Game Development

hamgamedevlist | 28 Dec 2003 15:50

Re: Gamedevlists-design digest, Vol 1 #67 - 6 msgs

> From: "Neil Stewart" <neil <at> r0x0rz.com>
> Subject: RE: [GD-Design] Speed kills

> helpers. By selecting the right number of helpers, novices can give
> themselves just the right number of things to deal with, so that they can
> drive a good lap, at full game speed, without becoming overloaded and
> confused.
> 
> You might argue at this point that this is no different to changing the
> number of hits it takes to kill a monster or similar game rule changes, but
> I think it is. Rather than changing the physics of the world or giving the
> player more ammo/health, we leave the game world alone and simply help the
> player overcome his limit on the number of things he can deal with at once.
> In this sense, it is more similar to the global speed change than it is to
> arbitrary game rule changes.
> ...
> You also don't have to limit yourself to "input helpers" like the Formula 1
> game. Anything which removes conscious thinking from the player will help
> him deal with more things at once so, for example, Quake could have a "map
> helper" that shows the player where he is and gives him advance warning of
> armour/weapons that are about to spawn, both things that would take up quite
> a lot of his "conscious runtime" if he were to do them himself.
> 

The "Cyborg" approach to game difficulty :)...amake use of the human-player / 
in-game avatar interface to artificially enhance (or degrade) the abilities
of the "player" (as observed by other players in the game - i.e. the
composition of human and avatar).

For followups, people might want to check out MUD / MMOG / RPG discussion

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Neil Stewart | 28 Dec 2003 17:34

RE: Re: Gamedevlists-design digest, Vol 1 #67 - 6 msgs

> Most MMOG's hover almost at a on most aspects, so that your 
> enjoyment is tightly bound to how long you spend playing the 
> MMOG (and hence how much subscription revenue the owner 
> extracts from you).

I think multiplayer games (RPG or otherwise) have a much more difficult
decision to make in this area because, if you allow novices to compete with
experts by using "implants" (to continue the cyborg analogy), the experts
will want some kind of retribution; for example, a handicap on the final
score for those using implants, based on the level of implants used.

So you've bought yourself the ability to level the playing field, but you're
paying for it in terms of a more complex scoring system. This might not be
all that bad, but it's worth keeping in mind when adopting something like
this.

It is conceivable that you can devise the implants such that an expert can
get better results by doing everything manually if he is skilled enough to
do so. The example of automatic gear changing is a good one; racing games
generally make the automatic changes slightly less optimal than well-timed
manual ones, so experts can achieve slightly better acceleration. If you
manage to make all your implants have this property, then you could have
novices and experts playing together without any problems. The experts would
probably still win, but the game would be more competitive.

I'm sure a lot of people will argue that the simplest way to solve
difficulty in multiplayer games is to keep people of wildly differing
abilities apart, which seems to work well on Xbox Live.

In single player games, no-one is being "cheated" (unless you are comparing

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Cruise | 2 Jan 2004 01:42

Re: Re: Gamedevlists-design digest, Vol 1 #67 - 6 msgs

Neil Stewart wrote:
> It is conceivable that you can devise the implants such that an expert can
> get better results by doing everything manually if he is skilled enough to
> do so. The example of automatic gear changing is a good one; racing games
> generally make the automatic changes slightly less optimal than well-timed
> manual ones, so experts can achieve slightly better acceleration. If you
> manage to make all your implants have this property, then you could have
> novices and experts playing together without any problems. The experts would
> probably still win, but the game would be more competitive.

Agreed - this method can be extended to lots of things. Auto-aiming, for 
example, can be made somewhat innaccurate (always aims for the torso, 
perhaps), so that a good player with manual aiming still has an 
advantage. Auto-blocking in a beat-em-up, but that doesn't fully prevent 
the damage (or, better, prevent more damage the better the timing of the 
block - sliding scales rather than on-offs are always better).

Generally, having a choice of easy-but-not-so-effective or 
hard-but-more-successful abilities is an excellent way to level the 
playng field.

> I'm sure a lot of people will argue that the simplest way to solve
> difficulty in multiplayer games is to keep people of wildly differing
> abilities apart, which seems to work well on Xbox Live.

The trouble with that is players who go up a level suddenly go from 
"being amongst the best" to "being one of the worst", which can be a 
nasty and unpleasant jump.

> In single player games, no-one is being "cheated" (unless you are comparing

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