What is Parasitic Design?
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- Опубліковано 8 сер 2021
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Parasitic design, systems within games that leech from the core mechanics and require support from other systems to function yet never become main, meaningful parts of the gameplay experience.
Temporary systems added to provide empty timesinks, easily removable distraction systems designed to placate players.
However once players realise a system is parasitic, they'll often stop using it because they realise it takes yet gives nothing back/
MMO games are guilty of this in almost every major expansion, systems you just KNOW won't be relevant in the next expansion.
Thanks to the Patreon supporters and Twitch subs for keeping the channel going :D - Розваги
It’s good that Josh explained about the mug, otherwise there could have been a misunderstanding!
Ah yes, having the numbers on the back were entirely to explain what it was not. I wouldn't have been able to understand without him explaining it. Thankfully he cleared that up.
He wouldn't want you to think he was calling Callum Upton a mug after all
@@bopsie55 You mean you CAN'T drink from Callum? I'm so confused!
@@pyrix British slang. It's calling someone a fool
Guess Callum got "mugged" by josh
"Hey, wouldn't this be cool?" is one of the most innocuously dangerous sentences in design. Not just game design.
Then ask "is it practical? does it work well?" It helps
Josh, Sir….been a gamer for 24 years and never heard the phrase “parasitic design”….didn’t hear toxic design until riot games started calling their entire player base toxic….
The phrase might be new, the concept for sure isn't.
it's like content islands but fancy
It's for sure a new phrase. I would say as well that the concept is quite new too in the grand scheme of things. Like consider how many years current game designs has existed compared to the invention of games, and it hasn't really existed for that long
The term Parasitic Design has been used in MtG for over a decade and probably more than 20 years, Mark Rosewater (the head designer of MtG since 2003) has been using it in articles about MtG and failed designs since at least 2009. It doesn't see much use outside design circles, in part because most developers do not want to attract attention to the limited long term scope of something they've put out.
I aint never hoid of it
The best example from Warframe was, for nearly 4 years, Archwing. Sepperated space missions where you had to level up some rocket wings, a new ranged and melee weapon, get new mods, and for what? 1 or 2 resources that affected the rest of the game. It has taken them until the last couple of years to start integrating it more properly. There's now an item that let's you call it down and use it on the Open World areas, with a boss added late in Fortuna's life cycle we got a way and reason too call down Archwing ranged weapons for use. Railjack made it so you use the archwing to travel between the ships and boarding objectives or even fight manually (would not recommend as you'll get bombarded from all angles in those missions). However with Fortuna they added another new system; a hoverboard, for mobility and tricks. However since Archwing is usable in open world, and most weapons and abilities don't work on the hoverboards, they are pointless. So the quest for the most recent warframe requires you to grind trickpoints with this system to complete. For hours. And hours.
I might be a bit of a normie but I like the k-drive and the tricks for the vent kids.
Sorry but k-drives are there for new players.
@@xyzen9673 That's not the point. The point is it takes resources from other game modes to support it but doesn't support any of them back in return.
I have several thousand of hours in Warframe
I have never upgraded any Archwing stuff. Only used it when it was necessary.
@@SwedetasticGames Agreed. K drives are useless because in terms of mobility, archwings are far superior. Yarelli was added simply to force people to use K drives, because no one used them prior (and no one uses them now because Yarelli is trash). Pure archwing missions were trash, and that's where railjack comes in to save the day.
TLDR: K drives are trash
Josh : *Talks about Parasitic Design and uses Warframe Footage*
The literal parasite infestation augment in the Warframe System : *Sweats profusely*
And all of it while fighting the infestation. Oh the irony!
Oh yeah, the Helminth on my ship is quite nervous now.
Well the helminth system's introduction was great IMO. Somewhat lazy but added a needed variety of builds, some new skills and uses for the stockpiles of resources laying arround.
That latest invigorations addition though? Yeah, don't think it can get more parasitic than that one
To be fair, at least DE is trying to synergize their systems, emphasis on trying they definitely haven't succeeded yet and there's a long way to go before that becomes a reality but still, better than just abandoning every extra system and forgetting they even exist.
@@RansHappyGamingFamily trying is kinda an overexagerration... with de its one step forward two steps back.
Now that I understand the concept, I feel like the Sims series (also: some Paradox titles) is a masterclass in parasitic design. I never had a word for grafting new, partly-redundant mechanics onto a game and then forgetting all about them when grafting even more redundant mechanics onto that corpus. Now I do. Thank you for that.
100%
The first place I heard the term was in regards to Magic: the Gathering. There, it was the idea that a new set's mechanics just relied on you playing more of the same cards from that set, not the other ones currently available in the format. It can definitely be like that with the Grand Strategy stuff from Paradox, for sure.
Though for Paradox, they are trying to simulate specific historical structures, etc. So a parasitic system isn't always a bad thing there.
To be fair at least paradox are still updating systems. Stellaris is going in a better direction now it has a dedicated team tweaking old content to make it work better
"I know we have Cooking and Gourmet cooking, but let's add Baking. Oh, and Juice making"
What's even worse is that the Sims way of gouging their playerbase for ridiculous amounts of money to get the complete product is becoming the standard in simulation games as a whole. Selling expansion packs and DLC is fine when there's a substantial amount of content added, but at some point we should be asking if some of that stuff should've been part of the base game or free updates. For example Cities: Skylines is an amazing game, but if you want all the DLC it's going to cost you the equivalent of 4 full price AAA games. Train Simulator games have so much paid DLC you are probably better off buying a real train.
WoW throwing the baby out with the bathwater, after each expansion was always one of the more annoying things for me.
They introduce the skeleton of a system, slowly refine it throughout the expansion, then throw it away.
Was never a fan of pet battles/collecting but I'll never argue that the whole system wasn't a great addition to the world.
Mage tower and class order halls could have been a solid addition to carry forward and expand upon. Minus the awful decision of making each player the "leader" of said class.
They don't even make meaningful cities anymore, which I get. However, they have a city that they can literally teleport!
Imagine if Dalaran was slightly expanded upon each expansion, eg. add a little extra chuck to house the current covenants/factions.
and most of the time the system is only "completed" at the very end when it's soon to be killed off, so people only get to spend a short time with the system that was actually envisioned by the devs
That's why I quit buying Blizzard products. That and the fact the entire company is toxic. Found a nice WotLK repack and I'm fine with letting friends on my server.
Class order halls were seriously the best, I loved them so much
I think its a good thing that they throw out the expansion mechanics otherwise the game would get bloated with systems on top of systems that people would have to deal with to balance out their char. My problem with it is how bad and unbalanced they usually make these systems and how slow they are to fix it's problems. The shadowlands systems that I dealt with before quitting were soo inconvenient to deal with on an hourly basis and the covenant choices were soo infuriatingly unbalanced you would think they were trying to ruin their own game and drive everyone away.
@@CrowbarOfJustice I think they already did that with most of their player base.
Loved hearing about this! I've been homebrewing a lot of equipment and mechanics for DnD 5e, and it's refreshing to take a look at what I've written and adjust accordingly.
I was thinking about this in terms of D&D 5e as well. Although i will point out that in an RPG mechanics that enhance Roleplay, or simulate specific roleplaying aspects feedback into the Immersion. So RPGs work a bit different than Video Games.
E.g. i was thinking about adding the Heat Mechanics from MCDMs Arcadia magazine to the game. They help simulate stolen items and fences/smugglers. The game could easily exist without them. But they help simulate the imagined reality, and complications of selljng stolen items. They also introduce new Characters to the PCs and help immersion into the world. So i think they are not so much parasitic, as they are complex.
Have you considered not playing DnD
It's also worth pointing out that a mechanic being parasitic doesn't mean it's bad, it just means it has the potential to feel bad in certain contexts. If you're just homebrewing stuff for a game and think a bunch of bloated and unrelated systems will be really fun to mess around with for a campaign or two then there's absolutely no reason not to do that if everyone else is on board, if the end result is fun then it was good game design. Parasitic mechanics are mostly an issue in professional products since they're affecting a much wider audience (many of which might not be as into them) and have budgetary issues continuing to support those new systems in the future which leaves them abandoned, but homebrew gamers can just keep adding more onto anything they like at any time.
MTG's Splice mechanic for example didn't work out in the official sets because almost every card with it was bad and they stopped printing Arcane cards altogether after that so there were never any new ways to support them. However, many custom card designers have revisited the keyword since then to make content just as fun and rich as anything else you might find in MTG. It's not that the concept was fundamentally flawed, it's that the execution of how they introduced and maintained it within a consumer product was botched horribly. There's a good lesson to learn there but it shouldn't be "I should never try to have fun with anything that seems like parasitic design ever again."
Perfect example of Parasitic design in Warframe, Archwing when it first came out. It was literally a system on its own that required resources from the base systems of the game to exist. The actual archwings themselves could not be called in to regular mission, and the arch guns and arch melee weapons couldn't be used in regular mission either. It wasn't until Plains of Eidolon that Archwing found another use as a great mode of transportation, and it wasn't until the Profit Taker fight from Fortuna and Orb Vallis that we could summon arch guns to use in normal ground combat. It's not really parasitic anymore, but it also wouldn't affect much if it was straight up removed.
Yeah archwing is such a gimmick thing back then, and its pretty resource with not much to do. Until the "open world" map is released.
Railjack was 100% that on release, now it's like 80% that, so baby steps i guess? I'm still waiting on that railjack team + ground team cooperation they were supposedly testing in Scarlet Spear event.
Archwings and doggos, that's when I played for the last time. And every time I'm tempted to reinstall I think about whatever time-sink they've added to farm and stale progression and it discourages me. I'd be fine with new frames, weapons, environments and enemies but there always has to be a new dumb system gating the content behind bazillions hours of grind -_-;
Even now it's mostly parasitic. Free Roam Archwing use is heavily hobbled by homing missiles which ignore player defences and are given to every other enemy while Railjack Archwing is hobbled by game balance heavily favouring the Railjack itself. Archwings definitely have a point now that they never really had originally, but they're still very superficial - as evidenced by the stagnant state of their balance and lack of weapon/mod variety. Digital Extremes have a long list of parasitic systems which they consistently ignore in favour of adding new ones. As much as I love Necramechs, we didn't need ANOTHER new parasitic system when one of the old ones could have been integrated into the game better. Atmospheric Archwing Melee seemed like the natural next step, but even Necramechs can use that.
I don't think this assessment tells the whole story. Archwing, like many things in Warframe, was implemented in an alpha/beta state. It was incredibly clear that DE wanted to integrate Archwing into the game, the intro quest for Archwing is a merger of on-foot and on-space combat. Jordas Verdict beautifully integrated the two, even having some mechanics that remind me a lot of what Railjack has started to become.
The problem was that DE gave up on it. Implementing Archwing was fine, the failure wasn't in the idea itself, the failure was in the followup.
Today I learned what the community in Warframe has always called "content islands" has actually been parasitic design all along.
Have a like Hayes!
No, however most things DE slaps onto them are. Railjack and the not-even-close-to-shadow-of-mordor lich systems on the other hand...
i'm still waiting for him to do a full vid on WF content islands
I think there might still be a distinction between design that detracts from the experience and something that is merely very discrete. There are systems in Warframe that I actively wish would just die, and there are others that, while totally disconnected, are FUN to explore and then forget about.
I think that's kind of unfair. Systems in Warframe are not borrowed power that is taken away in a new update or expansion unlike in WoW. However, new content is usually cleared rather fast and people are then bored with it, that's for sure.
@@tuxedocatfish9185 Couldn't agree more. But let's go a bit in depth on DE's parasitic design:
Most resources we get in open worlds, and others like Hexenon we got with Corpus Gas City tileset rework and the like are mostly useless outside the content those were paired with. Although in Hexenon's specific case they did use it for some of Deimos gear.
K-drives only being useable in open worlds.
Archwings being largely forgotten (reminder we were teased with Archwing modular rework years ago). Itzal and Amesha are the most widely used ones.
Only two out of the six companions we got on Deimos are useful. Panzer viability competing against Adarza and Smeeta.
Moa pets? What were those again?
Carrier, Helios, Djinn and arguably Shade and Wyrm. Diriga, Dethcube, Nautilus, Oxylus and Taxon sobbing in the corner.
Three Hounds released with Sisters of Parvos. Only reason aside from MR affinity to get them all is getting all precepts. I'm sure some already have over 20 Hounds sitting in the foundry.
Operator arcanes have like 4 to 6 BiS options. Rest is for completitionist purposes and/or incredibly gimmicky (altho admittedly fun) builds. Kinda the same deal for Theorem, Residual and regular Arcanes.
Infested Salvage, Defection, Rush, Pursuit game modes, I've seen people telling me they like Infested Salvage, but were it not for the fact Nidus parts drop there, they wouldn't play the game mode. Harrow parts drop from Defection, so same deal. Once people get the frame part they need most hardly go back to playing those game modes.
I could go on for longer but I think I've made my point 🤣 Like you said, some of the content and systems are fun to explore and forget about. I'm sure everyone of us would rather having more interconnection between the many systems we have on top of meaningful changes. Remember the Focus School Rework? How many people do you recall using Madurai or Unairu regularly?
"Garrisons in Draenor", "The artifact weapon", "Heart of Azeroth", *All of these gave me sudden PTSD*
Now when it comes to Warframe, i suppose that's a bit of a double edged sword, isn't it? Now i havn't been playing as long as some folks have, but i have played long enough to see how "at odds" many of the systems are with each other. Kitguns, K-Drives, Zaws, Railjacks . . . *Necramechs* . All of that honestly creates a weird bloat to the game. And the fact that it's not connected in a "good" way to the rest just creates even more problems. Zaws and Kitguns are *stupidly* good examples of this. Both of them require materials that you can get/harvest in the open world areas, and some of those materials are not exactly *easy* to acquire. It's become only a little easier recently with the fact that there are Thumpers in the Plains of Eidolon, of which there needs to be something similar for the Orb Vallis, and even Deimos isn't AS egregious with requiring you to fish or mine your eyeballs out. You still probably need to fuckin' do those, but still. Even Railjack is an . . . interesting beast that kinda got stuck in the muck of "how the fuck do we get this to work???"
Getting your own spaceship, flying it around, and blasting the shit out of multiple things sounds awesome! And that's the point of the problem. It *sounds* awesome. But take a step back and look at the mountainous process of MAKING your own ship, let alone getting it geared to an "okay" point and the humongous matroshka doll that is the mods and all that and it gets rather problematic. And i can go on for AGES about the Mod system and how they're either "non relevant" or just *break the entire fuckin' game* . But setting all that aside, Railjack was originally supposed to be a way to "connect" the sort of "content islands". Which as we all know, didn't fuckin' work.
And i think that just goes into the sort of odd problem of Warframe. A lot of the well . . . *everything* is held back by the fact that a lot of it can either be "missed" or "ignored" by a majority of players. Like i love Archwing as much as the next guy but i can freely admit that there needs to be a better way to integrate that gameplay loop into the rest of the fuckin' game. And the problem is that i KNOW they can figure out how to fix these problems. It's just a problem of oversight.
*Nothin' but blissfully ignorant giraffes*
I agree that k-drives have absolutely no reason to exist other than "futuristic skating", because you'll have the archwing to use as transport eventually, so it negates the initial proposition of k-drives.
Now, I'm not very sure how zaw and kit guns work fully, but I thought they existed mostly for people to keep gaining mastery after they maybe cleared everything else. I dunno if the game has enough regular items for max mastery, but since they keep adding more, perhaps now that system is actually irrelevant, aside for maybe some fun or unusual builds.
Necramechs on the other hand I think are a good system because they allow a player to be powerful without having endgame gear, and are used like tanks. If you combine them with Wukong or umbra, they can be useful for certain events. I do agree they should receive more support, more mods and weapons and things like that, but I think the necramechs have their place
@@xxOnigiri99 Zaws and Kitguns are primarily for customized weapons that feel/do what you want, not what the game says is right, you can find equivalent weapons for each kind you can build, but the novelty of making your own makes it worth keeping imo. There are more than enough weapons & warframes to get to MR30, and they've added an additional system to compensate.
K-Drives were for fun and lel's, and should have stayed that way. Originally it was just gonna be a side thing you could do if you wanted, but with Yareli they've made it a system you HAVE to participate in which ruins the original idea: Space Ninja on a space skateboard is hilarious.
This is all my opinion but I didn't really find doing the Rising Tide quest to be a "mountainous" process and getting good MKIII RJ guns, hulls, etc. didn't seem very problematic since I just clicked "Join Any Squad" in Veil Proxima which helped get me good amounts of MKIII RJ parts and the respective resources needed to craft them. Granted, I did get my own RJ (which I happily called Bugframe Airlines) before RJ 3.0 so I guess that's an important factor to take into account.
Garrisons could be salvageable, if not as a player housing, at least some sort of base a player could return to. After moving from Draenor, it could be your own personal space, offering commodities of your choosing
@@ar3klis Garrisons damaged the game the moment they were added into the game and were a really bad feature in the first place.
My entire guild thought they made the game feel more like a single player game and not an mmo, trying to turn them into something else might not make them better either as there will be some who will complain why they cant go back to being able to farm mats in them still and do everything from them as they made things easier.
Though maybe they should have just stuck with garrisons and doubled down on them as they seem to want to cater to a more casual audience anyway....
Just to add on to this and play a little devil’s advocate. A lot of companies in the tech space particularly gaming have really high employee turnover rates. So there’s high demand for content but people at the company might not be the same that built the initial system, have entirely different ideas or are so short staffed that putting improvised things on top and fixing it later is the go to method to supply demand and keep stakeholders happy.
Essentially, these days you’d have to plan a game and about 10-15 of content in advance to be able to keep up the level of intricacy and synergy. Not to speak of how incredibly expensive it would be to put out fully realized and tested content compared to “most viable” content that’s fast, cheap and can be adjusted later without touching core mechanics if the player base doesn’t accept it.
I’d like to use Warframe as an example of why this is a bad excuse. The trend of Warframe updates is always the same, some new content is added with inevitably new resources to gather and the devs decide to make it so only that one new activity will have that resource. These activities have all too frequently prevented you from using your arsenal in them and the gimmick of the activity can rarely be used in wider play. It costs nothing to let people use the hoverboard in any mission type or any other gimmick they have introduced over the past decade and yet the core gameplay loop has not expanded to accommodate more than one of these gimmicks and only after an egregious amount of farming.
Ah yes.. warframe's loot islands. This has been the form of content we've been getting since before I started playing in 2018. On the bright side, DE has started to interconnect them.
indeed. so far the tiny connections here and there really elevate the content. of all the mmo devs they are the ones that are willing to make the most bold changes. other exception is ff14. but that was an entire rework
@@cirescythe Warframe is well known to NOT make bold changes, wtf are you talking about? They constantly add random crap that that abandon weeks later and only come back to it to milk it a bit more later on.
@@cirescythe Bold changes? Buddy, you clearly haven't been around Warframe enough. DE have an established pattern of *not* making """bold""" changes, they only make a change _after_ the community is universally upset and for long enough. This goes for both in and out of the game.
@@magnolia549 I think you are talking about fixes to existing game systems. Let’s use some examples shall we? Movement 2.0 adds a movement system that allows players to move at 5x their previous speeds, changing the entire core movement and combat gameplay. Operators, adding a new type of playable character and allowing you to switch between them at will. Railjack, adds a ship and space combat.
Obviously we can debate about how well these new systems have been received but you cannot argue about them being bold. These type of changes to the core game you don’t see even in sequels of games, much less the game itself.
@@AzureRoxe reee reeee REEEE you say? sorry i dont speak whiney vet
The mug flex was strong enough to fix Josh's curl form.
I'm in absolute awe at the absolute chad move.
I almost died from the *ahem* understated English smugness.
And he looks like he's the younger half brother of jane from The Mentalist
Parasitic features are, in some ways the lesser evil. Especially in long term games like MMOs. The other options are to build these systems as integral which will take so much time that when the new feature or expansion is released, no one is left to play it. Or it represents such a drastic shift in core loops that a large portion of the playerbase will not take to it well. And unlike these parasitic designs, these integrated ones can't be ignored.
Add to that the complication of monetization, and you have to stratle the line between community segregation or expansion invalidation.
Other issue is that full integration means fiddling with core game systems that generally are barely functioning.
This. This video is a good intro to the idea but it's sadly lacking the full perspective. If you have a constantly updating game, parasiticism is a feature, not bug, because if you keep on expanding the integral systems, eventually the learning curve will be too high. New players will have to learn every aspect of an interwoven system before getting the hang of the true game experience. Parasitic systems are basically a way to modularize game-design. Thus you should be looking at it as "is this specific solution an appropriate trade-off?" rather than "avoid this at all costs like the plague".
@@lekhakaananta5864 Very much this. There are plenty of times where it's just another way to milk money without actually contributing anything worthwhile, just like dlcs selling what should have been base content, but there are appropriate uses.
Yeah, I can name some parasitic design elements that I enjoy from WoW. The problem (I think) is when it is just wildly egregious, like the Heart of Azeroth, and takes over the game for a while. Then the whole game feels like a futile exercise in "build it up only to tear it down", build it up, tear it down. Your effort feels (and is) meaningless, and it's _easy to recognize it as meaningless._
9:25
@@lekhakaananta5864 I humbly disagree. A new expansion doesn’t need a fundamentally and integrally change the mechanics or gameplay loop, it just needs to interact with it in a meaningful way. Expanding the gameplay can mean more than adding core mechanics that players have to keep track of. Take Minecraft, for example. When they added shulker boxes, it wasn’t a completely new system, but rather an expansion of the inventory system. It only interacted with one system of the game, but did so in a way that meaningfully changed the gameplay. Even when they add a new mechanic, like enchanting, it’s not a one and done deal. Over time they kept expanding on it with accompanying mechanics and added integration with other systems.
Besides, making sure mechanics are clear and readable to new players is part of a game designer’s job as well. Choosing when and how to show players new mechanics that integrate into the game’s systems can ensure that players aren’t flooded with information, and this is the case for any game
I came expecting a discussion of microtransactions and found something much more interesting.
Also this explains alot of how Destiny 2's been updated over the years.
Applies to Warframe as well.
I just realized that the entire Destiny 2 season model is based on parasitic design. They're continuously adding temporary systems that leach on the game base shooting mechanics and lore (which are very very good), just to give the players short term goals and keep them hooked until the next season. Now I fully understand why I abandoned Destiny 2.
This can also apply to Raid specific armour mods.
They don’t interact with the core game, and only do stuff while inside the raid, and take away from your ability to use other mods.
Now you feel how us WoW/mmorpg players have felt for the last decade. :'( It's honestly sad because the engine is there, the game is there and the mechanics that are amazing have been there.
I really don't think it applies to Destiny. Adding new activities is not really "leeching off of the shooting mechanics" because by that logic any new dungeon, zone, quest etc. Introduced into any game ever would qualify as Parasitic.
@@godqueensadie They're not just adding new activities, they're deleting old ones. They're making stuff you grinded for hours effectively useless. If you return to the game after some time it's like you're back to square one. And where's all the content I paid for or grinded for hundreds of hours of my life? Completely gone or rendered useless, because hey, come grind some more on "new" content that will be irrelevant six months from now.
@@thebaffman4898 They have to do it that way. From what I understand the sunsetting of content is to keep the game playable and not bloated. The remove content to keep the game size down and every time they add something new it needs to work with everything else. Also now all that armor you grinded for you can use as ornaments, so I think they did a good job of addressing the sunsetting issue.
as a long time warframe player, i love that you're completely tearing it to shreds. maybe your voice will be loud enough for the rest of us
I don't play anymore as the gameplay loop of the open worlds just got annoying to me, but yes, as much as i love the game still theres so many issues it has.
Sorry to hear that. I know the feeling of a loved game failing. I hope it works out for you.
warframe is basically, hey here is a bunch of rule 34, hopefully it distracts you coomers enough to overlook the fundamental issues of the game
@@acethemain7776 W-
Yup, love the the game, but the first thing that came to mind when he described parasitic design was "oh, like railjack"
You hit the nail on the head man. My girlfriend and I recently started playing OSRS (last I played was 2007) and I couldn’t believe how much fun we were having. That’s when I realized just how important “horizontal” game design is. I’m a veteran WoW player so I’m extremely familiar with the “all your gear is irrelevant now” cycle popular in MMO’s. The thing I love about OSRS is that when they add new stuff, you don’t have to be a max level to experience it like you do in WoW, and it interacts with the other systems / skills in place just like you mentioned.
Blizzard just refuses to stop with the vertical power creep year after year. It's sad to see.
You don’t have to be max level in RuneScape because it takes you doing tasks hundreds of thousands of times to get there. Max level content would leave 90% of their player base behind.
@@notGeist Pretty much. Spend hundreds of hours grinding to get the new thingamabob? Nah.
One problem with synergistic systems is that they tend to increase complexity. Many people cannot handle high levels of complexity. Those people become frustrated as they start to fall behind other players as complexity increases. Of course, there are other players that need complexity to not become bored. Therefore, there is a bit of a balancing act.
This is exactly* what Destiny does with its Seasonal Artifacts and Seasonal Systems. Each season, you level these things up over a few months, and while they do have many different uses, they are completely thrown out at the end of the season. Very frustrating.
*edited from "excellent"
I'm glad Bungo stopped removing seasonal activities but potentially not having breach and clear next season is going to sting.
This is part of why I didn't wanna keep playing Destiny. You level whatever artifact you get for the season to get mods relevant for that season and then at the end none of it mattered. Warframe's somewhat bad in this regard, but at least they didn't make Nightwave progression irrelevant after every new season.
Individual Seasonal Artifacts definitely might appear parasitic, but the game's seasonal nature is so deeply ingrained into the core gameplay loop that it gets kinda ambiguous. It's like PoE leagues in a sense, except you only get reset to a certain baseline instead of entirely. And I can understand why they do it this way - players have actually rather little room for building their power in comparison to most other games, and there isn't that much of a difference in performance between somewhat optimized gear and minmaxed godrolls. It keeps the game's balance from becoming a runaway train like it is in Warframe, but it also means players don't have all that much to chase after without the seasonal content.
@@vflitz For sure. My main issue with the system comes down to having seasonal mods. I understand from a gameplay perspective, but it is very much a feeling of, "Alright, you hit 10/10 power, now each season, we will give you up to a 12/10 with the artifact, then set you back to 10/10 so you can do it again next season, with different guns and abilities." At this point I am only really playing the game for the lore/story and gameplay, because trying to reach the top is so meaningless.
I miss the days of hitting that max, and then having the bar truly raised with the next expansion. That brings in power creep and a whole new can of worms though, so there has to be a compromise I suppose.
@@ghostassassin1107 That's what I mean though, now everyone is using a single temporary mod as a crutch, and next season, there is a good chance itll vanish back into the ether. For me, knowing it is temporary ruins the point of it for me.
This Josh dry face guy has some pretty good insight.
You mean Josh Wife Bays?
Josh's Life Rays?
I was so blown away by Path of Exile when the Betrayal syndicate came around and completely overhauled the mentor (I think that’s what it’s called, with Niko and the lot) replacing all of the old mentors and making them a part of this new enemy faction, it tied together the past few league mechanics into the endgame, while contextualizing the removal of the old mentor system, and using that contextualization to create a brand new system.
Great video!
Some Guild Wars 2 Masteries are a great example of this. To their credit, they did add movement and traversal elements from previous expansions and Living World maps into new maps (such as the Bouncing Mushrooms, Jackal portals, Skyscale flights etc.), which means you got more mileage from your previously trained masteries in new maps. Some of them feel a bit tacked on, but at least they acknowledge that users have put work into an ability that they can use in the new content.
But then there are the new masteries that apply to Dragon Response Missions and ONLY to them, some masteries from Living World Season 3 that apply only to one MAP of the entire season, and so on.
My only problem with Guild Wars 2 is how some things are locked behind far down into the game, like mounts; as a new player, you literally need to play the whole base game to only then go into the expansion and unlock a mount. If anything, those new mechanics introduced by expansions, well, should not be introduced by expansions, but instead added to the base game with the expansions.
@@ptkato_ as far as I know, if you own Path of Fire, you do need to be level 80 to access it, but you don't need to complete the base game story in order to just do the first Path of Fire mission and unlock the Raptor, which unlocks for all characters.
I know what you're saying though, I never jump around in the story like that and if I was a new player, the thought of having to go through main story + HoT just to get a mount does seem daunting.
You made me realise something about the Heart of Azeroth (I quit WoW in 8.1, returned in 9.0 and then quit for good). There was no reason for it to exist. They could have kept the azerite armor but removed the heart and the only thing that would change would be that it would be less annoying. Like really, it would just cut down on the useless grind and that's it. But there is another thing that I recently realised about WoW. It's not a game, it's a checklist. Tones of systems designed only to extend the playtime without giving back anything to the game, chores you have to do not to fall behind that will be irrelevant as soon as the next patch comes. Even mythic+ (which I liked in Legion) is this way, there is no real reason for the keys to regress. It's only to extend the play time.
A buddy of mine referred to this as keeping players running on that hamster wheel.
I am still playing,but I couldnt agree more. I log in only to do my checklist in order to raid properly. I dont log in because "I want to play it for fun" for quite some time now. Yet I still hang on because of my guild.. but it just doesnt feel good anymore ;_;
WoW is all about milking its playerbase. Gotta keep em players chasing "something" so that we can milk more $$$ right? Give em the carrot on the stick.. and let them chase it.
I hate what WoW has become in terms of game mechanics and story. The game's aesthetics and music are incredible and the questlines, dungeons, and raids are always fun to do, yet to even appreciate that stuff you gotta slog through all of the bullshit that exists because Blizzard just doesn't give a shit about making meaningful gameplay loops and systems to begin with. The fact that they even cut down on the grind by making all of the previous xpacs optional to go through is shocking as is. If only End Game wasn't such a mess to deal with.
Part of the problem was there was no reason to throw out the Legendary weapon system of Legion. The Legendary weapon actually fixed one of the core issues in WoW of your primary weapon being too important for stats and damage for melee. Plus with its item level determined by the enhancement slots the system could have indefinitely scaled up and merely made each new expansion unlocking a new set of transmogs (and if they made legion the primary level zones acquisition problem solved) for your legendary weapon and maybe 1-2 new signature abilities with some expansion enhancements. (such as say a skill that made you deal more damage or apply a debuff to azerite elementals)
Warframe is an amazing game to analyse, there's just so much done right and so much done wrong, pretty sure every game design student should go through the game's history.
8 years in and you think others would learn right! Anthem, Avengers, Godfall, Planetside the list goes on.
@@BuzzaB77 Planetside has had such a sad and fucked history, it was even on life support with like two or three devs for a while, now they're just trying to patch up the Frankenstein Monster they were left. I think PS3 needs to start getting into the prototype phase now so that they can actually transition sooner rather than later.
@@MeatyZeeg PS3 is never going to happen. I forget the company that bought SoE, (Bluehole maybe?) is never going to do anything with it. They are just milking the husk they got for cheap.
A shame, I think right now is the perfect time for an MMOFPS to shine if done right. Technology can kinda handle the concept now without the dire compromises both PS and PS2 had to do to just function.
@@Keldiur EG7 bought them but maybe a year or more down the line if PS2 proves their players interest then maybe we might see it. One can only hope.
I like to describe Warframe as "unconventional" to gamers who don't know it. Even when game mechanics/systems are sticking to convention, there are usually tantalizing signs that the designers actively gave thought to the "why" of those particular traditions.
But some of my favourite experiences in Warframe seem to be results of lucky accidents. Some outside constraint occasionally has forced Digital Extremes' hand, and then, apparently, they got unusually creative working around those constraints and/or weaving them into the game.
For example, some of today's core movement mechanics started out as "clever use of game mechanics" discovered by resourceful players. Instead of viewing those as exploits and disabling them, Digital Extremes sat down and asked themselves: why are players liking this thing so much? They were open to the possibility that it was a genuine improvement of player experience ... and it was, so it became standard.
There are a precious few extremely unconventional things in Warframe that no sane game designer would ever consider for even only a heartbeat. You will know them when you encounter them. Eventually. Too soon and too late. You will understand what I mean.
Thank you, Josh
I was going to introduce a parasitic homebrew mechanic into my D&D game.
Now i know i have to tweak it a bit so it has a nice synergy with the rest of the game's mechanics.
I just discovered your channel and wow! As someone who develops video games AND plays them this is the perfect channel. I am blown away by the constructive criticism you apply in your content. It is so refreshing to see un-biased honest opinions and instead of saying a game "sucks", being able to point out what even the worst games do WELL, and how they could've hit the mark better on other mechanics. It's such a good combo of having a "game designer" hat on while you review, while also keeping the player in mind and ensuring the mechanics are enjoyable. It's difficult finding reviewers that are able to do both. Keep up the awesome work, the effort you put into these videos is hugely appreciated and very informative!
Josh talking about Runescape - "The combat system is based-" I KNEW IT
I hope Bungie devs are watching this. Seasonal Activities? Seasonal Vendor Ranks? Seasonal Artifacts?
Seasonal Deletion Of Content People Paid For Only To Sell More Content That Will Also Be Deleted?
Love your videos man. This one is especially good. I have always known I did not like this type of design but never knew what to call it or why
Hey I’m so glad I found your channel! I normally don’t watch a ton of gaming channels despite loving games and mmos because I really hate the style of just shitting on a thing and not being objective that happens or the converse where someone only praises a game and doesn’t talk about the flaws and issues it has. I also love how you bring up so much analytical stuff as well and make an effort to understand things from the dev side!!
Anyway this isn’t really a comment on this video content specifically but I just wanted to say a big thanks and great work for making great content!!!
"Remember the Heart of Azeroth?" *eye twitches* Don't remind me.
Edit: You literally just described the "borrowed power" conversation that's been going on in the community for years.
Yeah, parasitic design is a better way to call it so the idiots who still defend Blizzard systems understand
Yeah, it just further cements how I have felt about Blizzard the past few years now. Basically, they keep doing things that cause talent to leave the studio (with the recent lawsuit just accelerating it) and leaving overworked underpaid abused devs to take their place, leading to a massive drop in quality, as evident by their output in recent years.
Convenants, Hearth of azeroth, legendaries, wod ring, Class halls, mop cloak. All goes into this definition. Funny enough all of that could be in the game in a more productive way lol. WoD garrison is still the only place i use because of the AH i have there.
@@rickroll9705 I will miss cata if not for this reason alone we still had real legendary gear and it did not really mess up the game.
Yeah I had never heard the term "parasitic design" before. After he used the "borrowed power" systems from Wow as examples of "parasitic design" I then understood the meaning.
I think what is the best thing in the world is that even though I discovered you through Asmongold....the channel growth after the initial discovery has been so organic and it has been so joyous to watch the Patreon list grow ever larger. You deserve every single moment of the success and attention Josh. Nothing but likes from this side of the pond.
Same boat as you. Discovered him through Asmongold and dove into his "Worst MMO" series. Definitely a great channel and deserves more subs.
I think Josh started showing up for me after I watched a few of AOGs videos. I watch asmongold sometimes, but pretty much only on twitch. Either way, it's a huge plus to my feed.
I randomly came across this channel. Most likely due to watching other similar content. UA-cam algorithm was like, "this might interest you". And I'm glad I found this channel. Josh definitely deserves everything he's gotten.
I found Josh because I was searching for videos reviewing Wizard101.
I discovered Josh through Asmongold as well...the funny part is I really like Josh and am already bored with Asmon because he feels so fake.
Noticed I've been binging your videos the last couple days, so have my sub!
This was really interesting. I have no background in game design or anything, but it's been quite fun thinking and Identifying core and parasitic mechanics. Thank you!
This is one of the biggest things that has seen my interest in WoW fade. WoW constantly adds new systems, and then scraps them after one expansion, only to add even more. In Legion, we had Artifact Weapons, Legion Legendaries, then we had the Netherlight Crucible. In BfA, we had the Heart of Azeroth, Azerite Armor, and then we had Azerite Essences, and then Corrupted Gear. In Shadowlands, we have Covenants with Covenant Abilities, Soulbinds with Conduits and Conduit Energy, and Shadowlands Legendaries. These will almost all certainly be retired in the next expansion.
You also get new systems that seem to ONLY exist for an expansion, like the Netherlight Crucible, Corruptions, and Domination sockets/gems. It's baffling.
Can i throw in rep specific stuff for one area like the Klaxi stuff? Just stuff that would work in that area and ONLY while you were out and about. No like benefit in Heart of Fear or something....
This mentality of adding random things till something works is why I can't get into many mainstream mmo's, it's straight up not good game design.
I'm in 100% agreement that the game relies way too heavily on borrowed power. However, I also think having something unique per expansion is really cool. I actually really liked corruption from a thematic standpoint (obtaining corruption was another story ... awful), but it made sense in the context of the story and didn't make sense to keep it when it was over. Not only this, but remember, good ole staples like tier sets are also borrowed power. We've had them since Classic, and every tier in every expansion we happily discard them for the next tier's more powerful updates.
So the idea of borrowed power isn't a flawed one. They just have to stop designing all forms of power progression around it and they also need to stop being so poorly designed. I mean, Azerite Gear in BFA, conduits in SL have to be some of the worst designed borrowed power systems you can think of. But legion artifacts on the other hand, I actually really liked those. They added a lot of fun to the game play, not just with fun abilities, but cosmetics as well. And loosing them at the end of the expansion felt bad. Where as opposed to the end of Shadowlands, I can't wait to get rid of coventants/conduits. Uhh, so bad.
So hopefully, blizzard can get their heads on straight. It would be nice to see some of the current core game mechanics added to, and it would be nice if there are any borrowed powers systems, they don't completely define our classes or the core game play loop.
Fingers crossed that we can retire WoW alltogether.
That mug is a special attack right at callums heart
I feel like dead-end design would be a clearer name, but good explanation of an interesting concept.
I can't believe how enlightening this video was. What JSH taught me here has so many useful applications in other areas. Thanks mah dude!
Everything about parasitic design perfectly describes Destiny2 seasons. and I'm a huge Destiny fan
Im so glad you congratulated callum on his charity stream! and certainly not the Three hundred and thirty eight million, two hundred and thirty eight thousand, five hundred and ninety three coins he lost in a shameful defeat dueling you. Keep up the positive vibes!
Just love how you how you stated dungeonering from RuneScape, I still kinda feel that way about it today, even though it has been less, but it’s still needs more work to be less parasitic.
I've seen this in Destiny 2 as well up until the time I stopped playing. A lot of gimmicky mods and items you have to charge and use that were only useful for that Season. Weapon sunsetting in general also seems really counterintuitive to the fact gun stats were randomly generated, so you had to grind so much just to get the right perks for them, only for them to be irrelevant down the line.
I really love these analytical videos about ingame systems / design / UI. Keep them coming, never get boring. And if you need another "worst MMO", play Crowfall ;) I can give you a 10 day key to test it out for free, if needed.
Ooooooh man i would love to see him play Crowfall. Pls josh
For warframe, the whole area on Cetus (first open world) was made to unlock Tenno abilities (josh didn't get there in main story). So cetus is 100% worthless until you complete almost all the main story, yet they let you go there and feel the confusion
indeed. they did a lot for new players but a bit more progress gating would be good. but i can see their problem here. if they gate it new players (like josh) will assume there is not much lore, worlds, systems etc. if they frontload all the story stuff without the gates within the story you wont have the whole journey feeling and most likely play the whole story in one big chunk leaving you with all the grindy bits without story breaks. i think the best way would be (which they seem to want to do) is to add more relevant story quests and then maybe make it so new players can experience the base systems quicker
Cetus should be locked until you get the point in the story where you actually need it IMO, it doesn't really make sense otherwise, the early game also needs to be a lot more on rails with the story, there are certain bitter warframe veterans content creators who claim the problem with the game is that DE panders to new players too much and that DE need to pander to old players, but the truth is the opposite. DE does nothing but put in new systems to pander to veterans and nothing to improve the new play exerence at all. playing warframe in 2021 as a new player is like a 3rd grader sitting in on a quantum physics lecture
I know right. why didin't they just gate all the open worlds off until you get your archwing? that would make total sense to me. WHen they did the new cutscene for deamos with you flying in i thought they might change it but nah. shame. what a mess of a sturcture that game has.
It's not a Cetus only problem. Same happens to Orb Vallis and Railjack, all those braindead grind for nothing relevant outside of those areas.
11:40 So I'm nitpicking here, re: Dungeoneering, but resource dungeons came out like three months after initial release, and were always part of the plan as it was described to us if I'm remembering correctly. And I think it's also worth pointing out that the skill itself launched with rewards that fed back into the main game in a major way; the Bonecrusher and Charming Imp were considered major QoL improvements, even before the addition of items like the split dragontooth necklace which, coupled with them, now practically define the Slayer meta.
And like. There's also the fact that Dungeoneering training was a decent, if inefficient, way to train skills if you didn't want to just do the same repetitive task over and over. And the Chaotic Weapons are still a pretty consistently important part of the gearing process, although they're no longer nearly as powerful (comparatively) as they used to be. I don't think the description of Dungeoneering as parasitic was ever warranted; it always fed back into the core gameplay loop in a major way. I don't want to speculate on the motives of its critics in general, because I only argued with a few dozen of them, but I got the very distinct sense at the time that many of them were just irritated at the more active style of gameplay, and were claiming that it "should have been a minigame" because they didn't want to interact with it at all.
Thank you again Josh. Once again, you put into words how I feel about the genre. Great Video as always!
You're really getting some mileage out of the Warframe footage lol
if you notice, he's going through the once awake quest. he's actually playing the game which is nice
I must say, I've felt there was something off about Warframe for ages now, a lot of us have. But I feel since Josh made these reviews and especially this video, I'm beginning to understand why some things about it felt so off. I also think that's why I like one of the newer systems they added, because it does take, but it also gives back. It's more like it's an improvement of the way the game plays, which is a thing that I already liked, it works well with the modding system and makes for some fun builds, but I do feel they could stand to inter-connect some of the systems more and make them more valid, that bridge could be what makes a terrible, obsolete mechanic into a fun mechanic.
Also, my first thought when it comes to this was that there's this really old game mode in Warframe that is one one node, with 1 purpose, to get a single warframe and you can tell it's been forgotten. The newest warframe Yareli uses a k-drive (Hover board) which was added much later, she was added very recently, and K-drives are kinda janky as it is. In this game mode you constantly lose armour unless you're in a safety bubble, however, because a k-drive is counted as it's own entity, when you're on Yareli's k-drive, even if you are in the safety bubble, you lose armour. A small oversite but a tell tale sign that the game mode has been forgotten, they relied on it registering what is and isn't a warframe in the bubble for stopping you losing armour but they didn't think that they'd have to make it work for the k-drive too.
Anyway, that's enough of my micro QA on warframe's newest frame, great video as always!
This is what happens when you kitbash 2 abandoned features together. Infested salvage canister mechanic is unfortunately way better than existing mechanics for excavation or mobile defense and nobody realized it or did anything to improve the old game modes that break all the time due to existence of one thing making or breaking the whole mode.
Who are you and why haven't I heard about you sooner! Awesome detailed content, smart and correct ideas and statements, good jokes and clear pronunciation!
grats on 200k!
This is key to my enjoyment of ff14.
They DO have parasitic design, but they are content islands (Bozja, Eureka) and they are never, ever, main expansion content. They are a side course with cosmetic rewards and part of the relic grind quest, which ARE a big power boost, but it is also optional? I just finished my grind this expansion and got a small but significant dps boost. Wouldn't shave a single minute for any of my raid clears though, better position would be way better.
I am getting more raids, more dungeons, more story, and they all work with the core systems.
Like all things in life, moderation is key.
They also offer a lot of lore value, too. A lot of optional content have amazing storylines with them so it doesn't happen in a vacuum
Even the relic weapon grind is optional unless you want the absolute best possible weapon
You have to go throw a lot of effort to get your relic weapon better than what you can just buy at a marketboard
Dont forget that even after EW comes out something like Bozja is still going to be the fastest way to level. from 71-80
Bozja isn’t really that parasitic as the relic weapon encourages engagement with legacy content,
Bozja provides an alternate EXP source like PotD,
it’s treated as a silo to intentionally keep the grind away from the core game systems,
And the major primary rewards are a side story and 3 dungeons that help develop elements from stormblood and endwalker.
You know, it's funny
because as someone who's sat through their devstreams, and dev workshops, and read over design council meetings...
DE _knows_ about parasitic design, and what a problem it is. Every time they add in a new system, the intention always seems to be 'well, get it out in a playable state right now just so that players can engage with it right away, and then we'll fully properly integrate it with the rest of the game as we go so that it won't just be abandoned content'
But then someone has a new cooler idea, or the playerbase screams for changes right then and there, or a new major update takes up the whole studio's time for a bit... and that integration just gets forgotten, left on the table as a project for 'later'. The system isn't removed, because integration IS planned... they just don't have the time to get to it yet.
And likely, they never will, but you just try and get DE to admit that - Warframe is their baby, and cutting features is like a knife to the heart for them - you can hear it in how they refer to old cut systems like the raids, when mentioned on streams
Warframe has a problem with direction. And by that, they don't have one. One of the higher-ups gets a half-baked idea, allocates resources to it, gets something half-done, releases it for "feedback" because WF is STILL in Beta, and then... crickets. I've also heard they also have relatively high turnover, which may also hamper creation, but my info may be old.
Removing raids was a mistake. Sometimes the only time I'd log on were for raids with clannies. I'm not mad they moved the raid rewards to Eidolons; More people can earn those rewards now and I'm happy that more people can participate. But the raids themselves were great for the social-style players like myself to hang out and goof off with friends.
@@IcicleFerret As much as I'm saddened raids aren't in the game anymore, they kinda had to. Each new patch they added to the game would break raids in some way and the upkeep needed to keep the 2 raids functional far exceeded the amount of players that even played raids. Personally, I hope they make a Railjack raid at some point, although I think the raid might be on Fortuna since the third orb is supposedly going to be a raid boss.
So they gonna kill the game by sucation
as I've said time and time again -- Warframe's flaws stem from poor management 99% of the time.
if there were people to say "no, we're not moving on from this until it is in a satisfactory state" the game would be *SO MUCH BETTER*.
but for some godforsaken reason they've allowed someone with untreated ADHD to lead the studio, and so the game suffers.
@@erickschusterdeoliveira2662 "they've allowed someone with untreated ADHD to lead the studio" is probably one of the best simple answers to why this game's development is so fucky, as someone with untreated ADHD myself.
Good video, I never knew about parasitic mechanics before. You're a very well spoken man that I'd expect would have tennis or cycling as a hobby, so I was struggling to process your shelf full of PS2 games, and was surprised when you mentioned that you're an avid runescape player.
One point I would raise about your video is that it's a bit heavy with analogy and explanation when you've already made the explanation of something very clear and easy to understand, so I needed to skip through one or two minutes of your video to finish it. Other than that, good stuff, subscribed!
Great Vid, you have been blowing up, I hope you keep doing well!
"Do you remember the Heart of Azeroth?"
Well thanks for waking up my "CHAMPYUN, AZEEROTH HAS WUUNDS DAT NEED EELIN" PTSD. That system was sooo bad.
Nevermind me, i was just passing by looking for that wow related comment 😂
"AZ'ROTH CRIES OOT IN PEHN" will echo in my nightmares
Not only parasitic design, but also creeping features, and the three of them were unbalance, broken and hard to grind, f*** the azerite armor, screw the escences, and especially go to the s***y hole were you came from corruption system
Warframe's Riven mod system is a pretty egregious examples of parasitic design, among many others in the game. It was intended as a sort of evergreen system: to buff up older, less-used equipment with mods that in theory would be strong enough to compete with newer, more powerful equipment. In the end it was an isolated, extremely grindy gameplay loop that really only served to make the already good equipment better. Even then, the Riven system becomes available at a point in a player's progression where it could be considered debatebly useful. Many people decried the way it was implemented and very little about it has changed.
rivens don't change because they make tons of money for DE, simple as that.
I've learned to just ignore them until I organically get a riven for a weapon I find interesting.
@@erickschusterdeoliveira2662 Very true, I knew some people who made small fortunes of plat from rolling rivens.
2 big unfair things about rivens: guns can roll negative damage or mult which always RUIN damage potential and every weapon releases with trash disco out of fear that rivers might be useful on it. In fact the only time it would be fair for new variant of thing that already has lowest dispo. Or at least keep the lower than average dispo for new variants and start closer to average
@@635574 thing is, rivens were made for underperforming and underutilized weapons.
they weren't made to make your newly released prime melee stronger, they were made to make stuff like the Latron Wraith more useable.
so releasing weapons with minimum disposition is the right thing to do, in my opinion.
I'm 50/50 on agreeing with you that 'rivens' in warframe are a parasitic system. But, I will at least say, they're implementation has absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, been extremely parasitic.
Maybe they could've had a good way to be implemented that wouldn't have been parasitic.
In an alternate reality. In a world where the developers had more than enough money to feel so comfortable, that the riven system wouldn't have 'needed to' (& I use that term loosely having lived in the golden years of the 2007's when games were made more so as outlets for passion instead of sources of income) have been so heavily affected by monetization. In a fantasy, where, "greed...has poisoned men's souls" wasn't true, maybe rivens could of been implemented without the developers ever even seeing them as a potential money-maker...because they would've already been content with the money the game has made...there wouldn't have even been a need to monetize rivens.
"What a fantasy!" Yes, admittedly. But, only by todays standards.
Really loved this video Josh. Great topic and it adds another element into the thought process when I design my new games. Thanks so much. Sub'd
Good video Josh, keep up the good work.
I used to love WarFrame. My name's even on a planet, if that's still a thing. Haven't played in at least 4 years. For one, I can only have so many games installed on my tiny hard-drive. For two, it started to feel way too monotonous and grindy. Guild halls seemed great at launch, then quickly became a problem because of the required rooms to unlock gear. And the massive farm required to make rooms then do research. Watching gameplay for it sorta makes me want to give it a go but I don't see me going to the trouble.
Don't return. The game is nothing but content islands nowadays. They've completely ditched their original vision to prop up the never-ending failure that is railjack. I've left 2 years ago and don't ever want to return.
They have no vision for the game anymore. They've completed the story and then thought to themselves "We can't just drop the game. Let's add more crap. Doesn't matter what it is, more crap." And that's the game.
While warframe suffers from Parasitic Design a lot they recently started to interconnect some systems to better work with themselves.
Back in 2019 you basically played Railjack missions to improve railjack and get railjack resources. Remove railjack and nothing happens.
With time they added other types of Railjack missions, where you need to play on foot, making your gear actually matter (other than Railjack armaments), vowen in Relic farming from normal missions into Railjack missions and added the finale of Liches/Sisters bossfight within Railjack missions.
There is still a lot of work to connect other system islands of warframe i feel like they know what their problem is and they actually take some steps to fight it. I just wonder if they'll keep fighting it instead of perpetuating their previous mistakes. Time will tell.
i think they will keep fighting it. they adressed the issues multiple times and said that they arent happy with the content island situation. thing is as a very very fair free to play game they HAVE to add new things regularly or they can shut down. so ye i can see why correcting missteps takes more time as they got to split their dev time
I just wish they didn't kill the solo levelling from old railjack in the process, it was the only option i had to level up my amps, companions and a bunch of useless gear
Notice how, after ignoring Railjack, they're only doing this NOW, YEARS later.
I hope they connect the operator system because its 100% useless.
This creates a new problem
Many systems in warframe are underdeveloped or abandoned because of that, no one wants to play them
For example: throw archwing into a piece of content and watch the people groan
this videos are so sooo good, thanks and keep doing this amazing work :')
Your mug is savage and I love it.
I've actually hated WoW's "Full Reset for an expansion" mentality since I first went into TBC.
Coming from EverQuest where gear was a big deal and there was tons of stuff from the prior expansions that was still very good in the new areas, having everything you've done be basically negated and feeling like all that effort was tossed down the drain felt so horrible and made we want to quit, and if it hadn't been for my guild I probably would have.
Yeah, but at least TBC just reset gear. You had jewel-crafting as more or less the only additional feature. It’s nowhere near as bad as ditching artefact weapons for another gimmick like the heart of Azeroth.
100% agree. Hated replacing my vanilla raid gear in Nagrand because it was just so outstatted by quest gear. Playing EQ again recently on the Selo server where we got a new expansion every month, it was very nice seeing how items I got in PoP were still relevant not just in GoD, but in OoW as well. The idea that your old BiS gear that you worked for is still very relevant is super nice. Getting my 2.0 and seeing it be still like the 5th best weapon 2 expansions later, and my other gear was ~9th, was awesome. Makes you really feel like the gear you worked for is still relevant and useful. That it was worth working toward. That they didn't pump up items like crazy every time. Your entry raid tier items will be slightly worse than the previous expansion's final raid, and we're only going to have a couple items per slot/type per tier. Massively different approach vs almost any other MMO I've played.
i still use alot of my healing gear from classic actually, much of it holds up super well. Especially my scarab brooch.
My hunter alt is still using full T2 8/8 at max level, until i get 4set beast lord set its still bis.
I thank God I didn't have a good guild by the time everything settled out in TBC.
Raiding kara with some over seas people then quit.
There are roughly 20 people who hate the "TBC" reset. When TBClassic came out most people stopped playing Vanilla Classic WOW. Some servers literately only have 2 players. The rest moved on.
Would this mean that adding core design elements is also riskier than parasitic design? If you add a new core system that interacts with everything, would it have a larger negative impact on your game if the system does not work out well?
Yes it really could ruin a game because it touches other core systems in some way so if you implement a new feature you gotta be sure it creates a fun interaction with other systems or doesnt make the others useless.
Which means that starting off with something as a parasitic design might not always be bad, just to see how the general response to the mechanic is. But the problem is when it remains parasitic instead of getting integrated
Taking his example with Runescape, one parasitic mechanic isn't all that terrible if it then gets updated over time to become relevant (which makes sense to me, work the change through smaller updates instead of trying to do too much at once with a giant patch).
The issue is when the mechanic doesn't work but instead of either improving or removing it, it's left abandoned and the devopers just create a new one.
I have only designed card games before but I think this is true.
A parasitic change is easier to create and discard. If a few cards are too unbalanced/doesn't translate well into the gameplay, I can just remove them from the card pool.
A core change shakes up the entire game and my only solution was to revert to the previous version altogether. It made the gameplay and strategy too different (in a negative way) compared to my main mode so I ended up scrapping the entire thing altogether.
I agree. I think JSH puts the parasitic design in too much of a negative light, and synergistic in too much of a positive light. Many mini games in a game are parasitic, but that doesn't make them bad. And some of the synergistic systems are bad.
Take wow again as an example. A good portion of the players hate it because it interacts too much with game systems. It was fine when it was a side activity, but becuase they made it synergistic (it interacts with creation of the best gear you can get, and it was the only way to get a mount that worked in one of the new zones for a while) , people began to hate it
8:55 I understand the point you're trying to make here, but it did not affect combat a *slight* bit - it affected combat a great deal. It was absolutely huge, especially after the 7.2 patch. If you didn't have it to a certain level, you couldn't get invites to groups for high-level dungeons, raids, or rated pvp. It was made absolutely essential by the sheer and massive power it had.
I was linked here from a reddit thread complaining about wow, but I actually learned something neat about game design, thanks!
id love to see bald asmongold printed on one of your mugs
Just when I think I can't love Josh anymore, I realize he is actually a legit OSRS player. You rock man!!
I'm actually interesting how the Splice into Arcane thing compares to archetypes in YuGiOh? Plenty of sets of cards that largely revolve around their own bubble of mechanics and can often only affect their own archetype with their core abilities.
yugioh is basically a lot of parasitic (or content islands if you prefer) mechanics working on their own, with the exception of non specific support cards like Cardcard D or idk whatever hand disruption people play nowadays. it feels like you're playing tribal in MtG except you have no other choice but to play tribal
I was working on a game, and not aware of how I should do the process of adding mechanics, thank you so much for this video because now I wont end up adding a lot of parasitic systems, I don't think I would have anyway but it's nice to be sure.
How does this channel have under 500k subs at this point? He always offers actual information, he doesn't feed into hype or hate, and he's got a great speaking voice.
I never subscribe to anyone. Likes/Comments sure but never sub.
A thing I appreciate about Oldschool Runescape is they go far out of their way to try and not add parasitic things. A lot of the new items doesnt totally replace others and is a best at a niche thing or requires another boss drop to combine to make it so that it doesnt totally replace the old.
I guess most of that appreciation goes to the community since the content added into the game is voted on by the community.
That mug takes bragging to a new height, I love it :D.
A Great and Concise video, good job Josh.
Basically every WoW expansion mechanic since MoP
What about the mastery system from GuildWars2 living Storys? They feel like you just need them for the maps you get with the actual update. Next Update there are new masterys and the old ones dont care.
But there are some masterys you really need: gliding, mounts
That's why I stopped playing GW2. ☹
@@Shauma_llama Same here, I've been tempted to come back to GW2 but then I remember masteries and just get frustrated. I appreciated their dedication to not raising the level cap, but I don't think masteries were exactly the way to go, at least not in the ways they integrate them (or don't integrate them, as it were).
@@Jovian12 raising the levelcap and powercreep is not the way guildwaes works. Thats why i prefer this over other games.
On the other hand the masteries are "okay", at least from the addons. I dont like the masterys from living storys. But either i dobt have a better idea for implementing
Great vid! script could use a little editing, i feel like you kept saying the definition of parasitic design over the course of the whole video, but your ideas are smart and engaging and i enjoyed watching :) also the mug cutaway was funny lol
This is a pretty interesting video, and with good examples. I hadn't heard if this term before, but I kinda knew what it was, just not in this depth.
When you mentioned parasitic design "existing in a vacuum" I instantly thought of Plains of Eidolon in Warframe. People could argue that you can acquire arcanes from there and that there is some weird story content there but I personally feel that it adds little to nothing to Warframe. Does it look great? Absolutely. Does it feel great to play? Nah. The fun in Warframe is making ridiculous builds that work well with the mods and the kit of your warframe and exploding everything on your path.
The story bits we get every now and then with quests and Warframe releases are absolutely brilliant, tho.
I thought of that instantly too lmao. The argument for arcanes being acquired from tridolons isn’t even that solid, because if poe + arcanes were just removed, would that affect the main game THAT much?
PoE Fortuna Deimos
Railjack
Kuva liches
Sisters of Parvos
All are parasites to the game yet they are good the problem is that they are islands of content that once done u never return to them
PoE/Fortuna/Deimos/Railjack feels like something we could just remove right now with little impact, but it helps with making future quests and you get rewards that work outside of it. As seen in the future story preview, open world adds flexibility when adding new content and old systems will be expanded sooner or later.
The plains didn't seem like an extraneous system - more a new way to experience the same gameplay.
You have all the starchart, with people to kill and loot to collect, then you have an open landscape - with people to kill and loot to collect. Same gameplay, different location - and it lets you flex different builds and items that you don't usually when running through missions everywhere else. ...but then you get to all the open-world specific systems which ARE parasitic - I had fun with fishing, but how does that translate to the star chart? Mining? Hunting on Orb Valis? Sure, some things are being mixed between the open worlds, but half of the game still doesn't care that you have a nice K-Drive.
So while the "open worlds" aren't necessarily parasitic in concept, everything done with them is either parasitic (new mechanics only relevant here) or feature creep. (new resources that can only be obtained in a certain way)
At least, that's my view of things.
@@pablohoney2971 I'd disagree with the current iteration of railjack and some of the open worlds.
Old Railjack had the best way to solo-level most gear and companions, as the xp earned by the ship was shared. New railjack is a "all arround" farm, that is decent for everything yet excels at none.
Fortuna T4 bounties are the only way to farm Fieldron/Mutagen Mass/Detonite injectors without any timer restrictions, Deimos T5 bounties have a pretty high endo payoff with the least amount of risk and investment of the other endo farms. PoE deserves to be on the list tho ... It has uses but nothing unique.
You want parasitic design? Add K-drives in it.
I really hope Josh keeps playing warframe, although I understand its problems very clearly. I just want his reaction on the storyline, where ninjas in space is no longer ninjas in space but something more.
wow, ive been playing Online games and MMOs since i was a kid and i never heard about this thing.
Ty kind gentlemen for transmiting your knowledge
im now reminded of so many different things from mods to special events
I’m not sure if you have played Destiny 2, but this entire video explains the seasonal model of Destiny 2. I’d love to see you do it for worst mmo ever since it is along the same lines as Warframe.
I've been gaming for almost 40 years and have never heard this term.
Because it's just stupid bullcrap that scumbags made up that doesn't apply to video games at all.
My first experience with that concept was realizing the player housing system in World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor was a parasitic design implementation and always had been before it launched. It may not have turned out the way it did if the goal was to incorporate it into the core gameplay. Didn't know at the time that they were planning on every expansion having its own systems that disregard the previous ones.
With me I was thinking about those when I first started hearing about upcoming artifacts in Legion...I was like who the F cares about the literal Ashbringer when they're just gonna steal it from us at the end of the exp.....
It was around mid TOS when I heard about the upcoming theft of all artifacts when some stupid ingame pos made me unsub and never play after that month.
Although was/still on classic every so often I refuse to pay blizz for more parasitic systems and less fun content.
That mug twist was *_priceless_*
How did I know, the title "Parasitic Design" was going to prominently feature WoW?
Oh, because I played the game and felt it first hand.
On the topic of Warframe, to DE's credit they made 4 "content islands" (Cetus and the Plains, Orb Valis and Fortuna, Deimos' Cambion Drift and Railjack). Although they were originally isolated and contribute nothing to the rest of the game (and in fact, have to be their own thing due to the fact that they use their OWN resources that can only be farmed in their respective islands), DE at least is trying to integrate them to the rest of the game. Hopefully someone at DE watches this video and takes this to heart before the New War drops lol
I love the pizza analogy :) awesome content
There's an audio pop about a minute and 20 seconds in that made me shit myself half to death. Thanks great vid 10/10.
Oh man, first JSH video I've had to shake my head through the whole time. Parasitic Design (PD) is not inherently bad, notice that Rosewater didn't say "we learned our lesson and aren't doing it anymore". Parasitic design can foster choice in a way that completely synergistic ones cannot. Both Magic and WoW have had issues of "pile the best ingredients on your stat/deck salad", and you win.
If one of the "splice" cards is busted good when cast more than once, you don't get to access that part of the power unless you make sacrifices elsewhere in you slot choices. If it is done well, it allows new design to rival older top power, without adding components to that ever-increasing top power composition. The BfA example largely removes the advantage of PD because players can't choose to organize their character with the BfA artifact instead of a similar component from another expansion, the system was just removed.
Decision making is more interesting when there are well-balanced opportunity costs, and some level of parasitism is required to get that. I will cede that PD is difficult, and easy really easy to ruin, but is delectable when done right. I love the various MtG parasitic archetypes, with their own strengths and weaknesses, that make approaching a tournament an interesting exercise in prediction.
I feel like you misunderstand. PD is not like how a company will make a fighting game and then not all characters have a projectile move. Or how they make an RPG and only some classes can summon creatures to fight for them. That's... I can't think of the word for that, but that's a great thing that allows for choice and options for the player. Parasitic Design is NOT THAT.
With that established, you saying that the PD in MTG is good because it gives more options... It is kind of like looking at a game with a list of 100 classes. A way too positive way of viewing it. Or it's like looking at... Smash Bros Ultimate. Which actually yeah, that's a good comparison! That had tonnes of characters but they all worked similar and had the same rules. UNTIL the DLC came along and began bringing in entirely new mechanics that would not come up with any new character after that. People were angry. This gave great advantages to those who chose to focus on learning these unique systems. Systems that only worked for 1 character. That was not how any other part of the game played. That went against the core mechanics. It was PD. It was bad.
PD isn't about player choice and options. That is very optomistic to see it that way, but it is wrong. Because if its competetive then other players WILL have to learn this new one-time system in order to battle it. Even if they find it unfun and as a gimmick to ignore, when someone else uses it, they don't get that choice anymore. That's how it is in Smash Bros. That's how it is in WoW. That's how it is in MTG. It's why games should not be expanded on forever. It's why they need to end and be built up again as a sequel. Smash understood that after it's longest run. WoW does occasionally update it's core mechanics, essentially becoming a sequel to itself secretly. And MTG has the option to bring back old mechanics and make more use of them, rather than only ever plowing ahead and causing serious power creep at the same time, which it does. I only vaguely recall hearing that one or two old mechanics ever made it into a modern set for MTG, and by that time I had already gotten tired of the game being unplayable unless you buy the newest cards. MTG is not even close to a good example of PD being good. It's got bad PD and bad power creep. It's a bad example. It's Smash Bros Ultimate DLC characters on crack, turned up to 11.
Okay to be completely honest: This is the very first time I've heard about parasitic design, and I'm glad to be informed just a little more
Me too, this is actually educational for me.
very happy i've stumbled upon josh dryface recently
Josh I really like your videos. And I’m just a random that doesn’t know much but you end up defining the thing you’re talking about 7 different times. I’m not saying don’t explain it, but I’d point to your other video quoting “write a shorter letter”. Regardless I enjoy your takes and agree with many of your points and appreciate your videos very much. Ty for the content.
I never got the need to feature add so much with MMO's. I don't know about most people but for me the "Draw" of an expansion is simply new areas, new enemies, new story content, and miscellaneous customization expansion. If devs have something on the rare occasion that can really enhance the core gameplay then cheers that's fun in moderation ever once in a while, but it's not on my list of priorities.
It would be amazing if developers would realize that stepping back to a previous patch isn't a horrible, destructive decision. If the update is hated, undo the update. Don't stack more updates and patches on bad content.
FACTS
Like when you paint and do a slight mistake. Then try to fix it by adding more. And it just gets worse and worse until you want to throw the whole thing in the trash.
Because it's not possible or reasonable. An update is more than just what the people don't like about the update. There are core stuff modified under the hood that they don't want to lose or rebuild, which may represent like 70% of an update. The stuff you see as a gamer is just the tip of the iceberg.
@@OneSek1 so changelogs are inaccurate? And why is it impossible to undo a change? Not saying it's easy, no update is, but it is possible to remove what people don't like and keep what works.
@@Jeagan2002 If you're talking about changelogs for people that play the game, on a technical stand point, obviously not. Even 'technical' changelogs won't always tell you the whole story.
Is it impossible to undo a change ? It depend what it is :
- a whole expansion ? yes, but then you'll have people asking for a refund
- a whole update ? possible and easy but you lose also all the bug fix, potential core system change made under the hood, etc => not reasonable
- a core feature in an recent update ? need a lot of time and effort that won't go into your next planned feature => better try to tweak it or make it bearable until you have the time to replace it/ remove it in the next big update/expansion
- a side feature ? depend how much this feature is linked to you core system (both technical and gameplay) => doable but depend how much this side feature is problematic to the experience. If players can ignore it, should you spend time removing it "now", etc many questions are to be asked to take the final decision.
- a small feature ? usually they do remove or change them if it's problematic
- a bugfix causing more problem than it solve ? hotfixed in the week usually
Technically speaking, everything is possible, with money and time, but you may not have them, specially time, that's where it may become "impossible".
Community asking change are features, those features are given priorities. The people that survey the community estimate how much it matter to them (the community), then a myriad of other factors comes in :
- how much this feature is needed for the integrity of the studio (stuff about quality standard, security, etc)
- how much is it critical for the players (annoying, blocking, upsetting, bearable, etc)
- it is just a new feature
Then they look at the cost, not money wise, but at a complexity level first, complexity will determine the time and thus money it will take to bring this change. Complexity is both about the technical part the functional part (read gameplay/story/etc). The functional part for example is : if we remove this feature, how many system are impacted in the gameplay, that will also need to be tweaked/updated again ? On the technical part, you can have things that you really want to fix/change (think security issue, like cheater, botter, etc) but it's extremely hard to find a solution that won't do more harms than it helps, or it maybe just ask for huge core system rebuild.
Finally, they take a decision considering those 2 factors priority/cost, and schedule it or take action for future changes to resolve the issue. As you can guess, there are a lot of items/feature that are already scheduled, so features/items with middle to low priority and high cost will be delayed. In your schedule, you also have different types of feature : bugfix, new feature, remake, system core update, security stuff, etc.
That's why you can see them remove something that became a problem just a week ago but not change something that have been asked for years.
Anyway, I went on en essay, hope it helps to understand the complexity behind decision making in development.
Brilliant video on game design!
Earned new sub. Good stuff.