Sesame Street
Radix
Join Date: 2005-01-10 Member: 34654Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2005-01-10 Member: 34654Members, Constellation
This is the fad in game design right now and I explicitly avoid games like TF2, Super Smash Bros Brawl, Jedi Academy, WoW, etc. because they generally tailor the fun elements of the game to 8-year-olds, and have as low a skill cap as possible. Now, there's nothing wrong with Sesame Street, or with 8-year-olds, but I don't care to watch it anymore as I've outgrown it.
This system is objectively less effective than information hiding wherein a game contains a great deal of depth, but obscures it from all but the most motivated players (Gish did this a little with secret areas, and SSBM did it a lot with A attacks, L cancelling, Wavedash, and Teching - Brawl took most of that out of course, in keeping with the Sesame Street trend).
The point here is that a game should be interesting long after a player buys it, even if that player is intelligent, but it needs to hide just how interesting it is, or it'll be too intimidating to new players. Clever UI implementation is one way of accomplishing this, matchmaking (not balancing) where extreme differences in skill level are simply disallowed and not seen at all would be another way. With all the posts in general I thought it'd be a good time to expound on why matchmaking is important - and I definitely hope the devs implement it sooner rather than later because if it's implemented too late players will start raging due to unbalanced teams.
Obviously very few people are going to be good enough to cause that for a couple of weeks (maybe months) after release.
I know it's tempting to want to build a game with crit rockets and frost shock, or a total lack of airspeed (rather than just bunny hopping) when that seems to be what everyone else is doing, but it doesn't need to be that simplistic in order to sell a great deal of copies. And at the end of the day, a simplistic "easy to learn easy to master" game is never going to be a classic like I hope NS2 one day becomes.
This system is objectively less effective than information hiding wherein a game contains a great deal of depth, but obscures it from all but the most motivated players (Gish did this a little with secret areas, and SSBM did it a lot with A attacks, L cancelling, Wavedash, and Teching - Brawl took most of that out of course, in keeping with the Sesame Street trend).
The point here is that a game should be interesting long after a player buys it, even if that player is intelligent, but it needs to hide just how interesting it is, or it'll be too intimidating to new players. Clever UI implementation is one way of accomplishing this, matchmaking (not balancing) where extreme differences in skill level are simply disallowed and not seen at all would be another way. With all the posts in general I thought it'd be a good time to expound on why matchmaking is important - and I definitely hope the devs implement it sooner rather than later because if it's implemented too late players will start raging due to unbalanced teams.
Obviously very few people are going to be good enough to cause that for a couple of weeks (maybe months) after release.
I know it's tempting to want to build a game with crit rockets and frost shock, or a total lack of airspeed (rather than just bunny hopping) when that seems to be what everyone else is doing, but it doesn't need to be that simplistic in order to sell a great deal of copies. And at the end of the day, a simplistic "easy to learn easy to master" game is never going to be a classic like I hope NS2 one day becomes.
Comments
Also I would like NS to be easy to learn the basics, while hard to learn the epic depth of the game (that is what FPS+RTS is all about baby! )
(One of)Charlie's mantra(s) has always been "easy to learn, hard to master". I don't think that will change for NS2. The devs have always been careful to cater to neither the competitive nor the casual scenes too much.
Moreso, it's important that you hide how *deep* the game is, and the best way to do that I think is with matchmaking, and also by giving players flashy powerful and expensive strategies (B attacks in the SSBM metaphor, turrets and proto in NS) but also creating quick and decisive strategies that are actually more efficient and objectively better <i>when the players are competent</i> so that both the newbies can enjoy turret spam and big flashy graphics that are extremely satisfying to watch, and competitive players can play strategies that just *work* at a much more cost-effective rate for the same basic results.
One caveat is that the flashy dynamics of the game should be easily countered (which is unavoidable seeing as how they resolve after the other more competitive strategies) but <!--coloro:lime--><span style="color:lime"><!--/coloro-->the impressive and flashy game mechanics should require less skill, while the quick and decisive mechanisms should take a lot more effort to pull off, while allowing for a much greater return on skill investment than one of the slower and more impressive mechanics would permit.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
Finally, I'd <b>really</b> reccomend that whoever is on the dev team for gameplay rent or buy super smash brothers melee (brawl is ok but inferior) and jedi outcast 1.02 (the later patches screwed it up) with guns off, and maybe warsow - just to get a feel for how *good* melee (or at least movement-oriented, ala wsw) games are made and how they unfold, what makes them fun, and how that knowledge can be applied to NS2. NS2 is going to be heavily melee just because much of the game hinges on bitey bitey skulks.