The fundamental problem is "player benefits from minimizing risk", which is usually boring. It happens in most genres, e.g. it's especially bad in roguelikes, where luring enemies to doors is a common tactic.
Of the proposed solutions: cover, hidden information, and enemy leashing are only obfuscating the low-risk path, not actually removing it. A good player is still rewarded for boring play, e.g. bouncing grenades at the leashed enemies.
Rewarding risk-taking is a good solution, but hard to implement in a FPS because there are only so many rewards you can give.
One-way paths are criticized for breaking exploration, but I think it's possible to get the benefits of them while still allowing exploration. Consider Ninja Gaiden for the NES. It spawns enemies when you cross certain thresholds, and crucially it does this every time you cross them, even if you already defeated the enemies. This punishes retreat by undoing any progress you made. You're forced to take risks, and it's IMO a better game because of it.
Some people call Ninja Gaiden unfair, but I think that's because they didn't understand the mechanic. You could get the same benefits while making it easier to understand, and more fair feeling, e.g.:
* Clearly mark the spawn triggers
* Visually show the triggers activating, e.g. with particle effects flying from them to the enemy spawn points
* Don't let the enemies harm the player immediately after spawning, so the player has time to react.
* Cap the number of active enemies and the spawn rate from each spawn trigger (Ninja Gaiden has sprite limits, but you can still produce absurd-looking spawn patterns by repeatedly crossing the trigger point).
Ninja Gaiden also has time limits, which are IMO an underrated method of punishing boring play. Time limits aren't fashionable in modern games, but I think they should be brought back. They're compatible with exploration by including hidden bonus time powerups.
The problem with your ninja gaiden example is more the implementation of the feature. Enemies would be specifically placed in location where they'd knock you back off screen over an open pit far enough away they'd respawn as soon as you moved forward inevitably sending you to your death.
Also, i'm fairly certain it had more to do with the way the nes held the screens and enemy objects in memory than an intentional choice. Most games on the nes had respawning enemies once you returned to a screen. And after going through the source code for metroid, it's simply because of memory limitations.
The ninja gaiden developers took advantage of this by placing enemies in the most frustrating positions possible. I've beat all three of the originals a few times and i grew up playing the hell out of ninja gaiden 2, but that enemy placement is sadistic for the sake of it.
> it's especially bad in roguelikes, where luring enemies to doors is a common tactic.
Ah ha yes my thoughts exactly while I read the article. I'm not throwing away an hour of procedurally generated airplane time-wasting fun by walking all the way into that room, doorway is just fine for me.
The other thought I had was that old America's Army game. When actually played "correctly" it was extremely slow paced and "boring". It wasn't usually doorways (honestly doorways were more exciting because you actually had some suspense about the doors &corners hiding aspect). Rather it was just hiding in bushes and waiting to move until someone far back told you where the sniper(s) was looking and if it was safe to bolt to the next bush. For like 20 minutes, which was an eon considering if you died at the beginning of the round you had nothing to do, and e.g. CS rounds were like 2 minutes.
We really still haven't done much to make the bad guys act like they have any intelligence at all. It's just swarms of unintelligent bad guys which cannot be faced head-on. Essentially because earlier generations of gamers kited, now most PC builds require kiting.
At the beginning of my career I toyed with the idea of specializing in game AI but decided I didn't want to write games for a living. I didn't entirely like what games were doing to my friends.
I recall that Halo 2 made a big deal out of the fact that part of compiling the game maps included putting metadata in about terrain and cover, which is why some of the mobs would hide behind crates when wounded. You had to play hide and seek with them the same way they had to do with you. I'd really like more of this. In theory these bad guys have been in this area for a long time. Of course they should use the terrain to their advantage.
And as you mentioned about lobbing grenades around corner, the reverse should also be true. If one grenade blew up in this spot nothing is stopping another one from coming. You should avoid that area for a while, and move to where you can shoot anyone who comes into it.
But I think the real problem is this Rambo model of games. In reality, a single assailant against a large number of armed defenders should never be able to attack their way into a base. They should be pinned down by the occupying forces until the ammo runs out. You could sneak in, but you can't just show up with a rifle or machine gun and get anywhere. But aside from the possible solution of harvesting comedy gold from this trope, this reality based model would be really, really boring.
Your point on time limits reminds me of XCOM 2, where Firaxis added turn limits to most missions to combat this same problem. They ended up doubling back a bit in the expansion by adding more untimed missions and a setting to ease the timer, because a sizable amount of players complained that they were being forced to make bad decisions. I personally agree with you on this and think that needing to optimize a bad situation is more interesting than always being able to use the boring but effective strategy, but it's clearly not for everyone.
> It happens in most genres, e.g. it's especially bad in roguelikes, where luring enemies to doors is a common tactic.
This is something I've really struggled with in my own roguelike where despite spending a ton of time on interesting procedural level generation and somewhat sophisticated monster AI, the gameplay often devolves to:
1. Peek out of a corridor until one monster notices you.
2. Retreat back into corridor where monster follows.
3. Dispatch.
4. Goto 1.
It's just not that fun. I think the real core game design issue this highlights, that crops up in a lot of places is when the optimal play style is not an enjoyable play style. It puts players in an unfun position of having to deliberately play "worse" to have more fun, but they feel like they're "cheating" the game or forced to do more meta-cognition than they want.
Here's some ideas I've had for my roguelike to try to address this (most of which I haven't had a chance to implement yet):
1. Put more cover and interesting decor inside rooms so that there are more interesting tactics available in there than in corridors and so that heroes don't get surrounded as much. In particular, half-cover tiles that can't be walked through be permit range weapons to go over aid the hero if they have a ranged attack and monsters don't because then they can pick off monsters while not being attacked in return.
2. Give monsters the ability to pick up or destroy loot. So if you see some treasure in the room the clock is ticking to get it before the monsters do.
3. Give monsters a "home" tile that they try to stay near. So they won't chase you too far into a corridor.
4. Make monsters wake up other nearby monsters.
5. Make monsters smart enough to not pursue the hero if other monsters aren't also chasing.
6. Give the hero more area effect attacks. This means they are less effective in corridors. This is one I really like and have implemented. In particular, I gave each weapon category a special attack that will hit multiple monsters across a couple of tiles. But that only works if there is enough open space to take advantage of it. The good thing about this is that instead of preventing (through smarter AI) or punishing (through things like closing doors before the player) the corridor strategy, it instead rewards going into open spaces.
Another technique is to provide limited ammo, forcing the player to figure out how to move forward without killing everything, which means there are enemies pursuing from behind as well. Open map designs (such as Doom II) were great for that, because an enemy you woke up at the beginning of the level could end up almost anywhere on the map, providing pressure from behind and creating tension when you had to backtrack. It's less interesting when you can afford to sweep through a level exterminating everything you see.
There’s a school of design thought that enumerating a bunch of stuff is itself to blame for dull gameplay.
As an alternative, consider that many of the best maps in games (1) were authored by the players/community and (2) had a competitive market (like choosable servers). Eg Dust 2 and the original DoTA map.
A poor comparison, yes, but you’ll learn from the design of big community competitive FPS maps. There are lots of ways to improve encounter design in “classic” FPSs. Or maybe just the process of building the level needs to change.
A recent interesting example of a way to fix this is CrossCode, an RPG/maybe Action RPG. The way they do it is you heal to full quickly out of combat, but if you remain in combat and get longer and longer kill streaks, it increases your odds of getting rare drops (and might improve exp/money gains as well, I haven't tested that portion). You have to weigh the risks of continuing to push on at red health vs going for more high end drops.
> "player benefits from minimizing risk", which is usually boring.
If the player is enjoying themself exploiting these attributes, then how is it boring? Is it boring to the spectator? If so, what does that say about the act of playing a game?
> which are IMO an underrated method of punishing boring play
On the other hand, most games with time limits these days, the time limits drive me away. They can be done well, but IMHO its rare and typically I prefer boring gameplay to being artificially limited by a timer. To me, timers are less fun and an overly long combat slog. Having said that, you can create less artificial-feeling timers, which I'm largely ok with (for example, an NPC buddy's health bar is essentially a timer, although NPC buddies have their own problems).
> it's especially bad in roguelikes, where luring enemies to doors is a common tactic.
> Ninja Gaiden also has time limits, which are IMO an underrated method of punishing boring play.
Have you by chance played One Way Heroics? It's a roguelike that adds a time limit. There is a black wall of death that moves east at a constant pace, effectively setting a time constraint for you: keep moving, or perish. You extend your time limit by simply moving forward.
I liked the original Doom and Doom II back in the day. But it seems that I played them differently than other people, since both the 2016 Doom, and the advice given in this article, eliminates my style of game play entirely. I never played much of the 2016 Doom game as a result – it just wasn’t fun for me. I can certainly accept that it deserved the acclaim it got, since it allowed the gameplay which other people experienced with the original Doom. But not my gameplay style.
The article talks about “If I want my friend to fight in the arena” and gives “One way path, with the drop down” as one possible solution. I absolutely abhor arena fights, especially with auto-closing doors or a drop down. I would always try to trigger as few enemies as possible, and would always retreat to fight them safely if possible. Why would you design levels which makes it impossible to play in this style, if some people prefer it? Why would you design a level to force a specific play style, even though they might not enjoy it?
>>Why would you design levels which makes it impossible to play in this style, if some people prefer it? Why would you design a level to force a specific play style, even though they might not enjoy it?
For the same reason someone designing a sports car will make the suspension super stiff - because they want to achieve a specific goal with their design. My grandmother would hate driving such a car as it would be uncomfortable for her, but it might be an acceptable trade-off for those looking for a specific type of experience. If you're not enjoying a specific type of game design then it simply means that the game isn't for you - and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
> Why would you design a level to force a specific play style, even though they might not enjoy it?
Personally I enjoy being challenged in my playstyle. I don't particularly abhor arena fights, but I'm a minmaxer by nature so if the game designer leaves the possibility of a boring fight open I will probably take it.
They're just forcing people like me into challenges.
That said, closing doors/drops in 2019 are just lazy design.
Most people like to play optimally, but also like fun gameplay, and the gameplay you describe tends to get boring since it is very repetitive and ignores the level and monster design almost completely (explore until you find monster, retreat to safety, attack until everything dead, repeat until game ends).
The majority of people would find that play style very boring (I would've thought everyone, before seeing your comment) and there's a class of problems in game design where the most fun way to play and the most effective way to play diverge. So maybe you have to make some assumptions about what "the most fun way" means, but you do so in hopes that players don't have to feel conflicted about it.
> Why would you design levels which makes it impossible to play in this style, if some people prefer it?
Whatever design decisions are made, there's always tradeoffs. If they really wanted to double-down on a particular style of gameplay they'll want to design everything in the game around that.
> Why would you design levels which makes it impossible to play in this style, if some people prefer it? Why would you design a level to force a specific play style, even though they might not enjoy it?
Because trying to design a thing that can be used by anyone in any way possible is the recipe for disaster.
I loved Doom and Doom II growing up -- no game has had more influence on this hobby or me as a person. But I never got much into Doom 2016, and I never could put my finger on why -- until now. So thanks
I believe most like playing intelligently. The goal of the level design shouldn’t be to make the intelligent move less rewarding, but to make the boring move less intelligent. So I kind of disagree with the offered solutions. A more modern set of solutions might be threats pursuing from the rear that make backtracking riskier than pushing forward, mobility or offensive options that favor aggressive moves over defensive moves, or (and perhaps I may only dream) non Euclidean level design such that moving backwards is actually a different area.
Situational awareness in competitive FPS is very impressive. I want to know what it looks like in non Euclidean space where assumptions about positioning get an order of magnitude more difficult.
> offensive options that favor aggressive moves over defensive moves
Doom (2016) did this fairly well. It had a "glory kill" system, where getting very close to an enemy after doing a bit of damage to it would let you finish it off, and guarantee that it'd drop health for you. It also had a special melee weapon which would guarantee ammo drops when used. Then it also had mostly non-hitscan attacks by enemies, so you could dodge most attacks.
This all combined to make a legitimately sensible strategy when low on health and ammo be running in a zig-zag at enemies, and effectively punished you for hanging back and trying to hide behind static cover.
An interesting flipside of the door problem is what experience is the mapmaker envisioning? In his first example, why is the default assumption that a player would WANT to enter a map full of enemies?
Usually this comes from a half-remembered fun of perfectly balanced battles, surrounded on all sides but managing to wade through them. There is an interesting parallel to game motivations and fiction plotting: the character needs motivation to advance into uncomfortable situations, either pushed from behind or pulled by desire. When you think along those terms, everything else falls into place naturally.
I've found enemies in shooters to be really weird just idling until you show up in their vincinity. They should know you're there and be coming for you or hold defensive positions. Or they could be unaware and unprepared, running for cover and their guns when they see you.
That was twenty years ago. Reading this article made me wonder whether it's still the same today. On second though it's probably about offering a game that allows people to shoot enemies in a satisfactory way. Having enemies too smart wouldn't allow killing hundreds of them because they'd get you first.
In linear single player games lowering the cost of failure is a powerful way to encourage aggressive play. Games like Super Meatboy don't even make the player wait after death, encouraging the player to keep trying immediately.
In multiplayer games, looping maps discourage tentative play. Remain in one space too long and get flanked.
I like the way World of Tanks discourages cautious play with scouting and artillery
Exploiting choke points to optimise your tactical positioning is a recurring trope. Some games just expect you to do that anyway. As mrob mentioned [0], roguelikes are notorious for this; but I wouldn't call that bad. It's more a matter of taste. Particularly in roguelikes, you'll also encounter situations where the tactical advantage is subverted by enemies that can teleport or spawn minions behind you.
One common, but somewhat clunky countermeasure is to start the fight only once you're inside an arena and lock down the exits until the adversaries are defeated. It's present in many genres, from metroidvanias to ostensibly tactical action (e.g. the Metal Gear Solid series).
In a Quake-style FPS, having power-ups not just available, but regularly re-spawning in exposed locations is a tried and true mechanic that maintains an exhilarating ballet between risk and reward. But how could one translate the elegant flow of this gameplay loop to a more realistic (or less artificially 'gamey') setting? As Andrew says in the article, you could make more linear and scripted encounters. Which is fine for story-driven games, but limits player agency.
If you'd prefer more organic, emergent game-play, there are other options. Instead of initiating combat only upon the player approaching a set piece, opening a monster closet, or crossing a trigger, you can instruct enemy AI to patrol the potential avenues a stealthy player might take and guard the choke points a speed-runner might attempt to barrel through. From there, you can temper the utility of the player retreating. There could be speedy mobs you wouldn't want to turn your back on. Level design that enables flanking — implement a nav mesh that guides your agents to split between chasing the player down and heading her off at the pass.
But none of that is objectively superior to more predictable fights. Nor is it guaranteed to to be perceived as more enjoyable than comparatively random encounters. Ultimately, what you really should avoid is a ruleset that keeps players from having fun because the interesting game play loops you intended to happen end up being trumped by dominant strategies that are obviously better for approaching the victory condition, but more boring and tedious to execute.
The actual problem isn't with players figuring out how to exploit doorways. It's rather that moment when they resign to repeating the same move ad nauseam.
This reminds me a bit about Christopher Alexander’s work on architecture and designing living spaces — as places that shape the potential of human social and emotional interaction.
Alexander’s pattern language work in architecture came to greatly influence human interaction design and object oriented programming pattern designs.
Nuclear Throne solved this problem by having enemies drop health and ammo pickups which expire really fast. So if you stay at the door and keep taking potshots, you'll just run out of ammo. The only way is to rush in, shoot, dodge and pick up stuff at the same time.
The author's solutions involved making the open arena more inviting, but another possibility is instead making the hallway less inviting. Maybe an enemy that appears behind you in the hallway, pushing you forward. Or damaging floors, or a laser, or conveyor belt, or something.
There's a very simple Android game called Very Angry Robots, where you negotiate maze-like levels filled with robots trying to kill you. The robots aren't very clever, so you could clear any level by taking it slowly. Except that there's a slow-moving but indestructible robot which can phase through walls, which enters the level if you're there for too long.
Oh man, the Shrieker in the Phogoth boss room entry hallway on a void burn nightfall! (Destiny, I'm sure most anyone who played it will know the scenario). Amazing game and does all things mentioned in this article at times.
Article gets the perspective completely wrong. A space has meaning because a mind interacts with it. If you see the player as the only mind in a single-player game, then go make design hurdles and obstacles like an olympic sport. But videogames can have fake AI minds.
If you design a room from the perspective of a dog that needs to maximize it's needs/wants/goals/skill/desire, from the perspective of it's mind, then designing terrain so that the dog can pursue those goals in a way that is fun for the player and for "the dog" is much more intuitive. The only conflict you need to focus on is the intersection between the dog's goals and the player's story-line through the world.
Presuming your game is based on combat, then designing the space so the dog can maximize (or just play) with it's abilities and perceptions in a fight and making the room play in fun way becomes more straight forward. You look at the room you are building from the perspective of 4 paws on the floor and build a nice overhang or a cheekily placed box so that when the dog breaks it's normal goals to pursue the player, the most common response from the player (look at it, or whatever) will be intersected or guided by a fun piece of world matter.
There is nearly no meaning in his world, it exists only to express the skill of playing a game with no minds, so an emphasis on map control and resources control becomes more important than interacting with a meaningful behaviour the game actors produce.
Reading this article made me think of many of the boss encounters in the first Destiny. Levels were usually a long, multi part corridor for the first half and a bullet sponge boss at the end. Many of the boss arenas were poorly designed with so many spawn points that most cover was nearly ineffective. So the optimal game play was to stand in the entry way, funnel trash mobs into the entry and kill them, go out and shot the boss for a bit until the next wave of trash spawned, retreat to the entrance and repeat. They did get better with design and started dropping you into arenas to remove the doorway.
I think the designers did fill the arenas with these mechanics to make them interesting. But so many of the main objectives included a bullet sponge enemy, that while you were addressing the objective new trash mobs would spawn in unpredictable places, and usually more than one wave would spawn during the objective. This made most of the cover feel worthless. Instead it was just as viable to fly around with you jet pack or super jump, keep moving, and hope to dodge random enemy fire.
To be frank, I thought this article would be discussing the 'other' door problem, which arises in multiplayer scenarios. It's also called 'first to the button' (or post or flag).
The basic premise is: there's a button on the wall and two players are running toward it, one has higher frame rate the other has lower latency. Which one wins?
It's a problem that's been around forever & I assume it's taught at uni these days. Ironically, I didn't find much on Google (nor gamasutra), here's a similar (but not exact) real world prob: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6241377/multiplayer-whit...
I couldn’t find a recording of the GDC 2019 talk about non linear level design the article mentions. Anyone know why GDC doesn’t post all talks online but rather uploads a subset of talks seemingly at random?
I recognise the situation but I've always considered it part of the gameplay. I mean, how else would you play when the enemies are tough?
In nearly any shooter you will soon learn that if you run into an open space carelessly you're likely to trigger lots of monsters/enemies at once and that means you're going to suffer from it. How do real-life special forces infiltrate a building with armed enemies? Very carefully, and with lots of cover.
Similarly, in a game you want to kill the enemies in small batches, ideally one by one, to minimise the risk of getting too much damage. And isn't the point of an FPS to map the whole level, corner by corner, without taking too much damage and successfully killing enemies until none are left?
You can balance taking damage with trying to speed up the game if you don't feel like going slow and secure. And you will learn places where it is worth taking a bit of damage to obtain more benefits. That's what you will be continuously balancing as a player, depending on your mood and how well you've been playing so far, and that's one element to it.
Playing the level the first time generally means slow and conservative gameplay. Further sessions in the same level will obviously make the player make more educated tactical choices. A good level will only reveal itself over multiple rounds of gameplay, and ultimately remain a good level.
In fact, tricks to prevent the player from finding cover by doorways or other obstacles are usually just irritating. You know it's going to be a hard battle in that big room ahead, and you know you can't back out to relative safety after dropping down to the lower level from that higher-level balcony you're supposed to use to enter the room. In all battles you want to have, at your disposal, some nearby place that you can retreat to, if you want, if you're low on armour or otherwise beaten down. If you're doing well you are likely to be impatient enough to stick with the safe routine by the doorway. This will let the player balance how conservatively he wants to play at any given time.
It's good to force the player to move around, though. Sprinkling ammo and health-ups around the level in small batches helps. A traditional scheme is to make the player fight for optional aids: going down a passage to get the big health pack or more ammo also means risking hitpoints and using nearly as much existing ammo to compensate. If you play good, you'll be rewarded with more than you had before. If you play bad, you just make things worse without getting any further in the level. But this shouldn't be used as an excuse to eradicate the locations of relative safety such as doorways that are really handy indeed when you need them.
Instead of forcing the player to fight without cover your level is much better off by being of non-linear nature in the first place, allowing the player to roam to any direction and choosing which sections to take out first and which accompanying enemies to trigger in each location, because that also gives enemies some routes to wander behind the player's back. Some of the enemies can be made to hear fighting and start finding their way to the player while others can be kept to wait until they see the player. The unscripted arrival of extra enemies wandering about will make the eventual game dynamic much more random and convoluted, and opens more choices for the player to make. For example, "go through the easy wing to find yourself in more trouble at some point later" vs "start taking the hard enemies down first with less ammo to avoid the level collapsing into a hellhole later".
Any level should try to maximize the player's ability to balance between different tactics. Sometimes the player wants to finish off quickly, sometimes he wants to kill each and every enemy and collect all power-ups and secrets. A level can become totally different based on how it's played, and a good level doesn't force that "how".
[+] [-] mrob|6 years ago|reply
Of the proposed solutions: cover, hidden information, and enemy leashing are only obfuscating the low-risk path, not actually removing it. A good player is still rewarded for boring play, e.g. bouncing grenades at the leashed enemies.
Rewarding risk-taking is a good solution, but hard to implement in a FPS because there are only so many rewards you can give.
One-way paths are criticized for breaking exploration, but I think it's possible to get the benefits of them while still allowing exploration. Consider Ninja Gaiden for the NES. It spawns enemies when you cross certain thresholds, and crucially it does this every time you cross them, even if you already defeated the enemies. This punishes retreat by undoing any progress you made. You're forced to take risks, and it's IMO a better game because of it.
Some people call Ninja Gaiden unfair, but I think that's because they didn't understand the mechanic. You could get the same benefits while making it easier to understand, and more fair feeling, e.g.:
* Clearly mark the spawn triggers
* Visually show the triggers activating, e.g. with particle effects flying from them to the enemy spawn points
* Don't let the enemies harm the player immediately after spawning, so the player has time to react.
* Cap the number of active enemies and the spawn rate from each spawn trigger (Ninja Gaiden has sprite limits, but you can still produce absurd-looking spawn patterns by repeatedly crossing the trigger point).
Ninja Gaiden also has time limits, which are IMO an underrated method of punishing boring play. Time limits aren't fashionable in modern games, but I think they should be brought back. They're compatible with exploration by including hidden bonus time powerups.
[+] [-] grawprog|6 years ago|reply
Also, i'm fairly certain it had more to do with the way the nes held the screens and enemy objects in memory than an intentional choice. Most games on the nes had respawning enemies once you returned to a screen. And after going through the source code for metroid, it's simply because of memory limitations.
https://www.metroid-database.com/source-code/
The ninja gaiden developers took advantage of this by placing enemies in the most frustrating positions possible. I've beat all three of the originals a few times and i grew up playing the hell out of ninja gaiden 2, but that enemy placement is sadistic for the sake of it.
[+] [-] teddyh|6 years ago|reply
I remember playing the entirety of Doom, and IIRC, Doom II, in a careful, methodical manner, and I never found it “boring”.
[+] [-] dmoy|6 years ago|reply
Ah ha yes my thoughts exactly while I read the article. I'm not throwing away an hour of procedurally generated airplane time-wasting fun by walking all the way into that room, doorway is just fine for me.
The other thought I had was that old America's Army game. When actually played "correctly" it was extremely slow paced and "boring". It wasn't usually doorways (honestly doorways were more exciting because you actually had some suspense about the doors &corners hiding aspect). Rather it was just hiding in bushes and waiting to move until someone far back told you where the sniper(s) was looking and if it was safe to bolt to the next bush. For like 20 minutes, which was an eon considering if you died at the beginning of the round you had nothing to do, and e.g. CS rounds were like 2 minutes.
[+] [-] hinkley|6 years ago|reply
At the beginning of my career I toyed with the idea of specializing in game AI but decided I didn't want to write games for a living. I didn't entirely like what games were doing to my friends.
I recall that Halo 2 made a big deal out of the fact that part of compiling the game maps included putting metadata in about terrain and cover, which is why some of the mobs would hide behind crates when wounded. You had to play hide and seek with them the same way they had to do with you. I'd really like more of this. In theory these bad guys have been in this area for a long time. Of course they should use the terrain to their advantage.
And as you mentioned about lobbing grenades around corner, the reverse should also be true. If one grenade blew up in this spot nothing is stopping another one from coming. You should avoid that area for a while, and move to where you can shoot anyone who comes into it.
But I think the real problem is this Rambo model of games. In reality, a single assailant against a large number of armed defenders should never be able to attack their way into a base. They should be pinned down by the occupying forces until the ammo runs out. You could sneak in, but you can't just show up with a rifle or machine gun and get anywhere. But aside from the possible solution of harvesting comedy gold from this trope, this reality based model would be really, really boring.
[+] [-] anewone|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] munificent|6 years ago|reply
This is something I've really struggled with in my own roguelike where despite spending a ton of time on interesting procedural level generation and somewhat sophisticated monster AI, the gameplay often devolves to:
1. Peek out of a corridor until one monster notices you.
2. Retreat back into corridor where monster follows.
3. Dispatch.
4. Goto 1.
It's just not that fun. I think the real core game design issue this highlights, that crops up in a lot of places is when the optimal play style is not an enjoyable play style. It puts players in an unfun position of having to deliberately play "worse" to have more fun, but they feel like they're "cheating" the game or forced to do more meta-cognition than they want.
Here's some ideas I've had for my roguelike to try to address this (most of which I haven't had a chance to implement yet):
1. Put more cover and interesting decor inside rooms so that there are more interesting tactics available in there than in corridors and so that heroes don't get surrounded as much. In particular, half-cover tiles that can't be walked through be permit range weapons to go over aid the hero if they have a ranged attack and monsters don't because then they can pick off monsters while not being attacked in return.
2. Give monsters the ability to pick up or destroy loot. So if you see some treasure in the room the clock is ticking to get it before the monsters do.
3. Give monsters a "home" tile that they try to stay near. So they won't chase you too far into a corridor.
4. Make monsters wake up other nearby monsters.
5. Make monsters smart enough to not pursue the hero if other monsters aren't also chasing.
6. Give the hero more area effect attacks. This means they are less effective in corridors. This is one I really like and have implemented. In particular, I gave each weapon category a special attack that will hit multiple monsters across a couple of tiles. But that only works if there is enough open space to take advantage of it. The good thing about this is that instead of preventing (through smarter AI) or punishing (through things like closing doors before the player) the corridor strategy, it instead rewards going into open spaces.
[+] [-] dkarl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doctorpangloss|6 years ago|reply
As an alternative, consider that many of the best maps in games (1) were authored by the players/community and (2) had a competitive market (like choosable servers). Eg Dust 2 and the original DoTA map.
A poor comparison, yes, but you’ll learn from the design of big community competitive FPS maps. There are lots of ways to improve encounter design in “classic” FPSs. Or maybe just the process of building the level needs to change.
[+] [-] runevault|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomc1985|6 years ago|reply
If the player is enjoying themself exploiting these attributes, then how is it boring? Is it boring to the spectator? If so, what does that say about the act of playing a game?
[+] [-] dkersten|6 years ago|reply
On the other hand, most games with time limits these days, the time limits drive me away. They can be done well, but IMHO its rare and typically I prefer boring gameplay to being artificially limited by a timer. To me, timers are less fun and an overly long combat slog. Having said that, you can create less artificial-feeling timers, which I'm largely ok with (for example, an NPC buddy's health bar is essentially a timer, although NPC buddies have their own problems).
[+] [-] emasirik|6 years ago|reply
> Ninja Gaiden also has time limits, which are IMO an underrated method of punishing boring play.
Have you by chance played One Way Heroics? It's a roguelike that adds a time limit. There is a black wall of death that moves east at a constant pace, effectively setting a time constraint for you: keep moving, or perish. You extend your time limit by simply moving forward.
[+] [-] teddyh|6 years ago|reply
The article talks about “If I want my friend to fight in the arena” and gives “One way path, with the drop down” as one possible solution. I absolutely abhor arena fights, especially with auto-closing doors or a drop down. I would always try to trigger as few enemies as possible, and would always retreat to fight them safely if possible. Why would you design levels which makes it impossible to play in this style, if some people prefer it? Why would you design a level to force a specific play style, even though they might not enjoy it?
[+] [-] gambiting|6 years ago|reply
For the same reason someone designing a sports car will make the suspension super stiff - because they want to achieve a specific goal with their design. My grandmother would hate driving such a car as it would be uncomfortable for her, but it might be an acceptable trade-off for those looking for a specific type of experience. If you're not enjoying a specific type of game design then it simply means that the game isn't for you - and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
[+] [-] kaoD|6 years ago|reply
Personally I enjoy being challenged in my playstyle. I don't particularly abhor arena fights, but I'm a minmaxer by nature so if the game designer leaves the possibility of a boring fight open I will probably take it.
They're just forcing people like me into challenges.
That said, closing doors/drops in 2019 are just lazy design.
[+] [-] devit|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _bxg1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesrcole|6 years ago|reply
Whatever design decisions are made, there's always tradeoffs. If they really wanted to double-down on a particular style of gameplay they'll want to design everything in the game around that.
[+] [-] phkahler|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golergka|6 years ago|reply
Because trying to design a thing that can be used by anyone in any way possible is the recipe for disaster.
[+] [-] tomc1985|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b_tterc_p|6 years ago|reply
Situational awareness in competitive FPS is very impressive. I want to know what it looks like in non Euclidean space where assumptions about positioning get an order of magnitude more difficult.
[+] [-] kemayo|6 years ago|reply
Doom (2016) did this fairly well. It had a "glory kill" system, where getting very close to an enemy after doing a bit of damage to it would let you finish it off, and guarantee that it'd drop health for you. It also had a special melee weapon which would guarantee ammo drops when used. Then it also had mostly non-hitscan attacks by enemies, so you could dodge most attacks.
This all combined to make a legitimately sensible strategy when low on health and ammo be running in a zig-zag at enemies, and effectively punished you for hanging back and trying to hide behind static cover.
[+] [-] lubujackson|6 years ago|reply
Usually this comes from a half-remembered fun of perfectly balanced battles, surrounded on all sides but managing to wade through them. There is an interesting parallel to game motivations and fiction plotting: the character needs motivation to advance into uncomfortable situations, either pushed from behind or pulled by desire. When you think along those terms, everything else falls into place naturally.
[+] [-] lolc|6 years ago|reply
That was twenty years ago. Reading this article made me wonder whether it's still the same today. On second though it's probably about offering a game that allows people to shoot enemies in a satisfactory way. Having enemies too smart wouldn't allow killing hundreds of them because they'd get you first.
[+] [-] patsplat|6 years ago|reply
In multiplayer games, looping maps discourage tentative play. Remain in one space too long and get flanked.
I like the way World of Tanks discourages cautious play with scouting and artillery
[+] [-] n3k5|6 years ago|reply
One common, but somewhat clunky countermeasure is to start the fight only once you're inside an arena and lock down the exits until the adversaries are defeated. It's present in many genres, from metroidvanias to ostensibly tactical action (e.g. the Metal Gear Solid series).
In a Quake-style FPS, having power-ups not just available, but regularly re-spawning in exposed locations is a tried and true mechanic that maintains an exhilarating ballet between risk and reward. But how could one translate the elegant flow of this gameplay loop to a more realistic (or less artificially 'gamey') setting? As Andrew says in the article, you could make more linear and scripted encounters. Which is fine for story-driven games, but limits player agency.
If you'd prefer more organic, emergent game-play, there are other options. Instead of initiating combat only upon the player approaching a set piece, opening a monster closet, or crossing a trigger, you can instruct enemy AI to patrol the potential avenues a stealthy player might take and guard the choke points a speed-runner might attempt to barrel through. From there, you can temper the utility of the player retreating. There could be speedy mobs you wouldn't want to turn your back on. Level design that enables flanking — implement a nav mesh that guides your agents to split between chasing the player down and heading her off at the pass.
But none of that is objectively superior to more predictable fights. Nor is it guaranteed to to be perceived as more enjoyable than comparatively random encounters. Ultimately, what you really should avoid is a ruleset that keeps players from having fun because the interesting game play loops you intended to happen end up being trumped by dominant strategies that are obviously better for approaching the victory condition, but more boring and tedious to execute.
The actual problem isn't with players figuring out how to exploit doorways. It's rather that moment when they resign to repeating the same move ad nauseam.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20663044
[+] [-] hosh|6 years ago|reply
Alexander’s pattern language work in architecture came to greatly influence human interaction design and object oriented programming pattern designs.
[+] [-] cousin_it|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ISL|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcphage|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dave7|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] friendlybus|6 years ago|reply
If you design a room from the perspective of a dog that needs to maximize it's needs/wants/goals/skill/desire, from the perspective of it's mind, then designing terrain so that the dog can pursue those goals in a way that is fun for the player and for "the dog" is much more intuitive. The only conflict you need to focus on is the intersection between the dog's goals and the player's story-line through the world.
Presuming your game is based on combat, then designing the space so the dog can maximize (or just play) with it's abilities and perceptions in a fight and making the room play in fun way becomes more straight forward. You look at the room you are building from the perspective of 4 paws on the floor and build a nice overhang or a cheekily placed box so that when the dog breaks it's normal goals to pursue the player, the most common response from the player (look at it, or whatever) will be intersected or guided by a fun piece of world matter.
There is nearly no meaning in his world, it exists only to express the skill of playing a game with no minds, so an emphasis on map control and resources control becomes more important than interacting with a meaningful behaviour the game actors produce.
[+] [-] dexwiz|6 years ago|reply
I think the designers did fill the arenas with these mechanics to make them interesting. But so many of the main objectives included a bullet sponge enemy, that while you were addressing the objective new trash mobs would spawn in unpredictable places, and usually more than one wave would spawn during the objective. This made most of the cover feel worthless. Instead it was just as viable to fly around with you jet pack or super jump, keep moving, and hope to dodge random enemy fire.
[+] [-] cmroanirgo|6 years ago|reply
The basic premise is: there's a button on the wall and two players are running toward it, one has higher frame rate the other has lower latency. Which one wins?
It's a problem that's been around forever & I assume it's taught at uni these days. Ironically, I didn't find much on Google (nor gamasutra), here's a similar (but not exact) real world prob: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6241377/multiplayer-whit...
[+] [-] localcdn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anthrojikolp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErikAugust|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yason|6 years ago|reply
In nearly any shooter you will soon learn that if you run into an open space carelessly you're likely to trigger lots of monsters/enemies at once and that means you're going to suffer from it. How do real-life special forces infiltrate a building with armed enemies? Very carefully, and with lots of cover.
Similarly, in a game you want to kill the enemies in small batches, ideally one by one, to minimise the risk of getting too much damage. And isn't the point of an FPS to map the whole level, corner by corner, without taking too much damage and successfully killing enemies until none are left?
You can balance taking damage with trying to speed up the game if you don't feel like going slow and secure. And you will learn places where it is worth taking a bit of damage to obtain more benefits. That's what you will be continuously balancing as a player, depending on your mood and how well you've been playing so far, and that's one element to it.
Playing the level the first time generally means slow and conservative gameplay. Further sessions in the same level will obviously make the player make more educated tactical choices. A good level will only reveal itself over multiple rounds of gameplay, and ultimately remain a good level.
In fact, tricks to prevent the player from finding cover by doorways or other obstacles are usually just irritating. You know it's going to be a hard battle in that big room ahead, and you know you can't back out to relative safety after dropping down to the lower level from that higher-level balcony you're supposed to use to enter the room. In all battles you want to have, at your disposal, some nearby place that you can retreat to, if you want, if you're low on armour or otherwise beaten down. If you're doing well you are likely to be impatient enough to stick with the safe routine by the doorway. This will let the player balance how conservatively he wants to play at any given time.
It's good to force the player to move around, though. Sprinkling ammo and health-ups around the level in small batches helps. A traditional scheme is to make the player fight for optional aids: going down a passage to get the big health pack or more ammo also means risking hitpoints and using nearly as much existing ammo to compensate. If you play good, you'll be rewarded with more than you had before. If you play bad, you just make things worse without getting any further in the level. But this shouldn't be used as an excuse to eradicate the locations of relative safety such as doorways that are really handy indeed when you need them.
Instead of forcing the player to fight without cover your level is much better off by being of non-linear nature in the first place, allowing the player to roam to any direction and choosing which sections to take out first and which accompanying enemies to trigger in each location, because that also gives enemies some routes to wander behind the player's back. Some of the enemies can be made to hear fighting and start finding their way to the player while others can be kept to wait until they see the player. The unscripted arrival of extra enemies wandering about will make the eventual game dynamic much more random and convoluted, and opens more choices for the player to make. For example, "go through the easy wing to find yourself in more trouble at some point later" vs "start taking the hard enemies down first with less ammo to avoid the level collapsing into a hellhole later".
Any level should try to maximize the player's ability to balance between different tactics. Sometimes the player wants to finish off quickly, sometimes he wants to kill each and every enemy and collect all power-ups and secrets. A level can become totally different based on how it's played, and a good level doesn't force that "how".