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设计师应注意的游戏机制与节奏问题

发布时间:2014-01-10 08:22:19 Tags:,,,,

假设你正在制作一款游戏。已经挨块创建了地图,为角色命名,编写了史诗般的故事,为武器和盔甲写好了程序。也制作了战斗动画,精心策划了过场动画。平衡了战斗,为角色分配状态,创造挑战。

你想“这游戏真完美!”。在你看来,它确实完美。它已经具备了你认为RPG应该拥有的一切。

但它可能并不像你自己想得那么完美。也许人们并不喜欢战斗。也许他们认为游戏中的战斗无聊而乏味。

你告诉自己“他们都是笨蛋!这款游戏很有挑战性,他们不喜欢太困难的东西!”

但这很可能并非真正原因。极可能是因为你的战斗,并且很可能你的整款游戏都乱了步调。

现在我就来告诉你这是为什么,以及你该如何避免这种情况。

game mechanics(from zam.com)

game mechanics(from zam.com)

故事衔接要紧凑

我推崇使用游戏机制来讲故事的技巧。将机制与故事整合,可以让玩家觉得与故事更为亲近。这并不仅仅是发生于屏幕角色身上的事情。玩家处于场景之中,这些就是发生在他们身上的事情。

这并不是你可以有所选择地施加的结果,无论你想不想要,都会发生这些事情。所有的因素都会影响玩家如何到达场景或者与该场景互动。这意味着你开发游戏过程中可能从来没有考虑过的因素,正在影响着玩家如何吸收游戏故事信息的方式。

你需要考虑一切向向玩家传递信息的东西,以及他们获取信息的方式。有些可能是很明显的事物,例如字体大小,文本速度、玩家角色的行走速度,游戏颜色方案以及其他图像选择。但这些只是表面元素。而像地下城长度、遭遇战的难度等其他层面,却有可能在不经意间打断游戏故事。

在此我要讨论的是游戏的流状态,即游戏故事如何衔接在一起的过程。想想人们说故事的方式。如果有人很擅长讲故事,他们就会呈现所有你需要的重要信息,不会涉及那些无意义的信息。而不擅长讲故事的人可能就会语无伦次,甚至忘了提起一些事情,或者以毫无逻辑的方式将场景拼凑起来。这是一个糟糕的流状态。

游戏故事的流状态必须富有意义和逻辑性。其中有些是很明显的,例如场景富有逻辑地彼此相连。实际上还存在一种所谓的模块化叙事写作风格,它并不遵从连贯的故事,而是由那些在更大的视角中有可能或不可能拼凑在一起、能够自成一体的小片断组成的。但你必须有一些相当严肃的体裁判断条件来避免这类情况。如果你的故事是起伏不断并杂乱无章的,那就很可能会令玩家困惑或激怒他们。

也许你会说,“我以为我们应该讨论游戏机制而不是故事!”

现在我准备说说机制的问题。

游戏难度设置

我知道你是那种重视玩法的人,不是吗?你可能认为整款游戏中每个敌人都必须经过统计而精心制造,并且能够为你的英雄提供富有挑战性而合理的战斗。这确实很好。你想在游戏中的许多地方为英雄添加富有挑战性、设计精良的对手,但也并不想在所有地方都如此设计。

你认为战斗是游戏故事的一部分吗?当然!我们可以知道自己在起始村庄外杀死每只硕鼠和飞翔的意面怪物,并卷走现金购买到心仪的长剑对于游戏故事来说并不重要。这类怪物只是游戏中的障碍,它们就是玩家的战斗对象,并使用自己的武器变得更强大。我们知道与两只兔子和一个生活中世纪的忍者展开战斗的中途过程中,并不会出现什么重大的事件。

但你并不能像那样对待所有敌人。有些敌人是你的部分故事情节,如果植入方式很糟糕,它们就可能破坏故事情节乃至整款游戏。让我们看以下例子。

邪恶男爵掳走了英雄童年时的至爱Damsela,并强迫她嫁给自己。我们的英雄Heroy决定痛打男爵,并救回自己心爱之人。当他们闯进教堂高喊“我愿意”,甚至都没有想过牧师并没有问有没有人反对时,他们显得很愚蠢,但这并不重要。男爵派士兵去阻止Heroy破坏自己的婚礼!这些士兵分别来了三拔人马,英雄必须将他们全部收拾干净后才有机会亲自见到男爵,而男爵此时正在秘密地磨炼一项邪恶的技艺,打算以击杀掉这个讨厌的英雄。

那么,在此情况中以下哪一幕场景更为引人入胜?

A:Heroy与士兵交战。每个士兵都是富有挑战性的对手,都需要大量的攻击点数才能毙命。这些战斗来来去去不下十个回合,Heroy逐渐扫清了每个士兵,在此过程中可能还会被迫进行数次疗伤。他在对付这三拔人马时会重复多次遇到这一情况,而邪恶男爵则是一个极具挑战性的boss,他可能以自己的秘密技能杀死Heroy,迫使英雄重新载入游戏并重复之前的整个序列。

B.Heroy几招就把这些士兵全部收拾了。每场战斗都很快结速了,这让Heroy得以加快拯救爱人的步伐。这些士兵根本无力阻止Heroy。邪恶男爵要与Heroy决斗,但他的秘密技能根本奈何不了Heroy,所以Heroy轻松地救回了爱人。

场景B可能在故事情节上更有吸引力,尽管这一幕场景中的敌人简直是胆小鬼。为什么?因为战斗中的实际行动并非这幕场景中的关键。这个场景中的要点就是Heroy拯救了Damsela。如果Heroy与每个士兵交手都要花费5分钟时间,这就会破坏情景的流状态。谁会在乎这些士兵的实力呢?Heroy正处于盛怒之中,他们挡了英雄的路。将他们一网打尽才抓住了要点。这也正是游戏故事的需要,也就是让每个士兵都成为英雄的训练靶子。延长杀死每个士兵的时间将会令玩家在更大游戏情境中分心。如果Heroy实际上输掉了任何一场战斗,游戏体验就会遭到破坏,当他们无奈叹气并重新载入游戏时,这一幕就失去了同样的影响力。

那么男爵呢?当然,他必须是一个重量级的对手!你看,你并不希望玩家在这种序列中输掉。这是过场动画/动作序列的中间环节,如果玩家死在这里,他的一切就得重来了。这当然不是你希望的结果。将一个超级困难的boss置于脚本序列的尾声通常是个糟糕的设计。

那么我们应该如何设计男爵这个坏蛋,但又不让玩家输给他呢?男爵有一项之前提到的“秘密必杀技”。如果这一举动确有杀死玩家的极大风险,那就太糟糕了。除非玩家是彻头彻尾的笨蛋,否则就不应该让他们在这种情况下挂掉。那么我们该怎么做呢?

1.邪恶男爵发来了他的威胁通告。“我将以超级邪恶的技能将你干掉!”这样玩家就知道即将有人来攻击了,并且可以做好预防措施。

2.该超级邪恶的技能并不会致命。它可能会令Heroy的命值降为1。

这两种情况都不错,因为它们创造了紧张感,以及实际上并未将玩家置于危险境地的危险幻觉中。在第一种情况中,玩家会警惕。在第二种情况下,他会治愈自己。如果他什么都不做,那就活该受死了。

使用这些技巧,我们就可以用游戏机制来增强游戏故事,而无需打断游戏的流状态。

你可能又会问,“敌人应该设计得富得挑战性!不然玩家为什么要玩这愚蠢的游戏?”

对此我只能说,这是你的问题了。

为游戏增加多样性

设置脆弱敌人的原因多种多样。也许并非所有的敌人都应该如此。但为你的敌人设置多种难度却是件好事。其中一个原因就在于节奏。

玩家可能并不希望每次进入战场都像经历炼狱一般。有时候他们只想向敌群抛下自己的一个强大的符咒,然后看他们全部倒下身亡。或者他们在等待战斗结束的过程中并不想花5分钟时间来收拾这些坏蛋。有时候他们就是想成为蓝博(游戏邦注:电影《第一滴血》男主角)一招就摆平一切。有时候让玩家体验一下这种感觉也无妨。

这背后存在一种心理效应。如果游戏中的每个人敌人的强度进展都与玩家一样,那么玩家进入不同区域时并不会觉得有太大不同。玩家就不会觉得自己正在进步。这可能造成玩家的受挫感。令遭遇战呈现多样化特点不但可以打破单调性,还可以让玩家在偶然遇到一些轻易就能打败的敌人时获得一种进步感,而不是认为所有敌人都具有相同的强度和挑战性。你可以采用多种方法散布遭遇战以及调整其节奏。每个区域可能都有一打不堪一击的弱小敌人,也有一群属于中度挑战性的敌人。也可能有单个极为强大的敌人。聪明的设计师可以混合这些怪物创造有趣的遭遇战。

多样化游戏遭遇战的难度,不但可以照顾玩家的情绪,也可以造福故事情节的发展。让我们回到Heroy的例子中。假设Heroy是在一个深山老林的村子中长大,他在该地就是恶名远扬的坏蛋。这个恶名就以令国王雇佣他来执行某些任务,并以此展开故事。

Heroy向城堡出发,一路斩杀怪物。如果这些怪物都特别难招架,那我真怀疑Heroy究竟凭什么实力获得国王的注意?他甚至都对付不了老鼠!如果Heroy轻易拾掇掉了家乡周围的敌人,这才像个英雄。他已经吃透了这个地区野生动物的习性,是时候走向更大的世界挑战更大的威胁了。你有大把时间来提升游戏难度。不要觉得你得平衡每一场遭遇战,你有什么理由让一切战斗都如此困难呢?

所以,你要在哪设置困难?你可以在地下城布置挑战性、深思熟虑的遭遇战(但不要在首个地下城教程中如此设计)。这个地方很容易给予玩家一种精通之感。如果他们走出地下城教程后杀掉了一切敌人,他们就会觉得不知道自己究竟在干什么。

当玩家玩够游戏获得了足够的玩法,知道哪种技巧管用,哪项道具强大,有机会获得自己的装备,认清自己一方的实力和弱点时,你就该在地下城中多设置几场恶战了。玩家走进地下城时就预料到有敌人和boss出没,你可以心情发挥,适时抛出一些声音。玩家会欣赏你这种做法,因为这给予他们在被收拾前进行设想的机会,他们会更自信地面对这些新挑战。不要在玩家刚出门时就展开攻击。让玩家在游戏头20分钟就阵亡的做法只会令他们望而却步。

不要浪费我的时间

Dont-waste-my-time(from tereluctantspeakersclub)

Dont-waste-my-time(from tereluctantspeakersclub)

这是一条黄金法则。这是重要的设计格言。你应该认真考虑这一点。

不要浪费玩家的时间。基于刷任务、重复性RPG和MMO的发展史已经令游戏浪费玩家时间成为可被接受的理念。我不想浪费自己的时间。你的游戏不应该浪费我的时间。

你每次在游戏中做出任何决定,无论是增加一场战役或一个谜题,或者让玩家返回原路时,就要自问:这会丰富游戏内容,还是说只是在浪费玩家时间?如果答案是后者,你可能就得调整一下序列。你的游戏及其节奏、流状态可能也会更好。

但这还不够!所有只会浪费玩家时间的愚蠢想法在游戏开发过程中都带有“个性化的选择”这种伪装。以下就是其中某些例子,以及你为何要禁用这些方法的原因:

1.缓慢的文本速度

如果有人说这是一个好想法,我真的不敢苛同。在字里行间,人为地插入对话停顿甚至也成了一种可被接受的行为。

我们有些人阅读速度很快。这种做法无异于惩罚阅读速度很快的人。如果你想打断对话,那就要更努力一点,以有点意义的内容而非空洞的停顿来插入对话。即使是让角色在说话的时候四处转转也比这个更强!

2.缓慢的行走速度

这是一个大问题。人们喜欢加入一些缓慢的行走速度,以便增强游戏背景、氛围、基调。“他们在此应该缓慢行走,这样他们才能欣赏到我所创建的这个地图中的一切内容!”不,如果我觉得自己想欣赏你严密的光照图,我可以根据自己的喜好花点时间走完地图。你迫使我这么做等于是将自己的意志强加于玩家身上。如果地图很小,设计足够精良,那么你就可以采用缓慢的行走速度,但如果我有大量需要穿越的空间,那么我敢保证人们首先注意并抱怨的就是行走速度过慢的问题。

也许你会说“但缓慢的行走速度是一个合理的工具。”

没错,如果使用得当,缓慢的行走速度可以作为叙事工具。但可能并不是出于你所认为的原因。缓慢行走速度的主要用途应该是创造特定场景中的紧张感。比如女主角独自在小黑屋里,而屋里正好有个杀手!缓慢的行走速度此时就是增加紧张感的一个绝佳选项。但在每个地图上都使用这一做法,那就不仅仅是惹人烦了,它还会令这种合理用途失效。

3.无意义的回溯法

这是填补游戏时间的另一个常见做法,即让玩家反复穿越同个地点。如果你看让玩家原路返回,至少要为玩家增加一点新鲜元素。这一路上会发生什么新事件吗?玩家的能力是否足以应对新出现的走廊或发现新宝藏?现在是否存在能够开启的捷径?回溯法是你调戏玩家预期的一个机会!单纯地迫使玩家无意义地重玩游戏真是太无聊了。

4.过于“随机”的机会

这一传统的存在历史几乎与角色扮演游戏一样悠久了。这通常是一种填补游戏时间的简便方法。MMO游戏中就不乏这种设置。收集20个道具来完成这一任务。这一道具却只存在于某人物身上,而这一人物在特定区域的出现概率仅为1/20。此外,这一人物掉落这种道具的概率只有30%!这样你就是在浪费玩家3个小时的时间了。他们每次找到一件道具,就会觉得自己取得了进步!但事实并非如此,你只是以这种小伎俩迫使他们产生这种感觉。你太邪恶了。

单人游戏也会出现这种情况。你执行某一任务都有X%的获胜概率,例如制作药水、摧毁陷阱或者是开启门锁。你会说“做这种事只是在浪费我的时间。”如果迫使玩家因为在概率事件上的失败而去打战或完成其他任务,那就真是在浪费他们的时间了。

你可能又会说,“随机的机会是RPG游戏20多年来的一个惯例。你居然认为这很糟糕!”

人们曾认为奴隶制是个好主意。之后又觉得它很糟糕是错误做法,并废止了这一制度。人们能够意识到自己过去认为正确的东西实际上是完全错误的,并继续前行。这就是所谓的“进步”。认为某物应该保留,只是因为它过去一向如此,这真是最糟糕的辩论结构。因为你并没有什么具有说服力的逻辑或原因。

给予玩家明确的游戏目的

是否曾遇到过在游戏中漫无目的地行走,却不知道自己该干什么?这可能发生了两种情况:

1.设计师没有告诉你该做什么

2.设计师认为让你四处游荡,自己想想要做什么是个好主意

但事实并非如此!

设计师应该告诉玩家该往哪里走才能到达下一个节点!如果玩家尽力了,却还是没想出来,那也不是他们的错,而是设计师的失职。要让你的玩家知道他们该走向何处,该做什么,该去杀谁。玩家在游戏中游荡的时候很无趣,不知道自己该干什么的感觉非常糟糕,你应该做些有意义的行为最小化这一情况。

我曾看到许多开发者认为理解游戏是玩家的责任,而实际上他们所存在的问题就是玩家并不理解作者的意图。但理解设计师的理念并非玩家的职责,向玩家明确作者意图和想法却是设计师的职责。如果玩家无法理解,那他们可能就不会喜欢游戏,那你除了自责就无法归咎于他人了。

人们不喜欢你的游戏有多种原因。但极大可能是你的机制或故事破坏了游戏。你可能从未想过是节奏的问题。我希望现在你能够意识到你的游戏设计箱中最重要的工具是什么。(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

GAME MECHANICS AND PACING

Tips on how to not waste your player’s time.

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So, you’re making a game. You build the maps tile by tile. You name the characters. You write the epic story. You program the weapons and armor. You make the badass battle animations. You choreograph the awesome cutscene where the MC beheads a villain with an envelope opener. You balance your awesome battles. You give the characters stats. You always create your encounters to be a challenge.

“The game is perfect!” you say. And in your mind, it is. It does everything that you think an RPG should do.

But maybe it’s not as perfect as you think it is. Maybe people don’t enjoy the combat. Maybe they find the battles tedious or boring.

“They’re just wimps!” you tell yourself. “The game is challenging! They just don’t like things that are hard!”

Chances are, however, that this isn’t it either. Chances are that your combat, and possibly your entire game, is badly paced.

I am here to tell you why this happens and how you can prevent it.

Go with the flow.

I’m a fan of story-telling techniques through the use of game mechanics. By integrating your mechanics with you narrative, it makes the player feel closer to the story. These aren’t just things happening to a character on a screen. The player is IN the scene and these things are happening to them.

This isn’t something you can impose selectively, however. It happens whether you want it to or not. And all kinds of factors can influence how the player is approaching or interacting with a scene. This means that factors you might never even think about while you are developing your game are influencing absolutely everything about how your player is absorbing information about your narrative.

You need to think about everything that conveys information to the player, and the manner in which they are acquiring it. Some of these can be obvious things, such as font size and style, text speed, the walking speed of the player’s avatar, the game’s palette and other graphical choices. But those are only surface elements. Other things, from dungeon length, to the length and difficulty of encounters, can interrupt your game’s narrative if you aren’t careful.

What I’m talking about here is a game’s flow, and if you don’t know what that is, flow is how the game’s narrative fits together. Think about how someone tells a story. If someone is good at telling a story, they will present all the relevant information you need only when you need it, and probably doesn’t weigh their story down with irrelevant tangents or pointless information. Someone who is bad at telling a story might be incoherent, might forget to mention things, or tie scenes together in an illogical manner. That’s bad flow. Don’t do that.

The flow of a game’s narrative must make sense and be logical. Some of this is obvious, such as scenes logically following from each other. There is actually a style of writing known as modular storytelling that doesn’t follow a coherent narrative, but often consists of self-contained vignettes that may or may not fit together in a larger perspective. But you need to have some pretty serious stylistic justification to get away with that sort of thing. If your narrative is choppy and disjointed, it’s probably just going to confuse and irritate your player.

“But Solitayre, I thought we were here to talk about game mechanics! Story is stupid!”

No, you’re stupid. Also, I’m getting to that.

Adventurus Interruptus

I know your type. You’re one of those gameplay people, aren’t you? You probably think every single enemy in the whole game must be handcrafted through statistics and abilities to provide the a challenging yet reasonable battle for your heroes to face. That’s great. Really. There are absolutely lots of places in a game where you want challenging, well-crafted opponents for your heroes to fight. But there are some places you might not WANT to do that.

Did you know battles are a part of your game’s story? They are! Sure, we can assume that every giant rat and flying spaghetti monster we slay outside the starting village while squirreling away the cash to buy that super sweet LONG SWORD aren’t very important to the game’s narrative. Creatures like that are just game abstractions, they’re there for the player to fight, use his SWEET MOVES on, get stronger. We can assume no major revelations or life-altering epiphanies will happen in the midst of a battle with two dire bunnies and a ninja who lives in a medieval fantasy setting for some reason.

But you can’t treat all enemies like that. Some enemies are part of your plot. And if implemented badly, they can damage your plot, and damage your game. Let’s look at an example.

Evil Baron Nefarious has kidnapped the hero’s childhood love interest, Damsela, and is forcing her to marry him! That bastard! Our Hero, Heroy, decides he needs to go kick the Baron’s ass and save his love interest from this horrible fate. He and his comrades kick in the door to the Church shouting “I do!” even thought the priest didn’t ask if anyone objected yet. They feel kind of silly, but that doesn’t matter. Baron Nefarious sends his guardsmen to stop Heroy from ruining his wedding! The guardsmen come in three separate waves and Heroy will have to fight them all before facing the baron himself, who has been honing a secret EVIL TECHNIQUE especially to kill that pesky Hero with.

So, which of these two scenarios is more compelling in this situation?

A. Heroy engages a battle with the guards. Each guard is a challenging opponent who will take many hits to defeat. These battles go back and forth for upwards of ten rounds as Heroy slowly whittles down each guard, probably being forced to heal several times over the course of the battle. He will repeat this encounter two more times as he fights all three waves, before facing Baron Nefarious who is a very challenging boss who might kill Heroy with his secret technique and force him to reload his game and replay this entire sequence again.

B. Heroy mows down each of these guards in one or two hits. Heroy absolutely plows through them. Each battle is over quickly allowing Heroy to rapidly advance towards rescuing his love. The guardsmen are powerless to stop him. Baron Nefarious challenges Heroy to a duel, but he and his secret technique aren’t actually that much of a threat and Heroy bests him easily to rescue his beloved.

Scenario B is probably more narratively compelling even though the enemies in this situation are complete wusses. Why? Because the actual act of fighting battles is not the point of this scene. The point of this scene is Heroy rescues Damsela like a badass. If Heroy had to spend five minutes with each wave of guards, that would disrupt the scene’s flow. Who cares how strong these guards actually are? Heroy is pissed and they are in his way. Dispatching them in one hit gets the point across. Heroy is kicking the guards’ asses. That’s what needs to happen here. Having each guard be a trial defeats the point of that. Having each guard take forever to kill would distract the player from what’s going on in the larger context. If Heroy actually loses any of these battles, the moment is ruined and the scene will lack any of the same impact when they sigh and reload the game.

What about the Baron? Surely he must be a worthy opponent! Well, sure, but you can convey that narratively too. Because you see, you probably don’t actually want the player to lose in a sequence like this. This is the middle of a cutscene/action sequence, and if the player dies here, he has to do the whole thing again. You don’t want that. Putting a super hard boss at the end of a scripted sequence is usually bad design (I’m looking at you, Xenogears.)

So how can we make the Baron a badass without actually making the player lose to him? The Baron has an aforementioned SECRET TECHNIQUE OF EVIL. If this move actually had a serious chance of killing the player here, that would be bad. The player shouldn’t lose in situations like this unless they’re being stupid. So what can we do?

1. Baron Nefarious telegraphs his attack. “I’M ABOUT TO HIT YOU WITH MY SUPER EVIL TECHNIQUE!” (Translation: “Defend, stupid!”). The player knows the attack is coming and can take proper precautions.

2. The super evil technique is non-lethal. Maybe it drops Heroy’s HP to 1.

Both of these situations are good, because they create tension and the illusion of danger without actually putting the player in danger. In the first situation, the player will guard. In the second, he will heal himself. If they don’t do those things, they deserve to lose!

Using these techniques, we can have game mechanics enhance the game’s narrative instead of interrupting your game’s flow.

“But Solitayre! Enemies should always be well-crafted encounters designed to challenge your player. Why even play your dumb stupid dumb game otherwise?”

You again. You’re the problem. Yes, you. Go sit in the corner.

Variety is the spice of life.

There are lots of reasons to have weak, throwaway enemies. Not ALL enemies should be like this, probably. But having some variety in the level of difficulty in your enemies is a good thing. And again, one of the reasons is pacing.

The player might not want to have to undergo a hellish trial worthy of being chronicled by Alighieri every time they go into a battle. Sometimes they just want to drop one of their strongest area spells on an enemy group and watch them all drop dead. Or maybe they don’t want to spend five minutes jackhammering the attack key while waiting for the battle to be over. Sometimes they want to be Rambo and just blow everything away. It is okay to let them do this sometimes.

There is a psychological effect behind this, too. If every single enemy in the game advances at the same rate of strength as the player, the player won’t notice much difference in encounters from one area to the next. The player won’t feel like they’re making progress. This can be frustrating. Varying up your encounters can not only break up monotony but give a greater sense of progress as the player occasionally runs into an enemy they can annihilate easily instead of all enemies being of equivalent strength and challenge. There are lots of ways to spread out and pace your encounters. Each area might have a pack of really weak enemies that can be dispatched without effort. There might be groups of enemies designed to be a moderate challenge. There might be a single enemy who is quite powerful. Clever designers can mix and match these creatures to create more interesting encounters.

There is plenty to be gained from varying the difficulty of your encounters, both for the sanity of your players, and for story purposes. Let’s go back to Heroy for a minute. Let’s say Heroy was raised in a remote mountain village where he acquired a reputation for being a badass. This reputation was enough that the king wanted to hire Heroy for some task that starts the plot.

Heroy sets out for the castle, fighting monsters on the way. If these monsters are designed to give Heroy a hard time, I’m going to wonder what it is that makes Heroy so badass. Why is he strong enough get the king’s attention? He’s having trouble fighting rats! If Heroy dispatches the enemies around his starting home village with ease, it makes him seem much more competent. He has already mastered this area’s wildlife and it will feel justified as he moves out into the world and challenges greater threats. There is plenty of time for you to ramp up your difficulty. Don’t feel like you have to balance every encounter be a hassle just because. Do you have a reason for why you want to make everything so hard?

So, where DO you put the hard stuff? The dungeons are the places to put your challenging, thoughtful encounters. And not the first tutorial dungeon, either. That place should be easy, to give the player a sense of mastery for clearing it. If they walk out of the tutorial dungeon beaten to all hell, they’ll feel like they don’t know what they’re doing.

Once the player has played enough of the game to get a sense of how to play, what techniques work, what items are useful, once they’ve had a chance to get their equipment in order, to figure out their party’s strengths and weaknesses, that is when you can start populating your dungeons with your fiendish encounters. The player will walk into a dungeon expecting enemies and bosses, so you can feel free to bring the noise. The player will appreciate that you gave them the opportunity to figure things out before manhandling them, and they’ll approach these new challenges with confidence. Don’t manhandle your player right out of the gate. Nothing is more likely to make someone give up on your gate then a game over in the first twenty minutes.

Don’t waste my time.

This is the golden rule. This is the maxim. You should really, definitely think about this part. Yes, even you.

Don’t waste your player’s time. Twenty years of grind-heavy, repetitive RPGs and MMOs have made it acceptable for games to waste your time. I don’t want to waste my time. Your game shouldn’t make me waste my time.

Every time you make any decision in your game, whether it’s adding a battle or a puzzle or making the player backtrack or anything like that, ask yourself this: Is this adding something to the game or am I just wasting the player’s time? If the answer is the latter, you should probably adjust the sequence. Your game, and its pacing and flow, will be better as a result.

But that’s not all! All kinds of stupid ideas designed only to waste the player’s time have been floating around the game development hivemind in the guise of “stylistic choices.” Here’s a list of some of them and why they’re terrible and you’re terrible if you use them. (And you are.)

1. Slow text speed.

I honestly can’t fathom why anyone ever thought this was a good idea. Somewhere along the line, it even became acceptable artificially insert pauses into your dialogue to draw it out.

Some of us can read fast. You are punishing us for being able to read fast. If you want to break up your dialogue, be willing to go the extra mile and break it up with something besides vacant pauses. Even little things like having the characters move around while talking can make a huge difference!

2. Slow walk speed.

This is a big one. People love to throw around slow walking speeds as some kind of legitimate gameplay mechanism as though it can enhance the game’s setting, mood, tone, or atmosphere. “They need to be walking slow here, so they can appreciate all the work I put into building these maps!” No, if I feel like I want to appreciate your rigorous tileset/light map endeavors, I am free to take my own time through the map if I wish. You forcing me to do so is putting your priorities over the player’s. You could get away with a really slow walking speed if the maps are small and well-constructed enough that I won’t notice (some games have done this!) but if I ever have huge amounts of empty space to traverse you can bet this is the first thing people will notice and complain about.

“But Solitayre, slow walk speed is a legitimate tool that I should be allowed to use for certain purposes! You’re dumb and stupid!”

You’re right. When used properly, slow walk speed CAN be used as a narrative tool. But probably not for the reasons you think it is. The primary use for slow walk speed would be for the purposes of building tension during a certain scene. The heroine is alone in a dark room, and there’s a killer! Slow walk speed would be an excellent choice to increase suspense in this situation. But using it always, on every map, all the time, is not only annoying, it makes the legitimate usages of this technique ineffective.

3. Pointless backtracking.

This is another common way to pad play time, by making the player traverse the same few locales over and over again. If you’re going to make the player backtrack, at least add something novel for the player to do en-route. Are there any new events along the way? Have the player’s abilities allowed for opening new passages or revealing new treasures? Are there any shortcuts that can be opened now? Backtracking is an opportunity for you to toy with the player’s expectations! Just forcing the player to pointlessly replay sections of your game is just boring.

4. Random chance.

This convention has been around pretty much as long as role-playing games have. It’s often an easy way to pad play time. MMOs are full of this. Collect 20 “whatevers” to complete this quest. This item is only dropped by the “whatever man” which has only a 1/20 chance of appearing in a certain area. Also, the “whatever man” only has a 30% chance of dropping the “whatever!” Voila, you’ve instantly wasted three hours of the player’s time. Each time they find one of those vaunted “whatevers” they feel like they’re making progress! But they’re not. You’ve just tricked them into thinking they have. You monster.

This happens in single player games too. Any time you have an xty percent chance to succeed at a given task, whether making a potion, disabling a trap, or opening a lock, you’re really just saying “There’s a chance that doing this was a waste of your time.” This is especially true if failing a task forces them to fight a battle or complete some other task for failing what was essentially a dice roll.

“But SOLITAYRE!”

You again? What now?

“Random chance has been a staple of RPGs for twenty years. It’s dumb and weird that you would think this is bad!”

People used to think slavery was a good idea. Then they realized it was terrible and wrong, and stopped doing it. People are capable of realizing that an idea they thought had merit is actually stupid, and moving past it. This is called “progress.” Saying that something should remain the same because it has always been that way is basically the worst way you could ever frame an argument, because you aren’t appealing to logic or reason. You’re just appealing to the status quo.

I’m not saying that if you like random chance, you support slavery, but I’m not sure how you can sleep at night.

You cannot get there from here.

Ever been wandering around in a game not really knowing what you’re supposed to be doing? There are two things that might have happened here.

1. The designer did a bad job of telling you where you were supposed to go.
2. The designer thought making you wander around and figure out what to do on your own was a good idea.

But it’s not!

It’s your job to tell the player where to go to get to the next part of your epic plot! If the player makes an honest effort but can’t figure it out, that’s not their fault, it’s yours. Let your player know where they’re supposed to go or what they’re supposed to do, or who they have to kill/talk to/both. Any time the player is wandering around bored and not knowing what they’re supposed to do is bad, and you should do everything reasonable to minimize this.

Honestly, I see a lot of developers who seem to expect the onus of understanding their game to be on the player, and any problems they have are because they didn’t understand the author’s intentions. But it isn’t the player’s job to decipher your ideas. It’s your job to make your intentions and ideas clear to the player. If they can’t figure it out, they’re probably not going to like your game, and you won’t have anyone to blame but yourself!

There are lots of reasons someone may or may not like your game. But chances are you are going to think it is your mechanics or your writing that will make or break your game. Pacing might be something that never even crosses your mind. I hope that now, you realize what an important and essential tool this is in your game design arsenal.

Go forth and wield this tool for justice. (source:rpgmaker


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