Yesterday we discussed bad designs made brilliant. Let’s talk about designs you hate that others love, perhaps because they are bad designs. Continue reading Bad At and Good For
Category: General
General
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.Bad Design Can Be Great Design
Good jobs take advantage of your strengths. Great jobs take advantage of your weaknesses.
A system that is bad design in most games can be a great feature in a game that consciously builds around it. Continue reading Bad Design Can Be Great Design
Resetting Characters and Worlds
I find myself preferring new game plus models where you carry over a bonus to a new character rather than taking the same character through a new, higher-level version of the game.
Rally!
An exciting mechanic I do not see in enough games is a state between fully capable and dead. Some games weaken the player as injuries accumulate, but most follow the trope codifier in letting you (and your enemies) operate at full power with 1 hit point and instantly die to the next falling leaf. For this post, I am less interested in gradual weakening than a transitional dying state. This is variously known as dying, downed, unconscious, “fight for your life,” bleeding out, second wind, etc.
Emphasis and Reviews
When aggregating, weighting can be idiosyncratic.
When assessing games or anything else, you and I can agree on every point but disagree on our total assessment. You and I care about different things, so your trivial detail is my game-breaking problem.
Continue reading Emphasis and Reviews
My resolutions for 2013
(that is, assuming the world does not indeed end on 12/21/12. If so, and this particular game actually shuts down, it’s been a pleasure)
1- If something is fun, I’ll play it. If it stops being fun, I’ll stop.
2- I’ll stop caring about what and how genres should be and instead go back to point 1 when needed.
3- I’ll keep thinking holiday/seasonal content is bullshit. Because it is.
4- There is no point 4.
5- I will post more.
6- I will wear my “Protection from Marketing” charm necklace and in doing so I will avoid being bitten and infected with Hype Disease.
7- I will be more Lawful Neutral.
8- I will continue to meditate on the koan; “The problem is not the carrot, it’s how long the stick is.”
9- I will finally discard most of my Political Correctness armor, and if that ends up breaking the Civility set bonuses, then so be it. I got better stuff anyway.
10- I will not lambast because it’s AAA, I will not support because it’s indie, I will not forget that there are always better ways to do things and I most definitely won’t suffer intentional mediocrity idly.
More Gaming Metaphors From My Cat
She will whine at great length and volume about any closed door or other obstruction to her freedom of movement. She has high expectations about coming attractions and how responsive to her desires others should be. Once past an obstruction, she will do exactly the same thing that she did in the previous room.
: Zubon
To-Hit Rolls
To-hit rolls are an RPG mechanic inherited from pen-and-paper systems. They represent an obvious intuition (attacks can miss) and use a binomial mechanic with a random chance. Many non-RPG computer games use a different mechanic: did the sword, shot, spell, or whatever hit the target?
One of the City of Heroes developers remarked that, had he to do it over again, he would not have included a to-hit roll or an accuracy stat. Every attack would hit unless some defense caused it to miss, and then you would have an indicator of why you missed. Continue reading To-Hit Rolls
Comparison, Volume, Enthusiasm
Something clearly better in small doses may not be better in large doses. I accidentally replicated the New Coke taste test problem last weekend when comparing the store and national brands of a soda flavor. The flavor I preferred in small quantity started seeming unpleasant when drinking an entire glass. Also, some of the merit of the small quantity may have been that I was already familiar with the national brand, so the store brand’s minor variation had a bit of novelty that was gone a few ounces in.
MMOs are typically designed to be played in thousands of hours but tested in dozens of hours. What is awesome in the beta, warts and all, may pale quickly once it becomes familiar, and then it will become far more than familiar when the developers multiply some numbers by 10 to create a theoretically satisfying grind. The only people who are going to repeat the same content ten times in beta are the ones who really really like that content or really really like that grind. This may not translate well to the median player once you go live, even if the beta feedback was entirely positive.
In program evaluation, we must constantly remind policymakers that average results will be worse than the pilot. The pilot project involved finding the most enthusiastic volunteers and setting them loose on the problem with the greatest room for improvement, and the specifics of the project were tuned to their capabilities. You are testing the best case scenario. In game development, beta testers (the ones actually testing) are the people so enthusiastic about the project that they are willing to work for free and then pay you for the output. These are not typical customers.
: Zubon
More Gaming Metaphors From My Cat
She usually does not want to interact, and heaven forfend you show her attention when she is otherwise occupied, but she hates being left alone and seems to like having people around (just at a safe remove).
: Zubon