Steamroll

By May 1, 2012 Common Sense, Game Design, Written 2 comments

Seriously,

This whole streamrolling thing has gotten out of hand in games these days. In the example game I’m giving here, keep in mind that this is an just to illustrate the core problem. And I’m going to just ramble. Don’t expect this to follow a train of thought.

Let’s play a game where we flip a coin. Here’s the rules:
1. Both players pick head or tails before the game.
2. Each round, the coin is flipped.
3. Whoever wins the most rounds out of ten wins the game.

Simple enough. Let’s add a new rule:

4. Whenever a player wins the toss, they get a pennies, equal to the round number, which they can spend at any time to reflip the coin. So if they win the Round 2 toss, they get two pennies. And if they win the Round 8 toss, they get 8 more pennies.

Already, you should see there’s a problem. The person who wins gets a bunch of extra chances to make sure the game comes out in their favor.

 

But, still, we see this in everywhere in games these days. (Not usually as a fundamental behind the entire game, but in the smaller interactions that define the game flow and balance). In World of Warcraft PvP(since I love picking on it), combat usually comes down to numbers: The entity with the highest numbers wins. And on winning, that entity is awarded higher numbers. (Technically, they’re given points, which are spent on items that make them better at PvP, but – simplicity, man!!)

 

I figure the origins of all this probably come from people who love playing games becoming the people who make games. Particularly when their favorite play style is domination, and they craft the game around that idea.

n = n+1 is a fundamentally flawed equation. You can’t balance a game like that. (programmers, hold your tongues.)

But it’s everywhere now. The strong should get stronger and the weak should just be fodder for the strong. If only 5% of your userbase is L33T, and you’re making the game for them, then everyone else is going to get sick of being stomped by some dude who got even more power to stomp them by stomping people the day before. And then you, the dev, are going to get caught in this dismal spiral of user numbers.

Of course, that’s when insidious tactics come into play. “How can we force people to keep playing and make them think that they want to keep playing?”

Either way: Let’s make a game for 20 players. 19 just sit there, while the last one beats on them for hours. So who gets to be the beater, and who the beaten? Well, the dev that makes the game doesn’t like losing when he plays…

Nub In The Sheeple Factory – Update 3?

By April 11, 2012 Android, bloggerator, Development One comment

This is the third update? I think? Might be something else. Dunno.

Either way, Just finished the desktop version of the level editor, and grabbed some footage of the game running, and some pics.

So what is the game exactly?

 

 

Our hero, Nub, has woken up to find himself in the middle of the dreaded Sheeple Factory. A giant factory city which takes all the peoples from across the land and turns them into sheep, whose sole purpose is to make more sheep.

Nub’s goal is to escape the factory with the aid of his trusted demon gloves.

But make sure to pay attention to where you’re going, because few have ever made it out of the Sheeple Factory.

 

That’s the pitch, anyways. Gameplay revolves around the normal platformer stuff: Shoot bad guys, jump on top of things, try not to die, collect some crap, make it to the end. But, unlike normal platformers, the way to the end isn’t necessarily obvious. The whole game is a giant maze with dead ends, loops, and mind numbing frustration.

There probably would have been a better point to the whole game if this wasn’t my first full game. …Or maybe if a I had more people to share the workload with. Hint, hint. 

Anyways, here’s video of the game in action:

 

Overcompensating

By April 4, 2012 Game Design, Written One comment

Why is it that perfectly respectable game designers, when faced with issues that needs to balanced or tweaked, suddenly seem to react with all the forethought of a drunken six year old?

Okay, so it’s not really that bad. Still, made for a nice first sentence.

Right.

The most recent thing that brought this to back to the front of my mind is Battlefield 3, and it’s new patch, and the hubbub from players about it. To counter a few inequalities in gameplay, some thing were fixed. Or, they attempted to fix them anyways.

First Problem: The suppressor attachment increased accuracy, and they hid the player on the minimap. There was only one detriment to this (decreased power at range), and no other equipment for the same position that was better or even a plausible alternative.

Second Problem: Suppression Effect, which causes a blurry screen and an increase in random bullet deviation was underpowered, and for the most part, easily ignored. This was bad, because that effect was supposed to control Risk vs Reward, while also keeping players from just going on killing rampages. Such as, A engages B (both encounter Suppression Effect), A kills B, A must either wait before engaging C, or engage C with a detriment. So, with it being ineffective, you would end up with teamwork being unimportant, because it all comes down to the one guy who can shoot everything up.

Third problem is just the teamwork in general. Because of a lot of little things, (vehicle balancing, weapon selections) Lonewolf gameplay actually becomes the default, and then players get frustrated because challenges can’t be overcome, because all the challenges are oriented towards teams, etc etc.

There is more that the patch was covering, but these are the three I’m going to pick on to illustrate my point.

The solutions to these problems were:
First Problem’s Solution: Get rid of the suppressor’s accuracy bonus, and have it reduce recoil, hide the player on the map, while also increasing bullet deviation. This alongside modifying another accessory to have the missing accuracy bonus preserves player options while negating the overused equipment.

Second Problem’s Solution: Increase Suppression Effect, while adding a greater penalty to accuracy when suppressed. When Suppressed, bullet deviation skyrockets, and it becomes difficult to hit anything even with skill. Thus, Suppression is used to achieve its previous goals, while also finding a new way to force the “L33T SKILLZ” crowd to actually work with their teammates, since the high skill players will still need to watch out for incoming fire, and plan around Suppression Zones.

Third Problem’s Solution: Lower general accuracy, so 80% headshots becomes say, 55% headshots. On a large scale, this becomes the tipping point for forcing teamwork, while still maintaining lone-wolf gameplay as being viable. (Etc, etc, there were more things, too but, moving on…)

Now, the community is complaining because accuracy has gone out the window. Between overall accuracy nerfs, the loss of equipment, and increased Suppression, it’s not hard to see why.

Too many things are being applied to decrease accuracy at once, and each one was intented on being a singular solution to the problems they were supposed to solve. But you can’t do that in a game, where all the systems are integrated and play off each other.

There’s also a second, sinister, side to the overshooting balance. Best example here is World of Warcraft, but I’ll shorten this down, since this has already been going on for too long: The patch notes in WoW always seem to be solving misuse or overpowered skills for the upper 5%, or buffing powers for the lowest 5%.

Seriously, those should be the absolute last groups of people that you balance the game for.

There’s been a lot of times that I’ve read the patch notes for WoW and thought, “What are they thinking?”

  • Skill A can be stacked, but it’s doing too much damage at a full stack, so we should reduce the damage and make it more difficult to get the full stack.
  • Well, wasn’t it supposed to do a lot of damage, and be balanced by it being difficult to get a full stack?
  • Yes, but some people have figured out a trick to get full stacks, so it isn’t as difficult as it should be.
  • Then shouldn’t the answer be to increase the difficulty back to where it should have been?
  • But those people who are abusing it will still abuse it!
  • But those people who are abusing it will abuse anything anyways, no matter what you do!

Maybe it would have been better to lower the damage slightly and make it easier to stack, or go after the thing that’s making it easy to stack. Instead, the patch goes the other way, to make the top 5% less powerful.

And of course, in balancing issues of the top 5%, the majority playerbase suffers the same detriment.

Comparatively speaking, it’s like you have a ex-con under house arrest in your neighborhood, so everybody in the neighborhood has to wear ankle monitors.

Blah. I’m losing focus and need to get back to normal work. More later, maybe. Either way, “Bad Developer! No Cookie!!”

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