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多人游戏平衡理论第2部分:可行性选择

发布时间:2011-12-14 17:45:05 Tags:,,,

作者:Sirlin

上篇文章中,我将平衡想法分解为两个概念——可行性选择和公平性。我还阐述了对称和非对称游戏的概念,需要平衡的不同初始选择种类越多,游戏的非对称性越强。(请点击此处阅读本文第3部分

那么,我们要如何确保游戏玩法中有足够的可行性选择呢?

Yomi Layer 3

在竞争性多人游戏中,最糟糕的情况是出现主导操作(游戏邦注:或者主导武器、角色、单位等内容)。我所指的这种主导操作并非仅仅算是优秀,而是那些必定优于其他操作选择的操作,因而其存在会降低游戏的战略性。主导操作也很可能没有任何应对方法,因而即便对手知晓你将采取何种行动,他们依然无可奈何。

要防止此类主导操作的产生,我们应当要知道Yomi Layer 3概念。“Yomi”在日语中是“阅读”的意思,比如读出对手的思维(游戏邦注:有款出自作者之手的策略卡牌游戏的名称也是这个词)。如果你的操作很强大,并用此来击败技术较差的对手,我将此称为“Yomi Layer 0”,也就是说双方玩家根本都不用去尝试猜测对手的做法。Layer 1指对手在察觉到你的操作后作出对抗。Layer 2指你反抗他的对抗。Layer 3指他反抗你的对抗。

以上内容似乎听起来让人很难理解,但是这在真正的游戏玩法中显得极为直观易懂。其意思就是,你和你的对手双方都有两个选择:

你:优秀的操作和Layer 2对抗

对手:针对你优秀操作的对抗和针对你Layer 2对抗的对抗

通常情况下,设计师无需设计Yomi Layer 4,因为到这个时候,你可以回到循环起点,展开最初始阶段的优秀操作。举个我在《街头霸王HD混合版》中创造出的Yomi Layer 3为例。

Street Fighter HD Remix(from sirlin)

Street Fighter HD Remix(from sirlin)

本田想要通过他的冲击操作靠近肯,但是肯扔个火球来对抗这种情况。我设计本田有能力用冲击来抵抗这些火球,但是只使用冲刺并不能使之移动很长距离。如果本田能够用招数抵消火球并且还能靠近对手,这对他来说很有好处。对于这种情况,肯的应对方法是不首先抛出火球,放任本田做出冲刺。在本田向前飞行的过程中,肯可以向前移动,在冲刺冷却时用扫腿击中他。

本田–移动较长距离的冲击和抵消火球的冲刺

肯–火球和向前移动并扫腿

我不需要再添加任何内容来构建Yomi Layer 4,因为本田可以用原先的全屏冲击来对抗本田的向前移动和扫腿。在竞争游戏中,Yomi Layer 4可以通过这种方式来实现。

这个概念提醒我们,操作需要存在对抗方式。如果你知道对手即将采取何种动作,通常情况下你应当有某些应对方法。在你的游戏开发过程中,应当不断询问自己,各种游戏玩法情境是否能够支持Yomi Layer 3想法。如果答案是否定的,那么肯定存在某些主导操作,这会影响到游戏的质量。

局部平衡与整体平衡

游戏中的所有情境是否都需要支持Yomi Layer 3呢?答案是否定的。

游戏中的所有情境是否都需要公平对待玩家双方呢?答案也是否定的。

应当记住的是,我所定义的公平性指的是获胜的总体机会相同,但是会存在不同的初始选择。公平性是个整体性术语,它的使用对象是从游戏开始到某个玩家胜利的整个游戏过程。但是局部层面不需要完全公平,也就是指游戏中的某个特定情境。即便是像象棋这样的对称游戏也有不公平的情境。当你只剩下3个棋子,而对方还剩下9个,这中情境对你来说就是不公平的。或者在《星际争霸》中,我们发现2个Zealot会击败或输给8个Zergling,这些情况都有可能发生,也是正常的,即便二者的制造消耗完全相同的资源。我们关心的并非诸如此类的情境是否公平,我们关心的只是神族与虫族的对抗是否公平。

将军(游戏邦注:指象棋术语“将军”)情境

将军情境意味着一方玩家几乎已经获得胜利,即便游戏还未结束。比如在《超级街头霸王2》中,如果本田向位于角落的古烈施放能够致人死地的Ochio Throw,随后他可以连上一系列操作(游戏邦注:包括用上更多的Ochio Throw),事实上他的前一个操作已经确保自己能够获得胜利。玩家操作失误可能会改变结果,但是只要你见到了首个操作,就能意识到可能会进入将军情境。

将军情境的存在是否合理呢?它明显违背了我们提出的多种可行操作的需求(游戏邦注:此时本田只有1个选择,而古烈根本没有选择)。它显然违背了Yomi Layer 3概念。然而,将军情境的存在是合理的。在这种比赛中,本田要靠近古烈非常困难。如果实现了目标,都应当获得此等奖励。在将军情境发生之前的所有游戏过程都是很公平的,即便本田在靠近对手之后可以施放此等必杀招数,但是从整体上来说比赛优势还是更倾向于古烈。

但是,我还想指出这个争论另一个方面的内容。有些玩家认为即便古烈在这场比赛中占有优势,但是本田能够重复施放Ochio Throw的能力实在过于不合理。他们表示本田的确需要这个招数来获得胜利,但是游戏整体还应当设计得更好些,不应如此极端。只要设计本田能够更加容易地靠近古烈,那么就可以取消这种将军情境。

我想起暴雪游戏设计副总裁Rob Pardo曾在游戏开发者大会多人游戏平衡演讲中回应过这个观点。他表示,即时战略游戏中设置“超级武器”往往是个糟糕的想法。它们让受害者认为他们已经无法挽回局面(游戏邦注:也就是进入将军情境)。他解释称,尽管《星际争霸》中人族的原子弹看似超级武器,但是其有许多内在的缺陷:幽灵单位必须靠近受害者的基地,受害者的基地上会出现红色的目标点,受害者会被提前10秒告知,使他有足够的时间摧毁幽灵来防止受原子弹袭击。

Pardo提出了个较好的观点,这足以应对那些抱怨本田的玩家。虽然我认为将军情境是合理的,但是换我来做决定时,我移除了《街头霸王HD混合版》中的本田将军情境。在这款游戏中,我设置其能够更容易地靠近古烈,将他的将军情境替换为Yomi Layer 3情境,这样整个比赛过程中就会有更多的可行决定。

无用情境

无用情境很像将军情境,但是有个不同之处,那就是时间。本田的将军情境需要大概3秒钟的时间就可以结束。但是,让我们考虑战斗游戏《Marvel vs. Capcom 2》中的类似情境。在这款游戏中,每个玩家都可以组建拥有3个角色的队伍,一个角色上场战斗,另外两个角色待命。玩家可以在任意时刻呼叫待命角色来援助战斗角色,让他们与自己的主角色并肩作战。或者更好的做法时,两个角色的攻击错开,这样每次攻击都会在另一个角色攻击的冷却时间进行。

当某个玩家只剩下最后一个角色时,他就无法再寻求援助。他必须用仅剩的这个角色与对手的两或三个角色战斗,这似乎也算是将军情境。问题在于,这种比赛的结束需要耗费相当长的时间,所以我们将游戏的最后部分称为无用部分。其他战斗游戏的高潮会持续到比赛最后一刻,但是无用部分的存在意味着游戏的真正高潮点出现在比赛中期的某个时间,随后输家会被迫去完成这个毫无意义的比赛,旁观者也会对接下来的比赛失去兴趣。确实,在极少的情况下可能会出现翻盘,但是没有无用结局的游戏中也会出现翻盘的情况,所以这并非有说服力的论据。

虽然将军情境的存在是合理的,但是你在游戏设计中应当避免时间过长的无用结局。象棋和《星际争霸》中都有令人不悦的资产,玩家往往会在游戏结束之前就投降。这些游戏显示出,含有无用结局并非很可怕的事情(游戏邦注:象棋和《星际争霸》都是很受玩家欢迎的游戏),但是作为设计师,你还是应当全力避免这种情况的产生。

探索设计空间

设计空间指你可以在游戏中做出的所有设计决定。无论你的游戏是对称的还是非对称的,让游戏尽可能地触及设计空间的各个角落总是个不错的想法。这可以让游戏更有深度,也可以避免主导操作的出现。

比如,在我设计的虚拟卡牌游戏《Kongai》中,每个角色有4个操作。当操作进行时,有一定的几率触发效果。我们为角色的4种不同操作设定了不同的伤害、速度和能量消耗。如果我们止步于此的话,游戏可能就失去变得更为多样化的机会,而且也有可能出现某些主导操作,减少了可行选择的数量。因而,我尝试尽可能地探索设计空间。有个操作可以将战斗范围由近变远,这通常适宜在攻击阶段前使用。有个操作造成的伤害足以杀死游戏中的每个角色,但是你用此操作攻击某个角色后4个回合才能产生效果。有个操作可以攻击到那些脱离战斗的角色,虽然脱离战斗可以抵挡住几乎所有的攻击。

要点在于,我们对设计空间探索得越深,玩家就越难以权衡操作的相对价值。玩家可能会产生如下疑问:是要选择有90%的几率在战斗期间改变攻击范围的操作,还是要选择有95%的几率攻击到隐身角色的操作呢?这种选择很难,需要根据众多因素来做出决定。这算是种优秀的设计,因为它意味着在某些情境下,每种操作都可能会发挥作用,而玩家的技能就在于发现做出操作的合适时机。我将此称为技能评估。

玩家也希望你能够探索设计空间。如果游戏中的所有内容都过于简单,游戏看上去就不够丰富精彩。你呈现出的微妙之处和不同选择越多,玩家就越有可能展现出自己独特的玩法风格。

分清良莠

以下是Strunk & White的《The Elements of Style》中我最喜欢的内容:

删除无用的内容

强大的作品往往是简明扼要的。句子中不应当包含有多余的字词,段落中不应当包含有多余的句子,绘图中同样不应当包含有多余的线条,机器中也不应当包含有多余的零件。这并非要求作者写出的全是短句子,或者说省略所有的细节并以提纲的方式列举出所有的主题内容,而是要求每个字词都能够发挥作用。

你应当以同样的方式来对待游戏设计。探索设计空间是应当的,但是需要避开无用的字词、机制、角色和选择。可行选择的首要目标是确保能够给予玩家足够数量的选择,其次要目标是要消除所有的无用选择。

《Marvel vs. Capcom 2》中有54个角色,多得显得有点可笑。多少数量的角色合适呢?我的意见是10个。如果战斗游戏中的10个角色能够实现平衡,这无疑算是成功,因为这是很困难的事情。将上述情况与《超级街头霸王2》的16个角色和《罪恶装备》的23个角色相比,你就可以发现何为真正的紧凑设计。

有种游戏题材以故意创造出大量无用选择而闻名,那就是卡片收集游戏。虽然我认为《魔法风云会》(游戏邦注:下文简称“MTG”)是世界上设计最棒的游戏之一,但是我的评判标准是竞标赛环境所能够支持的优秀卡片的数量,而并非可用选择与无用选择的比率。如果以后者来看,这款游戏完全可以算作是失败的作品。

MTG的Mark Rosewater辩解称他们是出于设计原因而故意设计出较差的卡片,但他的说法源于被营销部门的观点所误导。Rosewater声称游戏中可以存在较差卡片,因为:

1、它们承载了某些有趣的实验性机制

2、它们测试了玩家的价值评判技能,如果所有的卡片效用都是平衡的,会降低游戏的战略性

3、它们让新玩家体验到发现较差卡片的乐趣,这算是进一步研究游戏和学习游戏的垫脚石

4、它们是必要的,因为即便它们与老牌组中的已知优秀卡片出现在相同的牌组中,但竞标赛上只有8个可用的牌位,它们很可能并不会被用到

第2和第3个理由完全没有道理。声称移除较差卡片会降级游戏的战略性完全是自辱游戏。声称需要让新玩家去发现故意添加其中的较差卡片显得更为可笑,因为这使得卡牌组对新玩家显得更为复杂,而对专家级玩家来说由显得冗余。我们都知道,如此设计的真正原因是要让玩家购买更多的随机卡包来获得其中屈指可数的优秀卡片。

最后,第4个理由是在公然承认游戏应该有较少的卡片。令人感到讽刺的是,我甚至不能确定第4个理由是正确的。印制大批量优秀卡片或许确实会导致竞标赛牌位增加。如果不是的话,他们完全可以不继续印制这种效果有好坏之分的卡片。

你可能会说,MTG证明了这样的设计也能够获得成功。对他们销售卡包来说,或许将少数可行选择放置在大量较差选择中是个良好的业务手段。但是我们在其他题材的游戏中并未看到这种情况。然而,我们确实也还未看到有人勇敢地站出来面对MTG的这个问题,向玩家提供设计类似但消除了所有无用卡片的竞争卡片游戏。

双盲猜测

我在自己的《Yomi》卡片游戏和《Kongai》虚拟卡片游戏(游戏邦注:看似卡片游戏的回合制战略游戏)中都使用了双盲猜测技术。这个想法是,让所有玩家在知晓其他玩家的选择之前做出自己的选择。

我从战斗游戏中学到这个概念。虽然它们看上去似乎是完全信息游戏,因为你可以看到对手看到的所有内容,但是战斗游戏事实上是双盲游戏。玩家在游戏中需要精确地把握时机,在你跳跃的时候往往不知道对手是否会施放火球。你知道的只是0.3或0.5秒之前他没有这么做。你意识到对手的操作只需要很短的时间,尽管这段时间看似毫无价值,但事实上它对战斗游戏来说至关重要,正是它使得战斗游戏像是战略游戏。

《星际争霸》之类的即时战略游戏有着同样的资产,但是时间相对而言较长。在你决定建造何种建筑物之时,往往并不能精确地了解对手在他的基地中建造何种建筑物。即便你可以侦查他的基地,你收集到的也是数秒之前的信息,所以对于他此刻的行动你只能猜测。

如果从我的两款卡片游戏中移除双盲性,或者从战斗和即时战略游戏中移除双盲性,我想这些游戏都将崩溃。这些游戏需要双盲决策才显得有趣。这种设计样式是增加游戏中可行操作数量的方法,因为从本质上来说,它强迫玩家进入我上文中提到的Yomi Layer 3概念。在双盲游戏中,较弱的操作反而变得较好,因为做出这些操作后可以更容易地避免被对手施以对抗招数。我甚至曾调侃称,世界顶级《Virtua Fighter》玩家间的比赛是“第三最佳操作的战斗”。有时,玩家担心他们做出的“最佳”选择会被对手反攻,所以他们更寄希望与对手无法反攻的第三最佳选择。如果游戏中完全不含有猜测元素,那么玩家也就不会使用最佳第三操作。

游戏测试

最后,游戏测试是你找到问题所在的方法,尤其是在能够找到行家进行测试的情况下。游戏行家是否忽略了很大部分的游戏操作?他们是否发现了某些你不知晓的将军情境?你是否发现他们在游戏中使用了各种不同的战略?

playtesting(from sirlin)

playtesting(from sirlin)

如何进行游戏测试是个内容覆盖极广的话题,但是我在这里可以提供某些值得考虑的做法。第一,质疑测试者的看法。玩家对会游戏的改变有过火的反应,声称某些战略根本没有对抗方法,但事实上这种对抗方法是存在的。解析出游戏中真正有效的战略往往需要数年时间,而游戏测试只是这个漫长旅程的开始。如果他们发现某些看似游戏最佳战略的东西,这些东西或许只是局部最佳战略,或许是因为他们还未发现某些更为强大的不同玩法。这种情况在战斗游戏中同样存在。

游戏测试是校验游戏平衡的唯一工具,理论根本无法完全替代它。我想所有人都知道他们需要游戏测试,但是最困难的问题是,当测试者的意见存在分歧时,你要听从何人的意见?你要如何得知测试者误解了游戏中的设计?这个问题很困难,我将随后的文章中进行阐述。

总结

如若需要确保我们有众多可行选择,使用Yomi Layer 3系统构建对抗是个不错的开始。但是,并非所有的情境都需要上述方法,将军情境也是可以接受的,但是你应当尽力避免出现持续时间较长的无用情境。通过提供各种不同的操作来探索游戏的设计空间,因为这项技术很有可能让所有的操作在某些游戏时刻均可用,从而让最佳操作的决定变得困难。这可以考验玩家的技能。删除所有没有价值的选择,因为它们只会让玩家感到困惑,但是某些题材游戏中的无用内容可以让你赚到大笔金钱。双盲猜测机制能够保持更多的操作可行性。

最后,世界上所有的游戏理论都不能够完全替代游戏测试。

游戏邦注:本文发稿于2008年10月17日,所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Balancing Multiplayer Games, Part 2: Viable Options

Sirlin

In the previous article I divided the idea of balance into the two sub-concepts of viable options and fairness. I also defined the concepts of symmetric and asymmetric games, where the more varied the different starting options are that must be fair against each other, the more asymmetric the game is.

How do we make sure we have enough viable options during gameplay?

Yomi Layer 3

The worst thing you can have in a competitive multiplayer game is a dominant move (or weapon, character, unit, whatever). I don’t mean a move that is merely good, I mean a move that is strictly better than any other you could do, so its very existence reduces the strategy of the game. A dominant move also probably has no real counter, so even if the opponent knows you will do it, there’s not a lot he can do.

To protect against dominant moves, we should be aware of the concept of Yomi Layer 3. I wrote a whole article on just that, but I’ll quickly summarize it here. “Yomi” is the Japanese word for “reading,” as in reading the mind of the opponent (and it’s also the name of my strategy card game). If you have a powerful move and use it against an unskilled opponent, I call that Yomi Layer 0, meaning neither player is even bothering with trying to know what the opponent will do. At Layer 1, your opponent does the counter to your move because he expects it. At Layer 2, you do the counter to his counter. At Layer 3, he does the counter to that.

That might sound confusing, but it’s very straight-forward in actual gameplay of real games. All it means is you and your opponent each have two options:

You: A good move and a 2nd level counter

Opponent: A counter to your good move and a counter to your counter

The designer generally does NOT need to design Yomi Layer 4 because at that point, you can go back to doing your original good move. Here’s an example Yomi Layer 3 situation that I created in Street Fighter HD Remix.

Honda wants to do his torpedo move get close to Ken, but Ken throws fireballs to prevent this. I gave Honda the ability to destroy these fireballs with his torpedo, but only with the jab version of the move that doesn’t travel very far. If Honda can destroy a fireball with it and end up closer, that’s good for him. Ken can counter this by not throwing the fireball in the first place and letting Honda do the jab torpedo. As Honda is flying forward, Ken can walk forward and sweep, hitting the recovery of the jab torpedo.

Honda: torpedo that goes far or jab torpedo that destroys fireballs

Ken: fireball or walk up and sweep

I did not need to add anything to allow for Yomi Layer 4 though because Honda can counter Ken’s walk-up-and-sweep option by simply doing the original, full-screen torpedo. Yomi Layer 4 tends to wrap around like this in competitive games.

This concept is a reminder that moves need to have counters. If you know what the opponent will do, you should generally have some way of dealing with that. As you go through development of a game, always be asking yourself if various gameplay situations you find yourself in support Yomi Layer 3 thinking. If they don’t there might be a dominant move in there somewhere, which is bad.

Local vs. Global Balance

Does every possible situation in a game need to support Yomi Layer 3?

Answer: no.

Does every possible situation in a game even need to be fair to both players?

Answer: definitely not.

Remember that I defined fairness by the overall chance of winning, given different starting options. Think of that as a global term, in that it applies to the game as a whole from the start of gameplay until someone wins. But the local level, meaning a particular situation in the middle of gameplay, does NOT need to be fair. Even symmetric games like Chess are supposed to have unfair situations. When you have 3 pieces left and the other guy has 9 pieces left, it’s supposed to be unfair to you. Or in StarCraft, if we find that two Zealots beat (or lose to) 8 Zerglings–even though they cost the same resources to make–that is perfectly fine. We don’t care if local situations like that are unfair or not, we only care if Protoss is fair against Zerg.

Checkmate Situations

I call a situation a checkmate situation if it means that one player has almost certainly won, even though the game isn’t actually over. For example in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, if Honda lands his deadly Ochio Throw against Guile in the corner, he can then follow up with a series of moves (involving more Ochio Throws) that virtually guarantee victory. Human error could change the outcome, but as soon as you see that first move, you know it should be a checkmate.

Are checkmate situations ok? They clearly violate our requirement that there be many viable moves (Honda really only has one option here and Guile has no good options). They clearly violate the concept of Yomi Layer 3. And yet, the answer is that checkmate situations can be ok. It’s sooooo hard for Honda to get close to Guile in this match, that if he does, he basically deserves to do 100% damage. All the gameplay that takes place before the checkmate is pretty good, and even though Honda can do this abusive thing up close, the match is still heavily in Guile’s favor overall.

I’d like to point out the other side of this argument though. Some players think that even though Guile has the advantage in this match, Honda’s ability to repeat that Ochio Throw is too degenerate. They say yes he needs it to win, but the game would be better overall if things weren’t so extreme. If only Honda could get close to Guile a little more easily, then he would not need a checkmate situation.

I think Rob Pardo, VP of Game Design at Blizzard, echoed this sentiment in a lecture he gave at the Game Developer’s Conference on multiplayer balance. He said that “super weapons” in real-time strategy games are generally a bad idea. They leave the victim feeling that there is nothing they could have done (checkmate!). He explained that even though the Terran nuclear missile in StarCraft looks like a super weapon, it has many built-in weaknesses: a ghost unit must be nearby the victim’s base, there is a red targeting dot on the victim’s base, and a 10 second countdown is announced to the victim, giving him time to destroy the ghost to prevent the nuclear missile.

Pardo has a good point and so did the players who complained about Honda. Even though I think checkmate situations can be ok, it’s telling that when it was my turn to make the decisions, I removed Honda’s checkmate situation in Street Fighter HD Remix. In that game, I gave him an easier time getting close to Guile, but replaced his checkmate situation with a Yomi Layer 3 situation so there’d be more viable decisions throughout the match.

Lame-duck Situations

Lame-duck situations are just like checkmate situations, but with one difference: time. Honda’s checkmate situation takes something like three seconds to get through. But consider a similar situation in the fighting game Marvel vs. Capcom 2. In that game, each player has a team of three characters: one on the playfield and two on the bench. Players can call in one of their benched characters for an assist move at any moment, letting them attack in parallel with their main character and assist character at the same time. Or better yet, they can stagger the attacks so that each attack covers the recovery period of the other.

When one player is down to his last character, he can no longer call assists. Fighting with just one character against an opponent with two or three characters might as well be checkmate, almost all the time. The problem is that it takes excruciatingly long for the match to actually end. It takes so long, that I call that last portion of the game the lame-duck portion. Other fighting games are exciting right up to the last moment, but a lame-duck portion of gameplay means the real climax is somewhere in the middle, and then players are forced to act out a mostly pointless endgame while spectators lose interest. Yes, on rare occasions someone pulls off an amazing comeback, comebacks also happen in games without lame-duck endings, so that’s not a good argument.

While a checkmate situation is maybe ok, you should try to avoid game designs that allow for long lame-duck endings. Both Chess and StarCraft have this undesirable property, and it just means that players often concede the game before the actual end. Those games also show that it’s not the worst thing in the world to have lame-duck endings (because Chess and StarCraft are good games), but you should still avoid them as a designer if at all possible.

Explore the Design Space

Design space is the set of all possible design decisions you could possibly make in your game. Whether your game is symmetric or asymmetric, it’s usually a good idea for your game to touch as many corners of the design space as possible. This helps give a game depth and nuance, but also tends to protect you from dominant moves.

For example, in the virtual card game I designed called Kongai, each character has four moves. When a move hits, it has a percentage chance to trigger an effect. For a given character, we could vary the damage, speed, and energy cost to come up with four different moves. If that’s all we did, though, we’d be missing out on a chance for more diversity in the game, and we’d get dangerously close to making some of those moves strictly better than others which would reduce the number of viable options. Instead, I tried to explore the design space as much as possible with different effects. One move can change the range of the fight from close to far, which is usually only possible before the attack phase. Another move deals enough damage to kill every character in the game, but only four turns after you hit with it. Another move can hit characters who switch out of combat, even though switching out usually beats all attacks.

The point is that by exploring the design space as much as possible, it’s a lot harder for players to judge the relative value of moves. How good is a 90% chance to change ranges during combat as opposed to a 95% chance to hit a switching opponent with a weak move? It’s hard to say and depends on a lot of factors, and that’s good because it means each move is likely to be useful in some situation and knowing when is an interesting skill to test. Incidentally, I call that skill valuation.

Players want you to explore the design space, too. When everything is too similar in a game, it feels like one-note design rather than a symphony. The more nuances and different choices you present, the more each player can express his own playstyle.

Wheat from the Chaff

Here’s my favorite quote from Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style:

Omit Needless Words

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Treat your game design the same way. Yes you should explore the design space, but omit needless words, mechanics, characters, and choices. Although your primary goal regarding viable options is to make sure you’re giving the player enough options, your secondary goal should be to eliminate all the useless ones.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has 54 characters, which is ridiculously many. How many are viable in a tournament? I’ll say 10, and I’m being generous. I actually call that a success because coming up with 10 characters in fighting game that are fair against each other is really hard. That said, it does look pretty bad to have more than FOUR TIMES that many characters sitting around in the garbage pile of non-viable choices. Compare this to Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo’s 16 characters, almost all of which are tournament viable, or Guilty Gear’s 23 characters, almost all of which are viable, and you see what a compact design looks like.

One genre of game is notable for intentionally creating an enormous number of useless options: collectable card games. Even though I claim Magic: The Gathering is one of the best designed games in the world, I’m judging the balance on an absolute scale of how many good cards/decks the tournament environment supports, not the ratio of viable to worthless. On that scale, we’d have to rate the game as a complete failure.

MTG’s Mark Rosewater defends the intentional inclusion of bad cards for design reasons, but this is only because the marketing department has brainwashed him into going along with their admittedly very successful rip-off scheme. Rosewater claims that bad cards are ok because they:

a) allow for interesting experimental mechanics that might end up being bad

b) test valuation skills because if all cards were equally good, there’d be less strategy

c) give new players the joy of discovering that certain cards are bad, as a stepping stone to learning the game

d) are necessary because even if they came out with a set that consisted entirely of known good cards from old sets, there’d still be only 8 tournament viable decks and the rest of the cards would not be used.

The solution to this problem is clear if we only cared about design and not rip-off marketing: print fewer cards. Reason a) is a great one, experimental cards that end up accidentally bad are fine. Reasons b) and c) are just silly. Saying the game would not have enough strategy if bad cards were removed is an insult to Mark’s own (terrific) game. Saying that new players need to discover the intentionally bad cards is even more silly because this comes at the cost of making sets overwhelming to new players and needlessly unwieldy for expert players. We all know the real reasoning here is to make players buy more random packs of cards to get at the few good ones.

Finally, reason d) is a blatant admission that the game should have fewer cards. Ironically, I’m not even sure d) is true. Maybe printing a large set of all good cards really would lead to more viable tournament decks than the game currently supports. If not though, they should stop printing all that chaff.

You could say that MTG proves that it’s really all about chaff, though. Maybe giving a few viable options amidst a sea of bad ones is good business when you sell by the pack. But we don’t see this in other genres and really we just haven’t seen anyone crazy enough to stand up to MTG on this issue and offer a competing card game that’s just as well designed but that eliminates all chaff. (A future Sirlin project?)

Double-blind Guessing

I used the technique of double-blind guessing in both my Yomi card game and my Kongai virtual card game (that one’s actually a turn-based strategy game dressed up like a card game). Anyway, the idea is to make all players commit to a choice before they know what the others have committed to. This is the same setup as the prisoner’s dilemma.

I learned this concept from fighting games. Though they appear to be games of complete information because you can see everything the opponent can see, fighting games are actually double-blind games. They come down to very precise timing and the moment you jump, you often don’t know that the other guy threw a fireball. You only know that 0.3 or 0.5 seconds ago he didn’t. It takes a small amount of time for the opponent’s move to register in your brain, and though it might seem insignificant, it’s actually critical to fighting games even working as strategy games at all.

Real-time strategy games like StarCraft have the same property, but on a much slower time-scale. You often do not know exactly what the opponent is building in his base at the moment you must decide what you should build. Even if you were able to scout his base, you might be working on information that’s several seconds old, so you have to guess what he did during that time.

If we were to remove the double-blind nature from my two card games Yomi and Kongai, and from fighting games and real-time strategy games, I think all of them would be broken. All those games need double-blind decision-making to be interesting. This design pattern is a way to increase the chances that you have many viable moves in your game because it naturally forces players into the Yomi Layer 3 concept I talked about earlier. Weaker moves become inherently better in a double-blind game because it’s easier to get away with doing them without being countered. I’ve even joked that some matches between the world’s best Virtua Fighter players are “a battle of the third-best moves.” Sometimes the players are so paranoid about doing their “best” option for fear of being countered, they fall back on a third best option that no one would ever counter (though it’s quite a sight when the opponent counters even that!). If no guessing was involved at all, players would not use third-best moves.

Playtesting

Finally, playtesting, especially with experts, is how you figure out where your problems really are. Do the experts ignore some vast portion of you game’s moves? Have they discovered a bunch of checkmate situations that you didn’t know about? Do you see them using a variety of strategies?

How to use playtests is really a whole topic of its own, but here’s a few points to keep in mind. First, be skeptical of them. Gamers tend to overreact to changes and claim that no counters exist to some strategies when counters do, in fact, exist. It can take years to sort out what is really effective in a game, and playtesters during your beta are only on the first few steps of that long journey. If they find what looks like the best strategy in the game, it might just be that they have found a local-maximum. Maybe some radically different way of playing that they have not yet discovered ends up being more powerful. This is actually par for the course in fighting games.

That said, playtests are really all you have. Theory is not a substitute for experts playing against each other and trying their hardest to win. I think everyone knows they need playtests, but the hardest question is who do you listen to when all your playtesters disagree, and how do you know when playtesters are wrong about how powerful something is? That question is so hard that I’ll save it for part 4 of this series when I tell you how much trouble we’re really in trying to balance a game at all.

Conclusion

To ensure we have many viable options, building in counters with the Yomi Layer 3 system is a good start. Not all situations need this though, and checkmate situations might be acceptable, but you should avoid their longer cousins, lame-duck situations, if possible. Explore your game’s design space by offering moves as different as possible because this technique has a good chance of making all moves useful somewhere and it makes it very difficult to determine what the best moves really are. That becomes an interesting skill test for players. Eliminate all the worthless options because they confuse the player and add nothing, but they make you a lot of money in a certain genre. The double-blind guessing mechanic helps keep more moves viable than otherwise would be.

And finally, all the theory in the world does not substitute for playtesting. (Source: sirlin.net)


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