Pretty much what I wrote many times about “systemic” Vs linear games.

(Dave)
The problem I see is that the “character based” games very quickly wind up running down the same treadmill, not just for the players but for the development team as well. Every new expansion effectively invalidates an equivalent amount of old content, every extension of the level range requires ways be found to reduce the time investment to reach the basline for the new cap. So you don’t move forward in your gameplay, you just replicate it with shinier technology and bigger numbers.

Contrast this with Eve Online: Every bit of content they have ever created is still valid, every bit of gameplay is still accessible, expansions are literally expanding the scope of the game rather than simply changing the scenery. I suspect that I’m going to be using Eve as an example a lot, simply because it’s the first game to break away from the Diku model and succeed in a big way without simply being a casual game writ large.

I was thinking that I didn’t really understand how the first line was linked to the rest (and in fact I was going to cut it from the quote).

Then I thought that maybe it’s tied to the fact that “character based” games are locked only on that kind of “personal progress”, so where the world is just a passive backdrop without any persistence or signification. Fixed, static. Disposable.

Which is why a systemic approach isn’t about another form of character progress, but more about interactive worlds.

Quoting myself:

In a systemic model:
– The players are brought together. The model is represented as a circumference, where the players/dots create groups or “cells” and move within while bouncing one against the other (creating alliances, conflicts, politics etc..). The space belongs to them (known) and is “managed”.

In a linear model:
– The players are spread apart. The model is represented as a vector, where the players are pointed toward an obligatory direction and have a set position that “qualifies” them toward the other players. The space is external, alien (unknown) and only conquered and progressively consumed.

In a systemic model every element has a precise function and is then linked with other elements in a complex relationship. This means that the function is always preserved. In a linear model, instead, the idea of progress means that you leave things behind. You use up. The function of an element is just about leading you to the next.

As Raph would say, those two models aren’t really “alternative”. Since the systemic model could easily contain one of more linear ones.

(Hm. I’m not sure “alternative” is the right word. My brain is fried. I mean “one OR the other, not both”.)

Sometimes I repeat in my mind things I already know for a better (excessive) schematization and simplification. And to find and underline some specific aspects.

Months before Raph published his book about the “Theory of Fun”, I had already figured out the most important point on my very own (precisation: I don’t claim to be smarter. Raph talks in the book about a million of other things. I got one, Raph got the remaining 999.999 that I really could have never hoped to understand and explain so well):

– “Fun” is the result of a learning process. So “learning” is the key.

There are then two possible situations in a game:

1- The game is boring because it is too simple, or repetitive, or doesn’t match the interest of the player.
2- The game is frustrating because it is too complicated (cannot be “read”) or too hard (performance).

“Fun” is essentially a state of equilibre between those two positions.

Game Design is essentially about finding that balance.

A game is a problem to solve. A given situation with its rules that requires a solution.

Playing a game and solving those problems is divided into two moments: acquisition/reading and mastering.

There’s a wall. I need to pass it. I start to poke it.

The first moment about the acquisition/learning is about starting to observe the type of wall. You observe its shape, thickness, height. What you do is about trying to define the type of obstacle starting from what is already part of your experience, so confronting this wall with the wall types you already know. First you look for similarities, then you look for differences. You start to poke it as a form of experimentation, to check consistence, to look for passages. To understand the differences and finally add the new discoveries to your “system of competences”, a pool of knowledge and abilities. So even this fist moment is divided into other two:

1- Use of competences that the player already has.
2- Acquisition of new competences.

The second moment of the learning process is then about the “performance” or mastering. What you do is about acquiring a practice and getting better. Becoming a well-oiled system, being able to react to and identify obstacles more promptly and so on.

This is a basic schematization that can help to understand how games essentially work, but that doesn’t really help to make better games. In the meantime I was thinking that the system I described is not closed at all. And this is definitely important. What I mean is that when a player begins a new game he doesn’t start from a “tabula rasa”. Instead he brings along all the competences that he has developed in previous games. This may be one good reason why games are often derivative.

In fact I’m quite sure that modern FPS are much more complex and “hard” overall than the FPS we had years ago. The “target” of these games (and the majority of games in general) isn’t a noob. But an experienced player that, for example, has already a very good competence about moving in a 3D space using two hands at the same time to use a keyboard and a mouse. It wasn’t easy at all when I moved from Doom to Quake and the new configurations with +mouselook stareted to become popular. It wasn’t even “fun” because I was struggling with the controls instead of enjoying the immersion (non-immersive FPS suck).

Today we see that games that focus on accessibility (like WoW) can be largely successful because they go back to absorb those players that weren’t already part of the sub-culture and sharing its competencies. WoW is laregely derivative, so very familiar for veteran mmorpg players, but at the same time it is built to rely on competencies that are shared by a larger pool of players (“gamers” in general).

So I started to think about derivative games and mechanics, feedback, competences required from other games, subsets, accessibility issues and so on. And there’s a point where this model breaks: the immersion, once again.

The immersion is a way to break out of “games”. Like the debate about “mechanics” and “metaphor”. Think for example if you aggro a monster. The monster start to chase you and you run as fast you can. You could find an house and close yourself inside, trying to block the door while the monster starts to ram it. Or maybe you can try to climb a tree and move out of reach. Or, if the monster is big, trying to move in a point where the forest is more intricate. In a mmorpg you would already know that noone of these are possible. You know that a mob can run right through a tree, you know that terrain doesn’t affect run speed, you know that buildings have no doors, you know that you cannot climb a tree.

The problem is: we can build a game to rely on itself, on its subset of rules that you slowly teach and impose to the player, or draw from previous experience when the game is derivative. But maybe we can also “jump” these specific competences and leverage the audience through immersivity. The immersion could be the very best accessibility key. Free of artificial mechanics that you have to study, free of GUI.

How can you make a game with that approach? Maybe by using game mechanics that only draw from immersive elements. (will return on this. Comments on Lum’s blog, simulation and so on)

I was thinking: is more accessible a mmorpg with the standard aggro mechanics we already know, or one with more complicate animal behaviours but where monster behave and react more realistically?

The point is that current games have become incredibly sophisticated, but they seem to have lost the tie with their very origin. The original myth and culture. The shared values. These games don’t talk anymore about this world we share. They talk about themselves only. In the meantime we have developed so much practice with these artificial, sophisticated worlds that aggro mechanics and whatnot are incredibly familiar and foregone.

You know what’s this process? Games becoming autoreferential. They don’t need anymore to talk about something out of themselves. Because the myth we share is now the myth that these games have built. They are now so complex than their system is autonomous.

But, while doing so, I think these games are also losing contact with a greater public, and with that desire for “something else” that even the “gamers” share. So the possibility to talk and seduce outside their niche (big and growing, but still niche).

What I mean is that there’s now a gap between the fantasy genre and the mmorpg genre. The mmorpg genre was a representation of the fantasy genre. But now they are two different and autonomous systems. With the risk that the fantasy genre will become a subset of the other (movies and books made out of games). And I don’t think I like this scenario.

Vanguard is a perfect example of incredibly sophisticated game built around those concepts that were created right within the genre, instead of outside of it. The most derivative game you can imagine. As Lum said:

various subtle game systems and UI improvements that would only make sense if you were staring at a combat screen forever, such as pre-built combat macros for common tasks, inherent friendly – and enemy – target differentation and the like.

Where’s the immersion?

So, Prey is quite short. Moreover, it has zero replayability.

There’s a long debate taking place in different forums, but those two points seem well recognized and accepted.

The problem about the replayability is due to the design of the game. Prey relies heavily on interesting level design and puzzle-solving. Thanks to the new tricks, that’s the very best part of the game:

sluggo: I think the death walk partially saves Prey, because the combat is so bland and filled with “gotcha!” deaths that having to reload over and over would have made it an annoying, unenjoyable mess. The death walk is basically a license to zoom through the uninspired combat so you can spend more time soaking in the crazy level design.

But after you have completed the game in those eight hours or so, all the fun coming from the puzzles and crazy level design is spoiled. So what’s left for the replayability? The combat. But the combat isn’t so challenging.

—
I have now something to criticize/suggest about the “death walk”, since I believe it would lead to a better game and also to a more fun nightmare/cherokee mode.

The reasoning behind my proposed changes is that the death walk, as it is designed and implemented in the game, removes completely the challenge since it’s exactly like a god mode. You don’t win a combat by fighting well, you win it exclusively through persistence.

The reason why death walk was introduced wasn’t to trivialize the game, though. But to avoid to break the action through reload/saves. And avoid to encourage the player to repeating a fight because it wasn’t done in an optimal way (instead of keep going). In two words: no downtime.

Proposed “death walk” changes

– (Normal difficulty) Instead of just respawning the player, all the monsters spawned and still alive would have their hit points completely restored.
– (Nightmare difficulty) Add stacking power-ups to the monsters (hitpoints or resistence) after each consequent death of the player in a short time span (a minute should be good).

The first change doesn’t break the original mechanic. It just restores the health of the monsters so that you have to actually kill something when you respawn if you want to progress.

The second one instead isn’t as harsh as you may imagine. Not only you would have to kill monsters between each death as in the normal difficulty mode (and that I believe is the BARE MINIMUM for a death mechanic). But you also have to pay attention and try to survive at least one minute after each death so that the monsters don’t get a slight power-up on their hit points (a 10% would be too much?). Maybe with a countdown displayed on screen so that you know exactly how long you have to resist and with the monsters hitpoint buff capping at 70-80% of their orginial hitpoint value.

Showing the countdown and even the hitpoint percent buff of the monsters on screen (Guild Wars-style, like the morale/death modifier appearing in the upper left corner of the screen in that game) would be definitely an immersion breaking element. But it would be limited to the “nightmare” mode, which is only accessible after the first run through the game, so with a definite more “arcade-ish” connotation.

The next possible step would about allowing the player to customize the three values of the nightmare difficulty before starting a game: the duration of the countdown, the mobs hitpoint buff and the hitpoint buff cap. So, for example, I could set the countdown at 1.30 minutes (the time I need to survive after each death to not trigger the mobs hitpoint buff), the hitpoint buff at 15% and the maximum value of the buff at 150% (of the original hitpoint value for that monster type).

I don’t think it’s unreasonable. It just ups the difficulty slightly as a nightmare mode is supposed to. Or not?

It’s something I believe could significantly improve the game, but I fear it wouldn’t be trivial enough to implement to hope in a patch from the developers, nor I think it could be achievable through a mod.

But you cannot stop me from wishing, can you? ;p

P.S.
This idea would also lead to two significant problems. The first is about having to attack regenerated monsters with less and less ammunition, the second is about making boss encounters un-winnable if they regenerate health completely after each player’s death.

Both of these could be easily addressed, though. The first by regenerating some ammo after each death (and also respawning healing sources on a timer), the second by regenerating only a portion of health of a boss.

—
Think about WoW.

It was praised because of the mild death penalty. No xp loss. But the way Prey works it would be like respawning on the place with the hitpoints restored.

Come on, how’s that different from flipping the god mode on? If you like that sort of thing why don’t you just pull down the console and type GOD in every other FPS. You can have a “death walk” in every game.

It’s kind of obvious that “challenge” isn’t a flaw to remove from a game. What was to remove was the *downtime*, not the challenge. Prey’s implementation of the “death walk” removes BOTH.

My idea instead removes the downtime without completely removing the challenge.

A mob spawns and starts to shoot at you? Who cares? You can just sit there and make a face at it. It doesn’t really matter. If you want you can even go around with the pipe wrench and finish the game with just that.

In these kind if games you used to be cautious when you entered a room. You are on your toes. And that IS fun.

At the end a fight is something you need to overcome. If I intend you to prevail on a 1 vs 1 encounter than you have to figure out a way.

For God’s sake, if you remove that, you have NO GAME. It’s just an interactive movie that requires you to press a “NEXT” button.

The current implementation of the “death walk” in Prey doesn’t make a fight *possible*. It makes it trivial. You don’t have to be good at anything at all because the mobs will eventually die.

A game is about a given situation that you need to figure out. Something you learn and then re-apply till you master it. This from Tetris to Pac-man, World of Warcraft or Prey. All games are like that.

The death walk in Prey trivializes too much the combat difficulty because it doesn’t require you to actually learn anything. While the puzzles and environments are fun exactly because they are elements that you cannot skip. If a door is closed you have to figure out how to open it. You HAVE TO do it. You cannot just say, “okay, I pass anyway”. That’s a game. Something that requires from you an active brain usage.

Restoring the health of the mobs who have survived is really a small change, but one would keep the difficulty at least more consistent. Without taking away ANYTHING from the original idea.

—
This is what George Broussard (3DRealms) said about the death walk and its purpose:

George Broussard: Nobody likes dying a lot and losing progress. It’s the thing that makes you stop playing a game and take a break.

People like to say “prey is short” or that they finish it in one sitting. Something to think about is the fact that it did not frustrate them enough to stop playing, and that maybe doing things like adding DeathWalk, while possibly making the game shorter by removing re-playing areas, made the game more enjoyable overall.

His other comments aren’t as smart, though:

You can achieve the same results with lots of quick saves, even during a boss fight. If you quick save every 10 seconds, you will never lose progress in a game.

There is a massive audience of gamers out there that haven’t played FPS games for 10 years. It’s about time we started thinking about them.

All DeathWalk does is keep you from losing progress. It does make the bosses a little easier, but then again, most people are frustrated by really hard or complex bosses.

—
DeathWalk is not God mode at all. It’s simply a persistant quick save. You don’t lose progress. You still have some time penalty for dying (10 seconds or so – more if you try to shoot Wraiths to get full spirit or health).

This is false. If you reload a saved game you do lose progression, but in particular you are bound to your current state. Reloading doesn’t restore your health as the death walk does. At the end you can save and reload all you want, but you still need to fight well if you want to win an encounter.

This is not the case in Prey, and is the only reason why I proposed those changes.

Well, Prey was designed to be approachable to more than just core FPS players. That’s why it has dynamic difficulty and DeathWalk. In hindsight, we should have allowed a slider to core players could make the dynamic difficulty system harder. That was an oversight.

But still, the goal was to have everyone be able to finish the game. The worst thing you can do is make a game and people stop 50% through it. I’d rather more people finish, than not, and error on being too easy, than too hard.

Most people play games to see and do cool things, and not be challenged at a very high level, by combat.

I wonder if it’s possible for me to play a game without having gripes about its design and/or getting ideas that I think would made it much more fun (and consequently runing my fun in the actual game since I keep thinking at the better version that I will be never able to play).

This is something that has always been in my wishlist. Try to design the mobs in a game as creatures, with a background, specific behaviour and so on.

What I don’t like is having one pattern only. Where aggressive mobs pretty much react only to the player’s level and range. I always though that in a game the mobs shouldn’t be just generic entities with different statistics. Differentiated not only by a model, a texture and different attacks, but also by different behaviours.

Here you can see how this way of thinking (because it’s really about an overall approach to a genre) is linked to all the critics I made against the linear content progression typical of level based games. Instead of “killing the bigger foozle” as you progress, you wouldn’t just deal with stronger mobs, but you would have to learn and recognize their different behavious. Something that, even in this case, is much more “systemic” than the linear progression. Less forced in a obligatory sequence and MUCH more appropriate to a “world”, where different creatures have their own individuality and aren’t exclusively functional to a power progression.

A few games tried to go in that direction, but without much success. Ryzom has creatures that come to watch you and even migrate in packs from zone to zone. SWG also had creatures that approached you. But what really misses is the variation. The possibility of reaction to a number of different variables, both coming from the player and the environment. So that the concrete gameplay will be then much less predictable. And also much more interesting to discover and learn.

It’s also again not a wish for complex, reactive AI systems. I repeated in the past that advanced AI isn’t something that these type of games should waste lots of resources on. Both Dave Rickey and Raph Koster are strongly against me on this front. But I continue to think that we only need some more complexity, but not necessarily reactive AI, with the hope that it would help to auto-generate content. I have a desire for identity and specificity, but not automation. I would just like to see worlds that are more interesting to explore, more immersive, interactive. Rich.

Less predictable. Feeling not all coming from the exact same mold. But in THIS genre. Not in another. A fantasy world, still, but seen from a new point of view that would make it feel as a totally new experience. Standing out between the rest.

It’s an approach that, despite applied to a similar genre and world, would be the exact opposite of WoW and all the other similar games. Instead of simplifying and reducing everything to the essential, the goal would be about delving, adding details. Rediscovering aspects of this genre that have been purged. Similarly to how Diablo “boxed” the RPG genre, making it lose a lot of unique qualities.

We are used to mosters that simply aggro at a range. It’s even incredibly annoying if you are traveling and start aggroing all sort of critters that in a few cases can even stun and snare you. What if instead the creature would start growling if you walked too close? What if some creatures could be attracted by a light, or scared by it? Or attacking only to defend their lair? What if some wolves would attack you only if you were alone, while runinng away if you moved with a party? What if they would attack you only when they feel the smell of your food? What if the game could simulate the mechanics of a real hunt?

With zones designed to be more organic. Mobs with realistic loot.

That’s the approach I’d like to see. Richer, immersive worlds. Without the need to move away from the fantasy genre to do something different.

(Then if you tell me that is already daunting enough for the servers to check aggro ranges and pathing without adding more variables, okay. Let’s make treadmills all life long… *sigh*)

Prey is officially out and I had to struggle with Triton (digital download) but I finally managed to make it work, even if there are still some problems with that client. For me, still thousands times better than retail since I hate translated games over here and ordering a copy at release from Play.com would always mean having to wait about a week for the copy to be delivered.

So, despite the flaws, the digital download will be always my choice. And not only. If a game is available on digital download it is also more likely that I decide to purchase it.

There are three basic advantages:
– Being able to play right the minute the game is released. Sometimes with the possibility to preload
– Avoid to wait about one week for the delivery, and/or having to pay for the shipment (which can be more expensive than the game itself)
– Can pick the language/version you want

With the game out the most heated debate everywhere is about how long it is and if it’s worth the price. As always the playtime varies considerably, but most people agree clocking it at about 10 scarce hours. Some people finished it in around seven, some even less than five. The demo with the first five levels was about one hour of play. In my first run I spent there more than two hours, while in a second, sperimental run I finished it in less than half an hour, also considering all the narrated parts that slow you down quite a bit. So you can imagine how the playtime can vary so much.

On Q23 this spawned a discussion about “quantity” and “quality”. My opinion is that, in particular in this kind of FPS, quality and quantity are deeply interconnected.

—
The point is that a “quality” FPS is about offering a fun experience through visceral, frenetic combat. Quality and quantity, with this kind of games, are EXTREMELY interconnected.

That “FEAR” that people praise was almost ALL filler content. It looks all made with the same art assets with nearly zero “level design”. You exit a room and enter another that it’s exactly the same.

But the game was fun, supposedly even long.

So the point is that the quality of the FPS also leads to quantity. FEAR had an AI system so satisfying that it didn’t need much else to entertain for a good period of time. Even if the locations finish to be all the same, the combat is so involving that people do not care.

What matters is the support for fun variations IN the gameplay. If the gameplay is complex and deep enough, then it will be easier to make a long game that doesn’t feel just redundant.

Now this thread is about Prey. Prey, beside setting and story, is about the introduction of new interesting mechanics, such as wall walking, gravity flipping and portal technology.

So, guess what? This technology was thought and introduced for ONE REASON: add variations.

See? See how the discussion about quality and quantity is so deeply interconnected, in particular when Prey is the subject?

The point is: Prey introduces a technology so powerful that you can do a WHOLE LOT with it without making the game feel repetitive. It’s a support for variation. It’s an “enabler” for content. Good, fun content is only possible when in the game the technology has built-in support for a good variation. It is ALL about that.

That’s what is relevant discussing. If Prey is too short it will be disappointing not because of “pacing”. But because the game had the support for a long and involving game. They have the right resources.

And it is even more interesting discussing how strong is the technology behind. Because while the implementation of the new possibilities seems solid and powerful, I still didn’t see ANY MONSTER being aware of it. Monsters cannot use gravity flipping because they just die, monsters have limited movement, monsters don’t walk in/out wall walking pads, monsters seem to use portals only when scripted.

Now take these limits. Work on the technology so that the AI makes those mobs use seamlessly those possibilities like a player. Voila.

The game can easily now double its length because there’s now support for a lot more FUN variations.

And that’s, really, the point.

—
That’s a premise to what I wanted to say. I’ve already written my opinion about the demo and all the details about the innovative ideas it introduces (links here). I think I was right on those points but there’s to consider the potential behind those ideas and see if the implementation betrayed them or not. As I said it’s all about having support for variation. A FPS is a game that relies heavily on the technology because (before Half-Life) the game was all about the mechanics and possible variations. So the engine was directly an “enabler” for content.

The basic point is that the design is completely powerless if the engine doesn’t support interesting patterns. So this is why with this kind of games there’s always a very strong tie between abstract game design and the technical realization. In fact the technical realization IS the game design of the game. Technical execution above all, sophisticated graphic engines. In particular in a game like Prey where it is the use of the new possibilities to make the game stand out among the competition.

While I’m still not very far from the point where the demo ends, I was still able to recognize some limits and some design choices that I think do not let the game express itself fully.

The problem about the game design is probably the one that could have been fixed easily and it’s about the “death walk”. Tom Chick describes it best, so I’ll quote:

Prey manages to keep moving at a steady clip. It helps that you never had to save or reload, thanks to a gimmick called “deathwalking,” which is apparently the Cherokee ability to die, visit limbo for about 10 seconds, and then just pick up where you left off. And it actually works pretty well. Prey has its share of boss fights, most of them clustered unceremoniously at the end, and deathwalking is a great way to circumvent the hassle of getting stuck at a really hard part. Plug away long enough at any fight in Prey, and you’re going to prevail.

The design goal behind this idea was about preserving the “flow” that was usually broken by encouraging the players to save/reload often. In some cases we have seen games with no saves and just checkpoints for similar reasons, but that choice has always been criticized. Prey has a much better solution since now the action never breaks or stops and you play from the beginning to the end without having to worry about repeating a fight just because you haven’t executed it in a optimal way. Similarly to a mmorpg, you are projected forward and the mistakes aren’t something that forces a repetition, but are instead incorporated in the gameplay. In a word: no downtime.

That solution has a problem, though. The “death walk” goes very close to a god mode. Dying has absolutely no penalty and you can keep respawning as many times you want. It is quite obvious that, while the action is continue, the combat encounters are trivialized since you aren’t required to fight well or “fear” anything. But just to persist. There’s nothing to “win” or solve, which makes the game feel a bit cheap.

My opinion is that this mechanic could have been implemented better, and it could have even helped to make the game last a bit longer, since its scarce duraction is also due to the way the death was handled. Without anything holding you back, the game is even too much straightforward. My idea is how I actually expected the system to work.

Proposed “death walk” changes

– (Normal difficulty) Instead of just respawning the player, all the monsters spawned and still alive would have their hit points completely restored.
– (Nightmare difficulty) Add consequent power-ups to the monsters (hitpoints or resistence) after each consequent death of the player in a short time span (a minute should be good).

This is a simple change that wouldn’t disrupt the original idea (not breaking the action), but that would still require some attention during combat, because if you don’t kill the monsters then you’ll be back with them fully healed (at standard difficulty), or even stronger (at “nightmare”). Combat, and then more combat without downtime. But combat that would be meaninful, instead of just redundant.

Sadly that’s not the way Prey works and it’s one element that ruins the game for me. The other solution wouldn’t have been much harder to implement and it would also have given the “nighmare” difficulty a lot more appeal. As it is currently in the game the only difference is that there is no healing around the levels and that the monsters do more damage when they hit you. Which doesn’t really add anything particularly interesting or fun.

That’s the first problem. The second problem is instead a structural one and that is about the interdependence between technology and design I pointed out above. So it’s a significant limit in the game that cannot be easily solved.

While the new gimmicks suck as the dimensional portals, wall walking and gravity flipping are interesting *for the player*, I was disappointed to discover that the monsters are completely “blind” about them. In the cases they use them actively it seems just as result of a script and not of a seamless, spontaneous interaction.

In particular I observed that monsters cannot see you through a portal and they usually just keep shooting into it at the direction you entered it. So if you can put a portal between you and them you can exploit this by shooting at the right angle without getting hit back.

Now join these observations with what I wrote above and you can arrive at the conclusion. Those new mechanics that Prey introduces are definitely interesting (old post) but they still have to face the limit of the lack of real interaction. They are passive objects because the monsters still “understand” only a very simple, flat space. So still suck to a 3D trick as the original engine that powered Duke Nukem 3D. In my review of the demo I complained about the staticity of the mosters and I fear that was the obligatory solution they had to made to avoid those mosters to get stuck in odd behavious due to the new elements that Prey has and that the monsters still do not understand.

That limit I described about the monsters being “blind” against a portal is more significant than how it appears since it basically forbids a level designer to use two-ways portals in a combat situation. Exactly when they could offer fun and interesting variations in the game.

So all those ideas are meant to add variations, but while the team did a great work with the rendering engine to make all that possible, they still hit against the wall of the monster AI. Because it is probably too hard at this point to “teach” the AI how to use those devices and understand a different kind of space. So cutting consistently on their real potential and “faking” the gameplay through the smart use of scripting.

Prey is a wonderful game, but at the same time it exposed some weaknesses that, when solved, will surely power the games of tomorrow.

Just an observation I made on Q23 on a thread discussing the recently released Titan’s Quest along with the unavoidable comparisons with Diablo 2. The thread is particularly interesting because one of the game designers is there discussing and explaining how they arrived at some of the solutions, also taking suggestions and critics (which is also a good demonstration of what I wrote here).

Anyway, beside the loot system and the mood/setting of Diablo 2 (graphic, animations, sounds effects and all), what really made it “fun” was the visceral gameplay. It was rather fast paced and action packed, and you got to fight droves of monsters all at once, often mixed types. To the point that most gameplay is about pure slaughter and “crowd control”.

And while other elements are kind of obvious and universally recognized, it’s the crowd control that is one strong element. I compare it to Qix, that classic game where you need to draw and close rectangular areas in a finite space till you reached a certain percent of completition.

In those massive battles in D2 you didn’t just had to click on every monster. In fact the important mechanic, the “fun” one, wasn’t clicking quickly, but it was the movement. In this game you had to constantly move on the screen, trying to “circumnavigate” the monsters to prevent them to surround you and trap you without a possibility to escape. D2 was ALL about movement. Territorial. The moment where you were trapped and couldn’t move anymore, you were dead.

Which is also (not a case) a basic gameplay pattern used in God of War, another game not short on “fun”.

I write this also because this draws a sharp line between those games and that kind of “visceral” gameplay patterns, and mmorpgs. In mmorpgs “movement” is often irrelevant. It can have a role in the group-play but it isn’t really used for what it is. In a mmorpg you cannot try to circumnavigate the monsters or use terrain and distance to your own advantage. It’s just not something part of the combat mechanics. It’s completely missing. If you are fighting against a group of monsters you cannot move around them so that you can manage to hit and get hit just by only one of them, because “distancing” is not an available mechanic (if not when you are fleeing) and with no collision detection all the mosters will stack one on top of the other.

Another proof of what I’m saying: I think in Diablo 2 most of the mosters moved *slower* than you. Again to let you exercize your movement superiority. If you didn’t have the possibility to move “faster”, then the circumnavigating patterns and “space managment” (or how the hell you want to call it) couldn’t have been possible.

In a mmorpg all that is missing. Everything is “intangible”. You swing your weapon at the air, you don’t see your enemy recoil, you cannot “reach and touch”, you cannot push. There is no contact. And, in the end, there is no space. And “space” is an extremely strong element of our reality and perception, so obligatory for a game to be “fun”.

Remember that it was not the clickfest to be fun in D2. And that mmorpgs are “not so fun” because they are “nerfed” on some founding values.

(then it would be interesting to discuss possible solutions to minimize that innate limit, since the connection latency will always prevent a direct fix)