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点评对游戏间歇系统设计的不同观点

发布时间:2012-05-08 14:44:26 Tags:,,

作者:Eric Schwarz

我发表的有关间歇期的文章引发了读者的一系列讨论,尤其是针对其确实存在的问题和弊端。尽管我并不同意所有他人的观点,但是我确实认为有些额外的内容值得我们学习和讨论。

对间歇期设计的美学元素不满?

Geoffrey Kuhns强调的观点是,我对间歇期的抱怨似乎并非源于时间管理元素,主要针对的是时间管理本身的呈现方式。也就是说,魔法条可以用在所有游戏中,但间歇系统不一定有类似的通用于所有游戏的呈现方式。

这是个值得考虑的有趣问题。尽管我花费了很多时间来研究游戏及其机制的设计,但是有时确实很难从内在运作原理以及机制本身的效果同机制的呈现方式区分开来。《超级马里奥兄弟》之类的平台游戏在纸上或许显得很乏味,但是当你配上华丽的视觉效果、悦耳的音乐和出众的控制感(游戏邦注:包括重量感、响应和策略反馈)时,游戏瞬时变得栩栩如生和有趣起来。

Super-Mario-War(from wiilovemario.com)

Super-Mario-War(from wiilovemario.com)

我确实认为这方面有一定的指标,但是其最终被时间资源(游戏邦注:比如生命值、魔法值和体力值的恢复)的机制性时间差异所掩盖。正如我在上篇文章中所提到的那样,多数时候间歇系统无法被打断,而魔法条却可以用药水来补充。你能否在游戏中设计缩短间歇时间的药水?这当然可以,这样你的间歇机制就类似于魔法条。或许,类似于吸取生命的能力,你也可以在游戏中添加玩家使用标准攻击能够减少间歇时间的机制。

但是,这又产生了另一个问题,它的呈现方式会变得毫无意义。要解决间歇问题,我们所做的是破坏我们游戏时间的真实性。对于某些游戏来说,这确实显得无关紧要。MMO游戏在多数情况下本就缺乏真实性,使用非通用的机制,拥有毫无意义的故事,暴力等概念和控制选项来源于玩家自身的行为,有时它们甚至完全打破第四面墙(游戏邦注:戏剧术语,在镜框舞台上,一般写实的室内景只有三面墙,沿台口的一面不存在的墙,被视为“第四堵墙”,其作用是试图将演员与观众隔开,使演员忘记观众的存在,而只在想象中承认“第四堵墙”的存在)。但是,对许多游戏来说,在场景和美学中维持某种程度的一致性和严肃性显得非常重要。《超级马里奥兄弟》中的呈现方式吸引我们沉浸在游戏中,而间歇设置却可以轻易地将我们从游戏中拖回现实。

不存在“不良”机制

Mark Venturelli发表的回复驳斥了我认为间歇期是个不良和无趣机制的观点,他认为我的观点过于绝对。他表示,在合适的背景下,所有的游戏机制都是有趣的,脱离背景来看到机制会低估它的力量。他认为,从某种程度上来说,如果独立分析每个机制都会得出相似的结论。

这的确是种合理的说法。如果脱离背景独立看待,多数游戏机制都不是很有趣,包括间歇系统在内。比如,射击游戏中的重新装填枪支弹药只不过是按动一个按键而已,而让此动态在第三人称射击游戏中变得如此有吸引力的因素是装填时的紧张和压力情境以及装填与射击动作间的关系。主要问题不是“枪支重装弹药有多有趣?”,而是“当你攻击对手时只剩下数发子弹,而重装弹药或许会让你失去一次成功击杀的机会,这种情况下对是否重装的决定是否显得有趣?”基于掩体的射击题材游戏几乎完全靠这个动态来呈现趣味性,游戏不需要富有深度或复杂性,因为设计机制给玩家呈现的问题就已经足够有趣。

遵从同样的逻辑,如果将间歇期运用在合适的背景下,它也会持续表现出趣味性。在《魔兽世界》之类的游戏中,使用能力并不只是按动按键的问题,玩家需要对诸多元素进行战术评估,比如对手的能力、整个战场和残存对手的状态、自己的其他资源(游戏邦注:包括生命值、魔法值、其他可用法术和道具等)以及随后使用能力是否更有价值,因为使用能力后的20秒间歇时间可能决定着战斗的成败。

但是,我也要驳斥这种看法,因为我觉得间歇期与多数游戏中采用的传统资源管理方法相比,仍具有很大的不足。

1、各能力间的间歇期往往是独立的。虽然有些人认为这是间歇期的优势,但我认为在多数情况下这是弊端。因为,特定能力的唯一限制性因素是其本身的最后一次使用,玩家的能力几乎没有必要的存在空间。如果游戏中不存在将魔法弹和睡眠连接起来的资源,那么玩家也就没必要将其保留到合适的情况来施放,也就不存在衡量能力是否使用的指标。换句话说,所有的能力都是平等的,使用魔法弹还是睡眠并非真正的选择,玩家可以随机地使用各种能力。当遭遇战和敌人设计不甚有趣时(游戏邦注:这是MMO游戏的普遍问题),魔法等统一性的限制性资源无法发挥作用。诚然,有些带有间歇期的游戏确实含有此类资源,但是根据我个人的游戏经验,这些资源的数量过剩,以致于几乎无法对真正的效果产生影响。依我个人的观点,在真正的游戏玩法序列中做出选择要比失去游戏玩法序列而单纯追求美学选择要有趣得多。

2、间歇期总是发生在效果之后。换句话说,间歇期与玩家的关系发生在能力使用之后。对于不断使用相同能力是完成遭遇战的必要做法的游戏而言,这并不算是个问题,但是在其他情境中,尤其是长时间的间歇,就意味着特殊能力资源的管理只在能力被使用后才同玩家有所关联。如果玩家只需要按次序使用几个非常强大的能力就能够解决战斗,那么这些能力的使用时机和间歇期本身对战斗完全无法产生影响。只有当设计师给玩家提供更多的敌人或者提供前往下次遭遇战的其他动机,那么间歇期才能够发挥其资源管理的作用,而以上两种情况都不是很好的设计。

需要再次强调的是,以上这些并不是说间歇期毫无作用或者它们无趣,而是说在恰当的背景下,我仍然觉得多数情况下它的效果不及其他机制。

间歇期适合设计师使用

这也是我多次看到的驳斥观点,Jonathan Jou声称,尽管间歇系统不甚完美,但它们的确有效而且能够实现应有的目标。对于这一点,我确实没有异议,间歇期确实可以让设计师又快又简单地实现系统的平衡,也可以让设计师在对关卡进行细微的调整时保持游戏玩法不变。

但是,我认为这正是以间歇期为中心的设计的严重弊端之一,出问题的并非间歇期本身,而是隐藏在其背后的意图。具体地说,我认为这削弱了玩家对游戏的影响力,使游戏体验更多地取决于设计师。

乍看之下,上述观点似乎显得有点奇怪。毕竟,所有游戏都是由人设计的,玩家也总是在遵循设计师制定的规则。这是事实,但我认为应该铭记的是,最有趣的游戏应当是带有规则但允许玩家开展实验和抒发创意的游戏。比如,《反恐精英》和《星际争霸:母巢之战》之所以成为强大且寿命超长的竞技游戏,并不是因为它们有着近乎完美的平衡,而是因为它们的规则足够开放,允许玩家探索各种不同战术和战略。事实上,这些游戏中的许多不平衡性正是激发玩家竞争的因素。人族、虫族和神族并非完全相同,但是睿智的玩家能够发现利用这种差异的方法,而这些新战略会让其他玩家感到惊奇。创意上的自由形成了对话和交流,使这些游戏面世十多年后依然人气不减。

我想这也能够解释为何许多人抱怨《反恐精英:起源》和《星际争霸2》,因为它们消除了许多微妙的不平衡,导致创意的枯竭。在《星际争霸》中,将Siege Tank投放到敌人的基地以往是个出乎人意料的战略,在玩家社区中广为流传。在《星际争霸2》中,这个战略几乎被构建到游戏中,设计师在制作地图时就考虑到了这个战略。尽管这增加了游戏深度,让新玩家能够使用许多高级战术,但同时也减少了高级玩家创意战术选择的数量。《星际争霸2》的成就不及首作,部分原因在于将战略选择控制权从玩家转移到游戏设计师手上。

这种想法同样也适用于间歇期。以下引用的是暴雪长期社区管理员Bashiok就为何他们在《暗黑破坏神3》中使用间歇期的解释:

《暗黑破坏神2》拥有的是单资源机制(游戏邦注:也就是魔法),《暗黑破坏神2》中的最高端游戏技能在《暗黑破坏神3》中只能算是中低端技能。我们在游戏中设置的真正高端技能要更为复杂,而且如果技能可滥用就失去了其存在的意义,甚至可以完全将其从游戏中移除。而且,新游戏中有各种不同的资源系统,我们不能像《暗黑破坏神2》那样单纯靠魔法药水来解决问题。

比如,先祖之魂可以召唤4个野蛮人先祖与你并肩作战。如果它成为了可随时使用的技能,那还有什么作用呢?如果我们单纯将其设计为消耗100%的资源,那么等怒气恢复后不是又可以使用吗?这似乎并非我喜欢的系统。或许其他人可以找到不使用间歇期的解决方案,但是我不知道要怎么做。

暗黑破坏神3(from shacknews.com)

暗黑破坏神3(from shacknews.com)

从字面上来看,这听起来确实是种很睿智的设计:如果某种能力反复使用会显得过于强大,就必须用魔法之外的其他资源进行限制,因为玩家魔法的恢复速度很快(游戏邦注:魔法是种很廉价的资源,数秒钟之后就能够恢复)。但是,经过更深入的挖掘后,似乎有些问题。

其一,先祖之魂这种能力似乎与游戏中其他能力显得格格不入。我玩过《暗黑破坏神3》的测试版,可以说这是款不断按次序使用各种令人震撼技能的游戏,标准攻击似乎没有存在的必要。作为玩家升级过程中追求的顶级长期能力,先祖之魂的存在大概是为了帮助玩家应付游戏最终的困难区域,但是该能力与游戏中的其他能力显得并不协调。魔法机制(游戏邦注:尤其是野蛮人的怒气条,怒气随野蛮人受到/输出伤害而增加)的存在是为了实现在短期内管理能力,但是并不能限制这些类型的能力。我们不得不质疑,这种能力真的适合出现在暴雪设计的这款游戏中吗?

有趣的是,此类能力似乎更适合另一个职业。恶魔猎手有戒律和憎恨两种资源,或多或少可以视为长期和短期资源,这两种资源可以相互影响。憎恨用来在短期提升爆发力,而戒律用于某些强大的能力。将上述能力设计成恶魔猎手的技能难道不是更加恰当吗?在我看来,这样恶魔猎手会显得更加有趣,由此可以产生出真正有趣的职业差别。这样看来,暴雪的设计似乎用错了地方。

此外,这种“令人惊叹的”终极游戏能力被当成是玩家等级提升至顶点的奖励。尽管这听起来很棒,但是如果这种能力的存在是为了平衡和让玩家在角色满级后大量使用,那么这种能力还有存在的必要吗?如果玩家不达到满级,难道游戏就不应当平衡?或许,我可以将为这种能力添加间歇期视为例外,但间歇期似乎并不适合用于所有的能力。而且,难道不应当让玩家靠自己创意性地结合使用各种能力来实现“令人惊叹的”效果,而让设计师预先设计这种“令人惊叹的”效果?

总结

我发表的有关间歇期的文章引发了大量有趣的讨论。这表明它是个容易引起争议的话题,但也表明它是个相当不成熟的机制,需要进行更深入的考虑和实验,直到设计师能够有效地使用。我仍然没有改变自己将间歇期视为设计瑕疵的观点,也不认为它非常有趣,但是我确实从上篇文章之外的角度和方法来考量这项机制。感谢读者和评论者为我提供了思索的起点和绝妙观点!(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

Cooldowns: Follow-Up

Eric Schwarz

My article on cooldowns yesterday may have sparked a lot of discussion and debate, especially for its admittedly incisive title. That’s all for the best, though, as the response received brought to light a lot of really excellent points and contributions from readers on Gamasutra that I think should be brought to light. While I don’t agree with all of the points made, I do think there are some additional things to be learned from them, and discussed.

This article is mostly going to take the form of a blog post rather than my usual writing, if only because I think it’d be unfair to not give credit to a lot of the commentors who took the time to contribute. Forgive me if it’s not the most organized or eloquent piece in the world!

Are Complaints Against Cooldowns Aesthetic?

This point, suggested by Geoffrey Kuhns, highlighted the fact that my issue with cooldowns might stem not so much from the time management element, but the presentation of time management itself – namely, that while a mana bar might fit in-universe, a cooldown doesn’t necessarily have a real world (or at least game world) analogue in all cases.

This is an interesting question to consider. Despite spending time examining the design of a game or its mechanics, it’s also sometimes hard to detach the presentation of a mechanic from the inner workings and effects of the mechanic itself. Something like platforming in Super Mario Bros. might sound boring on paper, but when you’ve got nice-looking visuals, catchy music and a good sense of kinesthetics behind the controls (that is, weight, responsiveness and tactile feedback), suddenly the game really comes to life and becomes entertaining.

I do think there’s some merit to this, but it’s ultimately overridden by the fact that there are mechanical distinctions between different times of time-based resources (like regenerating health/mana/stamina). As I mentioned in the original article, most of the time cooldowns can’t be interrupted, whereas a mana meter can be filled up by a potion. Could you conceivably use a Potion of Reduce Cooldown in your game? Sure, absolutely, and then your cooldown would function exactly the same way as a mana meter. Perhaps, like a life leeching ability, you could also have a mechanic that causes cooldowns to decrease the more the player uses standard attacks.

This only raises another problem though – the presentation makes absolutely no sense. In trying to solve the cooldown problem, all we’ve done is damage our game world’s verisimilitude. For some games, this really might not matter. MMOs are already ridiculously meta most of the time, with mechanics that aren’t well justified in-universe, stories that make no sense, concepts like aggro and control options such as macros that are borrowed from players themselves, and sometimes they even break the fourth wall outright. However, for many games, maintaining a degree of consistency and seriousness to the setting and aesthetic may well be very important – and just like the presentation of Super Mario Bros. draws us in, cooldowns can easily pull us out.

There’s No Such Thing as a “Bad” Mechanic

One response made by Mark Venturelli refuted my point that cooldowns are a bad, unfun mechanic because I took them in isolation. He stated that all game mechanics can be fun given the proper context and that singling one out in such a fashion undermined its strengths, and, to a degree, you could micro-analyze just about any mechanic and reach similar conclusions.

This certainly seems to hold water. Most game mechanics, cooldowns included, aren’t all that much fun when taken in isolation. Reloading a gun in a shooter, for instance, simply boils down to pressing one key or button – it’s the act of doing it in a tense and stressful situation, and its relationship to the acts of shooting and taking cover that make the dynamic of a third-person shooter so thrilling. The question isn’t “how much fun is it to reload?” but rather “how much fun is it to reload when you’re under fire, down to a few bullets, and could give up a successful kill because of the time spent?” The cover-based shooter genre is founded almost entirely upon this dynamic – the games really don’t need to be all that deep or complex because the questions posed by the shooting mechanics are always relevant and interesting.

Following the same logic, cooldowns can be consistently interesting when used in the right context. In a game like World of Warcraft, using an ability isn’t just a matter of pressing a button that lights up – it’s also a tactical assessment of the enemy’s capabilities, the relative state of the entire battlefield and the remaining enemies on it, one’s own other resources (health, mana, other spells available, items, etc.) and a question of whether using an ability now or later is worthwhile, knowing that the 20 seconds an ability is unavailable could mean the difference between life and death.

I want to refute this statement, however, because I think cooldowns still have some faults that render them less effective than traditional resource management in (and I stress) most cases.

Cooldowns are usually ability-independent. While this can be seen as a strength by some, I think it’s actually a weakness in most cases. Because the only limiting factor on a given ability is the last time the ability itself was used, the player’s abilities rarely feel like they occupy the same space. Without a resource linking both Magic Missile and Sleep with one another, they can’t really have relative value save for casting time or their respective merits in a situation. In other words, all things being equal, there is no real choice to use Magic Missile or Sleep – the player might as well be choosing randomly. When things like encounter and enemy design fail to be interesting (a very common issue in MMOs), a unified limiting resource like mana isn’t there to pick up the slack. Granted, some games with cooldowns do have such resources, but in my experience they are so plentiful as to almost never matter anyway. In my opinion, making a choice with real gameplay consequence is more fun than making an aesthetic choice without gameplay consequence.

Cooldowns always happen “after the fact.” In other words, a cooldown will only actually be relevant to the player once an ability is used. This isn’t so much a problem for games where “spamming” the same abilities over and over might be necessary to complete an encounter, but in other situations and for long-term cooldowns especially, it means that managing the resource limiting Finger of Death – time – isn’t actually relevant until it’s already been cast. If the player can win an encounter just by using a few very powerful abilities in sequence, their timing relative to each other and the cooldowns themselves are completely irrelevant, and can only be made relevant if the designer either a) gives the player even more enemies to deal with or b) provides some other incentive to move forward to the next encounter, both of which suggest that the initial poor design remains.

Again, all of this isn’t to say that cooldowns can’t work or that they are never fun – but that, when all’s said and done, I still think that even when taken in context, most of the time cooldowns pale in comparison to other mechanics.

Cooldowns Are Better for Designers

This is another refutation I saw on multiple occasions, highlighted quite well by Jonathan Jou, who argued that cooldowns might not be pretty, but they’re effective and get the job done. And, really, I can’t disagree – cooldowns do indeed allow designers to balance a system quickly and easily, as well as allowing for a lot of nice micro-level tweaks that can get a game playing exactly as they intend.

But in this, I think, is one of the serious flaws of cooldown-centric design, which speaks not so much to cooldowns themselves but to the intentions behind cooldowns. Specifically, I’m talking about a reduction in the role of authorship the player has, and the reign of the designer over the game experience.

That might sound a bit strange at first. After all, all games are designed by someone, and players are always going to be following the designer’s rules. That’s true to a degree, but I think it’s worth bearing in mind that often some of the most fun games are ones with rules that allow for experimentation and creativity. Games like Counter-Strike and StarCraft: Brood War gained a very strong and long-term competitive following, for example, not because they were necessarily perfectly balanced in every way, but because their rules were open enough to allow for creative tactics and strategy; in fact, many of the imbalances in those games were actually what fueled the competition between players. Terran, Zerg and Protoss might not all be on equal footing, but smart players could potentially discover ways to make up the difference, and do so in a way that would surprise other players. This creative freedom formed a sort of point-counterpoint dialogue that kept these games going for over a decade.

I think it’s also telling that some of the biggest complaints against Counter-Strike: Source and StarCraft 2 were that they got rid of many of the subtle imbalances and other qualities that fueled and allowed for creativity. Doing something like dropping Siege Tanks into an enemy’s base in StarCraft used to be a pretty radical and unexpected strategy that eventually entered the community canon; in StarCraft 2, this strategy was there from day one and nearly built into the game, so much so that maps were designed specifically with it in mind. Although superficially this added more depth to the game and allowed newer players to get a handle of advanced tactics, in actuality this reduced the number of creative choices available to high-level players. StarCraft 2′s relative lack of success in the competitive circuit can in part be blamed upon that transfer of authorship from the players to the game designers.

This idea can be seen with respect to cooldowns as well. Here’s a quote from Blizzard’s long-time community manager, Bashiok, on why they went with cooldowns in Diablo III (brought to my attention on another forum):

Diablo II had a single resource mechanic (mana), and the biggest end game skills in Diablo II are low-to-mid tier skills in Diablo III. The big “end-tier” skills we have are more complex and usually wouldn’t make sense as spammable skills, or would likely outright have to be pulled from the game if it turned out they ever could be spammable. And we have varied resource systems that we can’t just throw a problem-solver at, like Diablo II could with mana potions.

For instance Call of the Ancients literally calls down the four barbarian ancients to fight alongside you. How would that work if it was spammable? Should we make it cost 100% resource to keep you from being able to spam it, and then leave you drained to Cleave back enough Fury to follow it up with anything? That doesn’t sound like something *I* would take. Maybe someone could find a build for it, I don’t know.

On paper, this again sounds like smart design – an ability that’s too powerful to be used all the time has to be limited by some resource other than mana, because the player regains mana too quickly (it’s a very cheap resource that comes back within seconds). Digging a bit deeper, however, reveals a few issues.

For one, this Call of the Ancients ability seems to be out of place with the rest of the abilities in the game. I’ve played the Diablo III beta extensively, so I can say that it’s very much a game about using lots of impressive and varied skills in sequence over and over again – the standard attack, in fact, might as well not even be in the game given the direction that ability use has gone. As a long-term ability that’s there as a capstone to the player’s leveling progress and presumably exists to help out in the difficult endgame areas, Call of the Ancients really does not gel very well with the rest of the game’s abilities. The mana mechanic (especially the Barbarian’s Fury meter, which is built up over time by taking and dealing damage) is there to manage abilities in the short term, but it isn’t capable of limiting these sorts of abilities. One has to ask, “is this ability really appropriate for the game Blizzard have designed?”

The interesting thing is that another hero seems far more suited to such an ability. The Demon Hunter has two resources, Discipline and Hatred, which more or less are long and short term resources, both of which can influence each other – Hatred is used in short bursts while Discipline is built up and used for powerful abilities. Wouldn’t it make much more sense for an ability such as this to be put in the Demon Hunter’s repertoire? In my opinion, that would make the Demon Hunter that much more interesting, and would create a lot of really interesting class distinctions that Call of the Ancients might serve to break down. In many ways it seems like Blizzard are trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.

Additionally, there’s this notion of an “awesome” endgame ability that the player gets as a reward for reaching the level cap. Although it sounds great on paper, if this ability is a) intended to be balanced and b) intended to be used for a lot of time well after the player has “maxed out” his or her character, why does this ability even exist? Shouldn’t the game remain balanced if the player is conceivably going to keep playing? Maybe I could understand a single cooldown for this one ability as an exception, but cooldowns certainly don’t seem appropriate to include for everything else. And anyway, shouldn’t the player be doing “awesome” things on his or her own by intelligently using combinations of abilities in creative ways, rather than being given something decreed and built to be “awesome” by a designer before-hand?

Closing Thoughts

A lot of interesting discussion has come out of my first article on cooldowns. I think more than anything, this demonstrated it was a divisive topic, but also a mechanic that is in its relative infancy and needs a lot more consideration and experimentation until designers really get the hang of using it effectively. I still haven’t changed my opinion on cooldowns as a design crutch, nor do I think they’re still very fun, but I have certainly have thought about them in ways I did not expect to when I wrote the first article. Thanks to all the readers and people who left comments for providing a lot of great food for thought, and some excellent points themselves! (Source: Gamasutra)


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