作者：Ernest Adams

又是一年将近尾声之时，让我们再次回顾这一年糟糕的游戏设计案例。（请点击此处阅读本系列第1、2、3、4、5、6、7、8、9、10、11、12、13篇）

生硬的作弊提示

让我先从自身的经历说起。我喜欢独自在MMORPG中玩游戏，因为我已经拥有足以打败高中生群体的游戏经验。但是，单人玩家在许多情况下非常吃圠，并需要掌握如何最大化自己机遇。我玩游戏有两套原则：一是来自《孙子兵法》的经验（可以简单总结为知己知彼，百战不殆），二是来自单舰海军战斗的经验（游戏邦注：这主要涉及射程、速度和火力）。为了实践这些经验，我一般是扮演可以快速奔跑的弓箭手角色，在与敌人交战前找到能够最大化自身优势的位置。这些战术看起来非常完美。

the-lord-of-the-rings-online(from miikahweb.com)

但令我失望的是，当我在《指环王Online》中爬上悬崖顶打算射击一个敌人时，游戏突然中止并弹出一个对话框，说我太天真了，居然想在游戏中作弊。因为游戏中的AI无法让敌人够着我，所以认定我是在作弊。敌人当然不可能找到我！这正是我煞费苦心爬上悬崖的原因。如果孙武在世，他肯定会为我骄傲，但游戏中的情况却让我觉得，我得为自己聪明才智而受到惩罚。

我意识到这一规则的存在是为了防止玩家利用游戏漏洞，但我认为比起直接指责玩家作弊，开发者还可以采用更好的方法来解决这个问题。现实世界中的战士如果遇到这情况会怎么样？当然是撤出对手的射程。如果这款游戏中的敌人如此行事，我就无法击弊他，也就无法得到经验值，但与此同时我却可以用这一招暂时驱走敌人。等我爬下悬崖的时候，敌人可以再次追击我。这个问题可以在游戏世界中自然解决，而不是插入这种人为、幻灭式的干预方法。

强迫更改游戏玩法

角色扮演游戏，尤其是大型多人游戏的一个优势在于，它们允许玩家以自己最喜欢的方式玩游戏。这类游戏中充满科技树和个人属性，以及装饰性道具等玩家可以投入时间捣鼓和完善的元素。正如我在前文所言，我喜欢扮演远程攻击的角色。如果我是一艘军舰，那就会是导弹巡洋舰。

不幸的是，《指环王Online》（我多数时候还是很喜欢这款游戏的）有时候会让我换种游戏玩法。在探索任务的过程中，游戏偶尔会让我扮演游戏世界中过去某位英雄人物，并体验其经历的冒险之旅。如果我不服从并获得成功，我就无法继续进行自己的的探索。

不幸的是，这名所谓的英雄人物多数时候只是一个手持宝剑的呆瓜。我对这种玩法所知甚少，经常被敌人痛打一顿。更重要的是，我却无从学握其要领——突然间就被丢进一个新的用户界面和一大堆我根本不认识的选项。这好比是将英式足球队员丢进美式橄榄球队一样。如果我真想用这种砍人的方法玩游戏，我一开始就会创建这种角色了。

更改游戏环境、敌人以及其他挑战并没有什么问题——但是正如我在之前的文章所言，你不可以强制采用非常规的关卡，也不可以引进极为陌生，令玩家不知如何对付的boss。

不明确的奖励门槛

这是Derek Manning所提出的意见，他写道：“最令我抓狂的是《愤怒的小鸟》，尤其是《愤怒的小鸟：星球大战》，游戏中没有关于在关卡尾声如何到达下一颗星球的任何提示。有许多次我完成一个关卡任务时以为自己完成任务了，结果却发现自己只是完成了两个星球的任务，但游戏却没有任何如何到达第三个星球的提示。”

这一点并不适用于所有游戏题材，因为我们并不希望通过向玩家抛出大量数字来破坏其沉浸感。但《愤怒的小鸟》并非《L.A. Noire》，它是一款极为侧重分数的游戏，令玩家挑战更高难度就是其重玩性的重要来源。多数游戏会用到大量数据，例如CRPG就会很明确玩家下一关该做什么——这对许多休闲F2P游戏来说确实是一个关键。“明确短期目标”是电子游戏设计的一个基本原则，让玩家无休无止地在游戏中瞎摸是一个糟糕的设计决策。

缺乏灵活的输入设备帮助&教程与玩法出入很大

这实际上是来自同一条消息的两个抱怨。来自Futuregames的Elvira Björkman称《Jak II》的教程指导她如何使用悬浮式面板，但之后却并不允许她在游戏中使用这一方法，而是在数个小时之后才准予使用——此时她几乎快忘记这种控制方式了，但却无法再次学习如何操作。游戏应该提供灵活的设备输入帮助，最好是在暂停菜单中呈现。许多游戏允许玩家重置控制方式（理当如此）。这种重置控制方式的屏幕，不但应在暂停菜单中呈现，主屏幕也不能忽略，因为这是令玩家直接看到控制方式的明显位置。

此外，游戏让玩家掌握某一技能之后，应该尽快令其派上用场，而不是在数个小时之后才运用该技能。

将重要信息呈现于视觉特效中

Kitsune Magyar写道，“《激战2》有一些非常出色圈子告诉你在boss战斗中和大型遭遇战中要避免什么情况，之后又会将玩家抛入重大的视觉特效，以至于他们完全跳过了这些信息。这款游戏中有些敌人拥有特殊的动画效果，告诉玩家他们将打开一个‘消灭你们团队’的箱子，之后又是大型特效登场了。我记得我和一组好友曾经试图拿下一个boss，但后来却被对方一招KO了（游戏也不应该令敌人一招就KO玩家）。这好像是随机发生的情况。但看了关于这些遭遇战的维基攻略后却发现，敌人在消灭玩家整个团队之前确实带有一种动画特效，但它却十分微妙，并且与敌人其他的攻击动画特效很相似，此外5个人在攻击他的符咒特效也盖住了这一重要信息，从而恶化了这一结果。”

让玩家知道自己所在的团队何时会陷入困境也是游戏设计的一个基本原则。如果游戏屏幕充斥大量炮火令玩家无法看到重要的提示和警告，那就说明游戏应该更改视觉特效了。

保存无法正常管理的游戏

这一点的积极性多于消极性，只是需要一些改进建议。

Skyrim(from gamasutra)

我一直主张游戏要有保存设置——对于那些就是喜欢失败并且重新开始这种刺激的玩家，我只想说“去玩街机游戏，或者永远不要点击保存”。也有其他更好或更糟糕的游戏保存屏幕。François-Xavier Quencez向我发送了一个《上古卷轴5：天际》的截图，并指出“为什么这样一款史上最优秀的游戏居然也会犯下这种最基础和丑陋的游戏保存系统？我创造了另一个角色，之后错误覆盖了我的第一个角色。当然，为了避免这种情况，并方便看到我的旧保存，我应该为自己的文件重新命名，但在这款游戏中却不允许这种操作！如果有朋友想在我的电脑上玩游戏，这就更不妙了。我发现保存文件的最佳方法就是在Windows Explorer中找到保存游戏的文件夹，然后在那里创建一个备份。”我也深为赞同：如果玩家必须到文件系统中找到保存文件，那游戏就太糟糕了。

Go Go Nippon(from gamasutra)

他还给我发了一个《Go Go Nippon》的屏幕截图，其上显示了一个更优良的系统。其颜色方案有点鲜艳，但功能却很棒。他写道：“如你所见，每个文件都有自己的按钮，每个文件夹可以保存5个文件，这些信息准确进行分类，玩家可以按自己需要组织保存文件。即使是快速保存和快速加载也有独立的文件。”

这看起来更像是计算机系统而不像是你所创造的奇幻世界，但让我们面对现实吧：保存游戏不属于游戏世界的范畴。当玩家有意要保存部分游戏世界以便将来使用时，你也就无法保留完整的沉浸感。（不过一个快速保存的点击按钮，效果应该更好）

Harley C针对类似话题写道，“我和孩子最近在玩《Disney Universe》。这对我们来说是一款很有趣的游戏，但它却不允许在同一个游戏设备上保存多个游戏文件。如果我想一人通关玩游戏，那意味着会更改全家人所保存的游戏。Wii上也有其他游戏存在这个问题。他们将所有的保存游戏放置在同一个地方，但却不允许玩家将保存文件与其虚拟角色相绑定。”我们在早期从未考虑到这个问题，但现在的主机一般都允许玩家分别保存文件，游戏应该充分利用这一功能。Windows PC游戏也理当如此：要在一个与登录用户相关的目录中保存游戏，而不是在应用目录中保存。

最后，Stéphane Bessette指出“退出游戏？任何未保存的进程都会丢失”这一警告信息若出现在你刚保存游戏之后，就非常不合时宜了。即使是Windows PC的基本输入也会让你选择：退出不保存（带有警告）或者保存并退出。如果Windows PC的基本输入都做得到，游戏设计也该做得到。

要创建一个为玩家带来灵活性的保存系统。让不同的玩家分别保存文件，为他们提供删除和重命名功能，以便他们合理管理文件。对于创造大型电子游戏所需投入的精力来说，这实在是琐碎的小事。

RPG中低劣的买卖界面

CRPG中持续不断的买入和出售损害了英雄探索之旅的感觉，所以你可以做的就是令这一过程更富效率，以免玩家在其中浪费太多时间。点击100次的出售按钮，清扫100个可有可无的低端道具一点也不好玩。Stéphane Bessette认为一个优秀的道具出售界面应该具有如下特点：

1.应该允许玩家购回自己之前无意中出售的商品，至少要允许他们在当前交易中执行。这一机制不需要是永久性的，其时间长度只要足够他们更正选项即可。

2.要允许玩家为道具上锁，以免他们无意中误售商品。

3.要设置一种方便玩家清理低端道具的方法，以节省玩家将其拖放回地面的精力。《Torchlight》就是这方面的典型。

4.允许玩家购买一件道具，特定数量的道具，或者一堆道具。

5.最好能让玩家出售大量相同的道具。

总体来说，《指环王Online》在这方面还是一款相当出色的游戏，除了上面的第3和第5点之外。它甚至允许道具自动堆叠，这样你就可以随心所欲购买相应数量的道具了。

不可退出的游戏

有名自称Tvwxyz的读者写道，“我玩过许多Xbox游戏，许多游戏甚至没有退出按钮！在这些游戏中，你得点击系统按钮，返回仪表盘（PS游戏也存在这种情况）。为什么不在主菜单提供一个退出游戏的按钮呢。当我点击的时候，也不要出现条幅广告或视频。如果是试玩/demo版本的游戏，我还可以接受这种行为，但付费游戏不可以。”

我并没有玩过太多不同的Xbox游戏，所以对此无从考证，但在玩家要退出游戏的时候，迫使其观看他已经付费的游戏中的广告视频，那真是太缺德了。只有两种游戏可令玩家无法退出：街机游戏，以及在那些没有输入方式的其他操作系统上运行的游戏。游戏不应该让玩家按下红色的切换按钮离开游戏。游戏是一种电脑程序，就像它需要一个保存设置一样，最好要允许玩家快速退出游戏。（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! XIV

by Ernest Adams

Happy solstice! It’s time to celebrate the return of the light, the changing of the seasons, and the reintroduction of the Twinkie, which was nearly rendered extinct by the bankruptcy of Hostess Brands. And while we’re letting in the light, let’s shine a little on bad game design practices…

Out-of-Fantasy Exploit Prevention

I’ll start with one of my own. I prefer to play solo in MMORPGs because I’ve already had more than enough experience with letting a team down in high school gym class. However, the solo player is at a disadvantage in many situations, and has to learn how to optimize his chances. I play by two sets of principles: those of Sun Tzu from The Art of War (which can be summed up in a nutshell as “be strong where the enemy is weak” and “don’t go where the enemy is stronger than you”), and those of single-ship naval combat (it’s all about range, speed, and firepower). To put these principles into practice, I play powerful archers who can run fast, and I try to find positions of maximum advantage to myself before engaging the enemy. As combat tactics go, this all makes perfect sense.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when the first time I climbed up to the top of a cliff to shoot down at an enemy in The Lord of the Rings Online, the game stopped and put up a popup box telling me that I was being naughty and trying to exploit it. The AI couldn’t work out any way for the enemy to get to me, so I was cheating. Of course it wasn’t able to get to me! That’s why I took the trouble to climb the cliff. Sun Tzu would have been proud of me, and I felt as if I had been punished for using my brain.

I realize the point of this rule is to prevent exploits, but I really think there’s a better way to handle it than shaking your finger at the player. What does any real-world combatant do when it’s outmaneuvered in this way? It retreats out of range, and that’s what should have happened. If the LOTRO enemy did that, I wouldn’t get the kill, so I wouldn’t get the experience points, but at the same time I would drive it off, rewarding me—in a small way, and only temporarily—for doing something smart. Once I climb down from the cliff, it could come after me again. The problem is solved within the game world, and as a natural part of it, rather than in an artificial, fantasy-killing way.

Forcible Gameplay Style Changes

Part of the point about role-playing games, and massively-multiplayer ones in particular, is that they let players play in their own preferred style. The games are full of technology trees and personal traits and customizable weapons and so on that the player can spend endless time tinkering with and refining. As I said above, I’m all about long-range firepower. If I were a ship I’d be a guided missile cruiser.

Unfortunately The Lord of the Rings Online (which, don’t get me wrong, I really like most of the time), sometimes decides that it’s time for me to play a different way. As part of the epic quest chain I am occasionally obliged to assume the persona of some heroic figure from the game world’s past and experience an adventure that he had. If I don’t do this—and succeed—I don’t get to go on with the quest chain.

Unfortunately, a lot of the time this heroic figure is a big dumb galoot with a sword. I have very little experience with this style of play and usually end up being clobbered. Repeatedly.

What’s more, there’s no opportunity to learn—I just get dumped into an instance with a new user interface and a lot of options that I know nothing about. This is roughly equivalent to being yanked out of a soccer game and made to play American football instead. If I had wanted to play a hack-n-slash type, that’s the kind of character I would have created in the first place.

It’s OK to change environments, enemies, and other kinds of challenges—though as I’ve said in earlier No Twinkie columns, you shouldn’t make mandatory wildly atypical levels, nor bosses that are so different that nothing the player has learned is of any use. This is a related error.  Bad game designer! No Twinkie!

Unclear Reward Thresholds

This one comes from Derek Manning of ORCAS. He writes, “[Something that] has really bugged me about Angry Birds, especially in Star Wars, is the absence of any indication of how to reach the next star at the end of a level. There have been multiple times where I’ve gotten done with a level after thinking I’ve done really well only to find out I’ve only gotten two stars, and I’m not told what the threshold is to reach the third star.”

This one doesn’t apply to all genres, since in some of them we don’t want to ruin the player’s immersion by dumping numbers on her. But Angry Birds is not L.A. Noire. It’s a heavily score-based game that offers its replayability by challenging you to do better. Most games that use a lot of numbers, such as CRPGs, are quite clear about what you have to do to get to the next level—indeed, in a lot of the casual free-to-play games it’s the whole point. “Be clear about short-term goals” is one of the bedrock principles of video game design, and making the player try the same thing endlessly without any idea of what he’s aiming for is a Twinkie Denial Condition.

No On-Demand Input Device Help and Tutorials Widely Separated From What They Prepare You For

This is actually two gripes in a single message. Elvira Björkman of Futuregames writes to say that Jak II (from the Jak and Daxter series) taught her how to use a hover-board in a tutorial, then didn’t let her use it in gameplay until hours later—by which time she had forgotten the controls, with no good way to learn them again. Games really do need to provide on-demand input device help, ideally in the pause menu. A lot of games permit players to reassign the controls (and ideally, all should). The control-reassignment screen, which should be available from the pause menu as well as from the shell screens, is an obvious place to let the player see what they are as well.

Also, the point at which you learn a skill should be shortly before you need that skill—not several hours earlier.

Obscuring Critical Information Behind Visual Effects

Kitsune Magyar writes, “Guild Wars 2 has excellent little circles showing you where not to be during boss fights and large encounters, and then drowns them in a billion visual effects to the point where they could have just skipped them completely. Some enemies in GW2 also have special animations to show the player they’re going to open up a can of wipe-your-party, which are then drowned in visual effects too. I remember me and my band of merry friends trying to take down an optional boss (thankfully) only to be completely murdered in a one-hit-KO. (Don’t have one-hit KOs either, please.) It seemed to happen at random. Upon reading the wiki-article for this encounter it turns out he did a special animation before wiping the team that was extremely subtle and similar to any other attack animations he had, and just to make sure it was extra hilarious the spell effects of five people attacking him made this even harder.”

It’s another bedrock rule of game design that the player needs to know when he, or his party, is in trouble. If the game screen is so filled with fireworks that he can’t see the essential clues warning him about this critical fact, you’ve overdone your visual effects.

Saved Games That The Player Can’t Manage Properly

This one is actually more positive than negative, with several suggestions about how to do it right.

I’ve already come down firmly on the side of saving the game—to those players who want the thrill of knowing that losing means starting over from the beginning, I say, “either play arcade games or never hit save.” But there are better and worse ways to implement the game save screen. François-Xavier Quencez sent me a screen shot from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, demanding, “Why does one of the best games ever created have such a basic and ugly system of game save? I happened to create another character and then overwrite my first character by mistake. Of course, in order to avoid this and to see easily where my old saves are, I should rename my file, but in this game I can’t! And it’s even worse if a friend wants to play on my computer. The best way I found to preserve my files is to find the folder of the saved games in Windows Explorer and create a backup.” I agree: If the player has to go out to the file system and hunt around to find the save files, you’ve screwed up.

Save game screen from Skyrim

He also sent a screen shot from Go Go Nippon, showing a much better system. The color scheme is a bit garish, but the functionality is great. He wrote, “As you can see, each file has its own buttons and we can store five files per folder. The information is correctly classified and players can organize their saves as desired. Even quick save and quick load have separate files.”

Go Go Nippon save screen

This may all look a little to computer-y and not enough like the fantasy world that you’re creating, but let’s face it: Saving the game is outside the game world. You’re never going to preserve full immersion when the player is intentionally keeping a snapshot of the world for future use. (Single-button quick-save helps, though.)

On a similar topic, Harley C writes, “My kids and I have been playing through Disney Universe. This is a fun game for all of us, but it doesn’t allow for multiple sets of save games to exist on the same machine. If I want to play through a part by myself, this progress will be reflected in the family’s save game. There are other games for the Wii that do the same thing.

They put all save games in a single place, instead of allowing players to tie the saves to their avatars.” We never considered this in the early days, but now that consoles routinely allow players to keep separate profiles, games ought to make use of it. Windows PC games should do the same thing: store game saves in a directory associated with the logged-in user, not in the application’s directory.

Finally, Stéphane Bessette writes to point out that the “Exit game? Any unsaved progress will be lost” warning message is annoying if you’ve just saved a second ago. Even the BIOS in Windows PCs offers you a choice: Exit Without Saving (with warning) and Save And Exit (which works silently). If the BIOS can do it, we can do it.

Build a save system that offers the players flexibility. Let different players keep their saves separate from one another, and offer them delete and rename functions so they can mange them properly. Compared to all the effort that goes into a large video game, this is trivial.

Poor Buying and Selling Interfaces in RPGs

The constant buying and selling in CRPGs harms their heroic quest feel, so the least you can do is make this more efficient so that the player doesn’t have to waste a lot of time on it. It’s not fun to have to click the sell button 100 times to get rid of 100 Vegetable Peelers of Unusual Bluntness looted from hapless kobolds. Stéphane Bessette suggested a set of qualities that a good loot-selling interface should have:

Players need a way to be able to buy stuff back that they’ve sold by accident, at least within the context of the current transaction. The opportunity doesn’t need to last forever, just long enough to be able to correct clicking on the wrong thing.

They need a way to lock items so they can’t sell them unintentionally.

It’s nice to be able to get rid of low-level junk without having to schlep it all the way back to the surface. Torchlight offers this.

Let players buy one item, a specific quantity of items, or a stack of items.

It would be good to be able to sell quantities of identical items that don’t stack.

Having complained about The Lord of the Rings Online above, I have to say that it does most of this stuff well, except #3 and #5. It even lets you automatically fill stacks so that you buy just as much as you need.

Games You Can’t Quit Out Of

Someone calling themselves Tvwxyz wrote, “I play lots of Xbox games and many of them don’t even have an Exit option! With such games, you have to click the System button to return to the dashboard (This also happens with PlayStation games.) Come on—just give me a Quit Game button on the main menu. And when I click it, just let me leave without banner ads or videos. I am willing to accept this behavior with trial/demo games but not full games that I’ve already paid for.”

I don’t play enough different kinds of Xbox games to verify this for myself, but making you watch an advertising video in order to leave a game that you’ve paid for is crass. There really ought to be only two kinds of games that you can’t get out of: arcade games, and games in a machine with no other operating system to speak of (dedicated, single-game handhelds or cartridge consoles). It shouldn’t be necessary to press the Big Red Switch (or equivalent) just to leave a game. A game is a computer program; just as it needs a way to save the user’s work, it needs a way to exit quickly and cleanly.

Conclusion

And speaking of exiting quickly and cleanly, that’s the end of this year’s Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! column. See you next year! （source：gamasutra）