Game Design: Tiny Changes, Big Results
This week, in my fencing class, our instructor handed us sabers. Up until this point, we'd only been using foils. We spent a half hour or so going over some attacks and parries, and then he had us fencing and judging each other. Incidentally, I'm bad at both.

I vaguely remember fencing with sabers before, years ago, in a similar one-evening-only experience. The biggest difference between using foils and sabers are:

#1 - The saber can slash as well as thrust to hit. So edge hits count.

#2 - The saber has a wider target range - basically from the waistline up - including the arms and head (but not the hands).

Otherwise, for the most part, the rules are pretty similar to foil fencing. But what a difference these two rule changes make! I won't say it feels like a totally different sport, but it does make for a faster game that really favors the attack. In fact, that led to one of the other rule differences in saber fencing - the "fleche" maneuver is illegal. According to my instructor, in saber fencing, the best defense is simply a quick retreat - get out of the way just enough to launch your own attack. There's less of the fancy parry-riposte action that you see in the movies. And a lot of overhead strikes to try and rap the opponent on the head.

Which, to me, actually makes saber fencing a little more boring. But the key point is how different it is - and how those rule changes caused a cascade effect and the need to introduce yet more rules (like making the fleche illegal).

Back when I was participating in medievalist combat, a veteran of several different varieties of these games described how fighters from different sports fought each other. The SCA fighters, for example, typically fought very erect, with quick overhead blows (not unlike saber fencing in that regard). By contrast, they'd get irritated when fighting Dagorhir fighters, who tended to fight low to the ground, in a deeper stance, and who would typically aim for the legs. Dagorhir fighters tended to rely a lot more heavily on footwork and maneuvering. In practice, the contrast was sorta like watching Kendo versus Capoeira.

The reasons were twofold. First of all - in Dagorhir, headshots were illegal, so overhead swings were very rare. Fighting low and aiming for lower targets tended avoided potential head shots - plus it shrank the fighter's own potential target area, since they didn't need to protect their head. Secondly, in the SCA they focused on protecting the fighter rather than making the weapons safe, so full-contact SCA fighting required participants to wear heavy armor and to wear helmets which restricted visibility. Thus they tended to economize on body movements (which would tire them out more quickly) and to keep their opponents directly in front of them at all times where they could see them clearly through their helmet.

A more "LARP" oriented group in the local area would often get decimated by Dagorhir fighters, as they relied too heavily on artificial game rules favoring things like levels. The actual combat rules were extremely similar, but the supplemental rules to make the game more RPG-like had quite a bit of as psychological effect on the players. And being able to survive four times as many hits didn't serve them very well when they were being hit eight times more often by a "level one" Dagorhir veteran. But it worked great for their own gaming style, as the veteran players could multiply their own hard-won player skills with the benefits given their characters by the rules, thus making an experienced player much more godlike on the field than his newbie peers. By contrast, Dagorhir veterans were constantly being taken down by a lucky javelin-toss or attack from behind from newbies, which irritated them to no end in their own game.

As I suggested in yesterday's post, little differences like these can really change the feel and gameplay of computer and console games, too.

Back in ancient history when I was working on Void War, I was getting pretty frustrated with how combat had become little more than a slug-fest. My victims - er, players and helpers - kept suggesting ideas for "pick-ups," and I grew tired of explaining to them that Void War was NOT that kind of game. I was still approaching it from more of a space-combat purists perspective (in spite of all the unrealistic concessions I was making). Finally, in desperation, I let go of my resistance to the idea, and implemented pick-ups. The basic mechanism was done in only a day or two.

And the difference was amazing. Especially in multiplayer. Suddenly, the game became much more about zipping around the battlefields trying to gain an advantage via pick-ups than simply coasting through the sky (or just sitting there) pounding on each other until the player who shot first won. It made a huge difference in the game - and while not a trivial change (we added a lot of pickup types that had to be implemented), it was a single modification that completely transformed the game.

In the Rampant Games Forums, there have been a couple of threads dealing with alternatives to the typical "mana" or "energy" or "magic point" systems used in RPGs - particularly with how they tend to be used as a "hit point battery" for healers. It's pretty tricky trying to think outside the box on this one, and it's easy to see why RPG designers tend to fall back on minor variations on the tried-and-true system. But that's the kind of thing that can completely transform the "feel" of the game.

Of course, some players won't like anything mucking with the feel that they prefer, but this is the kind of thinking - the kinds of changes - that do need to be explored. Veteran MMO players, in particular, have grown ultra-sensitive to the impacts of even the most minor changes in their game. The more vocal players may be far more sensitive than is warranted, but they are not wrong - those small "tweaks" can have a big impact on their game, particularly as they've optimized their character accordingly.

There's been a lot of controversy about Diablo III's design decisions - from the lack of customizable stat increases, to getting more immediate "healing globes" or whatever in combat that heal immediately rather than storing away tons of potions for later use. Are these bad decisions? Probably not. But they do transform the feel of the game - for better or worse, depending upon your point of view as a player. But as a player, you will want to recognize these differences quickly and adjust your play style to adapt.

But a lot of times, it doesn't take a major overhaul of the core system. Some simple but tiny changes can really have big results - and a big effect on how you play.

Labels: Game Design

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:52 AM (Permalink)