Want more problem-solving stories? Here's how Nintendo solved its big open world issue in Zelda: Breath of the Wild - ua-cam.com/video/CZzcVs8tNfE/v-deo.html
The last bullets doing more damage also make it more likely you would kill an enemy just when you needed to reload, making you feel like you barely made it.
@@stigmata_rex That can be accomplished just by having the UI lie to you, 1 square of health at max hp is 10 damage while 1 square of health in middle is 20
its also the inverse of the Street Fighter healthbars where the last of your health looks visually identical but functionally is higher than it looks like, making the player more likely to have a comeback.
I feel like that didn't fix the issue but made it worse tho no? Cuz now the good players will let their magazines run dry to get the dmg boost from last few bullets ON TOP of getting the dmg boost from hitting the perfect skillcheck. Or did they make it so if you hit the perfect skillcheck and got the boosted mag your last few bullets had the same dmg as the rest?
I'm surprised they didn't include a famous one from Silent Hill. The PS1's draw distance was limited, so they covered much of the town in mist. Not only did it make the world feel bigger than what the game could actually show at a time, but as a horror game, it really amped up the suspense and made you curious about what you couldn't see, thereby incentivizing you to get closer.
Mist or fog can help a lot with these things... In vanilla WoW the fog was also much closer, helping the zones feel bigger. Once they increased it (and added flying), the world started feeling much smaller. The initial release of GTA Defective Edition is where this was much more apparent. If you could see Mt Chilliad from every location in San Andres, it feels very small.
The value of the atmosphere that provided (despite being there because of technical limitations) was then proven by the later releases and just how much removing that fog hurt the game.
I wouldn't say that fits the category of this video. This is more about solving gameplay issues that hamper the player experience or designer's vision for the game, not so much glaring technical restraints.
@@IllidanS4 And the fact that you spent 2/3 of your levels running everywhere with far between gryphons help a lot also, once you finally got the horse at 40 you had already explored most of the early zones and later zones halted exploration with more mobs you had to fight to get past while in early zones you could mostly travel through the zone along roads without needing to fight. So there where many tricks together to help make the world feel bigger.
Very true. I’m reminded of how I try to figure out the causes of problems by wildly adjusting variables of the situation in my head and imagining how that changes it, which is basically the broad principle behind #4, for instance. That’s kinda the beauty of these videos, isn’t it? I’m never going to be designing a game, but they sure serve as an amazing sort of thematic lens to understand all sorts of things through about media and ourselves.
I was thinking the same thing, almost every single point made in this videos applies to projects outside of just game development. The lessons from this video are easily carried over to other aspects of media (screenwriting, songwriting, prop making, set design, etc.), they also carry over easily to other industries entirely and the rewards would be just as tangible.
a professor once said that before finding the requirements of a project we have to understand the needs of the user. this is very similar. like, imagine someone asked you to build a lot of shelves. when you ask why they tell you it's for books. then why not use an ebook reader? a lot of the time what we need is not what we think we need, so we have to investigate further and try different solutions.
Iteration is basically codified as one of the best general case solutions in math. The fundamental process is make a guess (or seed) and plug it into your formulas and the output is your new guess, loop until the difference between outputs is sufficiently small. Of course it can fail, either by not converging to a solution, or missing a solution in favor of another depending on the seed value. But its incredibly useful for preditions of non-linear systems like the output of a transistor, diode, or any similar electronics. (Note that resistors, capacitors, and inductors aren't included in this usage) And in the case of math, its very easy to get a computer to do it for you so who cares if it takes 2,000 calculations, a computer can do that in less than a second, way faster than doing it perfectly by hand. But the basic idea is that instead of trying to create the perfect solution kn your first attempt, just try stuff until you find a satisfactory solution. It isn't perfect but you find it way faster and learn alot more in the process. (Iteration is one of my favorite problem solving methods)
The poltergeist situation in Prey reminds me of why the added Goombas to Super Mario Bros. They needed another enemy type to help fill out the roster of the early game levels, but they didn't have much space left on the cartridge. So they made an enemy with comically simple AI (if you can even call it that) and only required one sprite that just flipped horizontally for its walking animation.
Poltergeist really was one of the most memorable enemies in Prey, at least for me. The first time you see objects flying around you really get that fear of the unknown feeling.
Definitely one of the cooler enemies. Only problem is because it's invisible, my friend didn't realize he was being chased. The music and flickering lights clued him in, but because all the previous enemies were corporeal he was looking for a physical enemy. I don't think they should've changed the enemy at all, but it is something to consider.
Was it? I didn't remember its whole existence until this video, while I do remember well all the other enemies. The flying brain thingie, weaver or something, was the most memorable for me for its uniqueness. Even if I don't remember its name.
The technopath was the most memorable for me because the first time I met one, it was in a room full of Operators. He hacked them all and it was not a good time for me lol
Working on Endless Legend back in the day, players could ally with one another, but at the end of the game, only one would win. This caused frustration as they felt everyone in the alliance should be declared the winner. I brought this up with the Sr Producer on the project, who told me we had very little resources in terms of programmers or designers on the project, as most of the studio was working on Endless Space 2 at the time. After considering our options, I suggested, not to make a significant change, but just a little one, aimed specifically at the player. The game checks whether you meet a victory condition. The game checks whether you are in an alliance. If yes to both, it asks you if you want to share your victory. If you select yes, it displays the victory screen to the rest of your team. Allied victoried were in, at the cost of a modal text window.
Interesting. Sounds like the Bungie example with a .2 second change in the sniper rifle's delay between shots. I wonder what sorts of issues came up from having such asymmetrical factions in the game. Like the Cultists of the Eternal End, or Mykara, who only have one city, or the Kapaku, who can only gather food on volcanic terrain. Prior to a few years ago, I mostly played rts games and heard that highly asymmetric factions had to be few in number, otherwise they'd be incredibly unbalanced. I've also heard that 4x/ turn based strategy games can have big changes in them more, since there's more stuff to go through to get something. I think a good example is upgrading units; in most rts games I've played, you build the upgrade building and research +1 to melee attack. When it's done all melee units get +1 to attack. Meanwhile, in the Endless games you have to unlock the ability to mine advanced substances, then research advanced weapons, then create a new template, then either upgrade an existing unit for dust(money) and the advanced resource, or make a new unit for industry and the adv. resource. I hope Endless Dungeon does well.
Endless Legend is my first true 4X game and so it holds a very special place in my heart. Thank you for your work on it, it's a beautiful game! And speaking of it, I am a very supportive player so I would definitely be the one frustrated about the alliance victory screwing over the rest of the alliance.
@@adams13245 We knew balancing Endless Legend would be very tricky, but thankfully we went for a more immersive experience and never really tried to fully balance the game, which would have been a fool's errand. We just made sure the game, and each faction, was fun to play, and played out differently. This didn't please the 0.01% most hardcore MP players who fought each other for dominance... but they weren't our target audience and we couldn't ever satisfy them fully, so we just didn't try! I have left the studio during Endless Dungeon preprod so I know very little about it, but I hope it does well. I looks incredible.
The way I usually think about 6:49 is in terms of upper/lower bounds. Lets say you think/know that 10 mana is too cheap for a spell; its too spammable. You could increase it to 12, but then oh, its still too cheap. So before you knew the answer was somewhere between 11 and infinity, now you know the answer is between 13 and infinity. But if you instead increased it to 25 and realize thats too expensive, well now you actually have a useful upper bound. Overshooting makes it so much easier to fix something in 2 or 3 passes, rather than being stuck trying every single number between your first guess and the right answer.
necroposting about binary searching so a number isn't right, it's too small. double it. still too small? double again. keep doing this and save the last two numbers you get: the one that's too small and the one that's too big. now while your number still isn't right, look at the halfway point. is it too small? replace lower number. is it too high? replace upper number. at some point it'll have to be good. same for numbers that are too large; at first, halve them every step. this is why algorithms are useful to all people, not just programmers; the intuition behind one can help solve other problems that aren't really computer-based.
The Sid Meier thing reminds me of an old engineering trick where, if you don't know the source of a problem between point A and point B, test the spot halfway between them. Then, if the problem exists there, test halfway between there and point A; otherwise test between there and point B. Repeat until you find where the problem originates. Mathematically it's the most efficient method of pinpointing the source. If halving the world had been too drastic, Meier probably would have gone back up to three quarters, and kept dialing it in until he hit the sweet spot.
Git actually automates this with the git bisect command. You tell it a version of your code where it worked and a version where it's broken, and it steps you through testing the revisions in between to find the one where the problem was introduced.
I’ve done this to find the git commit that broke something vague. Among 100s of commits, it’s a good approach if the reproduction is quick and reliable.
My favourite story about solving a problem is when Blizzard wanted to make sure hardcore players didn’t grind for 10+ hours every day and leave other players in the dust. They started with giving XP-penalties after a few hours of gameplay, but after some backlash, they reversed it entirely, giving players XP-boosts that increased based on how long since they last played. Falls very well in line with your 4th point :)
My favorite part is that the "reversal" was just rewording. The actual XP you got before and after were the exact same but players liked it being framed as a reward rather than a penalty.
@@christophersavignon4191 But giving XP boost for not playing in a while isn't inherently a punishment. Someone grinding all that time while other people are logged out ought to still get more XP over extended period of time
@@tappajaav Are you forgetting that the base exp gain was reduced? It's not a boost, never was. And of course it is a punishment. You play more, you get less exp. A negative consequence in response to specific behaviors - that is the very definition of punishment.
@@christophersavignon4191 I don't know the exact numbers regarding this. I just thought it would be reasonable that playing more would yield advancing more in the long run. If it isn't the case then it's pretty silly especially in an MMORPG
I once saw a talk from a developer of Marvel’s Spider-Man for PlayStation speaking about their massive performance challenges. He said something like "it's not a cutscene, it's an animated loading screen". That kind of blew my mind.
@@VideoMask93 reminds me that unfortunately that kind of thing had a negative impact on the gameplay design of bloodborne, where a specific alternative path through the game had to be cut due to performance issues, and because the geometry to the rest of the game was already done, they couldn't figure out how to prolong the walk to it and so the easier way was to just cut the alternative route.
yeah, pretty handy.. if I'm not wrong, i believe it was Rockstar who pioneered the cutscene-loading screen in Max Payne 3, granted the system was at its early stages and also due to hardware limitations, we had to compensate for sometimes long unskippable loading screen.. but nonetheless, i think it was pretty cool when i first encountered this back then when i played the game.. also, the game physics was phenomenal!!
This video really is a great summary of why I love game design so much. There are many times that I tell people that my goal is to be a game designer, and they don't understand what that means. I feel like this video would help people understand why the field is not only important, but captivating. I'm reminded of one of my favorite dev stories, from the Killer Instinct reboot. Jago's healing was seen as a menace to the meta, with a lot of player complaints. The common request was to reduce the amount of health that Jago could heal, or even remove his healing capability entirely (which thankfully the developers saw as an untouchable lever!). The devs followed the advice of "Your players are great at finding problems, but terrible at finding solutions". Rather than simply doing as players requested, they asked themselves *why* the healing was so frustrating. Lead combat designer Adam "Keits" Heart described it as curing the disease, rather than alleviating the symptom. They took 4 months to study Jago, and what they found was, Jago didn't have any bad matchups, and was solid anywhere on the screen. His long range was strong, his short range was strong, and his mid range could transition way too easily into short range via his Wind Kick. So they nerfed Wind Kick, making it punishable on block. Players reacted negatively, but within weeks, the Jago complaints vanished, and updated rankings now gave Jago several bad matchups. This was discussed more in-depth in Hold Back To Block's excellent documentary, "FIGHT ON: The Killer Instinct Story". I recommend it to anyone interested in fighting game design, reboots, and metagame balance. Anyway, excellent video, Mark! Thank you for these. I genuinely think this one might be my new favorite from you. God bless!!
this reminds me of "marvel super heroes" where Wolverine could heal himself, BUT his MAX health would decrease as well, so in the end it would usually take just 50% more damage than normal to finish him off. (less if a powerful attack got through near the end)
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I can vouch for the success of the bubble system in New Sup Wii. My mom, dad, brother, and I would frequently come across tricky sections, so if one person made it through, everyone else would get in a bubble and get popped.
I think this only applies if you are fine with people playing for you. I don’t find it to be thay good of a solution for that reason. In my experience I found people feeling less valuable because they were better off staying in the bubble. It might work for some people, but I’m certain there has to be better ways of doing this.
@@TestTubeGirl These games can played differently, it's good for competitiveness but casually you could let everyone do it. If someone stays in the bubble they just won't have fun so it's up to them
The Mario bubbles also had some hilarious side-effects. My friends and I got in the habit of using the bubbles as an ejector seat to get out of sticky situations. We would frequently find that we ALL bubbled, which caused plenty of laughter and chaos as we bounced frenetically through the levels only to find that we all bubbled and would have to start over.
Currently working on a local multiplayer indie game with a friend, and we've certainly hit similar roadblocks in our design (and still struggle with a few). It's nice to know that even industry professionals with years -- if not decades of experience also sometimes run into a design hiccup that can take a lot of effort to smooth out and resolve.
You guys should check GDC videos. There's plenty of interesting info that developers give out on how they solve problems. Some solutions are surprisingly simple for how elegant they end up!
@@migueeeelet Thanks for the suggestion! We've checked out a few GDC videos in the past, but it's difficult to find resources on how to approach solving our current issues... We've had a lot of trouble expressing information to the players without it being overwhelming, and also managing the camera to show both the players and points of interest during the game (it's shared-screen). Not many games take this exact design approach, so it's difficult to find people who had a similar experience and overcame it...
I feel like most of these can also be applied to context outside of game development. I am not a game dev but looking at these certainly made me think about the problems I have at work. Very interesting!
One of my favorite games of recent years Darkest Dungeon had a problem with players just simply mowing down the front line of enemies causing the back ones to move forward and rendering them useless because of positional placement needed to cast spells/attack. So Red Hook had the genius idea of adding corpses which would serve as temporary placement holders. They would appear if an enemy died but only if it wasn't by a critical attack or damage over time effect.
@@mrwizard5012 This was in Early Access, remember? They felt it was too easy to break the combat system in a game that was supposed to be about always teetering on the brink of ruin and tried to come up with a solution. Game developers don't make changes to spite their players; they make changes in service of their vision of the game, in the hopes of making it better. It is, among other things, what user testing and rapid prototyping are for: finding elements, or the lack thereof, that compromise the intended experience. This kind of story is super common in gamedev circles. Pretty much every game has one. Generally issues like this are caught early in development and squashed before the cement has time to set, but under the Early Access paradigm things solidify faster. Managing player expectations during this time is a task that can easily spiral out of hand. A really common problem is players not looking at something important and potentially getting confused about what to do or where to go. Designers usually solve this by putting in visual elements that draw the player's line of sight -- sometimes subtly (aligning things so that they "point" in a specific direction -- an image composition trick), sometimes not-so-subtly (particle effects, changes in lighting, explosions, camera direction, etc.), and sometimes completely overtly (highlighted areas of the screen, objective markers). One example that comes to mind is from Portal 2, where players were supposed to look at a particular animation (an imploding metal device of some kind) after completing a task, but kept turning around and missing it because there was a slight delay. The solution to this was to add a texture to a nearby object that would catch players' attention: a warning label that said something along the lines of "WARNING: DON'T LOOK AWAY FROM IMPLOSIONS". It worked; players would either pause long enough to notice something was happening or catch the hint and look back.
Great video, I'm glad problem solving has always been a major theme in any of your design analysis videos. Several years ago I studied Game Design and Production as my major, and one of my professors always repeated: "Anyone can come up with ideas, that's not what game design is about, it's about solving problems." I thought I had this idea down at an early stage, I'd always tell myself to make decisions not by creating a solution, but by addressing the underlying issue. About a year ago when I started my current job I realized that... I didn't have this idea down at all. My current design lead hammers it home every single time I reply to a problem impulsively. It's incredible how my design work has improved just by being constantly reminded to understand the problem before creating a solution. For anyone looking to get into game design, this may as well be the best skill to develop at an early stage. Sometimes solving problems can be much more fun than analyzing them, but by neglecting the analysis of all the problems your game might develop, you actually remove many elements of control from development itself, and it can wind up feeling like your design gets... Directionless. Keep asking questions, whenever you can, especially when your colleagues start to respond with "okay mom I get it"
In Gears games, a perfect reload would only boost the damage of used bullets i.e. if you shot 10 of 16 rounds then perfect reload only the first 10 rounds of the 16 round clip get a damage increase. This gives those veteran players more incentive to shoot more rounds before reloading by increasing the overall amount of extra damage per reload.
true they would get the boost from the last few bullets and also the reload in that case, however because this came from directly learning player behavior it works out, since its time sensitive and requires consistency ur just way more likely to want to trigger the reload yourself rather than have it start auto reloading and ur not focused on the mini bar that's why player behavior is why this worked instead of backfired
Just want to add that the Potions made it back in Diablo 3 at release, but with a 30sec cooldown. The health globe system worked great when the game was about killing a bunch of monsters, but then there were bosses and you're no longer killing things which broke the system again. They tried to change it with stats that gave a % life steal on hit as well but changed it to a set number per attack instead, then that got nerfed as well.
"Yeah, but what about bosses" was my first thought there too. The fact that "health/any other goodie on kill" skills aren't just sometimes useless, but are specifically useless when games are generally at their hardest has long been a point of game design frustration. So cool to have a heal or other buff skill that's exclusively useless when I need it most. Sure, some games "solve" that problem by giving bosses infinite minions, but considering how much I HATE endlessly respawning boss minions, that solves the kill skill problem like chopping off your leg solves a stubbed toe. Anyway, if you ask me, a game should either have bosses OR kill skills of any sort, but never both. Personally, I say it's kill skills that should go, as I strongly, STRONGLY prefer effects that trigger on hit rather than kill, such as percentage-based life steal. Not only do they solve the boss problem, but I just prefer rewards on hit (or stun or crit, etc, any offensive mechanic that's applicable throughout the entire course of an enemy's life rather than exactly once at the end) in general.
"Small change of 0.2s" That's massive balance change! 1.4x original cooldown ie. 40% increase. Especially considering a weapon that gets this every cycle.
Take into account that not all players would fire every 0.5 seconds prior to the tweak. I bet many players took longer than 0.7s between shots before that, and so, the unbalancing skill ceiling was lowered for top players, without upsetting the performance of less skilled players. Very elegant solution.
Bruh, Prey's team didn't have time to make a whole new unique enemy model? So they just made an invisible ghost? And not only that, but they made it use the pre-existing physics objects as its weapons?? That's really funny but also kinda genius lmao
Reminds me of how the Mortal Kombat 1 devs avoided programming a new character slot for Reptile. By making the game load Scorpion, turning his color palette green, upping his walk speed, and letting his AI switch between Sub-Zero's moveset, it gave the illusion of being a wholly separate fighter.
I've taught almost exactly this content to people learning business process re-engineering and continuous improvement methodologies for years. These principles are universally applicable to problem solving and your presentation was amazing.
As a TTRPG (Tabletop Role Playing Game) designer, a lot of these methods are ideas we have tried when developing or overhauling systems - anything from weapons and grenades, to what spells a character can cast, to something as specific as "can you attack after spending your entire turn running?". Seeing a lot of our methods being reflected in this video is a great feeling, knowing that we've generally been on the right course for efficient development. I'm going to share this with the rest of the devteam!
Me too, I like how a lot of the concepts can be applied to other projects, It’s just like Miyamoto said, a good solution can solve multiple problems at once
I typically "like" very few videos as I use my liked playlist to revisit interesting topics relevant to what I am currently doing or to simply enjoy a quality video, that being said, I will look over what I have learned here in case I ever come across these situations! Thanks for the video!
One of my favorite stories is not gameplay but in cutscenes. Kingdom Hearts released a game on the GBA. They wanted PS2 Real time cutscenes but, well, it can't do that. Instead, they recorded the cutscenes and turned them into a .gif file that plays at the opening and closing of the game with a synced audio track. Looks fantastic, if a smidge grainy, and takes up so much less space and processing power.
@@somerandombub unfortunately not on hand. I read this like 15 years ago on I THINK KHInsider but could be somewhere else. And right now searching Chain of Memories .gif opening cutscene GBA just gets you either gifs or talking about the script or similar.
4:55 reminds me of a previous video you did, where you pointed out that very often designers succeeded by rewarding players for doing what they wanted, rather than punishing them for deviating.
I work as a Data Engineer which generally is FAR less sophisticated from a programming point of view than game development. It is staggering to me how the very essence of videogame development is about using extremely advanced problem solving skills to make something for entertainment.
I think part of that is that video games are an odd mixture of a piece of art created by science. It needs both halves to function. Movies may seem like this too but the difference is that a camera and an editing program get created by engineers and programmers and then used as a tool by artists to make the product. Or like, a mechanical engineer who created a stove isn't a chef, even if they're key to the process. But in video games the art (some of it at least) and the engineering are the same part
it's really interesting how when presented with the solutions to these problems it seems like it's obvious, but it's not as if I or most could easily come up with the solution when presented with the problem. Really just shows how well these designers handled what are problems that are much harder than many would have assumed.
One of the other great points I thought of when you talked about flipping problems on their heads was the Rested Buff in WoW, which famously was just a mathematical reversal of what had been an exhaustion mechanic. People hated getting a debuff for continuing to play the game, but loved having a little boost for logging out in the right place. The two systems were literally exactly the same system, just presented differently (with the "base xp to level" being shifted behind the scenes to compensate), but elicited wildly different reactions.
Defining the problem is the base of UX / Product Design. You have to spend as much time with understanding the problem (discovery and define phases) as with the solution (develop and delivery phases). Also prototyping and testing are indispensable tools of the development phases. In game design this is even more important as a lots of features only can only be evaluated when you see, feel how they work, or when you see how players react.
This video can help not just solve game design problems, but rather any problems in general. Business, product design, engineering- anything. Great video as always!
The way the gameplay shown relates to what he says is super charming! I love when he says about games being unbalanced and it shows the see-saw in super mario maker 2!
Mark, your ingenious insight to the gaming process and ability to pick and dissect small parts of gaming development always baffles me. Great work, keep it up.
Flip it on it's Head could also be seen in World of Warcraft's early development. Rested EXP, where you get a bonus to experience aftering being logged out in a safe area for a length of time, used to be a punishment system where you got reduced exp for playing too long without logging out in a safe area to rest up. None of the numbers were changed, just the wording of the system to the player.
@@MisogynyMan I actually think it is a good system on paper. Theoretically It helps slow the gap between those that can only play an hour or two a day and those that play for hours on end. I think it is also good from an ethical standpoint to give the players a push to stop playing for a bit.
As always, this was a really helpful and entertaining video! Can we just take a minute to appreciate the level of thought that went into the background scenes Mark chose when talking and describing certain things? Just a few examples: 1:17 "going around in circles" + Link and the dog spinning around, 1:25 "how the best game creators go about solving problems in their design" + Mario and his friends figuring out how to fix the pipe, 13:00 "fixing a problem in one place can create another problem elsewhere" + gameplay from Slipways, where this is literally always a challange for the player. It just fits and makes the video so much more enjoyable! THANK YOU MARK! ♥
One of my favourite changes is in Cyberpunk 2077. The problem: NCPD Scanner Hustles (small combat encounters and light puzzles) were too numerous, boring and amounted to going to each location marked on the map like a Ubisoft open world box checking exercise. The solution: Instead of making all the Hustle's locations marked on the map, they are now only marked when the player is close to them. This spread out the content so it was less repetitive, encouraged exploration and felt like an encounter you stumble across rather than directly seek out. The side effect: It was now much harder to tell which hustles were/weren't completed for the associated achievements. Although those achievements aren't tied to in game rewards as far as I know so it's a minor side effect.
I agree, but also - you can put all NCPD scanner icons on the map back with the filtering system introduced in one of the patches, so if you really want the previous system - you can still have it. Just the default changed (for the better and exactly for the reason you mentioned).
@@domoslaf Didn't know you can revert it with the filters. That's real smart. Means players can opt-in for revealing all the locations if they're doing a completion playthrough but players playing for fun/immersion retain the fun of discovery.
Great video! As an industrial designer myself I found many parallels between these 11 "general" design problems and my work experience. These case studies offer nice tips on how to work on your product to find solutions.
These videos are nearly always universal for most types of games. I love watching these and using concepts to help my board games flesh out that much better!
big thanks for naming every game that appears on the screen in a popup, this is one of the small extra changes which I appreciate very much, because people don't have to scour the comments with the hope of finding someone curious about "what game is at time x:yz?"
One thing I love about games solving problems are the ones that do solve more than one. Mario Odyssey for example, using Captures to take out foes while finishing the challenge you captured the enemy for. It amazes me how well problem solving goes.
You know what makes your video flawless? That it doesn't only cover a subject I'm most interested in, but it also provides wisdom I can use anywhere in other life areas. X
Awesome video! Also wanted to thank you for your cameo in Jacob Geller's most recent piece. It was a pleasant surprise to hear your voice in some of my other game dev edutainment.
We had a situation like this recently on my team's game. We had a system where you could assign your favorite items to d-pad inputs, so you could easily switch between them without going into menus. However, when people played it, they either didn't understand the system, or they just didn't use it as it only really let them access 4 of the 25 or so different kinds of items they had. This meant players were spending a lot of time with menus open, gameplay paused, selecting items. And even the ones who used the quick-select system spent more time in the menu switching what items they had assigned based on the scenario they were in. We did a brainstorm session to try to figure out what options there were to solving the issue. We ended up doing the "make a huge change" option, and completely scrapped the assigning system. Instead, players are able to use L and R to scroll through a small overlay at the bottom of the screen, to switch between items. This had many benefits. For one, it meant players now spent considerably less time in menus, almost not even needing to pause the gameplay at all, which meant more time and focus for the player. It also took advantage of the shoulder buttons, allowing players to still use their thumbs to move and look around and run, while also switching items. Lastly, it simplified the menus a lot more, as one of the lingering issues we had was that it took too many button presses AND too much text in the menus to explain things. This one change solved many small but annoying issues we were dealing with, and improved the player experience a lot
Great vid so far. I love active reload mainly because it’s a good feeling way to show guns malfunctioning. More accurate, randomized malfunctions would suck. Making them part of a risk/reward mini game makes it fun.
Your videos are great because they offer insight into why games have many of the features that they do. Often I've wondered why, or even criticized, certain features found in the games I play. Now, I consider that these very features are present, not because it was an arbitrary decision, but rather to ensure the game is balanced and is as engaging as possible. Keep up the good work. Cheers.
My biggest problem to solve is figuring out which "problems" actually need solving. Many times when a player criticizes a mechanic, it's really just due to their own preference in playstyle, genre, etc not being met by my game. If you don't have some huge marketing and research department or funds to outsource it and get a better sample size, what do you do?
in UX research, the sample size considered "enough" to get useful feedback for a given player profile (you might have 1 to 3 player types in a typical game) is between 5 and 8 so given you get a representative enough panel, and these people don't have huge biases in your favour (like your friends do for instance), you can get a decent sample of your potentiel playerbase then, it comes down to how you do your playests. this needs a whole methodology and it's hard to do it properly, but with in-depth research you can get some first, ok-quality playtests
I would say, dig deeper then. The benefit of players outside the targeted ones is that they can point to things you may be overlooking or provide new prospective. For instance, Dark Souls is a hard game. But why is it hard? Deliberate combat pacing and abilities. It's not hard because of poor controls or responsiveness, unbalanced attacks, etc. Therefore, while players may face a difficult game, you can confirm that it is at least not because of poor design all around which gives you more confidence that it's hard in the right ways. As for where that difficuly level lies? That is a subjective answer and up for you to decide based on who you're building the game for.
Love the structure of this video! This is definitely one of my all-time faves from this channel. The contrast and seeing the problem vs. the solution is super helpful and it's so insightful to see how game designers tackle these problems in very practical ways. As much as I've enjoyed the "higher level" game design theory pieces, this feels more like a glimpse into the day-to-day design work at a studio
Videos where developers have to account for players behaviour and adjust are always a great watch As soon as I heard the TLOU problem I came up with the workbench solution but that might be because I've been crafting in Fallout: New Vegas a lot lately
My favorite one is in Resident evil. Friends and I had a hard time getting into the first few because the tank controls felt awkward and clunky. Then re4 came out and they fixed.... the camera. With an over the shoulder view instead of fly on the wall that constantly shifts, suddenly the tank controls made sense and felt intuitive.
I'm a software developers not a game dev but all of this applies to the thought process of any good developer. Especially the first one get a clear understanding of the problem.
Similar to the poltergeist in prey is the "darkness" enemy in Alan Wake where items would vibrate wildly and fly toward the player. I've been told this started as a bug in the engine, so the designers turned it into an enemy in the game. Pretty ingenious if you ask me.
I almost skipped this video because the title doesn't tell me if it has anything interesting in it. Thankfully, a friend told me it's about "how developers fix problems?", which did capture my interest.
Would love to hear a video on how to playtest mechanics in narrative-driven games. I imagine you'd need either a huge pool of playtesters, so that you would use onle a few and they wouldn't play same stuff over and over as often, or have some creative solutions?
Another incredible video. Super well done! As a game developer, these make me super happy to see. A little bit of me hates them because it slightly lessens my job security, but the other 99.9% of me is thrilled to see such a great resource for budding game developers.
For the intro example, GOTG had a similar mechanic but if you miss the sweet spot in the cool down phase, it just takes a second longer before you can start firing again (and if you hit it, you have a short burst of damage boost and can keep shooting).
Huh, didn't realize nailing a difficult timing challenge to get a short bonus was a problem that needed solving. That, in fact, seems like the whole point of it -- "do something difficult, make the game easier for a moment."
The problem was that expert players were left with a game that wasn't hard enough to satisfy them. Experts don't want the game to be trivial if you do the minigame, they want the minigame to feel like almost a necessity, something you have to do to survive comfortably. They generally want games where all of the systems are important. But when the developers actually made that the case, novice players were getting destroyed. The "normal" solution would be to just pick one group to appeal to, but given it's a AAA game that's supposed to have mass appeal, they didn't like that idea. So they gave novice players a "consolation prize" for their bad reload habits to help them survive the higher difficulty, and hoped that the experts wouldn't notice that the minigame wasn't as important as it seemed.
Great video and amazing insight for not-a-game-dev, thank you! But as a consumer of games I'd argue about the ingenuity of Gears of War solution to the reload system, especially the part about this feature of last bullets being a secret tweak. While this solves the issue for "completely new to FPS" players and is ok for "expert FPS players", what about the "in between"? Players who try to interract with the reload system, but have for example 30% success chance (30% successfull "fast" reloads, 70% unseccessful aka jammed gun). This makes the players who are willing to interract with game mechanic, but not being very good at it, in even worse position, than the ones who ignore it completely, which is a design flaw by my standarts.
I would tend to agree. The continuum from beginner to expert is a bell curve, typically, where the majority of players are in the middle, at average. In the application world we are encouraged to develop for that middle level average user, to provide help for beginners and advanced functions for experts. Maybe it's different in games in that once a beginner makes it to average, they are hooked enough to keep paying / playing / trying so the focus with games is more on keeping the beginner playing until they are hooked / leveled up to average, and preventing the advanced player from being overly dominant? It may not be fair, but it keeps the game company profitable.
Intersting point, but I don't think this is truly a design flaw. Or, more accurately, I think this issue is ofset by an "advantage" that average player have over both beguinners and experts: the addition of an interesting risk-reward decision. While an expert player will always get the faster reload, and a novice will likely ignore the system interely, an average player will have to decide whether they are willing to take the risk of their weapon jamming each time they reload. In a way, it's similar to the checkpoint system in Shovel Knight: if an average player decides to trade checkpoints for money, they might have a harder time progressing through the levels than a beguinner who simply uses all the checkpoints. However, since players are free to take the easier option whenever a level gets too hard, this creates a more organic difficulty setting.
@@joaomarcoscosta4647 thats not the same. in the shovel knight example, players know that there are two options. but the reload example is a secret. there's no choice for the average player to make. instead they will just struggle more because they wouldnt know about the magic bullets. the equivalent would be like if players thought they were forced to trade away checkpoint. they are not free to take the easier option because the easier option is locked behind a secret.
@@zengamer321 I'd say you are only half-right. Yeah, the info given to avarage players is more limited in GoW. I'd prefer if they were more open about the magic bullets as well. However, I'm pretty sure that avarage players do realize they have the option to either try to interact with the reload system or not. If the weapons are getting jammed 70% of the time like in the OP's example, and they keep going for it... That is their choice. When the question is "do I wait until my ammo is empity before reloading or not?" then yeah, the Shovel Knight example isn't very good. (not only because of the lack of information, but also because this isn't really a risk/reward problem in the first place) But when the question is "do I rely on the atomatic reloads, or try to do it manually and risk getting a jammed gun"... I still think the problem is basically the same one posed in Shovel Knight.
Even if you only get 30% of your reloads, you still get the magic bullets if you run the mag down. So you're doing better than the other guy while not as good as the expert. Plus the fact you're trying is practice and practice will mean you get more and more accurate and hit more than 30%.
This was an excellent video! Thank you for making it. It's not only helpful for aspiring game designers but also helps gamers understand some of the challenges of game dev, and also helps critics suggest better solutions to problems they perceive. Liked and [already was] Subscribed!
When playing Mario with my 5 and 6 year old nephew and niece, the bolder of the two will charge ahead, while the more careful one will sit in the bubble and watch. I'm not sure if it's a bad thing that they don't have to challenge themselves, or if it's a good thing that they can still interact with the game at their own pace.
Something that Nintendo has captured in a lot of their game design is that quote from Reggie "the game is fun, if it's not fun then why bother?". It is most definitely a good thing that they can still interact with the game at their own pace because it's a game and the point of it is to be fun. In a lot of Mario games, there's always alternate paths and routes you can take, always different challenges with varying degrees of difficulty. As a result, these games become incredibly varied in the amount of people that can play them and enjoy them. On top of that, they also make replaying them much more fun.
It's a good thing if they're having fun, and a bad thing if they're fighting and complaining about how they're not getting to play, don't think about if it's "good" hypothetically, in the real world are they having fun? If so it's good 👍
It felt like you were able to write about this in the way designers actually see it much better in this video, which is probably due to your own design experience now
I wish more indie-devs would know these methods of game-tweaking while they do their work. Too many devs confuse 'difficulty' with 'grind' or "how hard it is to actually get things done" with "TIME it takes to get things done". It isn't just indie devs that do it, but they seem more susceptible to it than others. I know it isn't an indi-game anymore, but Minecraft suffers from that too. *I'll do a second example from another game in a self-reply that has significantly less words than this, if you'd rather read that* There are countless material-farms (usually even called GRINDers) out there for procuring some mats, BECAUSE it takes so much time to get them in the first place. Consequently, people HAVE to build these farms, if they want to be as good as other players at the game. One of these farms that comes to mind the quickest is Skeleton Grinders. People usually only build them, because chickens are so stingy with their feathers. Gravel is plentiful, and while it's 'drop rate' for flint can also be a stingy, you can quite happily pick up your left over gravel, and try again. Sticks are arguably one of the most plentiful items in the game - only arguable because you need logs first to eventually craft sticks, and you can literally get logs anywhere that isn't a desert. But feathers? For feathers you have to kill a chicken, to MAYBE get A single feather. The chicken is gone, you don't get another try, you killed it. After you've gone through a few chickens, you might have a couple feathers. And each one feather, makes you all of four arrows. It takes 3-4 shots actually hitting to down a zombie - so you basically trade more than one dead chicken, for MAYBE an enemy, and a hit on another. Of course you can create a chicken farm/grinder if you breed together enough chickens. But again, they take time to grow up and be able to MAYbe drops feathers (or breed for more chickens) and that's just another type of grind, when you have to wait. Two of the possible solutions I can see here, after watching this video are either: 1) Increase the damage of arrows, so that each of those four crafted arrows can potentially take out a single enemy (maybe a headshot, but that seems tough to implement) or at least make it so not every single arrow is lost (similar to Skyrim) upon hit... BUT that would very easily screw up the multiplayer PvP scene, and while that's not MY cup of tea, I respect the people that enjoy it. or 2) Increase the drop rate of feathers from chickens to multiple feathers per chicken. OR, maybe they might shed them from time to time int their own, similarly to how they drop eggs, AND upon death. People would still have to seek out chickens to pen up somewhere, if they want easy access to the feathers... But it could be closer to an actually fun and rewarding farming-experience, where you can keep a few chickens around to look after, and you can collect their feathers just by giving them homes. But if you end up needing food you can breed up, and harvest them, for both meat and feathers. or even 2.5) Increase the amount of arrows you get with a single feather, though that would get under the skin of the players that prefer a bit more realism in their Minecraft ;) I don't know... Change the name of the drop to feathers with an S, to indicate a handful of feathers. What did the devs do to discourage grinders like this instead, since they didn't like the grinders? They made it harder to make skeleton traps, or any afk grinders really. Undead no longer drown. They don't drop as much loot (if any) if not killed directly by a player. If you build a zombie-drowning grinder, they just turn into more powerful versions of themselves. The devs ended up punishing the people willing to take the time to make grinders, instead of addressing WHY they were doing it. So it becomes more and more of a hassle to build a grinder like that, to bypass an already grindy aspect of the game.
I know this is a self-reply, but a less-wordy example from a different game than my above comment may be in order... Skyrim has a much easier example to 'fix': In that game, if you choose to increase the difficulty, you end up with a phenomenon known as "bullet sponge". While the *name* refers to projectiles, it is seen with all sources of damage. All entities that aren't you get a defense boost AND a damage boost. If you go all the way up to 'Legendary' it's not uncommon for the weakest critter in the game (rabbits) to no longer die in a single arrow shot or mace to the head. Yeah it's technically harder, but only in the sense of "it takes longer to kill things", and "things can kill you faster"... But it's more grindy, because of that. But if they had only increased all the damage dealt (towards you AND from you, even) it could be much easier to be simply caught off guard. Lose focus in a battle and you get wrecked, keep focus and you still triumph. This now requires you to strategize a bit more in your fights to succeed, without possibly taking hours to get through a single dungeon. *Everything beyond this line is just more details about what I mean, the quick fix has already been mentioned. And you can safely continue with your life having not missed a thing.* ;) Charging in blind will get you killed. Shooting at distance will get you killed, what with arrows and spells now raining down around you since you drew attention, and stealth-ing everywhere is so slow. So you start to consider some of the less-common potions, like frost-resistance for those mages, or poisons, or mana regen, or improved archery for one or two shots, or armored-flesh spells, or something/anything, to do better. But it doesn't take 10 headshots to a single draugr... in an alcove with half a dozen of them lurching about, and ALL the damage boosting enchantments you can find, to beat a single room in half an hour. There are a couple mods that do this (the one I used to use was Wildcat), and the game certainly felt like I had to play a bit smarter, and plan a little better, to have a better chance of winning. Without noticing the grindy aspect of the damage sponges. Bonus points, if you have an "active-time when in menus" mod and a "potions last longer, but can't be chugged as often" mod loaded up too. Stealth is only (figuratively, I'm sure there's tons of solutions) broken, because you need that crit-damage to break through those defense levels. lol
Oh my gosh if chickens could occasionally shed feathers, that would make me REALLY happy. Farming for arrows is always one of the worst things in Minecraft.
Two things I've learned that can make a *HUGE* difference in player enjoyment: 1. Follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment' as much as you can. Basically, the more intuitive the UI/etc. and the more like what they've experienced in other games, the faster the players can get used to playing your game and switch their focus from how to play to what they need to do to progress. For example, WASD for movement, left-click for primary action & right-click for secondary, for inventory, etc., are all examples of common game mechanisms that most games use because players are already quite familiar with them and don't have to learn them over again to play your game. 2. Use 'Yes, but...' instead of 'No!' Rather than simply preventing players from doing something, allow them to do so, but with logical, acceptable consequences, as this maximizes player agency and minimizes them blaming the game when things go wrong. The Shovel Knight checkpoints are an excellent example of this. Players can break them for extra money, but then they can't use the checkpoint as a spawn. If they can make it to another checkpoint, then they will be happy to have the extra cash. OTOH, if they die and have to start further back, they know that it was because of their decision, not the developers. A *bad* example is invisible walls; there is no logical, acceptable reason for the player not to be able to go past them, so the player ends up annoyed and their immersion is broken. This is just lazy development that also breaks the 'Law of Least Astonishment'; if you see an empty alley way, you would be surprised if you are prevented by an unseen force. Cheers!
omg I didn't realize that those were checkpoints in Shovel Knight 😑 I broke every single one, every single time. I thought that it was just supposed to be a throw back to when games didn't have check points and you had to beat the whole level in one go.
To add to the 'flip it on its head' approach. I'm a hobbyist game developer, but work as a deep learning engineer and also like to coach my friends at sports that I myself am better at, due to being lucky enough to afford the coaching myself. I often get the best results when making drastic changes. Take a golf swing for example, if someone is constantly suffering from a terrible slice, if I suspect their grip is the issue, rather than make incremental changes until they are hitting straight, I will make a drastic change to the point that they have now gone from a drastic slice to a drastic hook. This confines the problem and informs me that the solution lies somewhere in the middle. Had they not developed the drastic hook with the alteration, I would know that the cause of their slice is something else. The lesson here, is that making drastic changes first, provides us with massive feedback learning opportunities and allows us to reach the optimal solution quicker.
Want more problem-solving stories? Here's how Nintendo solved its big open world issue in Zelda: Breath of the Wild - ua-cam.com/video/CZzcVs8tNfE/v-deo.html
i prefered the cover system
Cool
bro think he mark brown 🤡
@@slugintub He literally is???
The last bullets doing more damage also make it more likely you would kill an enemy just when you needed to reload, making you feel like you barely made it.
This is also why you take less damage at low health in the vast majority of shooters.
@@stigmata_rex That can be accomplished just by having the UI lie to you, 1 square of health at max hp is 10 damage while 1 square of health in middle is 20
its also the inverse of the Street Fighter healthbars where the last of your health looks visually identical but functionally is higher than it looks like, making the player more likely to have a comeback.
I feel like that didn't fix the issue but made it worse tho no? Cuz now the good players will let their magazines run dry to get the dmg boost from last few bullets ON TOP of getting the dmg boost from hitting the perfect skillcheck. Or did they make it so if you hit the perfect skillcheck and got the boosted mag your last few bullets had the same dmg as the rest?
@@R0x0r I was just thinking that so the good players double dip and now they got even more of a boost
I'm surprised they didn't include a famous one from Silent Hill. The PS1's draw distance was limited, so they covered much of the town in mist. Not only did it make the world feel bigger than what the game could actually show at a time, but as a horror game, it really amped up the suspense and made you curious about what you couldn't see, thereby incentivizing you to get closer.
Mist or fog can help a lot with these things... In vanilla WoW the fog was also much closer, helping the zones feel bigger. Once they increased it (and added flying), the world started feeling much smaller.
The initial release of GTA Defective Edition is where this was much more apparent. If you could see Mt Chilliad from every location in San Andres, it feels very small.
The value of the atmosphere that provided (despite being there because of technical limitations) was then proven by the later releases and just how much removing that fog hurt the game.
SH wasn’t the first game doing that. In fact, that mist trick was a common solution to fix performance issues for 3d games.
I wouldn't say that fits the category of this video. This is more about solving gameplay issues that hamper the player experience or designer's vision for the game, not so much glaring technical restraints.
@@IllidanS4 And the fact that you spent 2/3 of your levels running everywhere with far between gryphons help a lot also, once you finally got the horse at 40 you had already explored most of the early zones and later zones halted exploration with more mobs you had to fight to get past while in early zones you could mostly travel through the zone along roads without needing to fight.
So there where many tricks together to help make the world feel bigger.
I feel as if the fundamentals of each of these approaches are incredibly useful techniques for all kinds of creative projects. Great video, dude!
Very true. I’m reminded of how I try to figure out the causes of problems by wildly adjusting variables of the situation in my head and imagining how that changes it, which is basically the broad principle behind #4, for instance.
That’s kinda the beauty of these videos, isn’t it? I’m never going to be designing a game, but they sure serve as an amazing sort of thematic lens to understand all sorts of things through about media and ourselves.
Like solving problems associated with politics...
I was thinking the same thing, almost every single point made in this videos applies to projects outside of just game development. The lessons from this video are easily carried over to other aspects of media (screenwriting, songwriting, prop making, set design, etc.), they also carry over easily to other industries entirely and the rewards would be just as tangible.
a professor once said that before finding the requirements of a project we have to understand the needs of the user. this is very similar.
like, imagine someone asked you to build a lot of shelves. when you ask why they tell you it's for books. then why not use an ebook reader? a lot of the time what we need is not what we think we need, so we have to investigate further and try different solutions.
Iteration is basically codified as one of the best general case solutions in math. The fundamental process is make a guess (or seed) and plug it into your formulas and the output is your new guess, loop until the difference between outputs is sufficiently small. Of course it can fail, either by not converging to a solution, or missing a solution in favor of another depending on the seed value. But its incredibly useful for preditions of non-linear systems like the output of a transistor, diode, or any similar electronics. (Note that resistors, capacitors, and inductors aren't included in this usage) And in the case of math, its very easy to get a computer to do it for you so who cares if it takes 2,000 calculations, a computer can do that in less than a second, way faster than doing it perfectly by hand.
But the basic idea is that instead of trying to create the perfect solution kn your first attempt, just try stuff until you find a satisfactory solution. It isn't perfect but you find it way faster and learn alot more in the process. (Iteration is one of my favorite problem solving methods)
The poltergeist situation in Prey reminds me of why the added Goombas to Super Mario Bros. They needed another enemy type to help fill out the roster of the early game levels, but they didn't have much space left on the cartridge. So they made an enemy with comically simple AI (if you can even call it that) and only required one sprite that just flipped horizontally for its walking animation.
Poltergeist really was one of the most memorable enemies in Prey, at least for me. The first time you see objects flying around you really get that fear of the unknown feeling.
Definitely one of the cooler enemies. Only problem is because it's invisible, my friend didn't realize he was being chased. The music and flickering lights clued him in, but because all the previous enemies were corporeal he was looking for a physical enemy. I don't think they should've changed the enemy at all, but it is something to consider.
Was it? I didn't remember its whole existence until this video, while I do remember well all the other enemies. The flying brain thingie, weaver or something, was the most memorable for me for its uniqueness. Even if I don't remember its name.
@@anteshell It’s Weaver.
The technopath was the most memorable for me because the first time I met one, it was in a room full of Operators. He hacked them all and it was not a good time for me lol
@@razzledazzle84921 Really.. Now I feel a bit idiot. Thanks! :D
Working on Endless Legend back in the day, players could ally with one another, but at the end of the game, only one would win. This caused frustration as they felt everyone in the alliance should be declared the winner. I brought this up with the Sr Producer on the project, who told me we had very little resources in terms of programmers or designers on the project, as most of the studio was working on Endless Space 2 at the time. After considering our options, I suggested, not to make a significant change, but just a little one, aimed specifically at the player. The game checks whether you meet a victory condition. The game checks whether you are in an alliance. If yes to both, it asks you if you want to share your victory. If you select yes, it displays the victory screen to the rest of your team.
Allied victoried were in, at the cost of a modal text window.
Interesting. Sounds like the Bungie example with a .2 second change in the sniper rifle's delay between shots. I wonder what sorts of issues came up from having such asymmetrical factions in the game. Like the Cultists of the Eternal End, or Mykara, who only have one city, or the Kapaku, who can only gather food on volcanic terrain. Prior to a few years ago, I mostly played rts games and heard that highly asymmetric factions had to be few in number, otherwise they'd be incredibly unbalanced. I've also heard that 4x/ turn based strategy games can have big changes in them more, since there's more stuff to go through to get something. I think a good example is upgrading units; in most rts games I've played, you build the upgrade building and research +1 to melee attack. When it's done all melee units get +1 to attack. Meanwhile, in the Endless games you have to unlock the ability to mine advanced substances, then research advanced weapons, then create a new template, then either upgrade an existing unit for dust(money) and the advanced resource, or make a new unit for industry and the adv. resource. I hope Endless Dungeon does well.
Endless Legend is my first true 4X game and so it holds a very special place in my heart. Thank you for your work on it, it's a beautiful game!
And speaking of it, I am a very supportive player so I would definitely be the one frustrated about the alliance victory screwing over the rest of the alliance.
@@adams13245 We knew balancing Endless Legend would be very tricky, but thankfully we went for a more immersive experience and never really tried to fully balance the game, which would have been a fool's errand. We just made sure the game, and each faction, was fun to play, and played out differently. This didn't please the 0.01% most hardcore MP players who fought each other for dominance... but they weren't our target audience and we couldn't ever satisfy them fully, so we just didn't try! I have left the studio during Endless Dungeon preprod so I know very little about it, but I hope it does well. I looks incredible.
Wow, never expected to get featured in a GMTK video 😅. Excellent compilation Mark, and honored to be included amongst such fantastic examples!
Yo! Which one were you?
@@yvesgomes Astroneer (Mining Your Own Design)
@@Smokeblue Awesome!
Cool!
@@Smokeblue Fantastic job. I really appreciate you and your teams work on Astroneer. One of my absolute favorite titles.
The way I usually think about 6:49 is in terms of upper/lower bounds. Lets say you think/know that 10 mana is too cheap for a spell; its too spammable. You could increase it to 12, but then oh, its still too cheap. So before you knew the answer was somewhere between 11 and infinity, now you know the answer is between 13 and infinity. But if you instead increased it to 25 and realize thats too expensive, well now you actually have a useful upper bound. Overshooting makes it so much easier to fix something in 2 or 3 passes, rather than being stuck trying every single number between your first guess and the right answer.
necroposting about binary searching
so a number isn't right, it's too small. double it. still too small? double again. keep doing this and save the last two numbers you get: the one that's too small and the one that's too big. now while your number still isn't right, look at the halfway point. is it too small? replace lower number. is it too high? replace upper number. at some point it'll have to be good. same for numbers that are too large; at first, halve them every step.
this is why algorithms are useful to all people, not just programmers; the intuition behind one can help solve other problems that aren't really computer-based.
The Sid Meier thing reminds me of an old engineering trick where, if you don't know the source of a problem between point A and point B, test the spot halfway between them. Then, if the problem exists there, test halfway between there and point A; otherwise test between there and point B. Repeat until you find where the problem originates. Mathematically it's the most efficient method of pinpointing the source. If halving the world had been too drastic, Meier probably would have gone back up to three quarters, and kept dialing it in until he hit the sweet spot.
Also known as Binary Search, used in almost all software that need to find something in an ordered collection.
Also used in the military when judging distance. It’s called bracketing.
Git actually automates this with the git bisect command. You tell it a version of your code where it worked and a version where it's broken, and it steps you through testing the revisions in between to find the one where the problem was introduced.
I’ve done this to find the git commit that broke something vague. Among 100s of commits, it’s a good approach if the reproduction is quick and reliable.
@@AaronRotenberg oh! I learned something today! Ha that’s awesome. I did it manually by eyeballing the middle each time.
My favourite story about solving a problem is when Blizzard wanted to make sure hardcore players didn’t grind for 10+ hours every day and leave other players in the dust. They started with giving XP-penalties after a few hours of gameplay, but after some backlash, they reversed it entirely, giving players XP-boosts that increased based on how long since they last played. Falls very well in line with your 4th point :)
My favorite part is that the "reversal" was just rewording. The actual XP you got before and after were the exact same but players liked it being framed as a reward rather than a penalty.
And many complained that it's the same punishment in different words, because they were not completely stupid.
@@christophersavignon4191 But giving XP boost for not playing in a while isn't inherently a punishment.
Someone grinding all that time while other people are logged out ought to still get more XP over extended period of time
@@tappajaav
Are you forgetting that the base exp gain was reduced? It's not a boost, never was.
And of course it is a punishment. You play more, you get less exp. A negative consequence in response to specific behaviors - that is the very definition of punishment.
@@christophersavignon4191 I don't know the exact numbers regarding this.
I just thought it would be reasonable that playing more would yield advancing more in the long run.
If it isn't the case then it's pretty silly especially in an MMORPG
I once saw a talk from a developer of Marvel’s Spider-Man for PlayStation speaking about their massive performance challenges. He said something like "it's not a cutscene, it's an animated loading screen". That kind of blew my mind.
Metroid Prime did this too with delayed doors and elevator cutscenes. Really clever.
@@VideoMask93 reminds me that unfortunately that kind of thing had a negative impact on the gameplay design of bloodborne, where a specific alternative path through the game had to be cut due to performance issues, and because the geometry to the rest of the game was already done, they couldn't figure out how to prolong the walk to it and so the easier way was to just cut the alternative route.
Thats a very common thing thats been around for decades
yeah, pretty handy.. if I'm not wrong, i believe it was Rockstar who pioneered the cutscene-loading screen in Max Payne 3, granted the system was at its early stages and also due to hardware limitations, we had to compensate for sometimes long unskippable loading screen.. but nonetheless, i think it was pretty cool when i first encountered this back then when i played the game.. also, the game physics was phenomenal!!
@@Toki-Ralte even resident evil had loading screens behind cutscenes, e.g. doors.
This video really is a great summary of why I love game design so much. There are many times that I tell people that my goal is to be a game designer, and they don't understand what that means. I feel like this video would help people understand why the field is not only important, but captivating.
I'm reminded of one of my favorite dev stories, from the Killer Instinct reboot. Jago's healing was seen as a menace to the meta, with a lot of player complaints. The common request was to reduce the amount of health that Jago could heal, or even remove his healing capability entirely (which thankfully the developers saw as an untouchable lever!).
The devs followed the advice of "Your players are great at finding problems, but terrible at finding solutions". Rather than simply doing as players requested, they asked themselves *why* the healing was so frustrating. Lead combat designer Adam "Keits" Heart described it as curing the disease, rather than alleviating the symptom. They took 4 months to study Jago, and what they found was, Jago didn't have any bad matchups, and was solid anywhere on the screen. His long range was strong, his short range was strong, and his mid range could transition way too easily into short range via his Wind Kick. So they nerfed Wind Kick, making it punishable on block. Players reacted negatively, but within weeks, the Jago complaints vanished, and updated rankings now gave Jago several bad matchups.
This was discussed more in-depth in Hold Back To Block's excellent documentary, "FIGHT ON: The Killer Instinct Story". I recommend it to anyone interested in fighting game design, reboots, and metagame balance.
Anyway, excellent video, Mark! Thank you for these. I genuinely think this one might be my new favorite from you. God bless!!
this reminds me of "marvel super heroes" where Wolverine could heal himself, BUT his MAX health would decrease as well, so in the end it would usually take just 50% more damage than normal to finish him off.
(less if a powerful attack got through near the end)
I can vouch for the success of the bubble system in New Sup Wii. My mom, dad, brother, and I would frequently come across tricky sections, so if one person made it through, everyone else would get in a bubble and get popped.
It's like the Yoshi's Island baby system, but less whiny.
Wish more games gave it a try.
I think this only applies if you are fine with people playing for you.
I don’t find it to be thay good of a solution for that reason.
In my experience I found people feeling less valuable because they were better off staying in the bubble.
It might work for some people, but I’m certain there has to be better ways of doing this.
@@TestTubeGirl If that's the case, just don't advance unless everyone can pass?
@@TestTubeGirl These games can played differently, it's good for competitiveness but casually you could let everyone do it. If someone stays in the bubble they just won't have fun so it's up to them
The Mario bubbles also had some hilarious side-effects. My friends and I got in the habit of using the bubbles as an ejector seat to get out of sticky situations.
We would frequently find that we ALL bubbled, which caused plenty of laughter and chaos as we bounced frenetically through the levels only to find that we all bubbled and would have to start over.
Currently working on a local multiplayer indie game with a friend, and we've certainly hit similar roadblocks in our design (and still struggle with a few). It's nice to know that even industry professionals with years -- if not decades of experience also sometimes run into a design hiccup that can take a lot of effort to smooth out and resolve.
You guys should check GDC videos. There's plenty of interesting info that developers give out on how they solve problems. Some solutions are surprisingly simple for how elegant they end up!
@@migueeeelet Thanks for the suggestion! We've checked out a few GDC videos in the past, but it's difficult to find resources on how to approach solving our current issues...
We've had a lot of trouble expressing information to the players without it being overwhelming, and also managing the camera to show both the players and points of interest during the game (it's shared-screen). Not many games take this exact design approach, so it's difficult to find people who had a similar experience and overcame it...
@@imjust_a you may need a set of fresh eyes, if the issue is as elusive as you say.
A newcomer can be a benefit to pointing out a simpler solution.
@@imjust_a like Lego star wars?
What is the name of the game ?
I feel like most of these can also be applied to context outside of game development. I am not a game dev but looking at these certainly made me think about the problems I have at work. Very interesting!
One of my favorite games of recent years Darkest Dungeon had a problem with players just simply mowing down the front line of enemies causing the back ones to move forward and rendering them useless because of positional placement needed to cast spells/attack. So Red Hook had the genius idea of adding corpses which would serve as temporary placement holders. They would appear if an enemy died but only if it wasn't by a critical attack or damage over time effect.
It's a mechanic I like a lot, but it was contentious enough among existing players that they had to add a toggle for it in the difficulty settings!
GMTK's video on listening to negative feedback talks about the backlash to the addition of corpses, and how Red Hook dealt with it.
Was it a problem though? Or was it Red Hook punishing people for playing?
@@mrwizard5012 This was in Early Access, remember? They felt it was too easy to break the combat system in a game that was supposed to be about always teetering on the brink of ruin and tried to come up with a solution.
Game developers don't make changes to spite their players; they make changes in service of their vision of the game, in the hopes of making it better. It is, among other things, what user testing and rapid prototyping are for: finding elements, or the lack thereof, that compromise the intended experience.
This kind of story is super common in gamedev circles. Pretty much every game has one. Generally issues like this are caught early in development and squashed before the cement has time to set, but under the Early Access paradigm things solidify faster. Managing player expectations during this time is a task that can easily spiral out of hand.
A really common problem is players not looking at something important and potentially getting confused about what to do or where to go. Designers usually solve this by putting in visual elements that draw the player's line of sight -- sometimes subtly (aligning things so that they "point" in a specific direction -- an image composition trick), sometimes not-so-subtly (particle effects, changes in lighting, explosions, camera direction, etc.), and sometimes completely overtly (highlighted areas of the screen, objective markers).
One example that comes to mind is from Portal 2, where players were supposed to look at a particular animation (an imploding metal device of some kind) after completing a task, but kept turning around and missing it because there was a slight delay. The solution to this was to add a texture to a nearby object that would catch players' attention: a warning label that said something along the lines of "WARNING: DON'T LOOK AWAY FROM IMPLOSIONS". It worked; players would either pause long enough to notice something was happening or catch the hint and look back.
Great video, I'm glad problem solving has always been a major theme in any of your design analysis videos.
Several years ago I studied Game Design and Production as my major, and one of my professors always repeated: "Anyone can come up with ideas, that's not what game design is about, it's about solving problems." I thought I had this idea down at an early stage, I'd always tell myself to make decisions not by creating a solution, but by addressing the underlying issue.
About a year ago when I started my current job I realized that... I didn't have this idea down at all. My current design lead hammers it home every single time I reply to a problem impulsively. It's incredible how my design work has improved just by being constantly reminded to understand the problem before creating a solution. For anyone looking to get into game design, this may as well be the best skill to develop at an early stage. Sometimes solving problems can be much more fun than analyzing them, but by neglecting the analysis of all the problems your game might develop, you actually remove many elements of control from development itself, and it can wind up feeling like your design gets... Directionless.
Keep asking questions, whenever you can, especially when your colleagues start to respond with "okay mom I get it"
In Gears games, a perfect reload would only boost the damage of used bullets i.e. if you shot 10 of 16 rounds then perfect reload only the first 10 rounds of the 16 round clip get a damage increase. This gives those veteran players more incentive to shoot more rounds before reloading by increasing the overall amount of extra damage per reload.
Interesting, that’s a very clever little caveat to include
true they would get the boost from the last few bullets and also the reload in that case, however because this came from directly learning player behavior it works out, since its time sensitive and requires consistency ur just way more likely to want to trigger the reload yourself rather than have it start auto reloading and ur not focused on the mini bar
that's why player behavior is why this worked instead of backfired
Just want to add that the Potions made it back in Diablo 3 at release, but with a 30sec cooldown.
The health globe system worked great when the game was about killing a bunch of monsters, but then there were bosses and you're no longer killing things which broke the system again.
They tried to change it with stats that gave a % life steal on hit as well but changed it to a set number per attack instead, then that got nerfed as well.
they couldve just made the boss drop health globes randomly when taking damage with higher chances when the boss has lower hp
"Yeah, but what about bosses" was my first thought there too.
The fact that "health/any other goodie on kill" skills aren't just sometimes useless, but are specifically useless when games are generally at their hardest has long been a point of game design frustration. So cool to have a heal or other buff skill that's exclusively useless when I need it most. Sure, some games "solve" that problem by giving bosses infinite minions, but considering how much I HATE endlessly respawning boss minions, that solves the kill skill problem like chopping off your leg solves a stubbed toe.
Anyway, if you ask me, a game should either have bosses OR kill skills of any sort, but never both. Personally, I say it's kill skills that should go, as I strongly, STRONGLY prefer effects that trigger on hit rather than kill, such as percentage-based life steal. Not only do they solve the boss problem, but I just prefer rewards on hit (or stun or crit, etc, any offensive mechanic that's applicable throughout the entire course of an enemy's life rather than exactly once at the end) in general.
"Small change of 0.2s" That's massive balance change! 1.4x original cooldown ie. 40% increase. Especially considering a weapon that gets this every cycle.
Yup, that is basically a night and day difference.
Agreed. Absolute difference is what he was talking about. Relative difference was huge.
Thats the point!
Take into account that not all players would fire every 0.5 seconds prior to the tweak. I bet many players took longer than 0.7s between shots before that, and so, the unbalancing skill ceiling was lowered for top players, without upsetting the performance of less skilled players. Very elegant solution.
@@fernando47180 very good point!
This is just a great metaphor for dealing with any problems in life.
Bruh, Prey's team didn't have time to make a whole new unique enemy model? So they just made an invisible ghost?
And not only that, but they made it use the pre-existing physics objects as its weapons??
That's really funny but also kinda genius lmao
they still had to code in the new behavior which is the most time consuming part
@@aliatef7203 well, at least the artists didn't have to get involved
@@__lasevix_ true
you found them! I can't thank you enough
Reminds me of how the Mortal Kombat 1 devs avoided programming a new character slot for Reptile.
By making the game load Scorpion, turning his color palette green, upping his walk speed, and letting his AI switch between Sub-Zero's moveset,
it gave the illusion of being a wholly separate fighter.
I've taught almost exactly this content to people learning business process re-engineering and continuous improvement methodologies for years. These principles are universally applicable to problem solving and your presentation was amazing.
game design is the embodiment of solving problems you created for yourself
As a TTRPG (Tabletop Role Playing Game) designer, a lot of these methods are ideas we have tried when developing or overhauling systems - anything from weapons and grenades, to what spells a character can cast, to something as specific as "can you attack after spending your entire turn running?". Seeing a lot of our methods being reflected in this video is a great feeling, knowing that we've generally been on the right course for efficient development. I'm going to share this with the rest of the devteam!
Really liked this episode focusing on design from a more foundation core level
Me too, I like how a lot of the concepts can be applied to other projects, It’s just like Miyamoto said, a good solution can solve multiple problems at once
I typically "like" very few videos as I use my liked playlist to revisit interesting topics relevant to what I am currently doing or to simply enjoy a quality video, that being said, I will look over what I have learned here in case I ever come across these situations! Thanks for the video!
One of my favorite stories is not gameplay but in cutscenes. Kingdom Hearts released a game on the GBA. They wanted PS2 Real time cutscenes but, well, it can't do that. Instead, they recorded the cutscenes and turned them into a .gif file that plays at the opening and closing of the game with a synced audio track. Looks fantastic, if a smidge grainy, and takes up so much less space and processing power.
The concept of a prerendered cutscene wasn't exactly novel at the time...
@@somerandombub getting it on a GBA via gif with a synced soundtrack though...
@@madamminalost Do you have a source? I also doubt it was literally a .gif file.
@@somerandombub unfortunately not on hand. I read this like 15 years ago on I THINK KHInsider but could be somewhere else. And right now searching Chain of Memories .gif opening cutscene GBA just gets you either gifs or talking about the script or similar.
4:55 reminds me of a previous video you did, where you pointed out that very often designers succeeded by rewarding players for doing what they wanted, rather than punishing them for deviating.
I work as a Data Engineer which generally is FAR less sophisticated from a programming point of view than game development. It is staggering to me how the very essence of videogame development is about using extremely advanced problem solving skills to make something for entertainment.
Combine that with the human factor. You can never predict player behaviour!
Quaternions yay
I think part of that is that video games are an odd mixture of a piece of art created by science. It needs both halves to function. Movies may seem like this too but the difference is that a camera and an editing program get created by engineers and programmers and then used as a tool by artists to make the product. Or like, a mechanical engineer who created a stove isn't a chef, even if they're key to the process. But in video games the art (some of it at least) and the engineering are the same part
@@demonwaterdemonwater4993 Good for you
Heyo fellow DE!
I think that's very true. Also maybe part of how Mark likes to look at game design
I can't believe how much work into this video. Absolutely fantastic work.
it's really interesting how when presented with the solutions to these problems it seems like it's obvious, but it's not as if I or most could easily come up with the solution when presented with the problem. Really just shows how well these designers handled what are problems that are much harder than many would have assumed.
The hard part is finding the simple but effective solution.
One of the other great points I thought of when you talked about flipping problems on their heads was the Rested Buff in WoW, which famously was just a mathematical reversal of what had been an exhaustion mechanic. People hated getting a debuff for continuing to play the game, but loved having a little boost for logging out in the right place. The two systems were literally exactly the same system, just presented differently (with the "base xp to level" being shifted behind the scenes to compensate), but elicited wildly different reactions.
Defining the problem is the base of UX / Product Design. You have to spend as much time with understanding the problem (discovery and define phases) as with the solution (develop and delivery phases). Also prototyping and testing are indispensable tools of the development phases. In game design this is even more important as a lots of features only can only be evaluated when you see, feel how they work, or when you see how players react.
This video can help not just solve game design problems, but rather any problems in general. Business, product design, engineering- anything. Great video as always!
The way the gameplay shown relates to what he says is super charming! I love when he says about games being unbalanced and it shows the see-saw in super mario maker 2!
Mark, your ingenious insight to the gaming process and ability to pick and dissect small parts of gaming development always baffles me. Great work, keep it up.
Flip it on it's Head could also be seen in World of Warcraft's early development. Rested EXP, where you get a bonus to experience aftering being logged out in a safe area for a length of time, used to be a punishment system where you got reduced exp for playing too long without logging out in a safe area to rest up.
None of the numbers were changed, just the wording of the system to the player.
Yeah. The WoW example is a classic!
Always loved that example. Because it points out that the presentation of a system is just at important as its implementation.
In general the industry has improved by flipping punishment systems into reward systems.
I would always change character in Wow when my rested xp ran out. Felt like the game was punishing me for playing too much.
It was a terrible system.
@@MisogynyMan I actually think it is a good system on paper. Theoretically It helps slow the gap between those that can only play an hour or two a day and those that play for hours on end. I think it is also good from an ethical standpoint to give the players a push to stop playing for a bit.
As always, this was a really helpful and entertaining video! Can we just take a minute to appreciate the level of thought that went into the background scenes Mark chose when talking and describing certain things?
Just a few examples: 1:17 "going around in circles" + Link and the dog spinning around, 1:25 "how the best game creators go about solving problems in their design" + Mario and his friends figuring out how to fix the pipe, 13:00 "fixing a problem in one place can create another problem elsewhere" + gameplay from Slipways, where this is literally always a challange for the player.
It just fits and makes the video so much more enjoyable! THANK YOU MARK! ♥
One of my favourite changes is in Cyberpunk 2077.
The problem: NCPD Scanner Hustles (small combat encounters and light puzzles) were too numerous, boring and amounted to going to each location marked on the map like a Ubisoft open world box checking exercise.
The solution: Instead of making all the Hustle's locations marked on the map, they are now only marked when the player is close to them. This spread out the content so it was less repetitive, encouraged exploration and felt like an encounter you stumble across rather than directly seek out.
The side effect: It was now much harder to tell which hustles were/weren't completed for the associated achievements. Although those achievements aren't tied to in game rewards as far as I know so it's a minor side effect.
I agree, but also - you can put all NCPD scanner icons on the map back with the filtering system introduced in one of the patches, so if you really want the previous system - you can still have it.
Just the default changed (for the better and exactly for the reason you mentioned).
@@domoslaf Didn't know you can revert it with the filters. That's real smart. Means players can opt-in for revealing all the locations if they're doing a completion playthrough but players playing for fun/immersion retain the fun of discovery.
@@PlebNC Exactly!
Great video! As an industrial designer myself I found many parallels between these 11 "general" design problems and my work experience. These case studies offer nice tips on how to work on your product to find solutions.
These videos are nearly always universal for most types of games. I love watching these and using concepts to help my board games flesh out that much better!
Amazing as always! This channel got me to try a game design formation and I'm starting my first real job in a few weeks. Thanks Mark!
Good luck!!
Congrats! Make us all proud!
big thanks for naming every game that appears on the screen in a popup, this is one of the small extra changes which I appreciate very much, because people don't have to scour the comments with the hope of finding someone curious about "what game is at time x:yz?"
One thing I love about games solving problems are the ones that do solve more than one. Mario Odyssey for example, using Captures to take out foes while finishing the challenge you captured the enemy for. It amazes me how well problem solving goes.
You know what makes your video flawless? That it doesn't only cover a subject I'm most interested in, but it also provides wisdom I can use anywhere in other life areas. X
I love these kinds of videos. They are interesting, enlightening, and inspiring. I'm so glad to see you coming back to this style of video.
This type of process is why an understanding of systems theory and troubleshooting is important for any engineering field
great vid, especially love the part where they solve problems
you haven't finished the vid bruh😭
KEKL nice one made me laugh
@Don't read profile photo OK i dont
@@zephyr6927 they solved the problem of the video being long by simply knowing all the details already
@Don't read profile photo ok
I was just mindlessly scrolling on my phone an this video started playing and instantly hooked me. Good work I love the in and outs of game design
Awesome video! Also wanted to thank you for your cameo in Jacob Geller's most recent piece. It was a pleasant surprise to hear your voice in some of my other game dev edutainment.
They should post these 7 principles in the help section of every game development kit. Really great tips.
Incredible video! Love your organized approach. Thank you dearly for the subtitles also (auditory-processing issues here). Thanks for sharing :)
Glad it was helpful!
We had a situation like this recently on my team's game. We had a system where you could assign your favorite items to d-pad inputs, so you could easily switch between them without going into menus. However, when people played it, they either didn't understand the system, or they just didn't use it as it only really let them access 4 of the 25 or so different kinds of items they had. This meant players were spending a lot of time with menus open, gameplay paused, selecting items. And even the ones who used the quick-select system spent more time in the menu switching what items they had assigned based on the scenario they were in. We did a brainstorm session to try to figure out what options there were to solving the issue. We ended up doing the "make a huge change" option, and completely scrapped the assigning system. Instead, players are able to use L and R to scroll through a small overlay at the bottom of the screen, to switch between items. This had many benefits. For one, it meant players now spent considerably less time in menus, almost not even needing to pause the gameplay at all, which meant more time and focus for the player. It also took advantage of the shoulder buttons, allowing players to still use their thumbs to move and look around and run, while also switching items. Lastly, it simplified the menus a lot more, as one of the lingering issues we had was that it took too many button presses AND too much text in the menus to explain things.
This one change solved many small but annoying issues we were dealing with, and improved the player experience a lot
Great vid so far. I love active reload mainly because it’s a good feeling way to show guns malfunctioning. More accurate, randomized malfunctions would suck. Making them part of a risk/reward mini game makes it fun.
im hoping youve played synthetik? uses this system, very very fun, gun based type game.
I appreciate this introduction to problem-solving. I wish more senior people were taught this.
Your videos are great because they offer insight into why games have many of the features that they do. Often I've wondered why, or even criticized, certain features found in the games I play. Now, I consider that these very features are present, not because it was an arbitrary decision, but rather to ensure the game is balanced and is as engaging as possible. Keep up the good work. Cheers.
Way better than anything Extra Credits has put out.
My biggest problem to solve is figuring out which "problems" actually need solving. Many times when a player criticizes a mechanic, it's really just due to their own preference in playstyle, genre, etc not being met by my game. If you don't have some huge marketing and research department or funds to outsource it and get a better sample size, what do you do?
in UX research, the sample size considered "enough" to get useful feedback for a given player profile (you might have 1 to 3 player types in a typical game) is between 5 and 8
so given you get a representative enough panel, and these people don't have huge biases in your favour (like your friends do for instance), you can get a decent sample of your potentiel playerbase
then, it comes down to how you do your playests. this needs a whole methodology and it's hard to do it properly, but with in-depth research you can get some first, ok-quality playtests
I would say, dig deeper then. The benefit of players outside the targeted ones is that they can point to things you may be overlooking or provide new prospective. For instance, Dark Souls is a hard game. But why is it hard? Deliberate combat pacing and abilities. It's not hard because of poor controls or responsiveness, unbalanced attacks, etc. Therefore, while players may face a difficult game, you can confirm that it is at least not because of poor design all around which gives you more confidence that it's hard in the right ways. As for where that difficuly level lies? That is a subjective answer and up for you to decide based on who you're building the game for.
Love the structure of this video! This is definitely one of my all-time faves from this channel. The contrast and seeing the problem vs. the solution is super helpful and it's so insightful to see how game designers tackle these problems in very practical ways. As much as I've enjoyed the "higher level" game design theory pieces, this feels more like a glimpse into the day-to-day design work at a studio
Videos where developers have to account for players behaviour and adjust are always a great watch
As soon as I heard the TLOU problem I came up with the workbench solution but that might be because I've been crafting in Fallout: New Vegas a lot lately
Oh My God, Mark Brown! You are doing all the research job for me! God Bless You!
My favorite one is in Resident evil. Friends and I had a hard time getting into the first few because the tank controls felt awkward and clunky. Then re4 came out and they fixed.... the camera. With an over the shoulder view instead of fly on the wall that constantly shifts, suddenly the tank controls made sense and felt intuitive.
5:26
I love how the agreed upon busted as Hell time between shots is SLOWER than the Sniper in TF2
This is so insightful on just problem solving in general
I'm a software developers not a game dev but all of this applies to the thought process of any good developer. Especially the first one get a clear understanding of the problem.
Similar to the poltergeist in prey is the "darkness" enemy in Alan Wake where items would vibrate wildly and fly toward the player. I've been told this started as a bug in the engine, so the designers turned it into an enemy in the game. Pretty ingenious if you ask me.
I've heard that many features in Minecraft started out as bugs. For instance, quasi-connectivity in Java.
@@robertabarnhart6240 like creepers originated from a time when were pigs were implemented wrong
I almost skipped this video because the title doesn't tell me if it has anything interesting in it. Thankfully, a friend told me it's about "how developers fix problems?", which did capture my interest.
I'm a games dev working on my second title and your videos are an invaluable source of insight and analysis.
I have watched this video three times since it's been out. It's beautifully done and so clear. One of my favorite videos on UA-cam
Would love to hear a video on how to playtest mechanics in narrative-driven games. I imagine you'd need either a huge pool of playtesters, so that you would use onle a few and they wouldn't play same stuff over and over as often, or have some creative solutions?
watching the seemingly new players in the chat learn warms my heart. Brian, you're doing great work to help newer players be ready to try SF6.
This is a really thorough video, so much detailed information
Another incredible video. Super well done! As a game developer, these make me super happy to see. A little bit of me hates them because it slightly lessens my job security, but the other 99.9% of me is thrilled to see such a great resource for budding game developers.
For the intro example, GOTG had a similar mechanic but if you miss the sweet spot in the cool down phase, it just takes a second longer before you can start firing again (and if you hit it, you have a short burst of damage boost and can keep shooting).
Game of the game?
@@CIinbox guardians of the galaxy
@@CIinbox Guardians Of The Galaxy
@@CIinbox Greath of the Gwild
This video is somehow related to every engineering project rather than just game development. I liked it Thanks
Huh, didn't realize nailing a difficult timing challenge to get a short bonus was a problem that needed solving. That, in fact, seems like the whole point of it -- "do something difficult, make the game easier for a moment."
Right? There was no problem to solve. Their «solution» is dumb.
The problem was that expert players were left with a game that wasn't hard enough to satisfy them. Experts don't want the game to be trivial if you do the minigame, they want the minigame to feel like almost a necessity, something you have to do to survive comfortably. They generally want games where all of the systems are important. But when the developers actually made that the case, novice players were getting destroyed. The "normal" solution would be to just pick one group to appeal to, but given it's a AAA game that's supposed to have mass appeal, they didn't like that idea. So they gave novice players a "consolation prize" for their bad reload habits to help them survive the higher difficulty, and hoped that the experts wouldn't notice that the minigame wasn't as important as it seemed.
@@lued123 Easily solved through difficulty settings.
Great video to remind that to find a solution one should approach the core of the problem and how it interacts with other mechanisms in game
Great video and amazing insight for not-a-game-dev, thank you!
But as a consumer of games I'd argue about the ingenuity of Gears of War solution to the reload system, especially the part about this feature of last bullets being a secret tweak.
While this solves the issue for "completely new to FPS" players and is ok for "expert FPS players", what about the "in between"? Players who try to interract with the reload system, but have for example 30% success chance (30% successfull "fast" reloads, 70% unseccessful aka jammed gun). This makes the players who are willing to interract with game mechanic, but not being very good at it, in even worse position, than the ones who ignore it completely, which is a design flaw by my standarts.
I would tend to agree. The continuum from beginner to expert is a bell curve, typically, where the majority of players are in the middle, at average. In the application world we are encouraged to develop for that middle level average user, to provide help for beginners and advanced functions for experts.
Maybe it's different in games in that once a beginner makes it to average, they are hooked enough to keep paying / playing / trying so the focus with games is more on keeping the beginner playing until they are hooked / leveled up to average, and preventing the advanced player from being overly dominant? It may not be fair, but it keeps the game company profitable.
Intersting point, but I don't think this is truly a design flaw. Or, more accurately, I think this issue is ofset by an "advantage" that average player have over both beguinners and experts: the addition of an interesting risk-reward decision.
While an expert player will always get the faster reload, and a novice will likely ignore the system interely, an average player will have to decide whether they are willing to take the risk of their weapon jamming each time they reload.
In a way, it's similar to the checkpoint system in Shovel Knight: if an average player decides to trade checkpoints for money, they might have a harder time progressing through the levels than a beguinner who simply uses all the checkpoints. However, since players are free to take the easier option whenever a level gets too hard, this creates a more organic difficulty setting.
@@joaomarcoscosta4647 thats not the same. in the shovel knight example, players know that there are two options. but the reload example is a secret. there's no choice for the average player to make. instead they will just struggle more because they wouldnt know about the magic bullets. the equivalent would be like if players thought they were forced to trade away checkpoint. they are not free to take the easier option because the easier option is locked behind a secret.
@@zengamer321 I'd say you are only half-right.
Yeah, the info given to avarage players is more limited in GoW. I'd prefer if they were more open about the magic bullets as well.
However, I'm pretty sure that avarage players do realize they have the option to either try to interact with the reload system or not. If the weapons are getting jammed 70% of the time like in the OP's example, and they keep going for it... That is their choice.
When the question is "do I wait until my ammo is empity before reloading or not?" then yeah, the Shovel Knight example isn't very good. (not only because of the lack of information, but also because this isn't really a risk/reward problem in the first place)
But when the question is "do I rely on the atomatic reloads, or try to do it manually and risk getting a jammed gun"... I still think the problem is basically the same one posed in Shovel Knight.
Even if you only get 30% of your reloads, you still get the magic bullets if you run the mag down. So you're doing better than the other guy while not as good as the expert. Plus the fact you're trying is practice and practice will mean you get more and more accurate and hit more than 30%.
How am I just now finding this channel!? Omg! What an amazing video today and I’m excited to go back thru your library to watch more.
This was an excellent video! Thank you for making it. It's not only helpful for aspiring game designers but also helps gamers understand some of the challenges of game dev, and also helps critics suggest better solutions to problems they perceive. Liked and [already was] Subscribed!
He doesn't upload often but when he does its a absolute treat
When playing Mario with my 5 and 6 year old nephew and niece, the bolder of the two will charge ahead, while the more careful one will sit in the bubble and watch.
I'm not sure if it's a bad thing that they don't have to challenge themselves, or if it's a good thing that they can still interact with the game at their own pace.
Something that Nintendo has captured in a lot of their game design is that quote from Reggie "the game is fun, if it's not fun then why bother?".
It is most definitely a good thing that they can still interact with the game at their own pace because it's a game and the point of it is to be fun.
In a lot of Mario games, there's always alternate paths and routes you can take, always different challenges with varying degrees of difficulty. As a result, these games become incredibly varied in the amount of people that can play them and enjoy them. On top of that, they also make replaying them much more fun.
It's a good thing if they're having fun, and a bad thing if they're fighting and complaining about how they're not getting to play, don't think about if it's "good" hypothetically, in the real world are they having fun? If so it's good 👍
That shovel knight save point idea is straight up genius. it's a small thing but so clever.
OH DEAR!!! YOU DID IT!!! YOU FINISHED YOUR GAME!!!
I haven't the slightest intention of ever going into games design - but just as a gamer these videos are fascinating.
I'm an industrial process designer in pharmaceutical manufacturing and this was very helpful for me. thank you.
11:05 "this one feature made dying more fun" 💀
Wonderful video. I work in UX design and have lots of the same experiences/skills. Especially like solving multiple problems in one change.
"Very few ideas survive first contact with players" is a fantastic line and insight.
I mean it is just a mutation of "No plan survives contact with the enemy." But it is a good mutation.
Pretty cool problem solving approaches! And you can transfer them one-to-one to digital product development. Love it
It felt like you were able to write about this in the way designers actually see it much better in this video, which is probably due to your own design experience now
This stuff isn't even limited to game design it's just straight up great advice on problem solving in general
I wish more indie-devs would know these methods of game-tweaking while they do their work. Too many devs confuse 'difficulty' with 'grind' or "how hard it is to actually get things done" with "TIME it takes to get things done". It isn't just indie devs that do it, but they seem more susceptible to it than others.
I know it isn't an indi-game anymore, but Minecraft suffers from that too. *I'll do a second example from another game in a self-reply that has significantly less words than this, if you'd rather read that*
There are countless material-farms (usually even called GRINDers) out there for procuring some mats, BECAUSE it takes so much time to get them in the first place. Consequently, people HAVE to build these farms, if they want to be as good as other players at the game.
One of these farms that comes to mind the quickest is Skeleton Grinders. People usually only build them, because chickens are so stingy with their feathers. Gravel is plentiful, and while it's 'drop rate' for flint can also be a stingy, you can quite happily pick up your left over gravel, and try again. Sticks are arguably one of the most plentiful items in the game - only arguable because you need logs first to eventually craft sticks, and you can literally get logs anywhere that isn't a desert.
But feathers? For feathers you have to kill a chicken, to MAYBE get A single feather. The chicken is gone, you don't get another try, you killed it. After you've gone through a few chickens, you might have a couple feathers. And each one feather, makes you all of four arrows. It takes 3-4 shots actually hitting to down a zombie - so you basically trade more than one dead chicken, for MAYBE an enemy, and a hit on another. Of course you can create a chicken farm/grinder if you breed together enough chickens. But again, they take time to grow up and be able to MAYbe drops feathers (or breed for more chickens) and that's just another type of grind, when you have to wait.
Two of the possible solutions I can see here, after watching this video are either:
1) Increase the damage of arrows, so that each of those four crafted arrows can potentially take out a single enemy (maybe a headshot, but that seems tough to implement) or at least make it so not every single arrow is lost (similar to Skyrim) upon hit... BUT that would very easily screw up the multiplayer PvP scene, and while that's not MY cup of tea, I respect the people that enjoy it.
or 2) Increase the drop rate of feathers from chickens to multiple feathers per chicken. OR, maybe they might shed them from time to time int their own, similarly to how they drop eggs, AND upon death. People would still have to seek out chickens to pen up somewhere, if they want easy access to the feathers... But it could be closer to an actually fun and rewarding farming-experience, where you can keep a few chickens around to look after, and you can collect their feathers just by giving them homes. But if you end up needing food you can breed up, and harvest them, for both meat and feathers.
or even 2.5) Increase the amount of arrows you get with a single feather, though that would get under the skin of the players that prefer a bit more realism in their Minecraft ;) I don't know... Change the name of the drop to feathers with an S, to indicate a handful of feathers.
What did the devs do to discourage grinders like this instead, since they didn't like the grinders? They made it harder to make skeleton traps, or any afk grinders really. Undead no longer drown. They don't drop as much loot (if any) if not killed directly by a player. If you build a zombie-drowning grinder, they just turn into more powerful versions of themselves. The devs ended up punishing the people willing to take the time to make grinders, instead of addressing WHY they were doing it. So it becomes more and more of a hassle to build a grinder like that, to bypass an already grindy aspect of the game.
I know this is a self-reply, but a less-wordy example from a different game than my above comment may be in order...
Skyrim has a much easier example to 'fix':
In that game, if you choose to increase the difficulty, you end up with a phenomenon known as "bullet sponge". While the *name* refers to projectiles, it is seen with all sources of damage. All entities that aren't you get a defense boost AND a damage boost. If you go all the way up to 'Legendary' it's not uncommon for the weakest critter in the game (rabbits) to no longer die in a single arrow shot or mace to the head. Yeah it's technically harder, but only in the sense of "it takes longer to kill things", and "things can kill you faster"... But it's more grindy, because of that.
But if they had only increased all the damage dealt (towards you AND from you, even) it could be much easier to be simply caught off guard. Lose focus in a battle and you get wrecked, keep focus and you still triumph. This now requires you to strategize a bit more in your fights to succeed, without possibly taking hours to get through a single dungeon.
*Everything beyond this line is just more details about what I mean, the quick fix has already been mentioned. And you can safely continue with your life having not missed a thing.* ;)
Charging in blind will get you killed. Shooting at distance will get you killed, what with arrows and spells now raining down around you since you drew attention, and stealth-ing everywhere is so slow. So you start to consider some of the less-common potions, like frost-resistance for those mages, or poisons, or mana regen, or improved archery for one or two shots, or armored-flesh spells, or something/anything, to do better. But it doesn't take 10 headshots to a single draugr... in an alcove with half a dozen of them lurching about, and ALL the damage boosting enchantments you can find, to beat a single room in half an hour.
There are a couple mods that do this (the one I used to use was Wildcat), and the game certainly felt like I had to play a bit smarter, and plan a little better, to have a better chance of winning. Without noticing the grindy aspect of the damage sponges. Bonus points, if you have an "active-time when in menus" mod and a "potions last longer, but can't be chugged as often" mod loaded up too. Stealth is only (figuratively, I'm sure there's tons of solutions) broken, because you need that crit-damage to break through those defense levels. lol
Oh my gosh if chickens could occasionally shed feathers, that would make me REALLY happy.
Farming for arrows is always one of the worst things in Minecraft.
@@AegixDrakan Depends of course if the game was even designed to be fun, or to be grindy so you'll want to pay for skipping that and make it fun.
Two things I've learned that can make a *HUGE* difference in player enjoyment:
1. Follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment' as much as you can. Basically, the more intuitive the UI/etc. and the more like what they've experienced in other games, the faster the players can get used to playing your game and switch their focus from how to play to what they need to do to progress. For example, WASD for movement, left-click for primary action & right-click for secondary, for inventory, etc., are all examples of common game mechanisms that most games use because players are already quite familiar with them and don't have to learn them over again to play your game.
2. Use 'Yes, but...' instead of 'No!' Rather than simply preventing players from doing something, allow them to do so, but with logical, acceptable consequences, as this maximizes player agency and minimizes them blaming the game when things go wrong. The Shovel Knight checkpoints are an excellent example of this. Players can break them for extra money, but then they can't use the checkpoint as a spawn. If they can make it to another checkpoint, then they will be happy to have the extra cash. OTOH, if they die and have to start further back, they know that it was because of their decision, not the developers. A *bad* example is invisible walls; there is no logical, acceptable reason for the player not to be able to go past them, so the player ends up annoyed and their immersion is broken. This is just lazy development that also breaks the 'Law of Least Astonishment'; if you see an empty alley way, you would be surprised if you are prevented by an unseen force.
Cheers!
omg I didn't realize that those were checkpoints in Shovel Knight 😑
I broke every single one, every single time. I thought that it was just supposed to be a throw back to when games didn't have check points and you had to beat the whole level in one go.
I just wanted to chime in and say how much I love this video's thumbnail!
I like this type of video too, more of these would be awesome.
Which "type" of video is this? It seems to be GMT's traditional video format, as opposed to making his own games or focusing on a single one.
To add to the 'flip it on its head' approach. I'm a hobbyist game developer, but work as a deep learning engineer and also like to coach my friends at sports that I myself am better at, due to being lucky enough to afford the coaching myself. I often get the best results when making drastic changes. Take a golf swing for example, if someone is constantly suffering from a terrible slice, if I suspect their grip is the issue, rather than make incremental changes until they are hitting straight, I will make a drastic change to the point that they have now gone from a drastic slice to a drastic hook. This confines the problem and informs me that the solution lies somewhere in the middle. Had they not developed the drastic hook with the alteration, I would know that the cause of their slice is something else. The lesson here, is that making drastic changes first, provides us with massive feedback learning opportunities and allows us to reach the optimal solution quicker.