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Posts Tagged ‘Comparison’

Resident Evil 5 Demo Impressions

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

The Resident Evil 5 Demo got released today for Gold members on Xbox Live Marketplace. I raced home from work and just finished it. I have written down some of my impressions for those of you interested.

Once you load up the game, you are given the option of choosing between two separate levels, one is called Public Assembly and the other is called Shanty Town. Here are my impressions in easy to follow list format.

Good
1. It’s Resident Evil 4 + 1
I loved Resident Evil 4. This is more of the same, so already it is good.

2. It’s very pretty
The game is beautiful. The character models are detailed and the game runs very smooth and everything looks great.

3. Difficulty
The game is hard, but stays on the challenging end without crossing the line into the frustrating. The difficulty was just right for a veteran of survival horror games.

4. Cooperative elements
The Shanty Town had two really cool parts where Chris and Sheva must separate and cover each other. In one, Sheva is thrown around the roof to the next building. There, Chris must defend her as she makes her way down to unlock the door for you to join her. In another sequence Chris boosts Sheva up onto the roof and she covers you while you work your way around on the lower level. This was easily the best part of the demo.

5. Mini-Bosses
The two mini-bosses can take a lot of hits and really get the adrenaline going. They both have instant kill attacks, so I had to be very careful and use guerrilla tactics against them. It was damn fun.

Neutral
1. Recycled zombies from Resident Evil 4.
The RE4 zombie animations still hold up decently well, but I would have liked to see some additional behaviors and animations from the rank and file zombies. It is still fun fighting RE4 zombies though, so this is not a negative. One thing carried over from Resident Evil 4 that I am sick and tired of is the Zombie behavior of running up to you and then standing there waiting for you to shoot/knife him. That needs to go.

Bad
1. It is not scary
This is not surprising considering direction taken by Resident Evil 4, but Resident Evil 5 has gone a step further.

The main problem is the setting. A bright nondescript African village at daytime would not by my first choice for a location of a survival horror. It completely lacks the atmosphere of RE4’s Spanish villages at night. Also the zombies are not muttering “morrir es vivir” over and over, which was really creepy in RE4.

Like Resident Evil 4, the controls and camera are too functional to cause the player to be scared. This is a great article summing up this important trait of survival horrors .

2. Controls
The default controls, Configuration D, has very similar controls to Call of Duty 4 surprisingly enough. The player can now strafe, but not while aiming. The player must stop in place for aiming, firing, calling Sheva to follow and knifing. If you are going to go down the path of having halfway decent controls and camera you might as do it right and just rip off Dead Space’s control scheme and be done with it. Unfortunately this is not the case with RE5. I know about the whole survival horror needs bad controls thing, but RE5 has good enough controls and camera that it essentially defeats this intentional aspect of survival horrors. So if you are going to go down the survival horror route then go with awful controls, if you are going to go action game go with great controls, don’t sit in the middle and frustrate both sides.

I am also not happy with the addition of the fast selection of inventory items from the directional-pad as it destroys all the suspense of having to shuffle around in your inventory while a zombie is bearing down on you. Now all you have to do is click the directional pad and your weapon or item immediately appears in your hand ready to use.

3. Friendly AI
Sheva constantly blocks my path and runs in front of my gun. In a survival horror every bullet counts and while I am methodically going through zombies with my knife she unloads on every non-threatening zombie with a rifle round so that she is constantly out of ammo. Also if you do not constantly call her to move, she will very likely become injured or even die to the one hit kill mini-bosses. This causes you to lose and since there are no checkpoints in the demo, you must start from the beginning. Just save yourself a bit of frustration and get a friend to play co-op with you.

Don’t get me wrong; based off the demo Resident Evil 5 is going to be a very good game and I will be a day one purchaser. I do sort of miss the old survival horror aspect of the earlier Resident Evil games as opposed to both RE4 and 5 that are definitely pushing into the action genre. Nonetheless Resident Evil 5 is one of the games I am most looking forward to this year.

Resident Evil 5 comes out of Xbox 360 and PS3 March 13, 2008.

Tags: blog, Comparison, limitless units, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, PS3, RE4, RE5 Demo, resident evil 4 comparison, resident evil 5 demo, resident evil 5 demo impressions, resident evil 5 downloadable demo, riposte101, tony huynh, Video Games, Xbox 360, xbox live marketplace
Posted in Video Games | 3 Comments »

Roger Ebert is Right: Games are Not High Art…Yet

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Some of you may have heard about Roger Ebert’s disparaging comments about video games. If not, I will sum it up for you here.

“The nature of the medium [video games] prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship [however elegant or sophisticated] to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. For most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.” – Roger Ebert

Later, Ebert updated his opinions that games are art, just not high art.

“A year or so ago, I rashly wrote that video games could not be art. That inspired a firestorm among gamers, who wrote me countless messages explaining why I was wrong, and urging me to play their favorite games. Of course, I was asking for it. Anything can be art. Even a can of Campbell’s soup. What I should have said is that games could not be high art…” – Roger Ebert

This may sound blasphemous, but in a way, I agree with Roger Ebert’s assessment of our industry. Video games are currently not high art and they are an inferior medium to film and literature. I am not saying that video games can never be “high art,” it is that games have not yet reached that point. Video games have many challenges that other mediums do not have. Video games are a relatively young art form, are difficult to create, have to be “fun” and mass-market games have spiraling budgets, which cause a reluctance to experiment. If we are able to move past the video game industry’s self-imposed limitations, games have the potential to be the most powerful and important art form we have. In this article I will define what I believe “high art” is and discuss the challenges that the gaming industry faces to attain this important recognition.

Other gamers may challenge what I am saying by pointing to games such as Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, or Okami as “high art.” I would disagree. Stylized graphics do not make a game high art. High art is a work of importance. Works of importance are pieces of art that have cultural significance that include social commentary. Games as a whole are missing these key ingredients. Where are our games that deal head-on with themes like religious fanaticism, racism or the holocaust? While there are hundreds of films and books dealing with these topics, video games in the pursuit of fun and sales, avoid these touchy subjects at all costs.

Games = Fun
If you look at all the end of the year best of video games lists, what one word determines the placement of these games on those lists? Fun. If you peruse the talk schedule of the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), it seems every other talk is based on how to make games fun. Being a game designer, the main discussion point in every game mechanic meeting is how to get the section of gameplay to be fun. Maybe all of this focus on fun is a bad thing. That possibility is just what Warren Spector discusses in his article; “Fun” is a Four-Letter Word.

But, the word “fun” has other problems. It kind of locks us into a “games are for kids” mentality. It implies that games are good for just one thing: passing time in an enjoyable manner, for want of a better definition.

And perhaps most damning to me is that all this focus on passing time puts a ceiling, of sorts, above us that separates us from other media, media that are allowed to strive for something other than simple “fun-ness.”

Movies, books, musical compositions and so on are – or can be – fun to watch/read/listen to, but there’s nothing in the definition or judgment of those other media that requires fun. We’re the only medium that says to itself, “This is what you must be and all you will ever be.”
– Warren Spector

The mandatory “fun” is what pigeonholes the video game medium into a escapist distraction and puts a self-imposed limitation on video games that prevents it from reaching the high art plateau. I recently watched the movie The Terrorist and asked myself the question, was that movie fun? The film was thought provoking, sad and even disturbing, but can hardly be described as fun. What separates films from games as a medium is film’s willingness to tackle difficult subject matter. In the case of The Terrorist, it chronicles the life of a pregnant female suicide bomber leading up to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. It is hard to imagine a video game based on the same subject matter. This drives home how mature an art form film is and how much further video games have to go to be considered high art. If we do not limit ourselves to games = fun, we could one day see video games encompass so much more. Perhaps video games could be relabeled as interactive media and we could then see games be on equal footing as films. We could have games that genuinely explore and tackle real cultural and societal issues.

Budgets and Sales: Willingness to Experiment
The reality we live with right now is that fun blockbuster video games receive all the press, accolades and most importantly, sales. Publishers make games to sell and games that tackle societal ills or are not “fun” are unproven. Game budgets are now commonly soaring into and beyond the 20 million dollar range and as games get more expensive, publishers are becoming less and less willing to take chances. It is difficult for game developers to tackle difficult subjects that may alienate or divide their intended audience of Western males age 12 to 35.

Here is an example of a game developer’s willingness to make decisions based off of sales. Seth Schiesel of the New York Times wrote an article questioning the Ubisoft Montreal’s decision to Anglicize the main character of the Prince of Persia.

“What are we to make of a “Prince of Persia” who talks and behaves like a 17-year-old American mall rat? A “Prince of Persia” with blue eyes, fully Anglicized facial features and what looks like a tan he picked up on spring break? Is it taking a video game too seriously to shrink in distaste from such characterizations?”

It was no mistake that the Prince of Persia is Anglicized. This was done to not alienate the developer’s intended Western audience. Yet the game gets a pass for blatantly disregarding reality, simply because it is a game. If we want games to be viewed as high art, we have to look more closely at our games and not take the approach that all that matters is sales.

It is this sales driven mentality and unwillingness to take chances that have placed a ceiling above this industry’s head and stymied the growth and acceptance of games by the mainstream. If we do not occasionally move away from the big-action-summer style of games, we will never reach that pervasive mainstream audience. Games may be expensive to produce, but so are movies and even large budget movies do not shy away from socially important issues.

The first step to having games be accepted as high art is to be willing to take on criticism and be held accountable for our decisions. We can no longer fall back on the excuse, “It is just a game.”

Complexity in Games
One of the major disadvantages of the video games medium is that games are very complex and difficult to produce. In order to create a mass-market game, it can take team sizes in excess of 100+ developers, each specializing in one of these four disciplines: programming, design, animators and artists well over two years. To a certain degree, independent filmmakers are on an even playing field with bigger budget film projects. The differences between a low budget independent film and a big budget film are much less discernable from the audience’s perspective than an independent video game and a big budget blockbuster video game. With film, anybody can pick up a camera and with post-production and editing software readily available, can make a highly polished mass-marketable film. This is not the case with the complexity required to bring a polished video game to market. It is much more difficult for smaller budget and more experimental games to gain acceptance by wide audiences because the production values between these types of games and games with much larger budgets are so wide and easily noticeable to even a casual observer.

Just as technology has made the independent filmmaker more on par with a studio production, I am hopeful that the day comes when technology closes the gap between independent games and big budget games. There are signs that this movement is already in progress with game development suites like Adobe Flash and Microsoft’s XNA studio. When independent gamemakers are able to remove the disparity between their products they will be more able to compete for the consumers’ dollars and it will empower our industry to push and experiment with new social themes and genres.

Video Games are a Young Industry
When film first took form, few would have called it a “high art” form. It took over a hundred years before it gained that distinction. Many parallels can be drawn from when film was in its infancy to video games of today. When film first appeared on the scene it was a spectacle, but frowned on as not comparable to live theater. The same can be said of games in comparison to films today. It heartens me that the video game industry has come so far and so fast on the technology front, but we cannot neglect our responsibility to our audience to move them to think. We cannot simply dismiss Roger Ebert’s criticism, but instead we need to take it as a challenge and use our medium to make our audience more “cultured, civilized and empathetic”. By doing so we elevate video games as a whole into the realm of high art. Games are a young form of media and in the years to come we will be given the opportunity to answer our critics and gain the respect of the mainstream, let us not waste it.

Conclusion
We are at a crossroads and must confront the self-imposed limitations we have placed on ourselves and start viewing video games as something more than mere escapist fare. It as a challenge to our industry as a whole to produce games that tackle difficult themes and strive for more than simple “fun.” Video games have boundless possibilities and are uniquely suited to surpass any other mediums that currently exist because there is a level of connectivity through open-ended and collaborative interactivity that no other media can hope to match. If we are willing to take head-on serious societal themes and not shirk our responsibilities, I believe we will see the day that the video game is looked upon as more than a way to mindlessly pass time, but as deeply important and socially relevant.

I would like to thank Amadeo Plaza for our discussions on this topic.

Tags: are games high art?, blog, Comparison, film, film vs. games, game design, games are a waste of time, games are not art, games are not high art, games as a serious art form, Games do not need to be fun, games opinion piece, limitless units, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, movie, movies versus video games, review, riposte101, roger ebert, roger ebert games are not art, Roger Ebert is Right: Games are Not High Art…Yet, social commentary in games, tony huynh, video game design, video game education, Video Games, video games are a young industry, video games are inferior to film and literature, Warren Spector
Posted in Video Games, film | 21 Comments »

Gears of War 2 Through the Eyes of a Game Designer

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

I finally made time to play through the campaign of developer Epic’s Gears of War 2 and wanted to share my thoughts on the game. I will begin by saying that this post is not so much a review of the game as a slightly more organized version of my notes taken while I was playing the game. With that being said, there will be spoilers. Continue reading at your own risk.

Gears of War 2 continues the nearly non-existent story of Gears of War. The Locust horde has been sinking entire cities and steadily pushing humanity back. The game begins with humanity clinging to their last stronghold of Jacinto and the Gears setting out on a counter-offensive to prevent their last bastion from being undermined.

In the following sections I will outline the aspects, levels and events in the game that left a more lasting impression on me.

A nice lengthy starting video helps to catch the player up on the setting and events. This video is something I felt was missing from the original Gears of War and does a great job in establishing the setting.

After the video, the player gains control of the protagonist Marcus Fenix and can choose to go through training or skip it entirely. Training is handled in a very novel way. Fenix takes on the training of a rookie recruit. The player, as Fenix, orders the rookie to perform each of the game’s mechanics, before the player performs the actions himself. The advantage of this is twofold. The first is that it maintains that Marcus Fenix, being a badass veteran, does not need training.

The second is that as Fenix orders the rookie around, the rookie AI shows the player the action before the player has to perform it himself. For example, Fenix will bark out, “show me how to take cover rook!” The AI takes cover and the player is shown how it is done, before he performs the maneuver himself. If you want to see another great tutorial that uses the AI to show the player the mechanics and controls of the game, look at Lost Planet.

The first real level of the game takes place in a hospital and starts out fairly slowly on the action quotient. The interior corridor setting does do the job of familiarizing the player to the basic cover mechanics without a lot of distractions. The developers placed dynamic flat panel monitors on top of the desks used for cover. The well-placed monitors were often shot off during the firefights and gave the action sequences more movement. The other thing that I noticed was when certain events occurred that would bring you closer to an accumulation achievement, such as performing 30 Active Reloads, the game would display a progress indicator to show you how far you are along to gaining the achievement. While I generally do not go out of my way for achievements, I found that these indicators would dictate the way I played the game. I would purposely keep specific weapons in order to get the achievements. I have a feeling this will not be the last time we see this mechanic used in other games. Epic also replaced their collectible dog tag system from the original Gears of War with a journal collection that serves the same function as dog tags, but they also give the player additional back-story in text format.

The one great bane of developers in first and third person shooters is that when we place down scripted events, we can never guarantee the player will witness the moment because we have no control over where the player’s camera is facing. Gears of War got around this problem by inventing the third-person-look-at (Y button) mechanic. This ensured that players knew where to go and are able to witness the scripted events that the developers spent so much time implementing.

One of the moments that are keyed off of Epic’s camera look-at-system is later in the mission when the action moves to the exterior. Locusts have taken over the high ground and are bunkered in on a turret. The turret is just out of the range of the weapons you have been introduced to at that point in the game. Just when the hail of fire from the enemy turret becomes frustrating a friendly helicopter flies in and takes out the enemy turret. The Y Button pops up on the screen during the event and when pressed by the player moves your camera to frame the event ensuring that none of the action is missed.

Another annoying thing about having friendly units with the player in other shooters is that when they run in front of your gunfire, they always scream at you like it is your fault for hitting them. This is different in Gears of War 2 in that when Marcus Fenix shoots his friends he is the one that screams, “Would you get the fuck out of the way please.” This really makes the player feel more like the hero.

Later in the game there is a sniper mini-game that was so well executed you just had to smile as you played it. There is a squad of Locusts who are moving and at range. A conveniently placed sniper rifle allows you to pick them off. Once you start firing, the surviving Locusts run off the screen out of your line of sight, which adds a timed element to the mini-game. Marcus counts out each kill with the sniper rifle. This mini-game did not have any bearing on the story, but it was just a simple moment that tests your sniping skills and was fun. More games need to add moments like these.

The next fun scene was when you are approaching a shut door and without cutting to a cinema the door opens on its own with a loud audio stinger and a bunch of creepers burst out of it rushing the player. This is one of those surprise moments that make you immediately slam down on the gun trigger and flail your weapon around spraying everything. Experiences like these remind me why I am a gamer.

The tank level had the player driving through a dark tunnel with the only illumination coming from the tank’s headlights. After landing the tank from a steep drop, the tank’s engines and lights malfunction and shut off. For several moments the only things you can hear are Locusts and then you begin to see the iridescent glow coming off their carapaces creeping closer. Meanwhile the tank’s crew is frantically trying to repair the tank. This was a suspenseful moment and was just awesome when the tank crew manages to fix the tank just in time.

During the locust queen’s castle mission you enter into a room where the enemies are not yet aware of your presence. There is a flamethrower-wielding locust on the bridge with his back turned to you. Since the player has already run into these locusts prior to this moment they have already been taught that these locusts carry flammable fuel in their backpacks for the flamethrowers that blow up if shot. In this case, if you shoot his pack he blows up and the bridge he is standing on collapses in glorious fashion with him. Having cool stuff happen when the player shoots is great because it almost guarantees that the player will see it.

There are a lot of different enemies in Gears of War 2. They vary greatly from one another in both their silhouettes and sizes, making them easy to differentiate from the varying types of enemies. The lesson here is that when each enemy type is dramatically different in size and silhouette it helps players quickly assess the threat of the situation and decide how to tackle the different scenarios designers create.

Chapter four of the last act is one of the most enjoyable levels because of how ridiculous everything is. As the game progresses the action continues to ramp up and by the end it is just out of control. This level has you falling through the floors of a building. You survive another falling building, which lands on its side and then you ride an elevator sideways through the building. It is so crazy, but you are having so much fun it that it does not even matter. The level ends with you and Dom commandeering a giant Brumak and using him as a mobile weapons platform to wreak havoc on the Locust hordes. It is just the absurd fun you can only have in a videogame.

The overall design theme of Gears of War 2 was unique and fun ways to introduce and use cover. This is a list of the different ways that I can remember that Epic introduced or had the player interact with cover.

A living rock worm that is attracted to red colored fruits that hung from the ceiling that the player can shoot down to entice the worm to move.

Player operated switches that turn cover on and off.

Enemies that attempt to remove your cover through the use of these switches.

Pillars that fall and create additional cover.

Rolling destroyed cars into place for cover.

The Boom Shield portable cover.

Picking up injured enemies to use as cover.

The sheer number of different locales and art pieces for the game are also amazing. Just off the top of my head.

Above ground forest

Hospital

Underground city

Underground cave

River

Inside the worm

Research facility

Snowy Forest and frozen lake

Locust home city

Jacinto city

All of the settings were very different and distinguishable from the others. The amount of art required to pull this off makes my head hurt. The artists at Epic are simply on another level.

The gameplay pacing was excellent. There was an incredible amount of gameplay variety and the designers constantly mixed things up so you never did anything for too long. There were on-foot segments, various vehicles that felt really different from each other, and rail shooting.

As I mentioned already, Gears of War 2 keeps outdoing itself over and over and reaches a great crescendo. The gameplay is lengthy and there was more than one time where I thought I was nearing the end of the game only to find the story twisted and offered so much more. The greatest accomplishment for this sequel was that I actually found myself caring about and getting involved with the story, which is really amazing considering how little I cared about the original Gears of War story.

Finally, it is very fitting that Gears of War 2 was EPIC. There are explosions, buildings collapsing and helicopters flying overhead everywhere you looked. You felt like you were part of a bigger war.

Issues I saw and improvements I would have liked to see in the game:

1. Bugs:

The number of obvious bugs that the game shipped with surprised me. While none of these were game breaking progression stoppers, I just expected better from Epic and because of these bugs the game does not feel polished. During my single play through of the campaign I saw all the geometry disappear and all the dynamic objects including people fall through, my squad warping everywhere in my line of sight dozens of times and lots of floating objects and players.

There are noticeable hitches when the game saves.

I saw Dom standing in front of a sentry gun blasting away at him and he just stood there not dying or even reacting.

The AI on a few occasions got hung up on static mesh and just kept running into walls over and over.

The flamethrower wielding AI would fire their short-ranged flamethrowers at me even when I was 200 meters away.

There are no interaction animations when carrying turret weapons. These include the kicking of doors and using switches. It is just bizarre when you are wielding a turret and the doors open by themselves. A minor issue, but noticeable nonetheless.

2. When you are alone, which happens very often in the game, the reviving mechanic does not work. In these segments, when you are injured, very often the enemy AI will ignore you after you have fallen and you are forced to wait until you bleed out and die before you are able to play again. This is very annoying. A very simple solution would have been to kill the player outright if there is no partner in the vicinity to rescue them.

3. Having the pick up a downed enemy to use as a human shield and the dive for cover move on the same button is just frustrating; especially when you accidentally do the opposite of what you intend to. The controller mapping on this is just bad. When an enemy is downed X, Y, and B buttons essentially have the same effect (different ways of killing the enemy). The only different option is on the A button (same button as dive), which picks up the downed enemy to use as a human shield. Having 3 options doing the same thing is redundant. Drop one of these killing moves and replace the button press with the human shield option. This would prevent the player from mistakenly diving when they mean to pick up a human shield or vice versa by only having the A button for dives.

4. Seeing the scene through Dom’s eyes as he is reunited with his wife is very jarring as the rest of the game is told through Marcus’ perspective. When telling a story, you have to be careful of not breaking the perspective from which the game is told.

5. The voice acting fluctuates in the game from bad to good. The voice actors for Dom and Carmine are noticeably worse than the rest of the cast.

6. Lastly, how does your robotic companion Jack just appear and disappear into and out of thin air like that?

I have to say that I am more than impressed by the game. Epic really outdid themselves on this title. The scope of the game and the variety of gameplay in Gears of War 2 is mind-boggling. I do not say this of many games, but the sheer amount of content in the campaign alone makes this game worth the $60.

My thoughts and impressions of the game were based off of a play through of the single-player campaign at the Casual difficulty.

Tags: blog, Comparison, game design, game review, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, gears of war 2 review, Gears of War 2 Through the Eyes of a Game Designer, GOW, GOW2, limitless units, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, review, riposte101, tony huynh, video game design, video game education, Video Games, videogame design, videogame review
Posted in Video Games | 5 Comments »

Low Skill Cap and Luck (RNG) in World of Warcraft PVP

Monday, December 15th, 2008

Wow is built and designed around the casual player
WoW is built from the ground up to be accessible to new players. Blizzard’s VP of game design Rob Pardo described the design philosophy of World of Warcraft as the “donut design.” This is where the outside of the donut consists of the casual players, while the center is where the hardcore players reside. WoW is a game built for casual players with enough depth to draw in the hardcore players. When Blizzard designed the Player-Versus-Player (PVP) system for WoW, this design philosophy carried over and resulted in the inclusion of the global cooldown and luck or random number generator (rng) as WoW players call it.

Neilyo 14.5 Part 1

Neilyo 14.5 Part 2

The global cooldown
While reaction times and the number of inputs does play a factor in World of Warcraft PVP, it is greatly limited by the built in one second global cooldown between inputs. This places a lowered skill cap on how fast a player needs to input commands to be competitive. There are exceptions to this as certain abilities are off the global cooldown, but for most cases this holds true. It does not matter if you have an amazing ability to input commands at a very fast pace, you are limited to the artificial limit imposed.

StarCraft is a good example of a game without such a skill cap. For elite StarCraft players the number of inputs per minute is something to brag about. Some of the players can consistently achieve as high as 500 inputs per minute. These players constantly practice and strive to improve their inputs per minute and their ability to micromanage multiple units.

The global cooldown also lessens the mistakes that players can make. Because a WoW player is limited by the global cooldown and can only input so many commands per minute they are less prone to make mistakes because there are simply fewer decisions and inputs necessary. This makes the game much more accessible to players who are simply incapable of entering 500 commands per minute. The global cooldown supports the casual player by making the game easier for them to be successful. The great advantage of this is that it makes World of Warcraft PVP much more popular and accessible to more people.

Luck gives PVP greater accessibility and helps turn the casual player into the hardcore player
Luck (rng) is a difficult balance in a game like WoW. Too little and the game becomes stale and inaccessible to novice players, too much luck and players become frustrated. However, luck supports the design tenant of the donut by giving less skilled or out-geared players a chance to win or at least make games close.

Luck is valuable because beginners will enjoy the game more when luck allows them to occasionally win against a more seasoned or better-geared opponent. Conversely, if WoW did not have a luck component, a less skill opponent would never win and this constant negative reinforcement will drive away many novice competitors. It is necessary to reward novice players occasionally to keep their participation and push them to get better at the game. For example, the poker variant Texas Hold’em is popular and maintains its popularity because the game rewards new players and keeps them interested in the game by allowing them to win on occasion through luck alone.

Neilyo Interview

Luck increases the skill cap
Without luck (RNG), WoW PVP involving two equally skilled opponents or teams would be a pre-scripted affair whose outcome would be predetermined from the start. The game would play out something like this. The attacker begins with an attack and from then on each player might as well read off of a script and perform the best possible move in succession until the conclusion of the match. While WoW gives players the illusion of a lot of options, there is almost always a best move or path at any given time. If both sides play “perfectly,” the race, class and spec of the characters or the teams’ combination of classes determine the game because certain classes or team matrixes simply outclass others. The only time this pattern can be broken is through human error. For all the negativity that luck in the game of WoW receives, the game without it would be a very straightforward experience without much deviation.

For WoW, luck has the very strange property of actually increasing skill cap. Players need to be able to react to broken patterns not only from human error but also from bad luck. Players need to switch to a different track or branch in the previously mentioned script to adjust for attacks or defensive measures that fail due to bad luck. This keeps matches from degenerating into a stale affair. If a Rogue’s kidney shot (a move that stuns the opponent) fails due to being randomly dodged, he needs to adjust his next series of moves for his now interrupted stun lock. Another example, this time involving a team, is if a Druid’s cyclone, a spell that incapacitates another player, is resisted, the team must now communicate and coordinate another member to use a different ability to continue the incapacitate effect on the opponent. Luck forces teamwork and emphasizes adjustment to failed attacks.

Luck mitigates some of the balance issues
WoW is a far cry from being balanced and with so many abilities and classes and team combinations possible it likely never will be. Luck helps to mitigate some of these issues by giving lower tier classes or class combinations a chance against higher tier class or team combinations. Let’s say a Warrior, Warlock and Druid team dominates a Rogue, Mage and Priest team (whether it does or not is immaterial to this discussion) luck can help to turn the tide and the dominated team can actually pull off a win over the dominate team. When a weaker class matrix can occasionally overcome a dominant one, it helps to mask the fact that the game is not balanced.

WoW’s shift to the hardcore
Games over the course of time tend to eliminate luck and cater more and more towards the hardcore. WoW is not the exception to this rule. The shift to a lessened duration of stuns instead of an outright resist percentage and the removal of Mace induced random stuns are examples of this.

Conclusion
The World of Warcraft design philosophy of catering to the casual player is supported by the global cooldown and built in luck element of PVP combat. These pillars of the design keep the game popular and accessible to a wider audience and mask many of the balance issues in the game. Luck also has the effect of spicing up the game and increasing the skill cap as players and teammates must adjust to failed attacks. Lastly, if you are a hardcore player that does not like luck in your games, the World of Warcraft has already changed in your favor and over time will continue to move in this direction.

Tags: accessibility, blog, casual gamer, Comparison, donut design, game design balance, game play, gameplay mechanics, global cooldown, hardcore gamer, limitless units, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, Low Skill Cap and Luck (RNG) in World of Warcraft PVP, low skill skill, luck, luck in pvp design, MMO, mmorpg, player versus player, PVP, pvp balance, pvp mechanics, random number generator, riposte101, RNG, rng in wow pvp, tony huynh, video game design, video game education, World of Warcraft, wow, wow pvp mechanics, wow skill cap
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Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 2

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

These are the video games that have defined their genre. They are the standard by which all other games in their category are judged. This is part 2 of this list.

Click here to go back to Part 1 of this list.

Best RTS of All Time
StarCraft (1998)
Platform: PC
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Starcraft has withstood the test of time like no other game before or after it. It is a game that is easy to pick up, but is so deep that even after a decade, millions of players are still developing new strategies and continue to evolve the gameplay. The ability for players to easily save and share replays of games was instrumental in elevating the techniques and strategies being used. The replay feature allowed players to be able to study games and learn from their mistakes and even watch their opponent’s strategies and adopt or adapt to them.

Despite StarCraft’s three completely unique races, it is the most balanced RTS ever created. All three races had completely unique units and equally skilled opponents would have very even chances of winning and could employ numerous different strategies to do so. Countless tournaments in the decade since the game’s release have proven StarCraft’s balanced gameplay. Blizzard has the best track record of any developer to continue to support a game well after release and StarCraft is no exception. Blizzard continues to release occasional patches and balance tweaks that keep the game fresh. This has been necessary as players continually push the gameplay balance with the discovery of new strategies. Despite the evolving gameplay in StarCraft, the game continues to be remarkable in how balanced the three races are as new strategies for one race are countered by new strategies created for their opposing factions. Here is a site dedicated to Starcraft replays.

No entry about StarCraft can go without the mention of the South Korean attachment to the game. StarCraft is a televised national sport in South Korea. The game has corporate endorsed teams of professional players. The players are big personalities and celebrities who are recognized and worshiped by their huge following of adoring fans. StarCraft tournaments are nationally televised events with slick production values and play-by-play announcers or “shoutcasters” as they are called. Here are some of the GOMTV tournaments translated into English. They are very interesting to watch even if you only know the rudiments of the game.

StarCraft, in spite of its age, is the most relevant and popular RTS today. There can be no doubt that it is the greatest game of its genre.

Best Action-RPG of All Time
Diablo 2 (2000)
Platform: PC
Developer: Blizzard North
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo 2: the Mouse Killer. Diablo 2 and its predecessor Diablo have likely destroyed more mice than any other game in existence. I owned an expensive gaming mouse and when Diablo’s million click gameplay destroyed it, I ran out to the store and quickly replaced it with a steady succession of $2 mice and kept my replacement expensive mouse well away from the game.

Diablo and its successor single-handedly invented the action-RPG genre. Dozens of “Diablo” clones continue to be produced, but to this day none can match up to Diablo 2. The randomly generated dungeons, loot, and monsters in Diablo 2 keep the game fresh even after dozens of play-throughs. Diablo 2 remains popular on Blizzards free online service Battle.net because of its addictive easy to pickup gameplay, randomly generated content and Blizzard’s patented brand of long-lasting support and updates to the title.

In many ways, Diablo 2 laid down the groundwork for World of Warcraft. From the branching tiered tree of talents, the UI, to the randomly generated set of colored loot, World of Warcraft owes much of its success to Diablo 2.

Best 3D Fighter of All Time
SoulCalibur (1999)
Platform: DreamCast
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

SoulCalibur Box Art

There was some internal debate between this game and Virtual Fighter 2, but in the end I have to give it to SoulCalibur for the following reasons.

SoulCalibur introduced three revolutionary gameplay mechanics.
1. Eight-Way-Run
The introduction of the eight-way-run gave very intuitive control over the player characters. It is a feature that truly opened up the 3D fighter to the third dimension. Whereas previous games functioned for the most part in 2D, with the only lateral movement coming from a short sidestep, SoulCalibur allowed the player to circle, or continuously move in any of the eight directions. The game controlled how you would expect and was incredibly intuitive.

2. Increased Move buffer
The move buffer is the window of timing that a player had while executing a move before the next controller input was accepted and executed. In both Virtual Fighter and Tekken, while a character is performing a move, the player needed to wait until a move had finished before inputting another move, otherwise the command input would not be accepted. This forced players to be very exact with the timing and execution of moves. SoulCalibur’s increased move buffer allowed players to input and string their attacks without waiting for a move to finish. The command would be accepted and after a move completes the next inputted player command would be executed. The move buffer coupled with the eight-way-run gave new players responsive controls and maneuvers that were simple to execute and impressive to behold. The mechanics of SoulCalibur opened a traditionally hardcore genre to a much wider audience.

3. Guard Impact
SoulCalibur is a part of a rare collection of games that opened the genre up to a less hardcore audience, while still maintaining all of the deep gameplay that a hardcore player expects. Each of SoulCalibur’s characters had deep move sets, air juggles and combos that allowed the expert player to easily set them apart from the novice player. The inclusion of the Guard Impact counter put SoulCalibur well out of the reach of its competition. The Guard Impact is performed either high or low and deflects incoming attacks. If the opponent performs a high attack at the same time that you perform a high Guard Impact it would deflect the attack while at the same time stunning the attacker and not allowing them to perform any other moves besides a counter guard impact for a short period of time. This would allow for really ridiculous strings of Guard Impacts as the attacker would try to mix up their angles of attacks and add delays before executing an attack in an effort to breach the defender’s Guard Impact defenses.

No other fighter encompasses the ebb and flow of combat like SoulCalibur. No words can fully describe the feeling of a long string of guard impact reversals between two good players. While SoulCalibur did not invent the 3D fighter, its mechanics made it truly 3D and introduced the genre to many new players. SoulCalibur was so far ahead of its time that in four iterations and nearly ten years the gameplay has remained nearly identical to the original with only a few minor tweaks.

Best RPG of All Time
Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)
Platform: PC
Developer: BioWare
Publisher: Black Isle Studios, Interplay

Baldur’s Gate II is an epic, timeless masterpiece that marks the last of the truly great RPGs. It sort of makes me sad going back and revisiting this game, because this game book ended a great style of games that developers today will likely never return to. They really do not makes games like this anymore.

Baldur’s Gate II is the last title to use the AD&D second edition rule set and was so accurate that I found the AD&D Player’s Handbook indispensable and constantly open and on my lap as I pored over it to find the best way to min/max my characters.

The story and writing for the game really shines. There is a great deal of text in the game, however it is really well written and the story plays out as if you are reading a great novel. The storyline is so good that even this game’s epic side quests easily outclass most other full RPGs’ main story lines.

The decisions players made in Baldur’s Gate II carried real weight and affected the outcome of future events. Many modern day RPGs distill choice down to good or evil. The player in Baldur’s Gate II had to make decisions that were often gray. The complex characters would support your decisions, offer their advice and even discuss events amongst themselves. With the numerous combinations of characters that the player could select to be apart of their party, this attention to detail was amazing. The player could choose to start up romantic relationships with members of the opposite sex with many of the characters in their party. The writing for these segments were very well done and often memorable. Baldur’s Gate II is one of those few titles that kept you up and playing until 4AM because you had to find out what happened next.

Baldur’s Gate II’s countless optional side quests, different combinations of characters and meaningful decision-making created almost unlimited replay value.

This is the definitive role-playing experience.

Click here to go back to Part 1 of this list.

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