I’ve been thinking over parrying a bit passively and here’s some more thoughts on it.
The issue with parrying is that it is its own system by itself, which can beat anything the game throws at you.
In games where parries can beat any attack, the only system you need to learn is parrying. Parrying in most games has no element of spacing, only the element of timing, so you tend to lose out on a lot of the dynamic spacing challenges that go on in a game, reducing the game to just a timing challenge. A tough timing challenge, but just a timing challenge. Continue reading →
What do you think of God Hand’s approach to dodging?
It’s a unique approach to a common mechanic. Instead of just giving you a dodge that can go any direction, you’re given 3 dodges that all have different attributes, different advantages and drawbacks. The back flip is clearly the most invincible, but also the slowest. It de-escalates encounters, but it can’t get you through sustained attacks or ones that rush at you, like self projectile enemies. It’s the crutch for beginners to lean on, but almost never the truly correct option for a scenario. The side step is really fast in comparison to the back flip, but it’s not very invincible. It’s good versus moves that go straight from enemies, and don’t sweep across, like overhead chops. The key is getting out of the way of the attack. It can also help you get at enemy’s sides or backs more easily, and move away from getting flanked. The up dodge, or weave dodge, is the fastest dodge, and lets you gain sustained upper body invincibility if you mash it (canceling/buffering into itself). It has no lower body invincibility, so low or fullbody hits can still strike you, but most close quarters attacks are high. Continue reading →
Permadeath is a staple of Fire Emblem, but most players just restart missions when somebody dies, which sort of defeats the purpose of the mechanic. How would you redesign permadeath to force players to deal with it rather than cheese to avoid it?
It’s tricky. You could go the obvious route and have no permanent save file to revert back to, but that’s harsh. My first thought was go dark souls and autosave constantly.
But then you run into the trouble of, what if everyone dies? Do you just reset everything? do you give them a checkpoint (that isn’t a save point) and restore the characters to what they had at that checkpoint? Then if they lose one character, they might just intentionally wipe their party, which is dumb and a waste of time on their part. Continue reading →
I absolutely adore Platinum’s stuff but absolutely cannot find anything to like in fighters. What differences between the two do you think causes this?
I can only guess, dude. That’s on you.
My guesses would be that fighting games have a very different control scheme from platinum games. I can only think of Ramlethal in GG Xrd who has chain combos of the same style as your average platinum game. Apart from that, the control schemes are extremely different, and fighting games are even different from normal 2D games in many ways.
And that fighting games aren’t really fun until you “get” them. It’s tricky to really understand what’s going on until it clicks for you, and before that it can seem like degenerate button mashing.
And that fighting games are a lot harder than platinum games. They have way more complex systems, more difficult commands to input moves, and tighter input windows for successful actions. Continue reading →
What do you think of some games that have special moves with cooldowns?
I don’t really like cooldowns. Cooldowns tend to promote play based on rotations. Cooldowns tend to promote abilities that aren’t designed very interestingly. I’ve spoken on this before, how I dislike the way RTS games and the genres influenced by them tend to have “abilities” instead of “moves”. Like a move or action in a traditional game has different periods of timing, it moves through space in an interesting way. There’s startup, active, recovery. “Abilities” tend to function instantly and ignore all the physical elements of how the action could function. They don’t feel grounded.
Compare a Moba to a 2d Zelda game and how different the items and attacks feel.
The other thing is, when abilities are designed with cooldowns in mind, generally the design ignores things like drawbacks to those abilities. Think of how many cooldown abilities in various games would be broken if you could spam them over and over again. What stops you from doing the same in say bloodborne, a fighting game, a first person shooter? Recovery time, ammo limits, reloading. There’s risks associated with these actions that make you not want to perform them all the time. In “ability oriented” games with cooldowns, if you could you would mash all your abilities at once usually.
So what’s the drawback to not using an ability? If you use it now, you can’t use it later. The real cost is opportunity cost, which is sensible, but kinda lame if you ask me. This leads to rotation based play, such as seen in MMOs, because when one is cooling down, you use the next one, then the next one, then loop around to the first one as it comes off. In some cases, there’s a good order to do these in that each boost one another for maximum efficiency, so you follow the rotation. Leads to very efficiency race styled play, because there’s no drawbacks to the moves that would make them counterable.
Rising Thunder made abilities work a bit better, but also those abilities were designed like Moves, they had the solid grounding in mechanic design that abilities don’t tend to have. Notice how all the Overwatch abilities tend to function instantly, where something like say, Mirror’s Edge (to use another first person example) has a bit more kinaesthetic sensation in its moves.
Not sure if there’s much to talk about on this subject, but care to do a writeup on hitstun in videogames?
Hmmmm, yeah, there’s actually a bunch that could be talked about I think.
The big factors are interrupting attacks, advantage time, and pushback. Other things are knockdown, juggles, counter hits, meaties & multihits, special hitstun states, dizzy, recovery options out of hitstun, control during hitstun, hitfreeze, super armor, no hitstun, and blockstun.
The single biggest thing hitstun does to a game is it allows one character’s attacks to interrupt another character’s. This means a lot. It means that the first person to attack will win, which means you don’t always want to throw out an attack because your opponent might be attacking first. It also means you can’t just attack repeatedly, because eventually your opponent will interrupt you, assuming you can’t infinite them.
Advantage time or frame advantage is basically the difference between when you recover from your attack, and your opponent recovers from hitstun. If you recover first, then you are said to be plus on hit. This is noted as +# where the number is the amount of frames you’re up on your opponent. If you recover second, you’re minus on hit, noted as -#. Being plus means you get to act first, minus means you get to act second. The more plus you are, the sooner you can act, which means you have a higher chance of winning if both of you attack at the same time, and you can afford to throw slower moves since they effectively have less startup time relative to your opponent. If you’re minus then it means your opponent can act that way towards you. Going minus means surrendering initiative to your opponent. If you’re minus enough then it is even possible that you could be hit back by your opponent. Personally I consider it a flaw to allow a move to be minus enough on hit that you can be punished by your opponent. This is fine on block, but on hit it’s unacceptable. If you’re plus enough on hit to have enough advantage time to fit the startup of another move in, then that’s a combo. If you’re plus enough on hit or block to deny your opponent enough time to start up any of their moves, then that’s a frametrap.
Next up is pushback. Pushback is related to frame advantage because if you push something far away enough, then frame disadvantage becomes safe. I suggested with a theoretical 3d zelda that it should have low hitstun and high pushback, so you’re giving initiative to the monsters with each successful attack, but you’re never unsafe to their attacks. The more pushback there is, similarly it becomes harder to follow up when you get frame advantage. This can help keep combo systems in check.
A basic example of this is the smash bros knockback/hitstun system. In Smash Bros, attacks do a certain amount of knockback based on the attack strength and percent. The number of frames of hitstun is the knockback value times 0.4. This means you’re gaining more advantage as you push opponents further away. Eventually you have a ton of advantage time, but can’t catch up with them.
The exception to the rule in Smash Bros is meteors or spikes into the stage. These knock off 20% of the knockback, but keep the hitstun the same. So in Smash the general key to building combos is to at first hit opponents with attacks that have a quick recovery at low percent, then ones with good knockback and good recovery at mid percent, then ones with weak knockback to keep opponents close to you at high percents, then kill them with something really strong.
Knockdown isn’t generally considered a state of hitstun, but it’s pretty similar in a lot of ways. Players or enemies aren’t allowed to act during this state, and it’s generally harder to attack them. In some games they’re entirely invincible until they get up (dark souls, most fighting games). In some games they can be hit, but they take less damage and aren’t sent into a new stun state, effectively having super armor. In some games they can be combo’d off the ground by certain moves, which may have penalties to combo damage or generally be less convenient. In some games the attacking player is allowed to perform special finisher moves on knocked down opponents. In some games the player (or enemy) who is knocked down has multiple options for getting up, like rolls, or getup attacks. Knockdown generally serves as a longer special state of hitstun where opponents can’t do as much, and you can use them being knocked down as setup time to hit them when they get up.
Meaties are when you hit someone with the late part of an attack on purpose. In most games, attacks do the same amount of hitstun no matter what part of them hits, so hitting with a later frame of the attack means you get more advantage time. This is especially noticeable with rushing attacks where a character moves across space with a hitbox out. By hitting with the late portion of an attack, it’s possible to do new combos, or make attacks safe on block with good timing or spacing. Slow moving projectiles can have an effect similar to meaties at a range by allowing the user to recover and move up behind the fireball before it hits.
Multihits are related to meaties, because they’re kind of the opposite of them. Multihit attacks hit with many hitboxes over a period, each one dealing its own hitstun. Multihit moves get a consistent amount of hitstun no matter what part of the attack hits, but they keep the opponent locked down for their duration. This means multihit moves can never be unsafe by hitting with an early portion of the attack, and they usually go on long enough to give the player time to confirm they’re hitting. Fox’s dair versus falco’s dair is a good comparison for meaty versus multihit, except that Falco’s dair is one of the rare examples of a hitbox that stays out for a long period that actually decreases in hitstun the longer it stays out. Jigglypuff’s pound might be a better example.
Some games have special states for hitstun, like in some fighting games such as guilty gear, skullgirls, and third strike, you can hit your opponent reeling back, which makes them vulnerable to throws and command throws, which they normally aren’t during hitstun. Another example would be the dizzy state, where upon hitting an opponent enough, a meter fills up that when full causes the opponent to enter a prolonged state of hitstun, giving you enough time to set up whatever attack you want before they recover. If the opponent is player controlled, then usually they’re allowed to mash to speed this animation up. In Dark Souls, some bosses have special states similar to dizzy once they take enough damage, like the iron golem who can be knocked off balance, or a bunch of bloodborne bosses who will let you visceral attack them once hit enough. Some bosses also have tails that can be cut, triggering a special hitstun when they are. Guard Crush is similar, except it’s triggered when an opponent guards too many attacks, or has a specific guard breaking attack performed on them. This sometimes also awards bonus damage to the attacker (like in dark souls 1) or allows a special followup (dark souls 2 and 3). In the Souls games, The Last Blade 2, Nioh, Soul Calibur 1, and Guilty Gear Xrd you can parry your opponent to put them into a special parried state, which sometimes allows specific followups and in the case of Soul Calibur 1 and Xrd, they can parry you back during this state, at risk of being punished. Guilty Gear has a couple more special hitstun states in the form of the ground slide and wall stick. In some games you can set up special hitstun states that make the enemy weak to certain attacks, like freezing an enemy in metroid prime, then shattering them with a missile.
By far the best known type of special state for hitstun is juggles. Juggles are like an extended state of hitstun, except they have more timing involved than normal hitstun because you gotta time your attacks to hit the enemy on their way down. Juggles can be affected by enemy weight, gravity, or air drift. Juggles can have a lot of different potential trajectories and make use of things like ground bounces or wall bounces. Characters can even follow those being juggled into the air in some games to wail on them up there. The dynamics of a juggle are typically that you need to keep them in the air, or they simply fall into a knockdown or ukemi. Juggles are limited in some games by the natural ending of combos and progressive gravity. In some games characters are capable of “air teching” juggles to return to a neutral state. In God Hand, enemies will flip out of juggles at a slightly randomized angle.
Recovery options out of hitstun are relatively unexplored for most single player games except for the god hand example above. In a number of fighting games (smash, darkstalkers, marvel, blazblue, SFV) you can tech knockdowns to get up faster or roll in different directions. These typically have different amounts of invincibility associated with them. In God Hand, enemies can also block during normal hitstun, but cannot during counterhit/guard break hitstun.
In Bayonetta, enemies are allowed to attack directly out of hitstun, unless it’s a juggle or witch time. In many action games it’s possible to tech the landing or do a getup attack when you’re knocked down. The more recent soulsborne games let you roll out of knockdown, but have less invincibility on knockdown in general. Arc Sys games allow players to air tech from juggles, but the combo can continue if they don’t as an invalid combo. The Smash Bros example is interesting, because it’s possible to beat every option on reaction in what’s called the reaction tech chase. The option your opponent will go for is clear on frame 19 of the animation, allowing you to jab reset if they missed the tech, grab on neutral tech, and dash left or right and grab if they rolled. This might be an interesting avenue for a single player game to pursue in their hitstun design, allowing enemies different ways out of hitstun that sit at the periphery of human reaction time, so you can follow up your combos if you react perfectly. This could keep combos more active and engaging. Some attacks in some games can deal “hard knockdown” which is untechable.
Hitfreeze or hitstop, or hitpause is a short delay that happens at the moment of impact to both the attacker and target before hitstun plays out. In most games this isn’t very serious. In Smash bros you can actually jiggle and move yourself around during this period. In a lot of older games hitfreeze is applied instead of hitstun and only to the damaged enemy. Meaning that hitting an enemy will temporarily freeze it, but will not interrupt what they were doing. This can have a hitstun-like effect, but since it does not interrupt the enemy’s action, you are more vulnerable to what they do. This works well in older games and ones styled like older games because they were more about enemy movement patterns with collision damage on touching you rather than telegraphed attacks, so you can attack them to freeze them temporarily and hold off their assault for a bit in something like a pseudo-combo. The bottle in Castlevania 3 inflicts so much hitfreeze it can stunlock enemies.
Super armor allows characters to ignore hitstun, especially if it’s only for one hit, or below a certain threshold. In most fighting games, super armor works per-hit, so you absorb a certain number of hits before taking hitstun. Skullgirls is a notable exception, as well as smash bros which has multiple types of super armor that all do not follow the per-hit rule, knockback threshold and knockback subtraction armor. Armor that can take an infinite number of hits is called heavy armor. The souls series came up with their own concept of armor called poise, turning hitstun into something similar to a dizzy meter. Once the invisible poise meter is depleted, the target will take hitstun until the meter refills, and the combo ends.
Some attacks, particularly ranged attacks, deal no hitstun, like fox’s lasers and FANG’s poison ball. This is kind of interesting for low startup low damage attacks in systems that normally have hitstun (unlike say FPS games which do this, but don’t normally have hitstun, so there’s no contrast there).
In some games, like most modern fighters after SF3, counterhits, meaning attacks that interrupt an enemy’s startup or active frames, deal extra frames of hitstun. This means that new combo options open up if you can interrupt an opponent’s attack. This is primarily useful for frametrap strings, because the intent is to catch the opponent mashing buttons during the string, at which point the frametrap suddenly becomes a combo and it can serve as a confirm into a longer sequence. In God hand, counter hits carry special hitstun and juggle properties depending on the move. In SFV, certain normals can crush counter opponent’s attacks for bigger combo damage. In Souls games counter hits have no special effect on hitstun, but deal more damage. In Blazblue there are Fatal Counters and Counter Hit Carries. Fatal Counters add 3 frames of hitstun to every subsequent attack in the combo, making comboing off any move more easily. Counter Hit Carries are a property of most multihitting moves, making every single hit of the multihit a combo so there’s frame advantage at the end of the multihit sequence on the last hit, making it more easy to combo off that. In SFIV the level 1 focus attack will cause crumple on counterhit (another special extended hitstun state).
Blockstun is like hitstun except obviously you block the attack. A lot of the same rules of frame advantage apply, though the rules for what you can do out of block may be different per game, like in Smash it takes 15 frames to drop a shield, however you can grab out of it or jump out of it immediately, and your opponent is almost always negative, so the different options out of shield can be a big deal. In games like dark souls, different shields have different amounts of deflection, inflicting special recovery animations on opponents who attack. This is also found in Last Blade 2 for sword attacks versus punches or kicks. In some fighting games there are special blocks like instant blocks in guilty gear which reduce the amount of blockstun taken so attacks can be more readily punished on block, or faultless defense which increases the amount of blockstun along with pushback and prevents chip damage. Smash has similar to the faultless defense with its light shields that increase blockstun and pushback, also its perfect shields which can be canceled directly into actions or in later smash games negate shield drop time.
I think that’s everything I can say on hitstun. All of these are different factors that can be tweaked, tuned, combined, or experimented with to make different effects.
Saurian Dash did an amazing exposition on hitstun states for Transformers Devastation that shows some of how this information can be applied practically to a game. He calls these hit reactions, and later refers to “hitstun” as a special type of hitstun, akin to dizzy in fighting games.
This video shows how hitstun states can be varied between enemies to give them variety.
How do you make hitscan enemies both fun and fair to fight against in a game where you don’t have regenerating health?
I think I’ve answered this before in a question regarding Vanquish. I think the answer is to mark the spots that enemies are targeting, then have you dodge the reticules (or laser sights obviously). Another very fair hitscan enemy is the Vortigaunts in Half Life because they have a very distinct audio and visual cue for when they’re about to fire and appear in environments with cover nearby. Not to mention they can be stunned by gunshots before they fire.
The idea is, you need to provide a reasonable method for the player to avoid taking damage. This means the sources of damage must move predictably, detectably, and within reaction time.
I don’t think your solution to hitscan is very interesting, it becomes the same as projectiles, only that lamer, as they don’t fill space and time. Hitscan as it’s usually implemented promotes spacial awareness–you need to know where enemies are and move perpendicular to their line of sight– and it promotes taking cover. They may not be very interesting in themselves, but they serve a different function from projectiles, and making them totally predictable eliminates that difference.
Becomes the same as a laser beam or a contact damage enemy really instead of continuous damage anywhere in sight of the enemy (imagine if an enemy emitted light that damaged you if you weren’t in shadow, it would have a very similar effect to common implementations of hitscan if you think about it. Someone should make a prototype of this. The hit detection would be easy to cheat with raycasts as long as you could get dynamic light sources and shadows working).
I mean, if we could have projectiles in every game, that would be fine. We use hitscan because it’s realistic, not because it’s necessarily good. My solution is just trying to preserve the theming in a way that’s fair.
Every form of projectile promotes spatial awareness. Every attack does. Moving perpendicular to their line of sight (circle strafing them) doesn’t affect hitscan enemies except at extremely close ranges. Unless they’re human that is, then it can be effective. It has no effect on AI enemies, which is where hitscan damage is actually harmful.
I don’t think hitscan bullets promote very much spatial awareness, because circle strafing and moving in general isn’t a very good strategy against them. A good strategy is killing whatever’s about to shoot at you before they can, and popping out of cover occasionally to take a potshot before going back into cover. Also occasionally moving up.
It certainly promotes taking cover, but that’s about it. It makes it so you continuously take damage when out of cover, which necessitates either extremely careful healthpack placement or regenerating health, the latter of which causes all sorts of other problems. Cover is useful versus Vortigaunts too and those are more fair than your average FPS enemy.
Maybe my solution isn’t the most interesting thing in the world, maybe there are better solutions, however we’ve only arrived at a fair implementation of hitscan enemies in modern shooters by sacrificing everything else. The design space of the game is limited by this element. It becomes more difficult to implement a wider range of options because of this element and its dependencies. Yeah, maybe it creates a unique dynamic unto itself, but we’ve had dozens and dozens of games that have explored this dynamic already.
Which of the Souls games do you think had the most successful (PvE) healing system overall, and why?
I think Dark Souls 3, all things considered.
Demon’s Souls is out because grass had to be farmed, could be stocked up really high and had a fast healing animation.
Dark Souls 1 is a strong contender because it invented the Estus system which is a really good healing system overall. Let you improve how much was healed with rare items, only 6 of which were in a given playthrough, and increase the number of heals in a way that was tied to each bonfire by expending resources, which carried over across playthroughs. However it allowed infinite, albeit slow, healing through Humanities, and limited per playthrough healing that was fast via elizabeth’s mushroom and divine blessings.
Dark Souls 2 is right out. Starts off with a gimped estus flask that eventually gets better, and pours lifestones in your face, which can be grinded for and bought, and regenerate health slowly. Lifestones weren’t strictly bad as far as healing systems go in general, better than Demon’s Souls’ grass, but still a low point for the series.
Bloodborne imposed a hard cap on the number of heals you got, they scale based on your max health, and can be increased with runes. Downside is you need to grind for them from time to time. The healing animation is fast, but if you’re shot during it then you’re put in a parry state. The system isn’t as unchecked as Demon’s Souls, but the grinding to restore blood vials is still a pain in the ass, even if Joseph Anderson made a decent case for it.
Dark Souls 3 starts you off with a weakened estus flask, but not completely gimped, lets you upgrade how much it heals and how many times. Far as I’m aware, there’s no other way to heal, except using embers, which can only be done once if you’re not already a host of embers. For an added dynamic, you can trade how many heals you have for FP regeneration.
I think Dark Souls 3 is the best simply because it’s the Dark Souls 1 system without any compromises. It’s good to minimize grinding, limit how much health can potentially be restored to a maximum, have that maximum grow as levels get longer, enemies do more damage and the player’s health bar gets bigger, and have the actual healing animation last a reasonably long amount of time to make it a risky option during a fight.
hitscan vs projectile? Even for fast ones like bullets, what would be better for gameplay? I think dodgeable bullets would be much more interesting.
Okay, if the projectile is so fast, it’s basically a bullet, then there’s really no difference between a physical projectile and a hitscan ray.
I absolutely agree that dodgeable bullets are more interesting. I think you can draw a basic relationship on how dodgeable bullets are between the speed/size of the bullet versus the movement speed/size of the character. When characters move faster, it’s more realistic for them to be able to dodge faster projectiles. When they are fast enough (about CS:GO speed and higher), it’s more realistic for them to be able to move out of the way of hitscan bullets by staying ahead of the other player’s ability to keep their reticule on the target (though of course, not to dodge bullets coming directly at them).
Basically, as a character is slower, the projectiles too should be slower to compensate and allow the player to dodge. As the character is faster, the projectiles are allowed to be faster because the player can adequately dodge them. At the threshold mentioned above of about CS:GO speed, a player can move and change their momentum fast enough to stay ahead of someone’s reticule (this is because of human reaction time).
Regrettably, we’ve seen the opposite relationship between projectiles in games, slower games are more likely to have hitscan rays, and faster games are more likely to have slow projectiles.
This is because the world is fucked up and there’s nothing we can do about it.
As a follow up to the hitscan/projectile question, is there a place for hitscan weapons in games? Are the best kept as low-tier weapons such as how quake 1 handles them, or how q3 handles them as either high spread or low power?
Yes, absolutely.
I think you’re forgetting that in both Quake 1 and Quake 3, the Lightning Gun is one of the best weapons you can get.
The thing is, when you make a weapon projectile-based, even with relatively fast projectiles, such as Q3’s plasma gun, it gets harder to aim it. So the Plasma Gun doesn’t see the same type of use as a DPS weapon like the Lightning Gun, even though the Plasma Gun has a higher DPS than the Lightning Gun. Instead of being used to DPS opponents, it’s more used for covering fire and controlling space when you don’t see your opponent, or outside LG range.
Hitscan weapons are fine because ideally if both you and your opponent run out into the open and shoot at each other with LGs, you’re not both going to hit each other dead on until the first one to get shot dies, because you’re both going to miss a lot, because it’s hard to keep your reticule trained on someone who keeps weaving back and forth, and aiming better when your target is moving in ways you can’t predict, while simultaneously weaving yourself takes predictive skills.
It’s sort of like how in fighting games, you can’t see what move your opponent does until after it hits you. Reactionary blind spot. Similar deal in RTS with the fog of war. The winner isn’t determined strictly by efficiency, it’s determined by who throws rock and who throws paper. Efficiency in FPS games isn’t strictly who has better aim and target acquisition speed, it’s who can predict where the other will move and shoot as well. So hitscan weapons can’t consistently DPS, so it all works out as long as you’re not so slow these things become trivial.
Hitscan is fine, as long as it doesn’t dominate the game in one way or another.
Are you a fan of hitscan weapons? Why or not?
Uh, I like them when I like them? I dislike when a game is ENTIRELY hitscan weapons, like most modern shooters. It’s nice to have a mix of projectiles and hitscan. There’s only so much varying functionality you can get out of exclusively hitscan weapons.
I only really have an issue with when enemies have 0 startup hitscan weapons, that’s where trouble comes in.
Hitscan works fine in multiplayer because players need to predict which way their opponent will move, so it’s not totally a “who sees who first” thing, unless you die practically instantly and move slowly like modern shooters.
It also works fine in multiplayer because it doesn’t really matter if the player has unfairly overpowered weapons relative to the CPU, only that enemies don’t have unfair weapons against the player, because they can’t participate in the same mindgames as two human players can. They can at best approximate it, and have their efficiency cranked up or down.
Celia Wagar's CritPoints 