This line of thinking came about after my comparison of Path of Exile to Magic the Gathering. I realized why I found the games so similar, and why they tend to have more depth than games like Hearthstone or Diablo 3. Its because they take extraordinary pains not to exclude options from the player. So, first point of order is what is the definition of Exclusive and Inclusive?
Exclusive - A game that removes options from the player based on some initial choice.
Inclusive - A game that doesn't remove options from the player but supports options with escalating costs.
That's a bit simplistic, so some examples are in order. I've already stated that I believe Magic and POE to be inclusive games. Lets look at Magic first. Don't you have to pick your colors before playing a game of magic? No actually. You are perfectly free in deck building to put anything you want in your deck. Its up to you to figure out how to cast the cards you choose to play. The best example of this is the Legacy deck Sneak and Show. The title of the deck refers to two cards, Sneak Attack and Show and Tell. Not only do these decks cheat into play things that cost more mana than you have access to, they also cheat into play cards that are outside your mana colors.A popular strategy against Sneak and Show for a long time was to board in Angel of Despair. This gave you an out if they played Show and Tell. This type of scenario is unusual, but is totally possible because the limits of what you can play in Magic are defined by what you can pay for. If you don't ever play against Sneak and Show you lost your sideboard slots. If you board it in and they don't play Show and Tell then you have dead cards. There is a cost to using this option.
The contrast here is Hearthstone. In Hearthstone you can't play anything outside your Class. If you were in the situation where the equivalent of Angel of Despair, something that normally you couldn't cast but would be perfect in a specific situation then you would be shit out of luck.This is because in Hearthstone what you can play is defined by the designer of the game instead of the deckbuilding cost of including cards that are hard to play. In short, in Magic you can play anything but covering it all could stretch you out till your deck is suboptimal. Blizzard made Hearthstone to exclude cards outside your "Color" both to simplfy the resource system and so people didn't trap themselves while building their decks.
That is the essential tension between Inclusive and Exclusive games. Inclusive games give you significantly more options at the cost of being much harder to learn and become proficient in. Exclusive games tend to try to follow the mantra of "Easy to learn, difficult to Master." They are designed specifically to present a more streamlined experience with less clutter. The trade off being that with less available to the players the game loses some amount of the subtly that comes with truly masterful games.
The same holds true for POE and D3. POE requires you to plan what you want to do with your character before you start, but what you want to do with any given character is essentially infinite. Everything is held together by the cost associated with a build. The more complicated and difficult the build, the higher the cost will be in gearing, skills, mana, life, etc. And no one class is held to a specific set of skills. It may not be optimal or easy to build a Marauder as an Incinerate character, but it is within the set of possibilities the game allows. Holding that up against D3 and its not even close. D3 has skills tied to classes, gear has nowhere near the impact that it does for POE in terms of broadening a character's possible builds, and their crafting system doesn't even hold a candle to POE's ability to manipulate gear. Also, making D3 all self-found holds players back from trying experimental gear due to the rarity of the involved items.
It sounds like I'm arguing in favor of Inclusive games, but they have detractors as well. Inclusive games are much harsher on new players. The sheer amount of options and information you have to learn make for a significant barrier to entry. I played magic for two to three years before I could really follow along with coverage. It took another three years before I really got what games hinged on. That's a monstrous amount of time to be involved with something. I had fun the whole way, but not everyone has the time/interest/focus to stay with one game for a long period of time, especially when Exclusive games exist that streamline the action for you.
Exclusive games have the benefit of being able to pick up and play them. They are cool tightly packed experiences. Not everyone who plays games has hours and hours to pour into them. And by no means does being exclusive prelude having a rabid fanbase as Hearthstone has proven.
As before, neither choice is more correct in the grand scheme of things, but for a specific game its important to have your audience in mind. How are you making the game for? Do you want the experience to reward high time investment and complexity but shut out potential new players, or be engaging and have a low barrier to entry but not have the same level of mastery.
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