Games Ruined by Bad Balance

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Can you name some games (single player and/or competitive) that you feel were ruined by poor balance?

I can’t think of any multiplayer games that are that way, except maybe TF2? An Arena shooter would get hurt by that too, but I don’t think any current arena shooter has a balance problem. Balance in those games affects the number of viable elements of play within a single game, bad balance effectively makes them simpler games to play overall, it doesn’t just excise certain characters.

As for a single player game, Nier. Absolutely Nier. Nier was fucked in the ass by balance. Nothing is balanced in Nier. Weapons aren’t balanced, attacks aren’t balanced, spells aren’t balanced, companions aren’t balanced. Dodging and blocking aren’t balanced. The only things in the game that are balanced are the standard attack combo, dark blast, dark lance, and dark hand. Continue reading →

Nerfing Fox

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dHi4t-idPU

Lemme cite Leffen really quick:

I don’t approve of Scrumpy’s balancing style for multiple reasons. First is, no balance patch exists in a vacuum. If you nerf the top tiers, then you turn away people who previously enjoyed those top tiers. Nerfs are occasionally necessary, and I agree that Fox could use a nerf, but I do not think these are the correct nerfs, especially because they change what fox is capable of and his options, making the character less deep.

I think the Project M fox nerfs were much more appropriately considered, especially the changes to shine and laser. Laser shouldn’t be limited to a single laser, players enjoy using double laser. It should be nerfed in damage instead. Sure this will keep its ability to reset scaling the same (though theoretically that could be jury rigged to count less often in the staling buffer, or be excluded from it completely) Project M went the extra mile and had its damage decrease over distance, while nerfing its base damage to like half a percent. Continue reading →

Project M Intro & Overview

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A friend of mine said that Project M isn’t very good because most characters are up there on Fox level and because of that they don’t have any match ups which tends to be a bad game (such as Squirtle gimping out players). I don’t know much about fighting games, what do you think?

Alright. Lemme explain a little. Basically, in Melee, Fox was the undisputed best character. There’s a lot of reasons for this, he’s fast, can combo people really hard, can run away and shoot lasers at them forcing them to approach, has really easy setups to kill people, has a great recovery and several different ways to recover. If you want the full lowdown, you can check a lot of different guides.

Project M originally aimed to make Brawl more similar to Melee. To be Melee 2.0. To that end they recreated a ton of extremely subtle melee mechanics. Things so small most people feel them, but don’t realize they’re ever there. Continue reading →

Pacing and Games

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What are your thoughts on pacing and structure in videogames? (Not when it comes to cutscenes, but based on pure gameplay)

Okay, I’ve been thinking about pacing, and the obvious observation is that pacing in a video game is way different from a movie or an act of theater. The instinct perhaps is to think of pacing in terms of how developers laid out their content, like here’s a fast section, here’s a slow section, here’s a variety section. I think it’s worth investigating rather the different modes of interaction and how fast those are perceived as. Is the player reacting to an enemy? are they allowed to proceed at their own pace? Are they controlling a character or sitting in menus? Are they allowed to trigger a different phase of interaction? I think more consideration should go to the literal pace in terms of action frequency too. The other major factor is of course the difficulty curve. Continue reading →

Majora’s Mask Boss Review

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What do you think of Majora’s Mask’s boss battles?

Original

Remake

Odolwa because his fight sucked in the original video

They’re weird compared to normal zelda bosses. You’re given a variety of ways to fight them. Each one incorporates the mask associated with that dungeon but doesn’t force you to use it. They all have some spatial aiming element. They’re not amazing boss battles in the scheme of things, but for a 3d zelda boss, they’re pretty good. Continue reading →

Intro to King of Fighters

Celia Wagar2 Comments

Addendum to my KoF question. What makes King of Fighters different than all the other fighting games?

Juicebox said something that speaks to me about KoF, that it’s like the 2d equivalent of 3d fighting games, insofar as you can play any character and do well. What makes top tier characters good isn’t their matchup spread, it’s having better moves and better combos than the other characters. All characters in 3d fighting games can play from a similar template, with unique characteristics like dragon punches, fireballs, and command throws being less defining of the character. This is in a large part due to shorthops and rolls. Rolls are a handy universal option to get out of danger, to get around. Shorthops let you get over lows, and makes the game highly aggressive since every character has this amazing mixup option sitting right there. This is why I can pick random so often and still win, because I get the fundamentals and I can quickly figure out what each character’s moveset is good for in playing that fundamental style of shorthop, pressure with lights, and occasionally throw in a sweep. Beyond that, combos are pretty similar with every character. It’s normals into a command normal, into a special, into a super, and juggle if you can. Continue reading →

God Hand Dodging

Celia Wagar6 Comments

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 →

Stealth Beat ‘Em Up Pitch

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Metal Gear Rising tried to combine hack and slash gameplay with stealth and most folks weren’t too keen on it. What do you think people could do to make this combination work?

I think it would work with kind of a Far Cry or Crysis style approach, where you move into and out of stealth as you attack enemies. Would require levels that let you escape into cover and move behind enemies.

Here’s my pitch: Imagine pac-man or bomber-man shaped levels from a top down perspective. Similar to the vulcan raven fight in MGS1. You have a bunch of pillars or other forms of cover with ways around them. A few more open areas as well. Continue reading →

Forcing Permadeath in Tactics Games

Celia Wagar4 Comments

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 →