I sometimes feel that Borderlands 2 has no (or little) notion of how numbers work and how numbers effect players' motivations. It comes across as though they just assumed that badass rank is something that the player will get over time. However you can find a way to just grind one of them and the rewards are so high for a slight increase in "challenges" that it makes the payoff hugely rewarding. For example, getting "second winds" with pistols gives you BR towards the "Hard Boiled" challenge:
2 seconds winds with pistols = 1 badass rank
another 3 SWs with pistols = another 5 BR
another 10 SWs with pistols = another 10 BR
another 15 SWs with pistols = another 50 BR
another 20 SWs with pistols = another 100 BR
see how ludicrous that gets? it goes from 0.5 BR per SW to 5.
I ended up running into Boom Bewm's lair, allowing constantly respawning psychos to kill me so I could then get my second wind on them. I don't think the designers intended for people to find a spot where they could "reliably get killed" over and over for the sake of gaining massive points but that's what ended up happening.
The second wind mechanics is something that always confused me too, so you're rewarded more for dying whilst nearly having killed an enemy more so than if you fully kill it?
But really I just wanted to show that if you add "more stuff" to a game then you need to make sure it isn't so exploitative. At least if you actually want to make something exploitative, make it a challenge to figure it out. What I don't want to see is more stuff being added under the assumption that it adds depth, because it may not actually be the case.
On a side note: In the menu screen, why does the EXP to level up display the total amount of EXP in numbers yet the corresponding bar only show the EXP within the current level?
Thursday 26 December 2013
Tuesday 17 December 2013
My Reaction To The Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Guided Tour Video
So after the first two games (even though I like the first a lot more than the second) I am looking forward to this. Even the "bad" FF games are still fantastic in my book so it's only natural. However watching this raises a slight cause for concern...
How to explain? It's not so much that anything looks "bad" so-to-speak, but it's the way the narrator describes the features. Using phrases like "more direct control that ever before in the Final Fantasy series" which insinuates that the belief that a turn-based system gives you "less control" is true... now from a complete technical standpoint that is false, and a generalisation. Any game can have more or less "control" regardless of the system they use. Although the way they describe these things doesn't actually change what is in the game, it makes me weary that they either believe the generalisations or are just going along with them for the sake of marketing, and when they market based on a common fallacy that people make, this brings their motives into question. What I really don't want is for Square Enix to actually go along with that mentality regardless of weather it is for the sake of what they truly believe or pure marketing. Marketing is understandable, they want the game to sell, but marketing based off a lie makes me sad. Can we please stop this trend of calling mechanics "outdated" when they're just different? Can we please stop making hasty generalisations about a game's system just because it does something a particular way? Also, on the subject of control, can we please stop pretending that having more control is always going to be better than having less?
Now other examples of what I'm talking about here include the colour selection for Lightning's clothes and the gross misuse of the word "exploration" which seems to have become a buzz-word during the seventh gen and really is only ever used to describe exploration of the geographic variety (not saying that Lightning Returns only has exploration of the geographical variety by the way, I'm just talking about the way the word is used). I'm also talking about the photo feature which I can't imagine being any use for other than to show off the outfit colours (by the way, the ability to take screenshots in general would be neat, like what the vita does)
Regardless, I am looking forward to this and I'm interested to see how the "time limit" thing in action. I read somewhere before that the game runs off a time limit and you can reset it with a New Game+. I imagine this fits well with a more open-word style game because it allows you to take advantage of learning different locations, the dash feature seems a bit odd but it also makes sense to have that since better equipment will let you do it for longer and this also meshes together with the time limit. This is the type of thing you get in Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter or Dead Rising, and I am generally a fan of the whole "start again but keep some of the stuff you got last time" idea, it allows you to adapt and (for lack of a better word) "immerse" yourself in how the world works (I hate that word).
See what I'm doing there? I'm thinking about how the mechanics work in conjunction with each other and how they facilitate each other. That's what I want to see more of instead of hasty generalisations.
Now other examples of what I'm talking about here include the colour selection for Lightning's clothes and the gross misuse of the word "exploration" which seems to have become a buzz-word during the seventh gen and really is only ever used to describe exploration of the geographic variety (not saying that Lightning Returns only has exploration of the geographical variety by the way, I'm just talking about the way the word is used). I'm also talking about the photo feature which I can't imagine being any use for other than to show off the outfit colours (by the way, the ability to take screenshots in general would be neat, like what the vita does)
Regardless, I am looking forward to this and I'm interested to see how the "time limit" thing in action. I read somewhere before that the game runs off a time limit and you can reset it with a New Game+. I imagine this fits well with a more open-word style game because it allows you to take advantage of learning different locations, the dash feature seems a bit odd but it also makes sense to have that since better equipment will let you do it for longer and this also meshes together with the time limit. This is the type of thing you get in Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter or Dead Rising, and I am generally a fan of the whole "start again but keep some of the stuff you got last time" idea, it allows you to adapt and (for lack of a better word) "immerse" yourself in how the world works (I hate that word).
See what I'm doing there? I'm thinking about how the mechanics work in conjunction with each other and how they facilitate each other. That's what I want to see more of instead of hasty generalisations.
Sunday 1 December 2013
Large Punishments For Failure Is A Design Choice
I was browsing Facebook and found that somebody said that in the new Kingdom Hearts HD edition there is a smaller punishment for death. He then went on to say that having large punishments for death is inherently a bad thing and "archaic"
I completely disagree, the size of the punishment for failure is not inherently a bad thing but rather a design choice that may be good or bad. It is not the equivalent of having a long load screen or glitchy graphics.
Now KH as an example I'm not sure, I couldn't say that KH is better off or worse off either way because I'd have to think about it. But the "lack of punishment for death" is absolutely an example of hand-holding (not necessarily easiness, but hand-holding). It does of course depend on the game and what you're doing in the game. If the individual events of the game are really hard then a large punishment for death only adds to that difficulty.
But let's talk about the large punishments in general: If you are sent back a long way for death then this results in the game rewarding certain types of skills that I (as a big RPG fan) find admirable. For example: planning ahead, knowing your limits, being careful. The first point I want to make is that by making checkpoints more sparse, you must therefore as a result approach the game in a completely different way that certain people (including myself) find very engaging.
Planning ahead and knowing your own limits is a big factor in this. It's about conceptualizing the situation and preparing yourself. If you see a bonus 3-hour dungeon with no save points or boss that takes 2 hours to kill, you better be damn well sure that you can do it. The game puts the whole process in your mind and makes you appreciate what your own skills and abilities are. When you finally say to yourself that you are ready, you feel really attached to who you are and what you're able to accomplish. You also get that "on-edge" feeling. I know those are extreme examples, but examples none-the-less
Large punishments by their nature also result in large rewards. If you conquered that 3-hour saveless dungeon, how badass do you feel? how epic was that victory? How proud are you? You managed to climb that mountain.
Small punishments also diminish the effects of decision making with uncertain results. For example, you find a chest, you know it will either contain a potion or it will be a poison trap. Ideally you want it to result in giving you a potion but given the possibility that it may be a poison trap, there is a reason to decide to not open it. Now if you had just passed a checkpoint, you could just open it and then reload back to the checkpoint if it turned out to be a poison. However if your checkpoint was a while back, you have to carefully consider whether or not opening the chest is worth doing given the parameters of its effects. In this scenario, the decision making process has value. It makes you appreciate the consequences of your decision and the decision making process that the game sends you through because the act of making that decision has more quantifiable results.
This doesn't just apply to decisions though, it also applies to skill. If you have far away checkpoints then the risk-reward loop is expanded. What I mean by this is that you need to consider your skill on parts larger parts of the game before you can dismiss it. For example, if you have a platform game that is an hour long with no saving, you need to consider the game as an entire over-arching system as opposed to a series of case-by-case scenarios. Without saving, you may be able to complete level 7 fine, but you can still improve yourself and benefit from improving if you manage to do it without losing lives (for example). But if the game saved between levels, you could complete level 7 once and then erase it from your mind. By removing these save-points, you need to consider and appreciate the game as a whole system. It means that even though you can complete level 5 without issue, it still matters to you because you might slip-up one time and that adds dynamism and value to your consistent abilities (more on dynamism later).
But with larger punishments, you end up having to repeat more gameplay you've already done right? wrong! What actually results in more repeating gameplay is difficulty. If a game has closer checkpoints together then it is fundamentally easier, and that easiness needs to be balanced by making the individual events more challenging. A more challenging game results in more deaths and being sent back more frequently. What has more repetition: a game where you have to play a 30-minute segment twice, or one where you have to play a 3-minute segment 20 times? I'd probably say the playing a 3-minute section 20 times depending on the dynamism. This is one reason I got so bored with Uncharted
About dynamism, just because you are repeating a segment of the game does not mean the game will be *exactly* the same. Different things you encounter can change the tide of how that segment will go. A shorter time-frame means there is less viability for dynamism to happen. If you think of a flow chart: the bigger the flow chart, the more possibility there is for the process to go into alternate routes. When you play Super Meat Boy, a jump over a pit is always exactly the same jump every time with next to no dynamism. Also, given the pure difficulty of Super Meat Boy, you could end up making that same jump 40 or 50 times. I'm not bashing Super Meat Boy by the way, I do like that game, it just works as an example how constant checkpoints don't facilitate for as much dynamism.
The message that I really want to push is that large punishments for failure is not a bad thing by it's very nature. I am sure Super Meat Boy wouldn't be as good if you had just 3 lives and no saving. Super Meat Boy was built for the sake of testing the player to overcome a challenge in an enclosed environment and infinite lives suits that particular game. I am also sure that even big games with big-punishment segments don't need them all the time, and I know that large punishments can hinder a game if the game isn't suited or built towards it. I am not saying all games need to have big punishments for failure, I'm just saying that to erase it as a design choice stifles the ranges of fun players can have and creativity from designers is limited. As I am seeing this "anti-punishment" attitude crop up more and more often from both players and designers, it makes me sad that creativity and the range of fun is being limited like this.
I completely disagree, the size of the punishment for failure is not inherently a bad thing but rather a design choice that may be good or bad. It is not the equivalent of having a long load screen or glitchy graphics.
Now KH as an example I'm not sure, I couldn't say that KH is better off or worse off either way because I'd have to think about it. But the "lack of punishment for death" is absolutely an example of hand-holding (not necessarily easiness, but hand-holding). It does of course depend on the game and what you're doing in the game. If the individual events of the game are really hard then a large punishment for death only adds to that difficulty.
But let's talk about the large punishments in general: If you are sent back a long way for death then this results in the game rewarding certain types of skills that I (as a big RPG fan) find admirable. For example: planning ahead, knowing your limits, being careful. The first point I want to make is that by making checkpoints more sparse, you must therefore as a result approach the game in a completely different way that certain people (including myself) find very engaging.
Planning ahead and knowing your own limits is a big factor in this. It's about conceptualizing the situation and preparing yourself. If you see a bonus 3-hour dungeon with no save points or boss that takes 2 hours to kill, you better be damn well sure that you can do it. The game puts the whole process in your mind and makes you appreciate what your own skills and abilities are. When you finally say to yourself that you are ready, you feel really attached to who you are and what you're able to accomplish. You also get that "on-edge" feeling. I know those are extreme examples, but examples none-the-less
Large punishments by their nature also result in large rewards. If you conquered that 3-hour saveless dungeon, how badass do you feel? how epic was that victory? How proud are you? You managed to climb that mountain.
Small punishments also diminish the effects of decision making with uncertain results. For example, you find a chest, you know it will either contain a potion or it will be a poison trap. Ideally you want it to result in giving you a potion but given the possibility that it may be a poison trap, there is a reason to decide to not open it. Now if you had just passed a checkpoint, you could just open it and then reload back to the checkpoint if it turned out to be a poison. However if your checkpoint was a while back, you have to carefully consider whether or not opening the chest is worth doing given the parameters of its effects. In this scenario, the decision making process has value. It makes you appreciate the consequences of your decision and the decision making process that the game sends you through because the act of making that decision has more quantifiable results.
This doesn't just apply to decisions though, it also applies to skill. If you have far away checkpoints then the risk-reward loop is expanded. What I mean by this is that you need to consider your skill on parts larger parts of the game before you can dismiss it. For example, if you have a platform game that is an hour long with no saving, you need to consider the game as an entire over-arching system as opposed to a series of case-by-case scenarios. Without saving, you may be able to complete level 7 fine, but you can still improve yourself and benefit from improving if you manage to do it without losing lives (for example). But if the game saved between levels, you could complete level 7 once and then erase it from your mind. By removing these save-points, you need to consider and appreciate the game as a whole system. It means that even though you can complete level 5 without issue, it still matters to you because you might slip-up one time and that adds dynamism and value to your consistent abilities (more on dynamism later).
But with larger punishments, you end up having to repeat more gameplay you've already done right? wrong! What actually results in more repeating gameplay is difficulty. If a game has closer checkpoints together then it is fundamentally easier, and that easiness needs to be balanced by making the individual events more challenging. A more challenging game results in more deaths and being sent back more frequently. What has more repetition: a game where you have to play a 30-minute segment twice, or one where you have to play a 3-minute segment 20 times? I'd probably say the playing a 3-minute section 20 times depending on the dynamism. This is one reason I got so bored with Uncharted
About dynamism, just because you are repeating a segment of the game does not mean the game will be *exactly* the same. Different things you encounter can change the tide of how that segment will go. A shorter time-frame means there is less viability for dynamism to happen. If you think of a flow chart: the bigger the flow chart, the more possibility there is for the process to go into alternate routes. When you play Super Meat Boy, a jump over a pit is always exactly the same jump every time with next to no dynamism. Also, given the pure difficulty of Super Meat Boy, you could end up making that same jump 40 or 50 times. I'm not bashing Super Meat Boy by the way, I do like that game, it just works as an example how constant checkpoints don't facilitate for as much dynamism.
The message that I really want to push is that large punishments for failure is not a bad thing by it's very nature. I am sure Super Meat Boy wouldn't be as good if you had just 3 lives and no saving. Super Meat Boy was built for the sake of testing the player to overcome a challenge in an enclosed environment and infinite lives suits that particular game. I am also sure that even big games with big-punishment segments don't need them all the time, and I know that large punishments can hinder a game if the game isn't suited or built towards it. I am not saying all games need to have big punishments for failure, I'm just saying that to erase it as a design choice stifles the ranges of fun players can have and creativity from designers is limited. As I am seeing this "anti-punishment" attitude crop up more and more often from both players and designers, it makes me sad that creativity and the range of fun is being limited like this.
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