作者：Ernest Adams

每年我都要把一些玩家纠出的游戏缺陷编写成一个纲要，今年仍然有很多Twinkie Denial Conditions要探讨，以下是今年的10条：（请点击此处阅读本系列第1、2、3、4、5、6、7、8、9、10、11、12篇）

糟糕的随机生成挑战

许多早期的电子游戏采用随机生成挑战（和相关的游戏世界，如果有的话）的方法。现在，要设计、编写和构建一个精细的关卡，成本可能是上百万美元。虽然我们不再像过去那样习惯于考虑随机生成挑战，但休闲游戏领域仍然大量采用这种方法。

随机生成挑战提供无尽的重玩价值，但它们必须受一些实验的限定，才能保证生成的挑战是良好的。至于“糟糕”，我指的是，游戏随机生成的挑战不能玩、太简单或太无聊。

《Yahoo Word Racer》是一款类似拼写游戏的多人游戏，玩家在游戏中要做的就是将随机生成的字母组合拼成单词。Mary Ellen Foley指出，有时候游戏会给出完全没有元音的字母组合。玩家必须等到计时器走完两分钟才能开始下一回合。这太可笑了。这款游戏附带一个字典，会检查玩家输入的单词是否存在；当然它可以在游戏放出随机字母组合以前，检查这些字母是否能拼成单词……或至少检查一下有没有元音。

 

她建议添加一个“我完成了”按钮，允许玩家跳过本回合，而不必等到计时器走完。对于任何多人、同步回合的游戏来说，这真是个好主意，正好解决了《Word Racer》的问题。但他们也应该修改一下游戏的生成算法。

好东西都要钱

Ian Schreiber写道：“最近，一些免费游戏好像把所有好东西都藏到钱眼里去了。现在，显然我想要的一些好东西都得付钱了，但我还是希望留下一些好东西用来刺激玩家的购买欲。如果你只是把游戏的平庸部分拿给玩家看，就要他们相信如果付钱，这款游戏就会更好玩，他们是不会相信的（更可能的结果是，玩家觉得这游戏也就是这样，你卖的也不会是好东西）。”

“就像一个找工作的游戏设计师，在面试时将作品集中最精华的部分删掉了，居然还想不明白为什么他没有一次面试成功。我觉得这尤其是游戏设计中的一宗大罪，因为它不仅摧毁了游戏，而且破坏了公司的整个商业模式.”

我打算在“No Twinkie Database”网页中另起一个章节讨论这个问题。我在Twinkie Denial Conditions中提到的大部分问题都与伤害玩家的体验有关，而这个问题伤害的却是游戏公司。设计缺陷毕竟是设计缺陷。Ian说他不想指名道姓，但已经很不幸地看到有3款iOS游戏中枪了。

冗长老套的动画

这些与不间断过场动画是类似的，但不完全一样。Tyler Moor写道，有些游戏“强迫你看相同的动画或老套的剧本，平庸的情节带着意料之中的结局、封闭的玩法或交互活动，直到动画结束。我指的不是结束后给玩家各种奖励的动画（如在《塞尔达传说》中，打开一只宝箱），而是那些结果确定的动画。”他举的例子是，在《荒野大镖客》中，玩家被迫反复地观看剥皮动画来收集资源；在《天际》中，玩家要出售物品时被迫听店主说相同的问候语。

角色变傻

这一条太明显了，我不相信几年以前我会没有提过。有个名叫Jan的玩家写道，在《Max Payne 3》中，过场动画（非常多）中的Max与玩家操作时候的Max很不像。在战胜无数全副武装的人以后，玩家面临关键的时刻，却不能操作角色了。他看到的不是他期待中的战斗，而是一段显示了他完不成某事的动画，而这件“某事”是他被玩家操作时完全能应付的。

为了插入叙述剧情，有些交互故事往往会夺走角色的控制权，让玩家郁闷到底是谁在玩这个角色，是玩家还是游戏本身？在这些时候插入变化的剧情和意外的事件当然没错—-但是，让角色的表现低于玩家自己的水平或做一些显然愚蠢的事，就是不合理的，而且非常让人失望。值得一提的是，Valve的游戏不会这样。

过场动画和剧情事件自然有该出现的时候，在剧情丰富的游戏中，角色的个性往往比较强，当然有理由让角色有自己的心理活动。但角色脱离玩家的控制后，无论做什么事都最好与受控制时的表现接近。游戏不是电影，当你给玩家一个角色操控时，参与演出的是玩家，而不是设计师。

亮度或声音激变

当电视广告太大声，与内容不搭时，我们总是很气愤（只有在美国这种行为才算违法）。游戏也可能出现这种情况，而且不只是声音。

Colin Williamson写道：“有问题的游戏是《刺客信条3》，在这款非常黑暗的游戏中，所有游戏过渡或过场动画都是切换成白屏才开始的。如果你是在光线暗的房间或用放映机看，这无异于谋杀你的视网膜。”

这就是为什么几十年前电影业就发明了淡进和淡出的切换方式—-在昏暗的影剧院里，突然变成白屏简直就是虐待观众。在音频制作中，有一种技术叫作动态范围压缩（与数据压缩无关）。使用这种技术后，设备会动态地将低音的放大和高音的减小控制在适当的范围内，这样听众就不必一直调整音量。虽然听众免不了手动调整扬声器，但确实避免耳膜受到剧烈的冲击。

唠叨又轻率的NPC

Tess Snider不啰嗦，她说的都是必须说的：

当你在街道上行走时，有个完全陌生的人突然截住你开始大侃特侃他为什么来这里，他的死对头是谁或他的生意怎么样。如果真的遇上这种事，你会不会觉得这个人脑子有病？在《天际》中，几乎所有NPC都是这样。太怪异了，太烦人了，所以有人做了补丁堵NPC的嘴。

《天际》不是唯一存在这个问题的游戏。放眼RPG领域，所有可信的NPC都坚持告诉我们所有个人信息，即使那些信息我们并不需要。正常人是不会跟一个完全陌生的人讲这些的。难怪土匪要打劫他们。

Tess认为这是游戏编剧的错，他们懒得想还有什么类似“你好”的表达作为NPC的问候语，却想更多地表现他们的自我。我认为这可能是受了电视警匪片的影响，这种片要在有限的时间内提供大量信息，结果就是废话连篇：

警察：“昨晚10点你有没有听到什么不寻常的声音？”

目击者：“没……我在房子后面睡觉。生了第三个孩子后，我和我丈夫就分房睡了。我们之间的关系真的变了。”

无论出于什么原因，不要这么做。读读你的对白，看看听起来像不像真实的对话。爱唠叨的人确实有，但毕竟是少数。

看不见的墙

许多人抱怨这个问题，我就不一一提名了。看不见的墙是指3D空间中的一道屏障，用来防止玩家进入某个区域，然而，可见的环境和游戏的其他所有机制都告诉玩家他应该能够进入。（我已经谈过相关的问题了，即玩家必须站在3D空间中的某个点上或以它作为起跳点。）

这种例子非常非常多，其中之一是《S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: 切尔诺贝利的阴影》中的隔离区，那里有及腰高的倒刺铁丝围栏。在RPG中，玩家可以用钥匙打开木门，却不可以损坏它，从概念上讲，看不见的墙与木门类似，但执行效果不一样。为什么玩家不能进入某些他原本能够进入的地方？游戏没有给出看上去可信的理由。

我们从常识的角度来说吧。除非角色是坐轮椅，否则低的围栏就不算障碍。如果角色是突击队员或超级英雄，六英尺高的围栏也不算难题。一块玻璃自然也不算什么。建造一个看起来吸引人的区域，却拿看不见的墙隔绝它， 是不合理的。如果你让某个区域看起来是可探索的，那么它就必须可探索。记住，应该让游戏世界之内的区域比之外的更有趣。

有害的升级

玩家达成游戏设定的目标后会得到价值各异的奖励。但有些奖励发挥的却是负面效果。在RPG中，你有时候会捡到被诅咒的物品，这种物品产生的害处多于好处，不过，你通常可以抑制、修复或抛弃它。另一方面，你用游戏奖励的金钱在游戏商店里买到的东西—-例如，装备强化，真的不应该对你造成伤害。一位名叫Cyrad的玩家提到热门动作RPG《The World Ends With You》：装备是玩家从商店购买的。除了增加属性点，当你与店员建立关系时，还会释放或激活装备的各件物品的被动效果。这些效果通常是“你的攻击将随机减少敌人的力量”或当你受重创时产生提高防御。

我在游戏中一直没找到属性合适的鞋子，后来终于让我找到一双绝对满意的。我花了一大笔钱给各个队员买了一双。这种鞋子的能力就是获得一个辅助技能，但代价是每一次敌人的进攻都会让我失去重心。

一边治疗一边承受反复的伤害，这是在游戏中最常见的死法。此时，也是大多数敌人进攻得最猛的时候。基本上可以说，穿上这种鞋子就等于自杀。而且，鞋子的能力无法改变或移除。鞋子还不能出售。我买的另一双也有这种能力。

玩家买强化物品，你却惩罚他，Square Enix？ 真是糟糕的游戏设计师！

过度使用同一个地点

这一条的例子是一款老游戏，但其他游戏也有出现这种情况。Deunen Berkely写道：“你不应该一次又一次地让玩家在同一个洞穴/建筑/区域执行不同的任务。最明显的就是MMO版《Star Wars Galaxies》，但其他游戏也犯了相同的错误……你不断地跑进山洞里去看不响应你的任务的NPC或物品，或更糟的是，你不得不杀掉所有人才能到达洞穴底部。

你好不容易杀出一条血路，几个活动之后却接到另一个任务让你返回之前那个该死的洞穴，又要再杀掉所有人，寻找那个洞穴/建筑/区域附近的不同东西，然后再次杀回原路。这样反复15次，确实够无聊的。这就是刷刷任务的任务，你懂吗？”

如果地点的范围够大，场景够丰富，那就无所谓多放几个任务，比如《侠盗猎车手》就是这样的。但如果玩家在一个任务中就已经把场景探索遍了，你就不应该这么做。

转化敌人为己用

对于早期的游戏《Bad Guys With Vanishing Weapons》，这是必然的。你花了大量时间用一个大武器痛打一个坏蛋，最后发现他的武器简陋到只是一根矛。

Sean Hagans写道：“整个国家的人听到他的大名都会闻风而逃，能阻止他统治全世界的野心的只有玩家角色了……不知怎的，你终究是拼上老命战胜他了。

因为你掷地有声的谴责，恶人痛改前非加入你的阵营（天呐，我要好好利用他！太好了！）。让人绝望的是，这货的名字好像叫“神童Bob”，他唯一的进攻方式就是用那把有一点儿大的木剑砍来砍去。

不公平啊。另一个合理（也非常有趣）的例子是，来自《Ultima》系列的角色出现在《地下城守护者》的最后一关中，他是最终BOSS，但玩家可以转化他—-当他被转化，你就可以充分利用他的强大威力了。

总结

最近Lars Doucet告诉我，他的公司Level Up Labs对他们的设计做了一些排查工作。他们根据No Twinkie Database 检查各款游戏的设计，看看他们是不是中了Twinkie Denial Conditions的枪。知道这些专栏文章能发挥实际效用，真是令人高兴。（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）
The Designer’s Notebook: Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! XIII

by Ernest Adams

Unlucky 13! Since the demise of Hostess Brands, the exclusive worldwide suppliers of Twinkies to game designers, this may be the last Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! column. The company is being liquidated and its assets sold off. However, the Twinkie may live on in another guise. Rumor has it that Walmart is considering buying some of the Hostess properties, which would make perfect sense: a low-grade snack food for sale at a company that provides a low-grade shopping experience.

Of course, if Walmart does take over the brand, the product may not be quite the same. As Electronic Arts knows, you can stick a much-loved name onto a box containing something completely different, as they did with Syndicate. It’s not a good idea, though, because fans of the original will trash you on the internet. Take note, Walmart: you can’t turn a tactical Twinkie into an FPS Twinkie without paying a price.

For the moment, however, there are still plenty of Twinkie Denial Conditions to discuss in my annual compendium of gamer-contributed goofs and gaffes. Here are this year’s ten:

Bad Randomly Generated Challenges
Many early video games generated their challenges (and associated game worlds, if any) randomly. In these days of finely tuned level designs costing millions of dollars to build and script, we’re not that used to thinking about randomly generated challenges, but they’re still very much around in casual games.

Randomly generated challenges offer endless replayability, but they have to be constrained by some kind of heuristic to make sure they’re good. By “bad,” I mean impossible, overly easy, or just plain boring challenges that the game has generated randomly.

Mary Ellen Foley pointed out that Yahoo Word Racer, a Boggle-like multiplayer game about finding words in a random matrix of letters, sometimes produces a layout containing no vowels at all in the first round. The players have to sit around and wait for the two-minute timer to run out before they can go on to the next round. This is ridiculous. The game contains a dictionary to check the validity of each word the players enter; surely it could check to see that a given layout includes a minimum number of words before sending it to the players… or at least a few vowels.

She suggested that an “I’m finished” button would let the players jump on ahead without waiting for the timer to run out, once they all have pressed it. That’s a good idea for any multiplayer, simultaneous-turn based game, and a suitable workaround for Word Racer’s problem. But they should fix their generation algorithm too.

Hiding All Your Best Content Behind A PaywallIan Schreiber writes, “A few free-to-play games recently seems to hide all of the best content behind a paywall. Now, obviously I’d expect SOME good content to be pay-only, but I’d also expect some of it to be revealed to give the players incentive to actually buy. Otherwise you’re presenting the mediocre parts of the game to your customers and asking them to take it on faith that it gets better if they pay (instead of the more likely result, they see a mediocre game and assume that’s what you’re selling).

“It’s like a game designer searching for a job, and removing the best parts of their portfolio to use during the interview. Then they wonder why they never get an interview. I see this as a particularly nasty sin of game design because it doesn’t just ruin the game, it ruins the company’s entire business model.”

I’m going to have to set up a new section of the No Twinkie Database to cover this one. Most of my Twinkie Denial Conditions are issues that hurt the player’s experience, but this is one that hurts the game company. Still, a design flaw is a design flaw. Ian said that he couldn’t name names, unfortunately, but that he had seen three iOS games in a row with this problem.

Overlong, Predictable AnimationsThese are similar to, but not exactly the same as, uninterruptible cutscenes. Tyler Moore writes that some games “force you to watch the same animations or script for mundane actions with a predictable outcome, blocking gameplay or interaction until the animation is complete. This does not apply to animations that have a variable reward at the end (as in Zelda, opening a chest), only to those with a certain outcome.” His examples were watching the skinning animation over and over to collect a resource in Red Dead Redemption, and being forced to listen to the same tired shopkeeper greeting when you want to sell your wares in Skyrim.

Turning the Avatar Stupid or Incompetent in a Cutscene

This one is so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t mention it years ago. Someone named Jan wrote to say that in Max Payne 3, Max in the cutscenes (which are numerous) is very different from Max as the player plays him. Having fought huge numbers of armed men successfully before, the player arrives at a critical confrontation only to have control taken away from him. Instead of the battle he was expecting, he is shown a cutscene in which he fails to do something that he could handle easily in gameplay.

Certain kinds of interactive stories have a tendency to seize control of the avatar in order to insert narrative plot material, leaving the player wondering who’s role-playing this character anyway, him or the game? It’s okay to introduce plot twists and unexpected developments in the game world at these moments. It’s not fair — and very frustrating — to make the avatar perform below the player’s own competence level or do something blatantly stupid. Valve’s games, notably, don’t do this.

There’s a place for cutscenes and scripted sequences, and in story-heavy games with strongly characterized avatars (such as adventure games) it’s reasonable for the avatar to have a mind of his own at times. But whatever the avatar does outside the player’s control, it had better be similar to the things he does under the player’s control. Games are not movies, and when you give the player a role to play, the player, not the designer, is the actor.

Extreme Changes of Brightness or Sound

We’re all annoyed by TV commercials that are far louder than the content they’re sponsoring. (These are now illegal in the United States.) Games can do it too, and not only with sound.

Colin Williamson writes, “The game in question is Assassin’s Creed III, a very dark game which signals every gameplay transition or cutscene start with a smash cut to an all-white screen. If you’re playing in a dark room or, even worse, on a projector, this is the equivalent to a full assault on your retinas.”

This is the reason the fade-in and fade-out were invented for film decades ago — in a darkened cinema, a sudden cut to an all-white screen is abusive. In audio production there’s a technique called dynamic range compression (nothing to do with data compression) in which the equipment amplifies quiet sounds and reduces loud ones to keep the dynamic range within comfortable limits so that the listener doesn’t have to adjust his volume control all the time. This doesn’t prevent him from cranking his speakers, but it does avoid violent shocks.

Garrulous and Indiscreet NPCs

Tess Snider says all that needs to be said:

When was the last time you were walking down the street, and some complete stranger randomly paused next to you, and started telling you why he came to the city, who his rival was, or how his business is going? If it did happen, wouldn’t you think he was crazy? In Skyrim, almost all NPCs do this. It’s so weird and annoying that people have made mods to make it go away.

Skyrim isn’t the only offender on this count, though. Throughout RPG-dom we see weirdly trusting NPCs who insist on telling us all sorts of personal information that we really don’t need to know and which no normal person would ever share with a complete stranger. No wonder bandits robbed them blind.

Tess thinks this has to do with frustrated writers who are bored writing variations on “howdy” for NPC greetings and want to express themselves a bit more. I think it may be borrowed from TV cop shows, in which a lot of exposition has to be crammed into a limited amount of time, resulting in witnesses who provide far too much information:

Cop: “Did you hear any unusual noises at about 10 last night?”

Witness: “No… I sleep in the back of the house. My husband and I started sleeping in separate bedrooms after our third child was born. Things really haven’t been the same between us since.”

Whatever the reason, don’t do it. Read your dialog aloud to see if it sounds like actual conversation. Really chatty people do exist, but they’re rare.

Invisible Walls

So many people have sent in variations on this complaint that I can’t credit them all. An invisible wall is a barrier in a 3D space that prevents the player from entering a zone that the visible environment, and all the rest of the game’s mechanics, tell him he should be able to enter. (I’ve already discussed a related problem, having to stand on, or jump from, a tiny precise location in a 3D space.)

One of many, many examples is the waist-high barbed wire fence around the Chernobyl exclusion zone in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. Invisible walls are conceptually similar to, but implemented differently from, the wooden doors that you can open with a key but can’t break down in an RPG. They’re a failure to implement a visually credible reason for the player’s inability to go someplace that he ought to be able to go.

Let’s use some common sense here, people. Unless the avatar is in a wheelchair, a low fence is not an obstacle. If the avatar is supposed to be a commando or a superhero, a six-foot fence isn’t one either. Nor is a pane of glass. It’s also unfair to construct a visually enticing area beyond an invisible wall. If you signal that an area is worth exploring, then it needs to be explorable. Keep the areas inside the boundaries of your world more interesting than the ones outside.

Harmful “Upgrades”

Players of video games work toward goals the game sets for them, some of which produce rewards of varying value. These can even be negative. In an RPG, you’ll occasionally pick up a cursed item that does more harm than good. You can usually check it first, though, or get it fixed, or drop it. On the other hand, something that you buy in a game shop with in-game reward money — equipment upgrades, for example — really shouldn’t do you damage. A correspondent named Cyrad writes of the popular action RPG The World Ends With You:

Equipment comes in the form of clothing you purchase from stores. In addition to stat bonuses, each article of clothing also grants a passive ability that is unlocked/activated when you establish a good relationship with the store clerk. These abilities were usually things like “your attacks randomly debuff enemies’ strength” or grant you a defense boost when heavily injured.

After spending most of the game unable to find shoes with decent stats, I finally found a pair that I absolutely loved and spent a fortune buying a pair for each party member. The clerk later revealed the shoes’ ability, which granted a minor perk at the cost of making every enemy attack knock me off my feet.

Getting repeatedly hit-stunned while attempting to heal is the most common way in the game to die, and by this point, most enemies spam unavoidable projectiles. The unlocked ability essentially made this item suicide to wear. The ability cannot be toggled or removed. The shoes cannot be sold. Any new duplicate I buy will also have the ability.

You punished your player for buying an upgrade, Square Enix? Bad game designer! No Twinkie!

Overuse of One Location

The example for this one is an oldie, but the principle applies regardless. Deunen Berkely wrote, “Thou shalt not repeat multiple missions in the same cave/building/area over and over. You see this most blatantly in Star Wars Galaxies MMO, but other games fall to the temptation as well… you are trotting through the cave and see NPCs or items that don’t react to your mission, or worse, you have to kill everybody to get to the bottom.

You fight your way back out, only to get another mission just a few activities later that sends you back into the same darn cave, kill everybody again, reach different things around said cave/building/area, and then fight your way back out again. By the fifth time, it’s really dull. Puts the grind in grinding, you know?”

We can use a location for several missions if it’s big and diverse enough, as in the Grand Theft Auto games. But you shouldn’t do this too much with a location that the player explores completely in the course of a single mission.

Converting an Enemy to Your Side Nerfs Him

This is a corollary to an earlier TDC, Bad Guys With Vanishing Weapons. You spend a lot of time clobbering a serious bad guy with a big weapon and what you actually find on his body is a pointy stick.

In this case, Sean Hagans writes, “Entire nations run from the character’s name and the only thing standing between him and the total fulfillment of his overlord’s plans (usually imminent world domination) is your party of heroes… You SOMEHOW are able to barely make it out of the battle with your lives.

Due to your soundly punishing argument, the villain has a change of heart and joins you (OMG! I get to use HIM! YES!!!). Much to your despair, the villain is seen to be named ‘Bob the Boy Wonder’ and can only perform a basic slash attack with his slightly over-sized blade of dull wood.”

Not fair. Now a fair (and very funny) example occurred when the Avatar from the Ultima games showed up in the very last level of Dungeon Keeper. He was the ultimate enemy, but he could be converted with enough work — and when he was, you got to use every bit of his awesome power.

Conclusion

Recently Lars Doucet told me that his company, Level Up Labs, does a “Twinkie pass” over their designs. They check each game’s design against the No Twinkie Database to see make sure they haven’t included any Twinkie Denial Conditions. It’s nice to know these columns are having a real effect. Send your own complaint (check the database first to see if I’ve already covered it) to notwinkie@designersnotebook.com.(source:gamasutra)