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列举游戏设计需回避的错误做法(15)

发布时间:2015-12-11 17:54:31 Tags:,,,,

作者:Ernest Adams

我为这一系列文章供稿到了现在。今年一些读者提供了新的话题,而我也通过读者的来信得到了些素材。以下是十个极糟糕的游戏设计错误:

在阅读时文本突然消失

如果游戏在载入过程中给你一些需要阅读的文字,那就应当给出足够的时间来确保你真的读完了。Quentin Thomas 写到:

我是那种欣赏游戏故事的玩家。听别人说《黑暗之魂》有着很棒的剧情,主角和巨兽战斗,我知道难逃一死,但一如既往为其热血沸腾……即便这是毫无希望的。角色挂掉时候游戏转到载入界面,回到最后一次的存档点。在载入页面的时候,会有一个道具图标出现在左上角,配上7、8句话。我寻思“噢,我终于能看一眼玩家口耳相传《黑暗之魂》里面的传说了”因此我开始看第一句话,可它毫无警告的突然切回到了游戏界面。你难道不能让我在准备回到游戏的时候按下X键吗?你指望我在不到5秒的时间内读完7、8句话?真是个糟糕的设定!

我让Quentin做些更加深入的调查,他发现这种情况不会出现在主机上,而是发生于在载入速度很快的高配电脑上。这本质上是列举游戏设计需回避的错误做法(2)——游戏运行过快这种情况下的必然结果。设计师未经确认,假定计算机能放慢速度让玩家读完全部的内容。可如果情况有些出入,那他就算是运气不佳。但是无论如何,这是一个可以改进的问题。你知道,视力不佳或者阅读能力差的玩家总是需要慢慢阅读。让他们来决定什么时候继续,而不是基于你的CPU的时钟速度。

妨碍玩家的指令

玩家的输入设备依靠类比摇杆;这是真实世界中玩家的移动转换到游戏世界的途径。在正当的情况下困难的控制是能够允许的。我清晰的回忆起在《Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer》中(游戏邦注:1987年EA发行的飞行模拟游戏), 传言索普维斯“骆驼”战斗机像野兽一样难于驾驭——真实生活也是如此,直到你学会如何处理它。但是随意打断玩家的控制并不好。James Youngman写下了这个例子:

Earthbound(from ledanji)

Earthbound(from ledanji)

《地球冒险》中包含一种可以在玩家角色头上生成蘑菇的敌人。在战斗中,这不算什么,可当玩家回到地图上,他们的方向指令会周期性地翻转90,直到玩家能够移除这一状态前D-pad控制器都是颠倒的。玩家能够得到的咒语和道具做不了什么;他们必须找到城镇医院上的特定NPC并与其谈话,完成一项复杂、缺少提示又时而改变移动指令的任务。

在玩家不允许的情况下改变控制等同于破坏游戏本身;强迫玩家探索并通过不寻常路线来解决破坏性的问题,迫使玩家在推进游戏和回到能够得到治疗的慢慢长路中进行选择,面对着相同的地牢,面对能产生相同效果的敌人,所有的一切需重头再来。

妨碍玩家的指令打破了玩家的沉浸感,也产生了一种廉价的,恼人的挑战,而且和游戏本身的重点无关。所以别这么做。

某些角色类型不能完成游戏

Petra Rudolf的解释:

回想过去,我想用一个不寻常的角色通关《无冬之夜》的“幽城魔影”附加项,即一个游吟诗人/刺客。我早就知道用法师/战士就很容易通关,盗贼或者是牧师这类的(角色)就难些,要是德鲁伊/游吟诗人这类D&D中的支援型角色就更糟糕了,他们没有战士为其斩杀敌人就完全不能自理。依靠攻略,我完成了附加项的一半,之后就由于没机会升级(没剩余任务)或者转职(游戏邦注:即改变战术)而卡关了。

现在,你可能会认为玩家大可选择用穿着厚甲的战士过版,她值得拥有自己得到的;但RPG游戏被认为是英雄主义的幻想,这就意味着玩家无论选择什么类型的角色都能够通关。如果游戏提供的角色作为主角在单机游戏中不能通关,那这个角色就不应该被设立为主角。

破坏趣味性的逼真性

本专栏的长期读者都知道,我是模拟游戏的忠实粉丝,或至少需要某种精确度以维持一个幻想。为《疯狂橄榄球》系列工作6年,对我们来说逼真性是必要的,因为玩家会将游戏中和球场上发生的事经行对比。但也有可能做得过火,特别是影响了趣味性的情况下。Mikhail Merkuryev指出,虽然真实的卡丁车没有后视镜或倒档,但在游戏中应该有。在现实世界中,赛道裁判可以用手向后推卡丁车,驾驶员也可以回头看看身后。但在游戏没有赛道裁判,当你回头看时,你只会看到自己的房间。这是在一个适当的情况下添加的必要功能,这也是真正的车辆并没有的功能。

别做一个复制真实去破坏趣味的坏人。

滥用快速反应事件

一般来说对于快速反应事件总有争论——把一个按键怼烂真的有益于游戏的互动性吗?这的确不是一个有趣的选择。我并不是宣称所有的快速反应事件都是糟糕的设计,因为我认为它可以置于合适的情境和剧情线下,但是的确有一些是毫无意义的。Robert Doughty写到:

我认为快速反应事件被慷慨的滥用于玩家没有直接控制的情况下,例如过场动画和电影。最明显的例子就是《生化危机》系列的5、6代。这种滥用的问题在于让人感觉很勉强,更重要的是在过场动画时它打扰人的心思,将玩家从剧情和精彩片段剥开。我猜测这种机械性的使用只是附加于游戏的一小(或者是无关紧要的)部分,为的是在换幕时有些事情做,可却违背了给玩家小憩的机会这一要点。

没有移动体验的移动游戏

以下是Garrick Williams提到的另一个关于输入设备的情况:

我认为有些掌机游戏设计师忘了他们的游戏是面向便携设备的。

《塞尔达传说:幻影沙漏》中有一个对着DS麦克风设备大吼大叫来继续游戏的桥段。今时今日,便携游戏系统意味着允许玩家在走路,看病,搭公交,或者在饭店等上餐前进行娱乐。可设计师却让我在公共场所毫无防备的大喊大叫。也许这对设计师来说很有趣,但对于众目睽睽之下出丑或是退出游戏二选其一的玩家来说并不是这样。

Kid Icarus:哗众取宠的操控方式使得玩家不可能在玩游戏的时候,保持对3DS的控制,这便等于强迫你将便携的游戏系统搁在桌子上或使用不适合携带的装备。

这种向麦克风大吼大叫的噱头十分恼人,即使是在你家里的个人空间;而在公共场所,这又变成彻头彻尾的反社会行为——公共场所是很多人玩便携游戏机的地方。而如果你带着掌机却又不能玩?这会多奇怪!

指使玩家赢取(或是购买)体面的用户界面

新兴的盈利方式导致了各种各样的滥用行为,但这一条对我来说是新鲜的。Jon Gaull 写到:

我讨厌一个有着蹩脚UI的游戏让我做一些普通的事,他让我三个月达到20级时解锁道具,来提供更好的任务界面。

我的例子来源于《后院怪物》(一个塔防游戏)。在基地工作和调整布局是一个玩家每次访问游戏的内容。大多数玩家每天会访问游戏3至5次!

在《后院怪物》中,他们让你点击一个建筑,然后点击移动按钮,拖动它到你想落脚的位置,然后再次点击下降。如果游戏进程中有道具挡在路上,那就以相同的方式移走道具,再继续刚才的进程。特别是当你拥有超过一百个小小的防御墙包围住基地,异常紧密地挤满了你所有重要的防御结构时,刚才的事便会非常让人恼火。重新布置一个基地可能又要花好几个小时。

幸运的是,开发者有一个解决这个问题的方法。不幸的是,这是一个昂贵的建筑,你得玩一个月才能解锁。然后,一旦你解锁了,你还得收集资源才能使用它,并以同样拖沓的方式放置建筑!

[昵称已删除]认为应只允许愿意付费的玩家摆脱蹩脚的UI!

我见过游戏让你慢慢地做些重要的事,而在以后获得一个更高效的方式——但这通常只是在教程中向你展示游戏的运作。一个人性化的用户界面不是一个奖励或者一个成就,它应该是正当的,绝不能再强迫玩家进行额外购买!

再谈一谈社交游戏拖延时间的问题……

为了不花钱而等待

放眼时间并不长远的《地下城守护者》移动版,也被叫做“Dungeon Sleeper”。这种可怕的游戏设计的失败酒不用多说。(游戏邦注:早期的PC版本为建造与掠夺资源的指令设计了数分钟的完成时间,为游戏提供了良好的节奏;而2013年末EA上架的IOS版本,过分延长了这一过程的时间。例如搜集金矿需要数小时等待,而跳过等待需使用现金购买,这与原作的快节奏大相径庭。)虽然这不一定是最糟糕的例子,但却绝对是最臭名昭著的。

不会重复指示的NPC

好吧,该死。我到处翻遍Generic Mentor告诉我要找的Magic Thingy,可哪里都没有。也许我在他指引的话中错过了什么。我回去问他。噢,可他突然再也不想和我说话了。

Michael Brandse写到:在《塞尔达传说:黎明公主》中一开始有一个NPC会告诉你目的地的下一步要去哪。但是,如果你第二次问他,他就只愿意说一些和自己相关的琐事。无论你问他多少次,都不愿意重复之前说的话。

我应该记笔记吗?还是把屏幕截下来?如果NPC自己不愿意重复,那我手头的任务至少应该有个记事本或者其他可用的方式。

惩罚好奇心

根据某些东方传统,除了有必要的事,其它最好不要做,因为我们在世界中的所作所为,就像将一颗石头扔进池塘,没人知道涟漪会在哪里平静下来。

可是游戏不会坚持这一原则。默认玩家的行为就是行动,而不是为了避免行动。玩家玩的是探索与冒险。如果你在游戏中放一个红色的按钮,玩家就会按它,即使游戏明确地告诉他不可以。这是一种被称为“契诃夫之枪”的戏剧原则:“如果在第一章中你在墙上挂着把手枪,之后就要用它开火,否则别把它放在那。”Peter Silk写到:

玩家不应该仅仅因为好奇心而受到惩罚,除非这种好奇行为已经清楚的挂上了危险的标签。(也许在药水上画上骷髅头和两根交叉的骨头并不是好主意。)

我已经在早期的话题中抱怨过没有警告的立即死亡:“你在死前有30秒的时间找出过关方法”便和这个看法有关,如果你设计了一个洞穴,玩家自然会走进去—-即使这里面有龙。如果你不想让玩家做某些事,那就别诱导他们这么做。当然,把危险放在游戏中是可以的,但前提是这必须是能够克服的障碍,玩家(角色)的死亡应该是可避免的失败导致的,而不是作为对探索或好奇的惩罚。

结论

去年,受益于Ian Schreiber的提醒“好东西都要钱”这一点,我为数据库增加了一个新的类别,即糟糕的商业模式和盈利方式“为了不花钱的等待”显然是另一个例子,我也相信我们一定会发现更多错误的做法。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

I took a break from The Designer’s Notebook during 2014; I haven’t published anything since last year’s Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! XIV column. There were a lot of distractions this year, particularly “GamerGate,” which turned out to be the most irritating waste of our time since Jack Thompson’s efforts to censor video games. However, I couldn’t possibly miss the annual No Twinkie column! I brought the No Twinkie Database up to date, several people have suggested new Twinkie Denial Conditions during the year, and I’ve also trawled through old correspondence for a few more. Herewith, ten egregious game design errors:

Text that Vanishes While You’re Reading

If a game gives you something to read while the game is loading, it needs to give you enough time to actually read it. Quentin Thomas wrote:

I’m the kind of gamer who appreciates a good story in games. I heard through the grapevine that Dark Souls has a pretty good lore. So the guy’s fighting this huge gargoyle and I know he’s going to die but I’m rooting for him… to no avail. He dies and the game goes to a loading screen, bringing him to the last checkpoint. While he’s on this loading screen, there’s a item in the upper left corner with about 7-8 sentences.

I go “Oh goody, time for some of that Dark Souls lore I heard so much about.”

So I start reading the first sentence and it just abruptly cuts back to the gameplay without warning.

You couldn’t let me hit the X button myself when I was ready to go back to gameplay? 7-8 sentences and you expect me to read them all within 5 seconds?

BAD GAME DESIGNER! NO TWINKIE!

I asked Quentin to do a little further investigation, and he discovered that this doesn’t happen on consoles, only on high-end PCs where the loading is very fast. This is essentially a corollary to one of the oldest Twinkie Denial Conditions, Games That Run Too Fast. The designers assumed, without checking, that the machine would be slow enough to let the player read the whole thing. If it’s not, he’s out of luck. But in any case, this is a usability error. For all you know, the player has low vision or dyslexia and has to read slowly. Let him decide when he’s ready to go on, not your CPU’s clock speed.

Disrupting the Player’s Inputs

The player’s input devices lie on the boundary of the magic circle; they are where real-world player movements get turned into game-world actions. It’s OK for these controls to be difficult under the right circumstances. I well remember discovering, all the way back in Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer, that the storied Sopwith Camel was a beast to control — as indeed it was in real life, until you learned how to handle it. But arbitrarily disrupting the player’s controls is not cool. James Youngman writes with an example:

The game Earthbound contains enemies who can cause a mushroom to grow on the player character’s head. During battle, this does nothing, but once the player is back in the field, their directional input will periodically rotate itself 90 degrees, circling the D-pad until the player can remove the status. The spells and items available to the player cannot achieve this; the player must find a speak to a particular NPC at the town’s hospital, a task complicated by the lack of hinting and by the regularly changing movement controls.

Changing the player’s controls without their permission is disruptive in and of itself; forcing them to discover and navigate to rare locations to stop the disruption exacerbates the issue, forcing the player to chose between progressing or making the long walk back to the last place they can get healed, just to face the same dungeon, with the same status-effect casting enemy, all over again.

Disrupting the player’s inputs destroys immersion and creates a cheap, frustrating challenge that is unrelated to the game’s actual point. Don’t do it.

Character Classes That Can’t Finish the Game

Here’s one that’s completely self-explanatory from Petra Rudolf:

Back in the old times, I wanted to play Neverwinter Nights with the Underdark add-on with an unusual character, a bard/assassin. I knew already that it was easy to beat the game with any kind of mage or fighter, harder with a rogue or priest kind of class, and even worse with the standard D&D support classes like druid and bard, who cannot stand on their own legs without a fighter to slay things for them. Thanks to followers, I made it through about half of the add-on, and then was stuck without a possibility to level up (no other quests left) or to change my tactics.

Of course this could be seen as a part of bad balancing, yet it has an obvious reason: support characters can’t fight alone. Bad game designer, leave them out of the game or change the whole class.

Now, you could argue that if a player chooses to fight tanks with a jeep, she deserves what she gets; but RPGs are supposed to be heroic fantasy, and that means they’re supposed to be winnable with whatever kind of character the player starts with. If it’s completely impossible to play through a single-player game with a given character class as the protagonist, that class should not be available to be a protagonist.

Fun-Destroying Verisimilitude

Longtime readers of this column will know that I’m generally a fan of verisimilitude, or at least a level of accuracy sufficient to sustain a fantasy. Working for six years on Madden NFL, it was imperative, because our players were comparing what happened in our game to what happens on the field. But it’s possible to overdo it, especially if the effect is to harm the fun. Mikhail Merkuryev pointed out that although real-world kart racers have no mirrors or reverse gear, they should have them in video games. In the real world, a track marshal can push a kart backwards by hand, and the driver can turn his head to look behind him. But in video games there are no track marshals, and if you turn your head, you’re just going to see your living room. This is a case where it’s appropriate to add necessary features that the real vehicles don’t have.

Don’t be a slave to reproducing the real world to the point that you harm the fun.

“Filler” Quick Time Events

There’s a lot of debate about Quick Time Events generally — does mashing a single button just to advance a scene really constitute interactivity? It’s certainly not making an interesting choice. I’m not ready to declare all Quick Time Events to be Twinkie Denial Conditions, because I think they can be made to fit a situation and storyline appropriately, but certainly some of them are pointless. Robert Doughty writes,

I think Quick Time Events are used a little too liberally to fill in any part of a game that the player isn’t in direct control of, such as during cutscenes and cinematics. Biggest examples of this are in Resident Evil 5 and 6. The problem with this use is that it feels very tacked on, and more importantly it detracts from the action/events of the cutscene, prying the player from something that was storyboarded out and designed to look fantastic. I guess this kind of applies to any use of a mechanic that is just tacked on to cover a small (possibly inconsequential) part of a game, just so you have something during that section, violating that key thing of giving the player a breather.

Certainly if you have a fantastic movie or some other kind of narrative content, there’s no point in screwing it up with unnecessary Quick Time Events just to create some meaningless interactivity. Games are not supposed to be movies, but cinematics are a legitimate feature at times, and there’s no point in ruining a good one. Just let the player enjoy it.

Non-Portable Experiences for Portable Games

Here’s another one about input devices from Garrick Williams:

I think some handheld game designers forget that their game is meant for portable devices.

Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has a part where you’re unable to continue unless you scream into the Nintendo DS’s microphone at the top of your lungs. Now, portable gaming systems are meant to allow a player to play games while on the go, at the doctor’s office, on the bus, or in a restaurant waiting for food. Yet the game designers expect me to randomly scream my lungs out in public. It may be amusing to the designer, but not to the player who has to decide between publicly humiliating themselves or quit playing the game until they get home.

Kid Icarus: Uprising intentionally had controls that made it impossible/uncomfortable to play the game and hold the 3DS at the same time, forcing you to lay the game system on a table and/or use a peripheral that doesn’t fit well in your pocket.

The scream-at-the-microphone gimmick is annoying even in the privacy of your own home; it becomes downright anti-social when it’s required in public — which is where a lot of portable games are played. And a portable game that can’t be played while you’re carrying the device? That’s just nutty.

Making the Player Earn (or Pay For) A Decent User Interface

Our new approaches to monetization have led to all sorts of abusive practices, but this one was new to me. Jon Gaull writes,

I hate when a game has crappy UI for letting me do something common and they make me work for 3 months to hit level 20 when I can unlock that item that gives me a better UI for the task.

My example comes from Backyard Monsters [a tower defense game]. Working on her base and tweaking the layout is something a player does every time she visits the game. Most players visit the game 3-5 times a day!

In Backyard Monsters they make you click a building, then click the move button, drag it to the position you want to place it, and then click again to drop it. If something is in the way you need to go through that same process with the impeding item first, then place the item you wanted to place to begin with. It’s incredibly annoying when you could have over a hundred tiny little defensive walls surrounding your base, which is very tightly packed full of all your important defensive structures. Rearranging a base can literally take hours.

Fortunately, the developer has a solution to this problem. Unfortunately it’s an expensive building you don’t unlock until you’ve been playing the game for a month. Then, once you’ve unlocked, collected the resources, and finally placed the building you have to go through the silly social games time delay before you can even use it!

[Name deleted] believes we should allow only players willing to pay to have a way to circumnavigate our crappy UI!

I’ve seen games where you learn to do something rather slowly and inefficiently at first, and then get a better way to do it later on – but this is usually just in the tutorial, to show you how things work. A decent UI is not a reward or an achievement, it’s a right, and it’s absolutely not something the player should have to pay extra for!

Speaking of the silly social games time delay…

Free-to-Wait

Look no farther than Dungeon Keeper for mobile phones, also known colloquially as Dungeon Sleeper. No more need be said about this dire game design failure. Not necessarily the worst case, but certainly the most infamous.

NPCs Who Won’t Repeat Instructions

Well, darn. I’ve looked all over the place for the Magic Thingy that my Generic Mentor Character told me I had to go find, and I can’t see it anywhere. Maybe I missed something in his instructions. I’ll go back and ask him. Oh. Suddenly he doesn’t want to talk to me any more.

Michael Brandse wrote: “In Zelda Twilight Princess there was a NPC in the beginning who said where to go next to your next destination. But, if you asked him a second time, he would only say some useless things about himself. He would not repeat what he said before, no matter how many times you would ask him again.”

Am I supposed to take notes? Screen captures? If the NPC won’t repeat himself, then my current quest should at least be recorded in a diary or available by some other means.

Punishing Curiosity

According to some Eastern religions, it is best to refrain from all actions except those that are necessary, for by acting we throw a cause of things into the world like a stone into a pond, and no one can tell where the ripples might end up.

No video game ever made adheres to this principle. The default player behavior in a video game is to act, not to refrain from acting. Players play to explore, to have adventures, to do things. If you put a big red button in the game, the player will press it, and she will press it even if she is told explicitly not to. It’s a natural extension of the dramatic principle of Chekhov’s Gun: “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” Peter Silk writes:

Players shouldn’t be unduly punished for mere curiosity, except when such curiosity has been clearly labelled as dangerous (maybe it’s not a good idea to consume the potion with the skull and crossbones on it).

I’ve already complained about instant death with no warning in an earlier No Twinkie column: “You have 30 seconds to figure out this level before you die.” This one is related. If you make a cave, it is normal and natural for the player to enter it — even if it contains a dragon. If you don’t want the player to do something, then don’t tempt them to do it. Of course it’s OK to put dangers in a game, obstacles that must be overcome, but player death should occur as a result of avoidable failure, not as an arbitrary punishment for exploring or curiosity.

Conclusion

Last year, thanks to Ian Schreiber’s suggestion “Hiding All Your Best Content Behind a Paywall,” I added a new category to the No Twinkie Database, Bad Business Models or Monetization Schemes. Free-to-Wait is obviously another one, and I’m sure we will uncover many more. If you have suggestions, please feel free to send them, as always, to notwinkie@designersnotebook.com. Happy Solstice!(source:Gamasutra

 


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