Gameplay - depth vs complexity vs fun

[Lisbeth_Salander]

Make lacking skills have combat be more difficult. Add sway to aim, additional time to draw weapon, more recoil for weapons when shots are fired if the person has no skill with fire arms. Have guns jam sometimes, and are cleared more quickly by someone who knows how to use a firearm. Make it so there is a % chance parry is unsuccessful with melee weapons in melee combat if you don't have any skill in melee combat. There are third person combat games out there that do some or all of this to varying degrees of success. The Last of Us had skills effect sway of aim (and it was a pain to shoot until you took the skills). The Witcher 3 had parry and dodge (though I think you ought to be able to fail at it when you're not an expert swordsman). MGSV had solid stealth mechanics and it would be fairly easy to make the player easier or harder to spot for NPCs with certain skills. Mass Effect 3 had solid TPS combat mixed with companions. Lots of games have skills effect draw time, recoil and the like. You can have both the sense of variety in combat based on character skill and player control.

To achieve a tough combat system without sacrificing "accessibility" or too much of the fun element, the difficulty should be focused on enemies.

Everytime the player got better with his skills the enemies would do it too. Imagine enemies with AI’s that would adapt to almost every player's moves.

If word got out in the street that the player's most used weapon is a sniper rifle and attacks enemies at long distances, then enemies would start using more long ranged weapons and equipments that can identify the player at longer distances.

The same could happen during combat: "Oh the player just killed 40% of my buddies with a shotgun? Let's stay away from him and only shoot him at a longer distance, since shotguns have a short range."

The same goes for roles too: "Oh the player is a corporate and is wiping us out by calling ally reinforcements? Let's use this EMP grenade to intercept his methods of communications so he can't call any more reinforcements!"

And with equipments: "Oh the player's main cyber implants are stealth related? Lets buy equipment that makes it easier for us enemies, to identify the player when he's hiding."

This adaptive AI would respond uniquely for each individual class and it would work during combat too, which means enemies wouldn't watch the player wiping them out without doing anything AKA Witcher 3, but instead they'd try different things.

Spoiler

There's this theory in gaming called "Dominant Strategy" which means that if you find a ultimate strategy to dispose enemies you're always going to use it. With this adaptive A.I there's hope that we could get rid of that dominant strategy that always happens during gameplay.

 

[Lisbeth_Salander]

This could be easily handled by game mechanics. Say 25% (or whatever) of "hits" are "grazes" and do half (or less) damage. No reason to assume because a player is aiming right between the eyes (unless they're using a sniper weapon AND skilled in it's use) that's where a bullet will actually impact. They did hit, just not solidly. But to have every shot do some set amount of damage, be it modified by level, skill, weapon type (assuming the same caliber) just because developers want players to feel rewarded by some level of success rather then annoyed because they missed has zero place in "realistic" combat simulations. These sorts of (commonly used) "game" mechanics are some of the (many) things that personally annoy me about (most) FPS games.

Just gonna quote this here, so it can get more visibility.

 

[Suhiira]

Fuck. I really enjoy when you guys do Brainstorming.

No time constraints.
No budget.
No boss we need to "agree" with.
A passion for the project.
Some real world practical experience.
Some game design/tweaking experience.
Some good brains.

Is it really all that surprising?

:surprised:

 

[Suhiira]

To achieve a tough combat system without sacrificing "accessibility" or too much of the fun element, the difficulty should be focused on enemies.

Everytime the player got better with his skills the enemies would do it too. Imagine enemies with AI’s that would adapt to almost every player's moves.

If word got out in the street that the player's most used weapon is a sniper rifle and attacks enemies at long distances, then enemies would start using more long ranged weapons and equipments that can identify the player at longer distances.

Not really.
Opponents may exist in a game solely to challenge the player but if you're going for a "realistic" feel keep in mind the circumstances/environment they exist in. Why are they there? What do they normally do? What skills/equipment/weapon would they reasonably have access to? While they may well change their tactics, or acquire a couple pieces of specialized gear (EMP grenades for instance) to deal with a player they're highly unlikely to suddenly acquire new (or better) skills or weapons.

Now the one place a GM can reasonably "cheat" is numbers, you have access to as many NPCs as you need after all (within reason).
Or have them somehow acquire (hire, friend of a friend, whatever) one or two highly skilled/equipped individuals who'll hang back and let the cannon fodder flush they player then hit them like a ton of bricks.

This adaptive AI would respond uniquely for each individual class and it would work during combat too, which means enemies wouldn't watch the player wiping them out without doing anything AKA Witcher 3, but instead they'd try different things.

Most of this can be handled by giving NPCs reasonable reaction ranges and activities.

There's a sudden flurry of gunfire at the front door of NPC gang headquarters. In most games the NPCs in the next room will continue their card game till the player sticks their nose in the door, oblivious to what happened in the previous room i.e. typical game NPC response. Instead everyone within earshot of the gunfire should arm themselves and swarm or move to outflank the character(s), or run like hell ... cause they only have cheap handguns and they're hearing automatic weapons fire and grenade explosions.

But ... but ... that would mean we can't pick them off in manageable groups and might actually face a realistic challenge rather then a typical game one ...
I can't bulldoze my way thru hordes of NPCs! This game sux!
Even if the NPCs are fairly lousy shots there are enough shooting at me I'm getting hit, this isn't "fair"!

 

[Lisbeth_Salander]

Not really. Opponents may exist in a game solely to challenge the player but if you're going for a "realistic" feel keep in mind the circumstances/environment they exist in. Why are they there? What do they normally do? What skills/equipment/weapon would they reasonably have access to? While they may well change their tactics, or acquire a couple pieces of specialized gear (EMP grenades for instance) to deal with a player they're highly unlikely to suddenly acquire new (or better) skills or weapons.

You are objectively wrong.

They're not suddenly going to aquire equipments as you wrongly assumed. These enemies would buy equipments such as the EMP grenade before hand an as we play the game and word got out in the street of our tactics, enemies would adapt to each individual playstyle through the game. And if it happens that some of them has a EMP grenade, they'd use it to intercept the player's methods of communication. But regarding action, enemies could very well adapt their tactics during combat, after a time fighting agains't the player, and this time it would take for them to adapt would be relative to each enemy.

My examples are relative, If enemies didn't have long ranged weapons to confront a player with a shotgun then they could have medium range weapons, that means they could still stay keep a longer distance from the player, and even if they did not have medium range they would at least try new action focused strategies to destroy the player such as new formations, new methods of counter attacking, etc. And it wouldn't happen suddenly, my example states that they'd do this after 40% of their buddies being killed by the player, so it would take time for them to adapt in order to keep things realistic.

And the Adaptive A.I I'm talking about, wouldn't be all about what the player is doing or what equipements he is using as you probably think. In my example, enemies would also have strategies that are independent on their own, in other words, strategies that can be generally used regardless (most of the time) of what equipment the player is using, in other words, advanced action based strategies that works agains't most players, in other words, flexible strategies that are most of the time not affected by the equipment the player is using, but rather by his actions, strategies and skills.

I can't bulldoze my way thru hordes of NPCs! This game sux!

That's why I defend the switch proposition in this thread. Options like smart enemy A.Is would scare casuals that want to feel like gods playing the game, so by making this smart AI less smart in normal or easy settings or by making it an option in the menu or by making such AI only available in the hard difficulty setting then it will all be fine.

 

[Lisbeth_Salander]

Is it really all that surprising?

Plot twist: some of the users here work at CDPR and this thread is just they pretending not to be employers in order to find out if the public likes their ideas.

 

[NukeTheMoon]

- You move the character with WASD, mouse moves the cursor. All as usual.
- You take the cursor to the enemy and press and hold RMB (as if taking aim through the sights), and the cursor locks on to the target. Release RMB and you release the cursor.
- No submenu here (aside possibly for a tactical pause feature or the hinted "Tactical mode"). Default aim would be on torso (though I don't see why it couldn't be toggled on some preferences). Move mouse upwards and the cursor jumps to the enemys head and the time-counter and hit-chances reset to reflect what the difficulty to hit the head is. Move downwards to get back to the torso. Move it left and right for arms and bottomleft and -right for legs. LMB to shoot (each shot resets the aim, and long burst fire could even penalize so much that you can't for a while target anything but the guy as a whole).
- Additionally, you could use mousewheel to cycle through bodyparts. Ad Q and E to quick-cycle through possible targets (items included).
- All the while still holding RMB (the cursor is locked to the target so you don't need mouse for anything else before you shoot) and maneuvering the character as you would in any game.

This has been done before. Almost exactly the way you describe.
Ten years ago.
On console.
In an open world, third person shooter, cyber punk action-RPG.
Chance to hit in % wasn't used probably because there was no time to consider the info in the middle of a real-time fire fight.
Instead it was player experimentation with the Character ability to fire successful repeated shots at "X" bodypart at "Y" skill level.

Saying there's too many shooters is just saying there's too many shooters. I've tried to explaing that [I think] we need more games that break the common mold and take inspiration from the traditional RPG mechanics. What I suggest up there and in general is not a traditional RPG (because CP2077 isn't likely to be one) in the same sense as games that might inspire it, it's a modern game that tries to mix traditional RPG mechanics and sensibilities within modern framework and ideals.

Perhaps, I think it's an odd thing to say on the one hand you are open to a system like Dues Ex, but then when prompted you give an example of a system nearly copy-and-pasted from Crackdown.
Badass game but not what I thought you were going for.

It's only part of the player mind. Get rid of it and understand that you don't need "everything" and you're fine. Plus, you can design failure as part of the game so that even if you did just "fail" it counts for something, and needs not to be reversed.

Video games are supposed to offer a set of rules and restrictions than are meant to be worked within or worked around.
Telling the player of a video-game to accept a crappy dice role in a outcome is like putting a gambler in-front of a slot machine with no cost to play and expecting them to only pull the lever once.

Absolutely. But there might also be jealous people, who do not appreciate an overly charismatic personality. Thus some doors might also close.
Some people might also be unsure about what they want.. that means they might say no no matter how convincing you think you are.

Not the point I was making. I don't agree without Fallout 4 romance where I can have low Charisma but still get to bang Kate because I'm willing to spend time in the loading screen.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

This has been done before. Almost exactly the way you describe.
Ten years ago.
On console.
...
copy-and-pasted from Crackdown.

Badass game but not what I thought you were going for.

I wasn't going for that and it's not copy/pasted from anywhere. I didn't even know that game existed before you brought it up now; had I known I would've mentioned it has similiar thing going on. Looking at its gameplay it looks very arcade (almost slotmachine like) and way, way, way fasters and more primitive than what I had in mind, and it lacks the % checks and aim-timers I was talking about (it has some for distance, but that's not what I was meant with my idea). It has the basic idea of locking onto targets and selecting bodyparts down, but otherwise it is quite different.

Perhaps it's a better and more RPG'y version of that I'm going for, then. Forget Crackdown's arcade action intent and imagine the combat premise molten together with Deus Ex or Morrowind with the lethality of CP2020, and rolling with more humanlike pace of movement (and an added "tactical pause" and/or "tactical mode" feature to boot).

And in any case, like I said it's more about promoting the idea of marrying the oldschool mechanics with more modern framework. Not to specifically and meticulously design and describe a game here on the forums. I could've just as well start to promote the modernization of Wizardry 8 for purposes of creating a first person partybased CP2077 to drive a similiar point.

 

[NukeTheMoon]

I wasn't going for that and it's not copy/pasted from anywhere. I didn't even know that game existed before you brought it up now; had I known I would've mentioned it has similiar thing going on. Looking at its gameplay it looks very arcade (almost slotmachine like) and way, way, way fasters and more primitive than what I had in mind. It has the basic idea of locking onto targets and selecting bodyparts down, but otherwise it is quite different.

Perhaps it's a better and more RPG'y version of that I'm going for, then. Forget Crackdown's arcade action intent and imagine the combat premise molten together with Deus Ex or Morrowind with the lethality of CP2020, and rolling with more humanlike pace of movement (and an added "tactical pause" and/or "tactical mode" feature to boot).

I didn't mean to imply you were copy and pasting it from somewhere, but what you said, with the exception of (%) to hit displayed is all there.

Obviously Crackdown is arcade like, but doesn't dismiss the system is exactly what you described, even if the action is much faster.

Frankly, I think the system would work even better in a game with slower-paced combat like GTA5 than it does in Crackdown.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

but what you said, with the exception of (%) to hit displayed is all there.

Obviously Crackdown is arcade like, but doesn't dismiss the system is exactly what you described, even if the action is much faster.

So it seems, to a degree. What happens now?

Frankly, I think the system would work even better in a game with slower-paced combat like GTA5 than it does in Crackdown.

It would seem so to me too -- not necessarily even as fast as GTA V. Something where you can properly take advantage of the different target areas and their effects.

 

[NukeTheMoon]

So it seems, to a degree. What happens now?
It would seem so to me too -- not necessarily even as fast as GTA V. Something where you can properly take advantage of the different target areas and their effects.

If the idea has been exhausted, then it can be briefly summarized as,
"What Crackdown did with it targeting system was cool, it would be cool if CP77 did that too."

Could it be implemented or not? Who knows, it's quite possible the devs have seen and played Crackdown.
If one is attempting to create a Open World Cyberpunk Action-RPG, then to not see what has come before and draw inspiration seems like an oversight.

You would think that a long time ago, they made a decision to try to include, dismiss, and evolve on such an idea.
What happens now is we sit and wait. Until we get distracted by something else.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

What exactly is your point here?

This doesn't seem to be anymore about what CP2077 should have and do, but something about Crackdown. I do not wish the game to play like Crackdown and I have not suggested that; there is more to it than a similiar (and only similiar) targeting system. Hence summarizing it as "Crackdown did it, now do it here" is inadequate. I would never say "Do it like Crackdown".

Forget Crackdown, it's a note in the marginal. The point is not to try and do mimicry by intent.

 

[NukeTheMoon]

What exactly is your point here?

This doesn't seem to be anymore about what CP2077 should have and do, but something about Crackdown. I do not wish the game to play like Crackdown and I have not suggested that; there is more to it than a similiar (and only similiar) targeting system. Hence summarizing it as "Crackdown did it, now do it here" is inadequate. I would never say "Do it like Crackdown".

Forget Crackdown, it's a note in the marginal. The point is not to try and do mimicry by intent.

My comment was only about the targeting system in particular. Not the rest of Crackdown.

About mimicry, well, if it makes sense to do so, then go for it.
There is nothing new under the sun.
I wouldn't say TW3 did anything new, it just did it (mostly) very well and in a cohesive way.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

I asked about the point because I do not see the reason why you keep pushing on with that Crackdown thing here; as it's irrelevant to what I've been on about. I tried to say that already in my first response to bringing it up. If it's just a general commentary that it had did similiar things going on with it, ok, it did, that was already established when you brought the game up, we'll move on. If it's something else, what is it?

There is nothing new under the sun.

Ok. There's use and then there's overuse, though.

EDIT..

Actually, I take some of that back. It's not completely "irrelevant"; now that you brought it up I have something concrete to point at and it helps explain what I'm looking for.

 

[Calistarius]

Video games are supposed to offer a set of rules and restrictions than are meant to be worked within or worked around. Telling the player of a video-game to accept a crappy dice role in a outcome is like putting a gambler in-front of a slot machine with no cost to play and expecting them to only pull the lever once.

So... what your saying is that anyone who likes games like the old "UFO: Enemy Unknown" ( "X-COM: UFO Defense" for you American's), and "X-COM: Terror from the Deep", or the new "XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Within" and "XCOM 2", and a huge amount of people who like certain kinds of rogue-like games... are gambling addicts? XD

No... accepting crappy dice rolls has got almost nothing to do with being a gambling addict or anything. For the most part games of this nature is all about dealing with bad situations and rolling with the punches and what not... how to overcome the fact that you just had a mission in for example XCOM where you just lost your 6 best soldiers in a mission due to X reason.

Many games like this is built around that you can actually lose, and still keep playing, and potentually still win in the end... where as most games out there tend to be "If you lose this, then you have to reload and do it all over again untill you succeed".

Losing in a game like Skyrim means that the "gameplay flow" is broken and you have to constantly start over at your last save... it's like a vinyl record with a scratch on it which when you play it will constantly jumps back and replayes the same part over and over again untill it somehow manages to get past the scratch. Where as with XCOM 2 if you lose a mission the gameplay flow is not really interupted as you can continue playing... sure you probably just lost a bunch of soldiers and potentually equipment as well (which sucks), but you can keep going and in the end still manage to defeat the aliens. Of course, have enough of those bad losses happen in XCOM and you will eventually reach a permanent "fail state" in the game... but it does take a lot more effort to reach that point in games like XCOM, vs most other games out there where that fail state will happen as soon as your character dies or you failed in some mission to protect civilians from death or what ever, where you then have to start over from your last save.

Yes, you can essentually do the same with XCOM... reload each time something bad happens... but you don't always have to if you don't want to, since the game is built in such a way where it is possible to keep going even though you lost a mission or something.


A lot of games like this is all about "managing your luck", where you in various ways work your self around the fact that dice rolling can effect what happens. In Blood Bowl for example, a tabletop- and video-game which has a huge amount of dice rolling (almost every single thing you do in that game involves rolling dice), you can pretty easily see the difference between the good vs bad players, and/or the veteran vs newbie players. And the way you can see this difference is usually by a few factors, like their Win/Loss ratio obviously... but one of the biggest ones is by how much the player complaines about the games RNG. I can almost garantee you that almost every single person, who has ever complained about the RNG in Blood Bowl, has either been a newbie, had poor understanding on the game and it's game mechanics and rules, or is essentually a bad Blood Bowl player in general... because these players have failed to learn the simple truth of that the absolut best skills you as a player can learn when it comes to BB is the skill of "Manage your luck", the skill of "Plan for the dice always failing you", the skill of actually knowing all of the games rules, and other such things. Yes, good and/or bad luck can win and/or lose you a BB game... but you can not rely on luck for you to be a good BB player, to be someone who fairly consistantly wins most of their matches... to be such a player you have to learn those vital element of managing your luck, plan for failure, knowing the games rules, and other such things.

You see the same with a lot of the XCOM stuff... where a lot of players complain about how the game cheats with the RNG, or that the percentage that the game shows you is false (that if the game says you have a 90% chance to hit, it's actually more like a 50% or less or something... or other such rediculous statements), or what ever else it may be. And usually this comes from them either being newbies, or have a poor understanding of all of the other things I have mentioned befor, or just a general lacking understanding of how things like chance works (like even if you do have a 99% chance of hitting, you can still miss 10 times in a row... each new roll of a dice or RNG or somehting does after all NOT take into accound what any previous roll was). Generally people who can't accept that they them selves might actually be the problem in the equation as to why they failed.

I am not saying that you can't get screwed over by a bunch of subsequent bad rolls... where you have done everything right, and still you failed due to the RNG... but that is not evidence of a game cheating, or the game somehow being badly made, or that it is a bad game mechanics, or what ever else people might say... those things are just evidence of that "shit happens"... and that they are the exceptions which proves the rules kind of a thing, that the "skills" of managing your luck, planing for failure, learning the games rules and things which effects it, and accepting that shit happens, and all that, actually works for the most part in these games.

 

[Lisbeth_Salander]

I hate to keep posting in a thread made by me. It gives that attention seeking impression which I hate, but I can't help to post in this thread since I can't forget a certain conversation I had with you, @kofeiiniturpa.

You really think these will be inclined towards hadcore features in CP2077?

Why not? What do you make out of what I said, those few general and unspecific examples to make a point? What do you suppose I suggested?

Because of the inevitable urge of companies in the whole industry to sell more.

Why not what?

In the Rolling Stone magazine interview, Marcin Iwinski, one of CDPR's CEOs, said the following:

"Witcher 1 is very much – I don't like this word, but let's use it – a hardcore RPG, with a hard interface, with a lot of tough mechanics. I think it's a deep game on the story level, but still, if I were to have to play it from the beginning right now, I would probably have a hard time. Because I expect something else.

And so with The Witcher 2, we wanted to make it more cinematic. Having said that, when we shipped it, the PC version was extremely difficult, to put it lightly. I still remember one of the reviews in the U.S. where the journalist died in the prologue 50 times. And I was like, "Hmmm, I think we should rebalance it." It was a lesson learned.

With The Witcher 3, we really paid a lot of attention to immersion. This is really what we expect from games these days. Where we come from, Poland and Eastern Europe – and Germany, in a certain way as well – players have had always had a certain tolerance for hardcoreness, for clunkiness in interface. Let's say you have a game and you have to play with your hands crossed. "That's fine, I'm a tough guy. I'm smart. I'll play like that." And then, after you play like that for six hours, you think playing like that is cool.

While in the U.S., which we had to learn the hard way, it's: "If it's like that, then I'm not playing it; see you, thanks." It's like the way the country is constructed. It's user friendly. It's easily approachable. I totally agree with that, but it was a long way to get to this understanding. When I sit right now and watch a TV series or play a game, I have limited time. I have a family. I have three kids. I don't have time to learn the world for 10 hours in order to have another 20 hours of fun. I'm not talking about simplifying things. I'm talking about smart introductions and flawless immersion. That's what we are very much after in games. And I think Witcher 3 was a very important step in this direction. The commercial success proves it."




http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/i...-games-w472316

 

[Suhiira]

In the Rolling Stone magazine interview, Marcin Iwinski, one of CDPR's CEOs, said the following:

Always handy to know what CDPR learned from their previous games.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Seems to say American audience is to fault for the dilution of the games.

It was the same with Alpha Protocol. While Americans hated it, Europeans were more tolerant because while what Americans felt were flaws (like the accuracy penalties for weapons), Europeans thought it was either part of the experience or not such a big deal in the big picture, Americans got stuck on little nits to pick, Euro's evaluated the game more as a whole.

Btw, I still don't know what lisbeth understood from those "Why not?" quotes of mine, but somehow they seem to have cut deep.

 

[NukeTheMoon]

So... what your saying is that anyone who likes games like the old "UFO: Enemy Unknown" ( "X-COM: UFO Defense" for you American's), and "X-COM: Terror from the Deep", or the new "XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Within" and "XCOM 2", and a huge amount of people who like certain kinds of rogue-like games... are gambling addicts? XD

I'm saying it results for most people in a lot of loading screens.

I have no problem with story pathways being being open or closed based on Character stats or in-game decisions, but random chance just seems kind of lame.
What the point in having a high strength instead of a low if you can just re-load and re-roll the chance of being able to break the door open.

It's boring in games for example, where you reload over and over trying to repeatedly lock-pick a door that jams after your lock pick skill fails, reloading and trying again. It should either be accessible or not.

 

[Suhiira]

Seems to say American audience is to fault for the dilution of the games.

It was the same with Alpha Protocol. While Americans hated it, Europeans were more tolerant because while what Americans felt were flaws (like the accuracy penalties for weapons), Europeans thought it was either part of the experience or not such a big deal in the big picture, Americans got stuck on little nits to pick, Euro's evaluated the game more as a whole.

** Personal Opinion **
I think non-American gamers generally want more of a challenge in their games. Thus petty issues with the controls/UI are seen as part of the challenge. Americans are more demanding, "I want it the way I want it and won't settle for anything less".