Hello Ganker. Tommy Millar here, professional game developer. I would like to share a game design lesson with y'all. I hope you don't mind.
> With #ELDENRING rapidly approaching, I’m going to discuss why I believe the iconic Soulsborne “YOU DIED” screen (and the preceding “falling piano” death design theory) is actually a fairly bad #gamedesign tenet to follow, in the traditional sense. One of the fundamental game design tightropes you walk in #gamedev is, “how do I punish a player whilst allowing them to continue learning?” - in Super Mario Bros, for example, you’ll notice many “safe pitfalls” precede a bottomless pit. Even if they fail, they do not die. In more complex games, we offer this by increasing margin for error, or ability to recover from mistakes.
>The player should be punished without stopping the session - if you stop the game (game over) to force a restart after one mistake, the player is not learning anything. Glibly, we refer to tiny margin for error moments or sudden game overs as “piano falls” (referring to the Looney Tunes trope of a grand piano falling on a character out of nowhere). If the player has no opportunity to recover before game over, the “learning momentum” stops. Imagine a hypothetical Dark Souls-like where, instead of being punished by a “YOU DIED” game-over screen, your immortal character simply resurrected on the spot with a new “Soul Scar” - you could continue to learn/fight the enemy, but have that visual reminder of failure. This is just one solution to maintaining the difficulty whilst removing the archaic trial-and-error style of design which was largely dropped in the 1980s. We should always strive to keep the player **in** the game to teach them. If we slapped the clarinet out of a musician’s hands the second they played a bum note whilst learning a new song, forcing them to restart the whole thing every time, learning that song would take forever.
>We don’t learn by having our tools taken away.
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I bet this guy felt like such a fricking idiot when Elden Ring actually came out and BTFO his argument
tl;dr
Why do you dress like a gay?
I can dress however I like and it's none of your business. It's not the 1950s anymore.
>posts himself in a dress in a public space
>it's none of your business
i know this is larp, but this is why no one takes these people seriously
It's San Francisco
One of the primary malignant tumors in this country
The irony is that Souls having you die but keep all obtained items and only need to run back to your corpse to get your souls back was a step forward in leniency towards the player since the previous standard was just dying and losing all progress.
But nugamers don’t have the patience to actually play through the sequence again and not suicide run for their souls so it’s le hard.
>if you stop the game (game over) to force a restart after one mistake
you have to make a lot of mistakes in elden ring to die, not "one mistake"
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOO DIS homie BALD!!!!!!!!!!111111111
the way he's saying that makes it look like if you die you die forever and can't come back. What's the difference in running from a checkpoint to your soul compared to spawning directly where you died?
>totomimo
>bald
look tomar, its you
Tomar Tomar Tomar, what would you dooooo, if you died in Elden Ring
>after one mistake
That's what health bars are for, making multiple mistakes
>(game over) to force a restart
That doesn't happen you just are sent back to a checkpoint
>ability to recover from mistakes
That is what the bloodstain system is for. In fact, you will end up accumulating much more souls going through a level, if you keep picking up your bloodstains. The only punishing thing is making the same mistake twice and losing your accumulated souls.
>in Super Mario Bros, for example, you’ll notice many “safe pitfalls” precede a bottomless pit. Even if they fail, they do not die. In more complex games, we offer this by increasing margin for error, or ability to recover from mistakes.
Yea, and in Elden Ring/Souls game, you rarely if ever die to 1-shots. The hit you take and survive is analogous to the "safe pitfalls". This guy must be batshit moronic.
How did developers get it right in the 90's? They absolutely perfected gameplay structure, visual impact, controls, sound, and feel. Souls became popular for going back to what was basically the standard before the normiepocalypse of the 2000's. No matter how many new games are made, it's proven time and time again that old school game structure just works.
not op but,
they didnt get t perfect, if youre comparing it to today. in the 90s the standard was coming off of the arcade philsophy which was essentially:
>ballbusting difficulty that isnt necessarily fair to keep you invested longer and extend the life of the product
today theres more aspects that a game can shift that into like multiplayer or overall game size, among other things. not to mention theres an entire new axis to explore rather than just a 2d space. i still disagree with the idea of making games "easier", but tere are other ways to punish the player for fricking up that arent making them redo 10+ minutes of gameplay. there are definitely creative solutions that can be done in place of that
games were designed for hobbyists back then. now they're designed "for everyone" with the goal of making as much money via microtransactions. it used to be a challenge and achievement to clear a difficult section, now it's a paywall where you give the devs 5 dollars to level your character up instantly or whatever.
>I would like to share a game design lesson with y'all
this guy is peak midwit game designer. He thinks he has it all figured out. He thinks there are magical rules that apply to all games, when in reality, the right rule for your game depends on all the other elements in the game. He probably makes soulless AAA cookie-cutter garbage. If he's lucky, one day he will understand how little he really knows.
desu, lucasarts removing deaths made point n click adventure games 10x better so I don't have a problem with devs designing around it
Well yea. Back then it was just an absolutely unbreakable paradigm and it was shoehorned into almost every game on the market. It made zero sense for that kind of game to have game overs unless it was integral to the game design like Shadowgate.
have a nice day
>We don’t learn by having our tools taken away.
You learn to adapt and improvise. But he's just a UI """artist""", frick does he know about game design.
I agree, when I watch football and someone fumbles a play I think to myself, "They should stop the game and let that guy try again."
What if players want "bad" design sometimes?
I guess if you were going to post a morons opinions, including a picture that shows me I don't need to read it to know he is a moron is at least helpful.
all memes aside i think soul reaver handled death in a unique way and made the game interesting in the way only your corporal form was destroyed. Loved that game. I don't like elden ring much having to die to leave the tutorial area is just poor design.
If your games are nothing more than jumping over pits with a quick save button then you really haven't evolved past super Mario.
Real life doesn't have reloads, you have to learn skills like "risk management" and "adaptation".
You only get one shot at life, you should be thankful if a videogame let's you start over from the beginning
I know this is a shitpost but i actually like games which are designed for you to walk off your frick ups and keep playing. The nu xcoms are a good example. The game is balanced around the assumption that you're going to lose some soldiers/countries but it leads to a lot of interesting decisions that you just dont see in most other games. Sometimes the right decision is actually to withdraw from a mission you fricked up and get your guys back to the chopper. Most games you are on rails and theres no consequence for dying because you just restart until you complete the objective. Some people would argue that open world games dont do this but they do, all open world does is give you the option to mix up the order you do some encounters in. Most rpgs will try to act like the main quest is some time critical thing but in reality theres no consequence to fricking around and doing every single side mission. I like games where there are possible negative consequences other than just: you died, go back 10 minutes
This is a moronic take because losing HP is already a visual tell you failed something. However Elden Ring did have an obnoxious amount of one shots.
Just put some points in vigor and you don't get one shot. Sounds like you made a glass cannon build (which is still cool, but you can't complain about it if it's your own choice)
I wonder if these people can sense that an industry that requires talent would have no place for them. Being "tough but fair and also fun" is harder on every level than just strapping the player into a carnival ride. On top of looking stupid and out-of-touch for their assertion that the Call of Duty mindset is the undisputed future of gaming, a lot of brainlet devs wouldn't be able to cut it if they actually had to start putting thought into creating a long string of fun and interesting challenges for the player.
Nope. This is unironically the prevailing thought process in the industry. Forging the player to redo anything is bad game design, they should be constantly progressing in some way. Checkpoints every time you pick something up or survive an encounter are considered a quality of life feature.
let me pretend it isn't bait for a second
I just finished the game today with 200 hours and feel like I've learned more by ramming my head against every boss I could find than (You) through your entire "game design" career
in other news, why are journos and western gamedevs so mad that ED mogged them
you reap what you fricking sow
or did they think peddling subpar cashgrabs was a sustainable business model?
>in other news, why are journos and western gamedevs so mad that ED mogged them
Legitimately threatens their careers. Credibility is everything for a journalist (which is why the entire traditional journalism industry is collapsing), and if corporate America sudenly starts having sane standards, a lot of people all up and down the chain are going to find themselves out of a job or severely demoted.
I don't think it has to do with all that. I think they're just resentful about a Japanese game dev receiving so much praise over the years. It's a matter of racial pride for them.
>racial pride
While wokoids are legitimately some of the most racist people that you'll ever meet, their racism doesn't really work that way. I stand by the idea that they can sense danger, but I do think that there's also an element of frustration that Japanese fandom is one big party while their scenes are full of angry customers who want them to fail.
To those devs: You do it to yourselves. Japanese devs are respectful and customer-oriented. Mainstream western devs haven't had an ounce of humility in 20 years and have taken an "us vs. them" mindset in regards to customers, and they're proud of it. Respect starts with the people who are asking for money.
>in other news, why are journos and western gamedevs so mad that ED mogged them
They are mad that they were taught wrong and are now being confronted with the fact. The more introspective among them will eventually realize that they are being gays and be willing to relearn the correct way of designing a game, but the vast majority of them will instead seethe about it and insist that we are having fun wrong and that their generic movie game garbage is the right way of having fun.
So here's a question for you: If you're an AAA dev who's bet his professional reputation on advocating for the Call of Duty approach (which you thought was safe) and worked on some of these recent under-performing titles, does introspection necessarily save your position? And if people in that position lose their jobs, will the new leadership want to keep people who were hired because dev work was considered braindead? It's not always as easy as just changing your path to be more in line with reality.
That's why they're angry.
Let’s be real for a sex here plebbitbros, Elden Ring was a watered down, normalgay friendly Dark Souls. It doesn’t take much to get a few game journalists panties in a twist and even then, it’s one of the most critically calmly acclaimed games of the year. So your claims that it shook the industry to its core aren’t lining up with what I’m seeing with my eyeballs. It’s a decent game but Jesus, frick off.
I didn't praise it precisely because I know people are fed up with hearing about it
for the effect it had on the gaming sphere I'd assume it's due to the wider reach it has compared to previous FS games
the rest you made up yourself
>Kameo 2
THERE WAS A KAMEO 2???
>a “YOU DIED” game-over screen, your immortal character simply resurrected on the spot with a new “Soul Scar” - you could continue to learn/fight the enemy, but have that visual reminder of failure.
I played fable 2 which does exactly this. You know how much I learned about the combat and avoiding damage in general? Almost fricking nothing since you just come back to life. The scars were never hideous enough for this to be a serious deterrent and even if they were I'd be more annoyed than anything else that I couldn't just restart the fight instead to try and improve.
I have to agree
The medium has limitless potential but here we are with shooty shoot blood gun die bec you have to pander to the deranged white male
go make a game, moron
realise the potential
Who the frick asked you? At least not be a fricking raging homosexual when you're typing so I can take you seriously
Go back to driving taxis in San Fran you ridiculous clown shoe homosexual
But I don't want to limit player expression, and it promotes diversity too!
have a nice day, homosexual.
>Imagine a hypothetical Dark Souls-like where, instead of being punished by a “YOU DIED” game-over screen, your immortal character simply resurrected on the spot with a new “Soul Scar” - you could continue to learn/fight the enemy, but have that visual reminder of failure.
Fable 2 did that and it was absolutely moronic. Letting the player immediately get back up after dying doesn’t teach you anything other than to keep playing like an idiot since the only punishment for failure is a superficial cosmetic change.
"ui artist" =/= game dev.
Is he the guy that puts all the arrows on the screen in ubisoft games? Yeah let's listen to what THAT GUY has to say about actual game design and mechanics lmfao.
>Super Mario Bros, for example, you’ll notice many “safe pitfalls” precede a bottomless pit. Even if they fail, they do not die.
Super Mario was decades ago, and it had the additional requirement of teaching people who had never played a 2d game how to move around. Even so, there are death pits even in 1-1, and you die if you fall in them.
>If we slapped the clarinet out of a musician’s hands the second they played a bum note whilst learning a new song, forcing them to restart the whole thing every time
Actually if you're trying to learn a piece, you will separate it into several parts (which you can view as checkpoints) and repeat each part until you can do it flawlessly (which you can view as going back to a checkpoint upon death.)
t. actually played a musical instrument
Lose conditions will cease to be a thing soon enough. Zoomers are subhuman and ruining games with their shit taste simply because they buy mtx garbage with a price tag