13 replies to this topic

[Thorqemada]

Extra Credits about teaching complicated game mechanics and tutorials:



Enjoy!

[Koniving]

These two by Extra Credits are also worth mentioning.

Spoiler

Instead of rampant sales and the like to try and get people to pay in, why not try some of the ideas here? All we're getting is rampant sales and the "shorten the grind" merchandise. Consider what other ideas are thrown into the wind here, and the phrase "focus on building a good game that the players will enjoy and the money will come."

[Sug]

Who are those for?

[DYSEQTA]

Sug, on 29 June 2014 - 06:24 AM, said:

Who are those for?

PGI obviously.

[Sug]

DYSEQTA, on 29 June 2014 - 06:30 AM, said:

PGI obviously.

Then they should use Twitter.

[Koniving]

True. Or reddit.

[Exilyth]

Sug, on 29 June 2014 - 06:24 AM, said:

Who are those for?

Everyone. Extra Credits gives valuable information about game design, enabling players and game developer to better evaluate some of the design choices behind games and game mechanics.

[KhanCipher]

Exilyth, on 29 June 2014 - 07:01 AM, said:

Everyone. Extra Credits gives valuable information about game design, enabling players and game developer to better evaluate some of the design choices behind games and game mechanics.

they also tend to address the growing "development costs" as a thing that just happens instead looking at why costs are going up but quality is slowly sliding down (and totally ignoring the trend of over spending on marketing as well).

[Adridos]

Extra Credits, ugh...

Those guys are so hit and miss it's not even funny. When talking about elements they do understand, they're really great, but they also love to pick topics they know squat about and present it as facts.

See the Fighting Game video at the top, or the "Perfect Imabalance" (because that worked oh so well for Starcraft:BW, right... except that game got no such tooling around and is the most balanced and successful RTS to date, whereas WoW uses that principle and it's a constant forum war between those who get to enjoy the OP status and those who get the stick and end up waiting for the next wave of buffs and nerfs) for a perfect example of how wrong they can be.

[Sephlock]

KhanCipher, on 29 June 2014 - 07:54 AM, said:

they also tend to address the growing "development costs" as a thing that just happens instead looking at why costs are going up but quality is slowly sliding down (and totally ignoring the trend of over spending on marketing as well).

Also the over-emphasis on graphics (and now physics- thanks, Half-Life 2).

[oldradagast]

Good videos with a lot of solid info in there.. thanks for posting these!

[Koniving]

Adridos, on 29 June 2014 - 08:18 AM, said:

See the Fighting Game video at the top, or the "Perfect Imabalance" (because that worked oh so well for Starcraft:BW, right... except that game got no such tooling around and is the most balanced and successful RTS to date, whereas WoW uses that principle and it's a constant forum war between those who get to enjoy the OP status and those who get the stick and end up waiting for the next wave of buffs and nerfs) for a perfect example of how wrong they can be.

Starcraft received a few patches with changes. However the aim of the video is toward modern games that are frequently updated such as free to play games. Perfect Imbalance also requires slight curves that other things can oppose and defeat, with a way to learn of these. Starcraft Brood War suffers in this regard because where do you look to find this information? You build an entire army of units that get slaughtered, but what gives you a proper counter? When the game first started it did have imbalance; drastic imbalance. Those patches fixed it up, however and it was retooled to be balanced. Though truth be told it isn't really, there's just a number of tricks to even out bad odds.

The concept relies on three things. The first thing is the developer's competence. The second is the player's ability to see the problem and find the intended solution. The third and final thing is whether or not that solution actually works as intended...which falls back to the first thing, developer competence.

Let me give you an example of where it works: Total Annihilation.
There are many examples from the Krogoth to sheer differences between the Core and the Arm forces. One side favors strong hits, the other favors rapid DPS, and the two somehow just work out. My specific example is going to be the artillery, nuke, bomber, fighter, anti-air tree.

Big Bertha and the other side's own version of it called the Intimidator are huge artillery pieces that are devastating with incredible range. They require an extraneous supply of metal and energy to run and can fire at will, be given targets, hit areas to be an area of denial weapon, and even on the largest maps the can reach incredible distances.

However, as incredible as this weapon is especially in bulk (especially since just one shot can kill the Commander, which is an instant win), this weapon has many counters. If the player doesn't have enough energy or metal coming in, it can't fire. This is a counter that any unit or strike can work towards. The shots from this cannon can be seen on the minimap, which allows a player to trace its origin back to the source for a nuclear missile (which can be fired anywhere).

It and nukes cannot do anything to airborne craft (until it lands, heh) and can easily be destroyed by several bombing runs. Said bombers can be rapidly destroyed by anti-air turrets or fighters. And dealing with those anti-air turrets can be done with just about anything else. For a game developed in 1995, it's quite phenomenal and I honestly find it more balanced than Starcraft.

Far as the fighting game video, what's wrong with it? In Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive, or a number of others I actually do try to lure enemies into compromising positions or work in a combination of moves and when faced with an enemy whose attacks can't be handled by my character I tend to use other tricks to deal with them (nothing is funnier than leaping over an enemy that rushes you and then kicking them into a wall or off the edge).

Sadly I could never enjoy Tekken, developing a repertoire was far too difficult to be able to get into it.

However what it says about fighting games isn't the important element to take from it. It's the huge barrier of heavy learning memorization and endless graphs upon graphs upon stat sheets upon stat sheets that people shove onto new players to say "Here, this will help you." It's a huge barrier blocking new players from getting in because they get intimidated.

Ghost heat's mystery punishments amplify this problem, as does throwing new players in with higher end players which occasionally does happen.

[TheCaptainJZ]

I love Total Annihilation. The units on each side are mostly identical in stats. There are larger differences at the highest tech level, but still roughly equal. The expansion, Core Contingency, introduced some more unique units for each side that don't have a direct counter, but the game is still fairly well balanced as a whole between the factions, again, because the stats are so close for each. Most games add more "flavor" and uniqueness to the factions and thus add more innate imbalance.

[wanderer]

KhanCipher, on 29 June 2014 - 07:54 AM, said:

they also tend to address the growing "development costs" as a thing that just happens instead looking at why costs are going up but quality is slowly sliding down (and totally ignoring the trend of over spending on marketing as well).

Marketing dollars get you more short-term profit than actually making a good game.

That is, it's cheaper to paint over the rust spots than to fix the boat.