What’s cool about Backtracking?

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What do you think of backtracking in videogames?

I like planning routes across a large map. It’s not a direct gameplay challenge with discrete success or failure, but it’s an amusing side-element. I’ve been playing Nier Automata and had to backtrack so much I got practically sick of it. I wish you had a faster max run speed. I wish you could fast travel from anywhere. I wish the checkpoints were more conveniently placed, especially the amusement park one. Still rather enjoyed planning routes, just wish a lot of it wasn’t dead time running across the huge environment. Wish you could at least run 200-300% faster when no enemies are around.

Backtracking is neat when you give people things to do along the way that feel purposeful and not just time-filler-y, like collecting things or investigating things. So they can naturally string together a lot of tasks across the map rather than just running from one end to the other.

If the game is oriented around backtracking, it’s nice to give main missions that at least partially facilitate this, have you trekking across areas you’ve covered before, so you have an excuse to pick up all the side mission collectibles as you pass through. Ori and the Blind Forest notably does not do this, segmenting every main mission off into its own self-contained linear area, and it lacks fast travel, so picking up all the collectibles all across the map once you finally have the abilities to grab them at the end of the game is kind of a pain. Definitive edition added fast travel, fixing this. Ori had all of its mission critical areas kind of tied up in themselves, and you didn’t spend a lot of time going back and forth across the areas inbetween, where all the collectibles were hidden. Not the best metroidvania style design.

Dark Souls did a clever thing having fast travel only available in the latter half of the game, when all the goals were spread across the map and the world became unreasonably large to traverse on foot.

Symphony of the Night has a great nonlinear structure, even if I have misgivings about its level design. Castlevania games post-sotn usually do very well with this. It feels like mini-expeditions from savepoint to savepoint. You have challenges along the way, and it’s kind of tricky to figure out how you’ll fit together trips between points of interest.

Nier Automata drove me kind of nuts with the backtracking though for side quests. You needed to run across the world a LOT, without a lot to do on the way, and you didn’t move particularly fast relative to the scale of the world. Having you speed up more as you run further seems like a good solution to this type of thing. It means you can’t move super fast in battles, but also reduces travel time across long distances by a lot.

What I’d like to see out of DMC5

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If we ever get a Devil May Cry 5, what improvements to the series would you like to see?

More than anything I’d like to see better enemies. The current stock of enemies doesn’t seem to really play around Dante or Nero’s abilities. They seem to be alright combo fodder in terms of hit-reactions, but they don’t have a moveset that really plays with or responds to the movesets of the main characters. A more diverse set of physical combo properties for enemies would be cool too, like different combo weights, similar to how God Hand does things. A bunch of enemies seem designed in ways that seem counter-fun, like the fausts and mephistos that have the no hitstun cloak that you need to get rid of, then just pound on them when they have no ability to fight back. Or the Blitzes that make it so you can’t fight them with the majority of your moveset and are only remotely fun to fight as Dante who can parry them and who actually has an array of projectile moves. Or the Chimeras that fuck everything up at regular intervals and you basically just stop attacking them during that time. Or the Cutlass that you can’t very easily attack with melee and which disappear underground. Or all the different enemies across the series who can go through walls, leaving you unable to attack them. Or the enemies with shields that need to be broken through. These things don’t create a dynamic. They never ask the player to make tricky evaluations, they’re all about procedure, which is boring. They don’t allow the player to get varying levels of advantage or disadvantage in the fight. Some cues from Nioh enemies might be cool, but it’s hard to tell how much would really carry over. Obviously Bayonetta is the go-to example as most similar to DMC. Maybe MGR and Ninja Gaiden too, just no incendiary shurikens.
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What’s So Great About Zelda 1

Celia Wagar2 Comments

What’s so great about LoZ? There aren’t any advanced mechanics are there? inb4 muh micropositioning

M-Muh micropositioning!

I’m not gonna claim it’s the most deep game of all time, but it really emphasizes player movement around enemies in a way few other games do. The 2d top down action game roster is actually fairly limited (apart from twin stick shooters) and the original legend of zelda is one of the few successful games in that lineup.

There are a few advanced mechanics, but they’re not really why the game is deep. (spin attack, some weird reverse bomb thing that works on darknuts, and forcing bomb drops on the 10th enemy)
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DESYNC Changelist

Celia Wagar1 Comment

I was a tester/consultant for DESYNC after the creator Sean Gabriel, added me on steam out of the blue because he was a friend of a friend and curious what I’d think about his game. I went into the game not receiving any information on how to play it, attempting to figure it out purely for myself so I could give better feedback about how to inform players about how to play the game. I suggested a lot of changes over the course of development and a fair number made their way into the final product. I did not get to play a lot of later areas until extremely late into the project, meaning I never fought the second and third bosses until release, and never used a few late game weapons like the rail cannon, stake gun, and wavescythe until release. I’m very proud of my contribution to the product, although I did not serve as one of the primary developers and they are worthy of a lot of praise for their combined efforts. Continue reading →

Comeback Mechanics & Slippery Slopes

Celia Wagar1 Comment

Okay, comeback mechanics are contentious in a lot of games because they have weird effects on the game.

Comeback mechanics are basically when, as you get closer to losing, you’re given more power to hurt the other player. Some examples of this are Ultras in SF4 (gain ultra meter as you lose health), V-Gauge in SFV (same), X-Factor in Marvel Versus Capcom 3 (more powerful and longer X-factor as you lose more characters), Rage in Smash 4 (deal higher damage and knockback as your percent is higher), and item drops in Mario Kart (get better items the further behind you are). A more subtle version of this used on game shows is to have points increase in value as the game goes on, so the end of the game ultimately decides who wins more than the early game, they just put you through the low value early rounds to pace out the show.

The idea behind comeback factors is to avoid lame duck situations, situations where the game is already over, but the players are still playing, prolonging the inevitable. Continue reading →

My Skyrim Experience

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Have you played Skyrim or any of its mods?

Okay, here’s my skyrim experience:

First I started the tutorial. After following a straight path I eventually got a weapon. From there I realized that I could beat up the guide character and he would never die or aggro. I got my two handed skill up to like 26 or something before the tutorial was over.

Then I tried to keep attacking the tutorial guide after leaving the tutorial, and he aggro’d. I had saved after aggroing him so I had to kill him, so I did that. Continue reading →

Super Moves in Fighting Games

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What are your thoughts on super moves in fighting games? Do you prefer to have access to all of your supers, like Skullgirls, or choose between multiple supers a la 3rd Strike?

I have no strong preference. Maybe a mild preference towards having them all available.

As for supers in general, I always think back to this Sonic Hurricane article: http://sonichurricane.com/?p=3757

“The third milestone is learning how to combo into super (or ultra, in SF4’s case). Suddenly a single major mistake can end the round, so everything changes once again. When you can deal 40% damage in one shot, the entire match evolves from a series of isolated encounters into one continuous entity. You start to think long-term because you no longer have to win every minor clash, as long as you prepare to seize that big opportunity down the line.”

Supers are powered by meter, which is built up by merely using special moves, and occasionally other things, so it’s a resource that people deliberately build in part through their playstyle, but one which also requires commitment and action of some kind to build, unlike a cooldown. Since supers are limited by this meter resource, using them is about picking the right moment, which is somewhat similar to a cooldown. Supers typically have different utilities. They usually have invincibility, and can fit anywhere in most combos, since both normals and specials usually cancel into super. So you can confirm into super, or use supers raw. Confirming means you lose some of the potential damage of the super (even if you are doing more damage overall).

Because supers also typically feature a superflash, an animation that does not take place in in-game time, they warn the opponent before use, making them less useful in neutral situations unless you can catch your opponent in the middle of a move. So because of their invincibility and great hitboxes, they beat everything except doing nothing, which they lose hard to since the super flash gives the opponent a massive warning to block, provided any of the super’s startup time is after the super flash (it’s possible to have 2 frames of startup before the flash, and 0 afterwards, so by the time the flash is seen, it’s too late, this is typically done for super command grabs, because otherwise they’d be useless, since the opponent can just hold up to jump, and they need to be in a non-hitstun state for it to work and command grabs aren’t a good choice for beating attacks usually). This makes supers excellent reversals, since the point with a reversal is to beat a meaty attack, but vulnerable to being baited like any other reversal. Some games don’t have superflashes, but they’re rare.

Supers usually have a partial immunity to damage scaling in combos, so they’re ideal to tack onto the end of combos when the damage scaling is really high. This means you lose out on a lot of the super’s natural damage, but you get more damage right now when you know it’s guaranteed.

SFV then made supers the only way to chip out an opponent, which means chipping out is a major investment, which I think is super interesting.

Supers add a long-term strategic element to a tactical (short term) game.

Why does Bed of Chaos suck?

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What exactly makes the bed of chaos fight bad? I don’t disagree its bad, I just don’t have a grasp of that kind of stuff like you do

So basically, there’s these two roots on each side. To kill bed of chaos, you need to run up to these roots and deal 1 hit to each of them. The bed has these two big hands that try to sweep you towards the center, dealing damage and knockback if you’re hit. Continue reading →

Ability Progression for Dummies

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Whats you opinion on giving the player all abilities in the beginning vs gradually gaining them as you progress? Does it matter? Or you can do both but it depends on the execution?

Giving abilities over time prevents decision paralysis/analysis paralysis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis

Unlocking abilities over time basically never gives a game more depth than having them all from the beginning, unless later skills overshadow earlier skills, reducing the relevant depth of the game (though ideally not more than they increase the absolute depth of the game). So in that case, the game isn’t able to explore all the depth possible in its system unless you play both with and without all the abilities at once.

One approach that I like is the Symphony of the Night approach where you actually have all your spells from the beginning, but just don’t know them. You need to buy or find scrolls that tell you the input. This means that experienced players can play the way they want to from the beginning without needing to unlock anything, while newer players can be introduced to things as they have time to digest that information.

The ability to unlock new abilities over time can contribute to the depth of a speedrun if the time at which you gain each ability is negotiable, making it an interesting optimization constraint to gain certain abilities sooner or later.

On a simple level, it can help the game have a different tone and structure to its gameplay at the beginning relative to at the end. The first example of a game where later abilities overshadow earlier ones to reveal a different style of gameplay is probably a more productive implementation of this.

On a more psychological level, away from the notion of depth, there’s a simple feeling of reward in response to obtaining new things to play with. It feels good to work your way up to something and being given something new, regardless of whether that process is fun or not. This is why collection elements are so strong in so many games.

Some games, like DMC, are clearly more fun when you’re playing with a full deck, where others do better with a steady drip feed, like ……. Well, I can’t actually think of a good example here. Nioh? Oh. Metroidvanias. In those, even progression is tied to abilities.

Designing Stealth Enemies

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What do you think is a good way to design enemies for a stealth game?

For coming up with new enemies, I think it pays to consider what niche every enemy fills in terms of how they detect the player. Think of every variable in the standard detection and investigation system and how it could be modified for a different effect. Most stealth games are built with only really 1 enemy type that is designed to be so versatile, it can do nearly anything. Continue reading →