasy: I daydream alot, and can easily be several layers deep in my own mental world at work. So embracing another fantasy world to absorb into my own or "solve the rubiks cube" of such worlds is pretty important to me. This usually comes out as me pointing at something i feel like is unfinished or "this needs to progress more cause the implications are *many*. (though this usually sometimes clashes with the devs vision of what is to come, in my experience)

The term 'superior internet avatar' is apt here.

#2) Narrative: This is an extremely close second, and ties in with the whole 'expand this bit more plz' mania i get from time to time (moreso now with me being in my favorite genre: space scifi) but this is more for lore and worldbuilding that happens.

#3) Challenge: I like a challenge. This largely depends on my mental energy at the time, but also whether or not I'm strongly feeling the challenge presented to me is just there to make things 'difficult for the sake of rarity'. I like multiple paths to eliminate a challenge instead of just one way that's a massive PITA because 'you asked for challenging gameplay'. Like take for example a locked door. Some would go for the key, some would see if they can kick it open, or pick it open. I'd knock, in this example, just to see if anyone opens up. I guess I like a 'problem' more than I like a challenge?

#4) Expression: I spend *way* too long in any game customizing my character in ways that a) make sense for the mental image I have of them and b) have clothes that look stylish AF. Initial chargen menus not as much because if my Fallout characters are anything to go by I seem to make the same guy over again (think modern FPS/action game protags back when hair physics were still a terrifying animation prospect), I just change their clothes. Alot.

If 'Style' was an actual defense stat in most mainline RPGs, I'd be all over it. (Yes, I'm aware that Cyberpunk has it apparently, and I'm thrilled at the idea)

#5) Discovery: I like finding little nods to things, in-world or 'easter egg' type references (the pretty floral bonnet for example), the landscape/terrain can sometimes grab my attention but its not my draw. Discovering things that make me go 'hey, waitaminnit' on some level is more my thing. I also like finding methods of using my skills to utterly devastate my enemies, though using the common/current meta for tactics isn't as fun for me. That is more like jumping into a pool, only to find out its a puddle that uses mirrors to look deep. Even better if it momentarily breaks something in the game.

#6) Submission/abnegation: It's important, but to me I need the previous five fulfilled before this condition gets tripped. I'm going to start with this though: I don't get sucked into the monotony of bashing in MUDs, I actually find it tedious, boring and my mind tends to wander quickly to something else I'd rather be doing. It's not engaging to me, and never has been. Some people enjoy the grind, for me the grind should be something I can passively do while doing the previous five things, but this isn't ever going to be the case.
I can do this well enough in console games, because I can multitask much easier, but with MUDs, if you don't pay somewhat close attention in PvE or PvP, you die quite quickly. In console games, I've already mentally 'killed' the enemy i'm already fighting and have targetted/positioned myself for the other two while dodging targets three and four. I'm not entirely sure what the issue is for me on that front, though I did grow up with console games over PC games, so that might be it.

#7) Fellowship: I'm friendly, talkative but I don't need a sense of  immediate community to play a game. I'm a solo player in the end, I do not like being forced to pair up with other players to get things done. It's not that I don't wanna share loot, or experience. It's pacing. In console games, my skill level usually gets me paired up with people trying to set speedruns, loot farmers, or people just trying to spam A through a conversation. Algorithms place me with them cause I must be doing the same thing or something based on my own rapid pace. Sometimes I wanna slow down, especially in spots where there's alot of foreshadowing, interesting somethings to look at, lore dumps in the area, et cetera. I wanna hear the story and other people get in the way of that. Sometimes the mobs do too, but I can just kill those. Can't exactly shoot my teammates because they're spamming the 'Vote to Skip Cutscene' button and screeching in my ear to get moving when I've stopped to crouch and look at a piece of paper stuck to a wall cause it has writing I can kinda make out.

In MUDs it's a similar thing. My playstyle is massively unorthodox (i will use skills that aren't as effective but are way cooler to me than the preferred methods), my stat allocation makes number crunchers/minmaxers cry because of the inefficiency (I have points in evasion because I have a soft spot for chance based skills) and my TTK is measured better on a glacial timescale (usually). While I do occasionally use the current applied meta when I'm playing MUDs, ultimately I'm in here for my own fun, and most of the time, other players get in the way of that. If I wanna noobpunch things to death, I'm going to. Even if it isn't the most effective attack.

I'm doing it cause it's fucking funny to me.

#8) Sensory: I play MUDs regularly. That should probably explain all there is to know about this. I mean sure, it's important, but it isn't the be-all for me. Though I do appreciate a colorblind friendly option cause some games are like getting a wooden mixing spoon jammed into my eye socket, and lensflares don't help the situation much.