April 25th, 2009 Zen
And ignore the strange noises.
Important news coming up this weekend. Keep your eyes on the Secret Lab website in the next few days to see what the next Big Thing On The Internet will be. More on this as events unfold.
Captain’s Blog, Supplemental: The announcement has been delayed, but is set to be made very soon.
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April 20th, 2009 Zen
I tend to favour games with flimsy alliances and deadly tactical consequences. To explain, I like games that allow you backstab, and be vulnerable to the same. When I half-bake an idea for a board or card game in my head, I deliberately keep teamwork in mind.
Permanent alliances, or teams set out from the start, harbour a sense of security. You know who your friends are, you know where the enemy is - you build your tactics on numbers and probability alone. However, when you play a game in which you form alliances that can be broken, or you just don’t know who the enemy is, a human element of suspicion and distrust develops - which extends the game beyond simply knowing the rules and the best tactics. Note that these rules apply to certain fantastic electronic video computer games, in which Spy Checking can be a waste of time and ammunition.
In a card game idea that has been ongoing for some time now, I have toyed with the idea of players’ reliance on each other, even though there can be only one victor. It is my hope that players will begin the game with complete teamwork in mind, in order to complete their common objective, but as they get closer to the end, will begin playing against each other or, at the very least, leaving each other to die.
So, if you ever aspire to making a computer game or two, throw in some suspicion and distrust with your teamwork.
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March 31st, 2009 Zen
I got to talking with my good friend buddy Jon Manning yesterday about my previous blog post. Naturally, as we have before, we began talking about how much a mod would be properly implemented. Read the post below this one of you will remain baffled. The two keys to reimplimentation would be to enforce the line between unnecesary and neccesary killing of prisoners, and to give a proper objective to the prison wardens.
Determining the legitimacy of the kill could be based on an algorithm that combines all the circumstances of the kill into a single value, which is compared against a threshold. If the value is below the threshold, nearby players are asked to vote on the legitimacy of a kill. Determining a kill as unwarranted would result in a suitable punishment for the warden. The legitimacy value of the kill would increase in the following circumstances.
Note that these are situations that would raise the value, and not all would warrant an instant kill.
In terms of an objective for the wardens, it was agreed that the best solution was to provide an event that happens at a certain time in a certain location. Our example was a transport van arriving in the courtyard; The wardens would need to shepherd all prisoners to the courtyard and into the van. Of course, a minute or so after the van has arrived, all prisoners would be marked as disobedient for not jumping in the van and would be legitimate targets, thereby causing the round to end without excessive meandering.
The downside of this is that the prisoners have no incentive to get into the van. They lose if they comply, which will force a riot every single time. The best incentive is to offer a single point to those who comply, but two points for every prisoner who survives the round. This way, you have incentive for prisoners to give up when all is hopeless, but still reason to escape where possible.
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March 30th, 2009 Zen
Everyone who has ever touched a computer game knows what Counter-Strike is. For those of you who haven’t touched a computer and are looking over your friend’s shoulder with a mixture of fear and curiosity, Counter-Strike is a team-based First Person Shooter that is played in rounds. Once you’re dead in a round, you need to wait for the next one. Your team wins the round by completing your set objective (or, in some cases, stopping the other team from achieving theirs) or eliminating the opposing team.
I have re-discovered a “mod” for this game that I used to play years ago. I say mod in parentheses because it’s just a set of custom maps designed to facilitate the rules, and a server that has the rules as the Message of the Day.
The game is called Jailbreak. The idea is, generally, that the Counter-Terrorists start with whatever guns they choose and the Terrorists start with only knives (you can’t carry any less) and spawn inside the jail cells. The Counter-Terrorists will have access to buttons and switches that open and close doors throughout the map, including the Terrorists’ cells (no pun intended). This is where the self-imposed limitations come in. For Terrorists, there are no rules. Find a weak wall, break out, kill who you can, steal the guns, rescue your team-mates and escape. For the Counter-Terrorists, there are rules.
There are various smaller rules, but these are the core elements. It’s meant to be like a prison, and the Terrorists need to escape. Frequently, Counter-Terrorists will decide on a location to escort all the Terrorists to (such as, say, the courtyard outside) which usually involves taking them through a series of secure doors and making sure they have no guns. In general, escorting the Terrorists to another part of the level is a good way to encourage an escape attempt, thereby allowing Counter-Terrorists to kill within the rules. The game falls apart if even one Counter-Terrorist is a moron and shoots people.
Tactics I’ve seen used to best effect:
I’m obsessed with this game mode, as long as the server is kept clean of rule-breakers.
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March 18th, 2009 Zen
I don’t know much about Starcraft II. To be honest, I wasn’t as much a fan of the original as everyone else was. For those of you who are as ignorant of the game as I am, and prefer some serious tactical macro as I might find in our epic “don’t attack before a whole hour is up” C&C Generals games, this post is for you.
I’m not saying you could become a pro with Starcraft 2 simply by using its improved control groups and attack orders, but you’ll do better than you did with the original, and here’s why.
And, while it may seem strange, these next and last two points in tandem are my favourite improvement.
All these abilities point to one thing. Starcraft II will be a real, albeit simplified, strategy game that will appeal even to those of us that disliked the original. Long live macro.
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March 16th, 2009 Zen
Considering how many people I have seen online who whine constantly, I estimate that 70% of all players speak fluent Complainese, and have little knowledge of plain English. These players issue complicated statements, in which the subtle meanings are lost. Due to syntax errors in an English-speaker’s understanding of these players, I have decided to create a simple guide - a phrasebook, if you will - to help the few of us still acquainted with punctuation outside of Shift-1.
Complainese: “What a shit team” or “You guys all suck” or “Fail team”. Translation: “I have played this game with teams that operate well together, and this is not one of them. However, rather than adapting my own tactics to suit the team, I continued doing what I usually do in the hopes that brute force would suffice, which it did not. In the future, every one of you should do something different in the hopes of all being as good as me.”
Complainese: “<Player> sucks” followed by “<Player> should have <performed tactic> at <specific time>”. Translation: “You should have performed my suggested tactic because all of my precisely calculated conditions were in effect. I find it unacceptable that you should have done anything that I wouldn’t have done were I in your position. This game would be so much better if played by dozens of clones of me.”
Complainese: “Damn closet campers” (Left4Dead). Translation: “I see that the opposing team has adopted a tactic the puts them in a highly defendable position, thereby rendering my attacks useless until they inevitably move on. I deem this to be unacceptable. The appropriate thing to do would be for this team to stand at a junction of corridors, allowing us multiple angles of attack, so that the playing fields be fair. In the event of a real zombie apocalypse, I expect that any survivors would do the same.”
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March 16th, 2009 Zen
I’ve recently become infatuated with Empire: Total War. I bought it three days ago and somehow I’ve played it for 22 hours already. To compare, I have played Team Fortress 2 for 72 hours and I’ve owned that for one and a half years. It is also one of my favouritiest games.
Today, in a bored moment, I asked myself “how can I improve my game?” and immediately dived for Google to find some game guides. Don’t do this. They will ruin your game. I found myself in a pit of exploits and bugs, surrounded not only by immersion-ruining tactics, but thirteen year olds asking for the “developer cheats”.
My eyes wandered to a short comment on the website telling me how to defeat an enemy in a naval battle with a single inferior ship using a shortcoming in the enemy AI. Why this person thought that any Total War fan could derive pleasure from winning in such a cheap way, I have no idea. But now that tactic is stuck in my brain - I can never get rid of it. The next time I find myself on the losing side of a naval engagement, it will cross my mind, and in the moment I consider using that tactic, all game immersion is lost.
These exploits range to other genres of games, too. Not even multiplayer games are exempt - there have been countless Team Fortress 2 guides on how to use small gaps in level design to snipe the other team before the round has started, or how to fall underneath the entire level and become a deadly landshark.
When I want to better my game, I don’t want to read about it online. Not anymore. The Internet has ruined my fun.
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December 17th, 2008 Zen
I’m going to talk about player satisfaction and rewards in Left4Dead, the latest game to use Valve’s Source Engine. First, if you don’t know what it is, dart over to the Left4Dead website and find out what the game’s about. Then dip your feet in its Steam Community Forum, but don’t stay too long or you’ll be corrupted.
The vast majority of users posting there have their own gripe with the game, ranging from game play to technical issues. I’m just going to talk about game play, because that’s where we’re talking about player rewards. Most of the forum topics there are pleading the L4D developers to improve or degrade aspects of some player abilities. These changes are frequently only suggested for the direct competition value in L4D’s versus mode (where a team of Infected are tasked with stopping the Survivors from making it through the level). So it always will be with any game.
What makes this game particularly unique is the degree by which one team wins or fails. I’m not talking about the scoring system (which is itself a subject of complaint). I’m talking about the simple act of surviving the level. Because of the unique way in which the Infected attack, dividing the Survivors and picking on the weakest or slowest is the objective. Infected players cannot survive more than a few rounds from any weapon fired by the Survivors, and deal damaging by pinning a Survivor with their special ability, before they deal continuous damage. The pinned Survivor cannot save themselves, but must rely on a teammate to kill the Infected player pinning them first.
L4D places its emphasis on team work, which it relies on heavily. A team with one good twitch gamer cannot survive the level if one player meanders behind the rest of the group. 3 of the Infected team have pinning attacks, so a Survivor team less one man can be pinned simultaneously and end the game. The game can be decided in the time it takes between the second-last and the last player rounding a corner.
Because of this reliance on teamwork, especially moving together (not lagging behind or rushing ahead), the correlation between a small difference in skill and a small victory is completely destroyed. A team is made or broken on the skill of all its members. Goodbye player satisfaction.
A symptom of this larger make-or-break system is the constant blaming of aspects of the game. The AI Director, for example, which is primarily used to make the game more exciting, is often blamed for favouring one team. The Automatic Shotgun is another, with people complaining that it gives Survivors too much of an advantage. Here’s something I’m just gonna throw out there - how does the L4D team fix balance issues with such a make-or-break team play? How do you test the fairness of weapons or abilities?
My solution? You don’t. Try to balance, by all means, but don’t fret. It’s not going to be possible to get this game resembling perfect. The game is hard. Harder if the enemy know what they’re doing. But when you play both sides of the confrontation, does it really matter? You get your chance to do exactly what the opposition did to you.
I can understand why people complain about this game. I personally love it. I don’t mind getting my face ripped off by a Hunter. It’s cool. There are zombies. I’m a manly man for playing this game. But it doesn’t reward individuals, or let them compensate for the lack of new players or the inexperienced. Frankly, I’m not surprised that L4D has a smaller following than Team Fortress 2. The type of players who will not get frustrated at the game, like me, are the ones who can laugh with their team and say “oh well, we tried”.
Posted in Console Gaming, Game Balance, PC Gaming, Player Satisfaction | 1 Comment »
December 17th, 2008 Zen
Welcome to a renewed page of useful information. Well, not quite yet - but there will be! My name is Zen Miles, certified computer monkey with a hammer. I fix computers for a living, but I like to daydream - mostly about games that don’t exist but should.
What better content to fill a blog with, I hear you cry. You are right of course. And why wouldn’t you be? This blog is now officially for me pouring out ideas on game play, level design, game interactivity, game balance as well as offering up my opinions on existing games that I have tasted or enjoy frequently.
It will be my notebook, of sorts. My brain spilled on an Internet page for your viewing.
Eww.
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