Having been a small part of the efforts to help bring Project M to life, no one can really walk away from that without learning a good deal about game design. Things that seemed like they would be easy to do suddenly are seen with a new gaze and you realize that many of the things you have once taken for granted about game design actually don't measure up to what you believed. Balance changes you once thought would fix everything about a game actually cause more problems than they actually address, you start to realize your own biases and how you need to stop looking at the trees and focus on the forest... etc... The fact is, it was pretty enriching.
I wanted to start a discussion about game design by basically talking about the things I have learned, the many realizations I've come to grasp with. Now, this won't be a place where I'm going to reveal some crazy secrets, I really won't unless I got an ok from the people who were in charge, and I'm mostly going to focus on personal experiences and the various epiphanies that really hit me with my time there. I learned much, and yet feel that there is so much more to game design that I haven't gotten a clear grasp on. I'd like to do this little bi-weekly segments where I'll discuss these specific thoughts and I'd love to see how you guys would react to them.These are my learning experiences, some who were in PMDT with me may not all agree on those assertions.
Next one:
Managing the hype:
http://smashboards.com/threads/disc...ect-m-10-01-2016-update.425650/#post-20856762
Teamwork, limits and specialties:
http://smashboards.com/threads/disc...ect-m-26-12-2015-update.425650/#post-20716854
Balancing for fun, legacy and fanservice in mind.
I won’t mince words here: Balancing a game takes a lot of work, and it is a road paved with many failures. You will fail to reach good balance over, and over, and over again until you eventually learn from these failures and deliver an acceptably-balanced cast. Even then, you could still do better. You will never make and interesting game while reaching a perfect balance.
Now, technically-speaking, balancing a game can be very easy. If every character has the same exact moves, size and properties, you made a perfectly balanced cast. However, that is neither fun nor interesting. Super Smash Bros. is a series with asymmetrical balance. Each character plays differently, has different physics, different systems. That alone makes it impossible to reach perfect balance. Some characters will be better than others. It will inevitably happen, no matter what you do. And honestly, this asymmetric balance is what makes smash… well… smash.
Variety is very important when it comes to making a smash game. Personally, I am a Roy main. I also use Falco as a secondary, and for fun… I use Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, Wolf, Young Link (Melee), Ike, etc… if you look at the characters I tend to select; the majority of them tend to fall relatively quickly. On the other hand, I will not touch Jigglypuff, Peach, or other characters that have floaty jump mechanics. I like Luigi more as a character than Mario, but I will choose to play as Mario over Luigi any day in a Smash game. I have a bias toward fast-fallers, that much is evident. Nevertheless, there are people who gravitate towards characters with more floaty physics like Hungrybox for example. Some like Fly Amanita might gravitate towards characters with more atypical movesets (Ice Climbers, Lucario). When you look at every physical component in a Smash game, each character you make will have a distinct feel that will resonate with some players. Making characters feel distinct increases the odds that a player picking up this game finds a character that appeal to them.
Now, this game is very similar to Melee in feel, which also means that as far as smash games go, the extremes are wider apart. The difference between Jigglypuff and Falco in terms of physics is wider in Melee than in any other Smash game for example. That leaves more room in between for characters to fill different niches. Every niche is important, and that includes the strange characters like the Ice Climbers that operate on different rules from the rest of the cast. They may not be commonly played, but there is a group of people who enjoy these atypical characters.
Now, Super Smash Bros. is a crossover game. And that comes with its share of things to keep in mind. The first is that well… characters have a history. It bleeds into every aspect of balance such as physics (e.g. Sonic can’t be expected to run slower than most, if not any of the cast), movesets, animations, etc… On one hand, the fans of these series have certain expectations. It’s all right for Ganondorf to fight in a ruthless manner, but you can’t have friendly and awkward Luigi curb-stomp foes in a brutal manner. It has to be more cartoonish to reflect that aspect of Luigi’s personality. You also expect some fanservice, and that's what we appealed to when adding Donkey Kong’s signature rolling attack from Donkey Kong Country for instances. People play Super Smash Bros. in part because they love the characters and they want these characters to feel like they imagined they would. In any new, non-crossover franchises, you don’t have to deal with such expectations. There are other challenges attributable to having a lot, and sometimes too much freedom, but there also aren’t these limits when balancing a character. In a crossover, you have to find clever ways to incorporate fanservice into balance. The Donkey Kong rolling attack helped DK’s approach to some extent while at the same time providing fanservice.
There are also the earlier games in the series to consider. Captain Falcon didn’t really have anything you could consider “iconic” that could have been given to him as a fighter until Super Smash Bros. 64. However, certain moves like the Falcon Punch became ingrained into gaming culture to the point of becoming an Internet meme. While one could argue for a way to balance Captain Falcon better by replacing his Falcon Punch with something more efficient, it is something that if you take it off, it will take away one of the things that made the character special in the first place. The same could be argued about Roy’s down tilt that is a very signature launcher used by many Roy players, or Luigi’s 1% damage taunt for example.
Furthermore, when balancing for fun in mind, while it is very important to consider the player’s fun itself, it is also very important to consider the opponent’s enjoyment of the matchup as well. A character may be very fun for a player, but everyone who is fighting that character might be groaning and annoyed at the very idea of having to endure that matchup. Keep in mind, I believe that some people do grossly over-exaggerate with their hatred of certain characters, likely because they lost badly once, but when the frustration starts spreading to a large part of the community and the reason is sensible, it warrants some intervention. It is important to let other people comment on the characters you are working on. If you are working on that character, chances are that you have been playing a lot “as” the character and not very much “against” the character. It is important to fight your own creations as well as let other people fighting you give their honest opinions, even if you disagree with them. Report everything, even if you don’t like what you hear. The job of a character designer is not to make the character they want to play, but to make characters that enhance the roster.
Being able to take criticism, admit that you are wrong, and that your work needs to be polished further, or even scrapped can be difficult, but it’s necessary. While it’s great to make a game that’s fun for you, if you’re going to build a community, you have to consider other people. There can be no tournaments without a strong community.
Finally, a character has many matchups, and each matchup must be meticulously considered. A matchup between two given characters might be fun, fair and enjoyable, but then you switch one of them for another, and there’s an unfair and not very enjoyable matchup. Keep in mind that you can’t get rid of matchup advantages and disadvantages, but you can make them “acceptable”. As long as it feels like the character has a chance of winning, it’s already pretty good. Stages also need to be considered. Some characters perform better on certain stages as opposed to others. You also need to test matchups on each stage. It’s hard to be that thorough, but at the very least, when you’re testing out characters, you can’t just stick to one. When I first started, I wrote my “entrance” exam on Zelda. She was a character that I didn’t like. She was floaty, slow, the opposite of everything I normally like in a Smash character. I played as her for hours on end to try and understand how she plays. And then I had to do that with many characters that I mained for a while before I ended up becoming a full time Roy main near the end. If all you play is one character, then you view the balance in the eyes of this of someone who plays only a single character. Your experiences are legitimate, but they are also limited. I didn’t have a clear main until development pretty much almost ended.
All in all, when dealing with a crossover game, you have to balance in very creative ways. You need to do some research, look into other games featuring the said character, play them, take notes, and see if you can fix that character’s issue with something canonical if possible. If not, you still need to make sure animations keep the character’s demeanour and personality in mind, you need to consider different play styles and create new possibilities, and you need to consider both sides of a matchup. It’s a lot of things to consider, but it is also very interesting. Working within limitations fosters a lot of creativity.
Archives:
Training wheels:
I wanted to start a discussion about game design by basically talking about the things I have learned, the many realizations I've come to grasp with. Now, this won't be a place where I'm going to reveal some crazy secrets, I really won't unless I got an ok from the people who were in charge, and I'm mostly going to focus on personal experiences and the various epiphanies that really hit me with my time there. I learned much, and yet feel that there is so much more to game design that I haven't gotten a clear grasp on. I'd like to do this little bi-weekly segments where I'll discuss these specific thoughts and I'd love to see how you guys would react to them.These are my learning experiences, some who were in PMDT with me may not all agree on those assertions.
Next one:
Managing the hype:
http://smashboards.com/threads/disc...ect-m-10-01-2016-update.425650/#post-20856762
Teamwork, limits and specialties:
http://smashboards.com/threads/disc...ect-m-26-12-2015-update.425650/#post-20716854
Balancing for fun, legacy and fanservice in mind.
I won’t mince words here: Balancing a game takes a lot of work, and it is a road paved with many failures. You will fail to reach good balance over, and over, and over again until you eventually learn from these failures and deliver an acceptably-balanced cast. Even then, you could still do better. You will never make and interesting game while reaching a perfect balance.
Now, technically-speaking, balancing a game can be very easy. If every character has the same exact moves, size and properties, you made a perfectly balanced cast. However, that is neither fun nor interesting. Super Smash Bros. is a series with asymmetrical balance. Each character plays differently, has different physics, different systems. That alone makes it impossible to reach perfect balance. Some characters will be better than others. It will inevitably happen, no matter what you do. And honestly, this asymmetric balance is what makes smash… well… smash.
Variety is very important when it comes to making a smash game. Personally, I am a Roy main. I also use Falco as a secondary, and for fun… I use Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, Wolf, Young Link (Melee), Ike, etc… if you look at the characters I tend to select; the majority of them tend to fall relatively quickly. On the other hand, I will not touch Jigglypuff, Peach, or other characters that have floaty jump mechanics. I like Luigi more as a character than Mario, but I will choose to play as Mario over Luigi any day in a Smash game. I have a bias toward fast-fallers, that much is evident. Nevertheless, there are people who gravitate towards characters with more floaty physics like Hungrybox for example. Some like Fly Amanita might gravitate towards characters with more atypical movesets (Ice Climbers, Lucario). When you look at every physical component in a Smash game, each character you make will have a distinct feel that will resonate with some players. Making characters feel distinct increases the odds that a player picking up this game finds a character that appeal to them.
Now, this game is very similar to Melee in feel, which also means that as far as smash games go, the extremes are wider apart. The difference between Jigglypuff and Falco in terms of physics is wider in Melee than in any other Smash game for example. That leaves more room in between for characters to fill different niches. Every niche is important, and that includes the strange characters like the Ice Climbers that operate on different rules from the rest of the cast. They may not be commonly played, but there is a group of people who enjoy these atypical characters.
Now, Super Smash Bros. is a crossover game. And that comes with its share of things to keep in mind. The first is that well… characters have a history. It bleeds into every aspect of balance such as physics (e.g. Sonic can’t be expected to run slower than most, if not any of the cast), movesets, animations, etc… On one hand, the fans of these series have certain expectations. It’s all right for Ganondorf to fight in a ruthless manner, but you can’t have friendly and awkward Luigi curb-stomp foes in a brutal manner. It has to be more cartoonish to reflect that aspect of Luigi’s personality. You also expect some fanservice, and that's what we appealed to when adding Donkey Kong’s signature rolling attack from Donkey Kong Country for instances. People play Super Smash Bros. in part because they love the characters and they want these characters to feel like they imagined they would. In any new, non-crossover franchises, you don’t have to deal with such expectations. There are other challenges attributable to having a lot, and sometimes too much freedom, but there also aren’t these limits when balancing a character. In a crossover, you have to find clever ways to incorporate fanservice into balance. The Donkey Kong rolling attack helped DK’s approach to some extent while at the same time providing fanservice.
There are also the earlier games in the series to consider. Captain Falcon didn’t really have anything you could consider “iconic” that could have been given to him as a fighter until Super Smash Bros. 64. However, certain moves like the Falcon Punch became ingrained into gaming culture to the point of becoming an Internet meme. While one could argue for a way to balance Captain Falcon better by replacing his Falcon Punch with something more efficient, it is something that if you take it off, it will take away one of the things that made the character special in the first place. The same could be argued about Roy’s down tilt that is a very signature launcher used by many Roy players, or Luigi’s 1% damage taunt for example.
Furthermore, when balancing for fun in mind, while it is very important to consider the player’s fun itself, it is also very important to consider the opponent’s enjoyment of the matchup as well. A character may be very fun for a player, but everyone who is fighting that character might be groaning and annoyed at the very idea of having to endure that matchup. Keep in mind, I believe that some people do grossly over-exaggerate with their hatred of certain characters, likely because they lost badly once, but when the frustration starts spreading to a large part of the community and the reason is sensible, it warrants some intervention. It is important to let other people comment on the characters you are working on. If you are working on that character, chances are that you have been playing a lot “as” the character and not very much “against” the character. It is important to fight your own creations as well as let other people fighting you give their honest opinions, even if you disagree with them. Report everything, even if you don’t like what you hear. The job of a character designer is not to make the character they want to play, but to make characters that enhance the roster.
Being able to take criticism, admit that you are wrong, and that your work needs to be polished further, or even scrapped can be difficult, but it’s necessary. While it’s great to make a game that’s fun for you, if you’re going to build a community, you have to consider other people. There can be no tournaments without a strong community.
Finally, a character has many matchups, and each matchup must be meticulously considered. A matchup between two given characters might be fun, fair and enjoyable, but then you switch one of them for another, and there’s an unfair and not very enjoyable matchup. Keep in mind that you can’t get rid of matchup advantages and disadvantages, but you can make them “acceptable”. As long as it feels like the character has a chance of winning, it’s already pretty good. Stages also need to be considered. Some characters perform better on certain stages as opposed to others. You also need to test matchups on each stage. It’s hard to be that thorough, but at the very least, when you’re testing out characters, you can’t just stick to one. When I first started, I wrote my “entrance” exam on Zelda. She was a character that I didn’t like. She was floaty, slow, the opposite of everything I normally like in a Smash character. I played as her for hours on end to try and understand how she plays. And then I had to do that with many characters that I mained for a while before I ended up becoming a full time Roy main near the end. If all you play is one character, then you view the balance in the eyes of this of someone who plays only a single character. Your experiences are legitimate, but they are also limited. I didn’t have a clear main until development pretty much almost ended.
All in all, when dealing with a crossover game, you have to balance in very creative ways. You need to do some research, look into other games featuring the said character, play them, take notes, and see if you can fix that character’s issue with something canonical if possible. If not, you still need to make sure animations keep the character’s demeanour and personality in mind, you need to consider different play styles and create new possibilities, and you need to consider both sides of a matchup. It’s a lot of things to consider, but it is also very interesting. Working within limitations fosters a lot of creativity.
Archives:
Training wheels:
I'll try and keep you guys updated through twitter @Vigilante_Blade whenever I update this thread with a new topic. Just keep in mind, I also use it for other stuff.Whenever you are working on a game that has both a party and a competitive component, most people tend to believe that if you try to please one side, you must automatically forsake the other, but my time with the PMDT has proven me otherwise. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, one could perform an L-cancel, which reduced your landing lag after performing an aerial attack by half rounded down (done by tapping the shield button right before landing), and that has carried over to Project M. This mechanic originated from Super Smash Bros. 64 under the name of smooth landing. In this game, a successful smooth landing would cancel all landing lag. In Melee, for most competitive players, the difference between an L-cancelled attack and regular landing lag is very noticeable, but that is not as easy to notice in the eyes of a novice player. Competitive players have in-depth knowledge of how long the landing lag should last in the first place, while for a party smasher, it may not have even crossed their mind to even think about it. It makes it more challenging to a newcomer in the competitive scene to accurately judge if they have successfully L-canceled or not. In Project M, there is a brief white flash upon a successful L-cancel. That doesn’t change the mechanic itself, but it serves as a very helpful training tool by providing the feedback these players need.
Training wheels such as this one serve several useful functions. The first is that it allows the competitive meta to be much more accessible to newcomers. One barrier of entry that those wanting to improve their abilities in Super Smash Bros. Melee is that players must actively look for tutorials on how to accomplish these advanced feats. One might check a youtube video, or read a guide on Smashboards, but it takes deliberate effort. Anything that reduces the amount of effort needed to find the information required to execute these techniques will increase the likeliness that the player will persist in their quest for knowledge. Of course, the ideal solution would have been for Smash games to have tutorials in the form of “event-matches” that explains the timing and method to these techniques. Think of the Mario and Luigi games that tell you exactly when to press the attack button for extra damage. You may use these button prompts to help you get the right timing, but once you feel confident in your timing, you can remove them and gain a nice boost to your damage from doing so. It eases you into the timing then rewards you for taking the training wheels off.
The second function acts as a means of leveling the playing field. Often, people talk about leveling the playing field by making things less complex, and thus reducing the gap between skill levels. However, it is also possible to level the playing field in a different way: Giving everyone equal access to knowledge on how to improve. As stated before, not everyone will care enough to find out or even be aware of these mechanics to actually look them up. With everyone aware of how to execute these skills, anyone who wants to improve can improve.
Training wheels also speed up the learning process. One reason some individuals may be less likely to fully go through with mastering a technique is the frustration hailing from the impression that one hasn’t been making much progress. The player may feel like he has hit a wall or is dragging himself slowly through the process as opposed to seeing a clear difference in a short amount of time. What training wheels do is making the initial learning curve smoother, allowing the player to quickly learn the basics of the technique. Afterwards, the player’s learning will follow a more regular growth rate, but the player will be past the hurdle where most tend to give up.
Training wheels can also potentially, but not always, provide a “safety net”. Now, there really isn’t a mechanic like that in Project M, but I’ll use Smash 4 as a starting point. In this game, there is an add-on that you may attach to your character called the smooth lander. The game lacks any semblance of an L-canceling mechanic, but as I understand it from my very limited experience trying this game, it basically acts as a sort of auto-cancel, reducing landing lag after landing from an aerial attack. Now, if you take this and put it in a game that does have L-cancelling, it could potentially have some pretty interesting implications.
Now imagine that the game functions like Melee or Project M and an L-cancel reduces landing lag by half rounded down. The smooth lander could for example auto-cancel your landing lag, reducing it by a third. However, if you successfully L-cancel with the smooth lander equipped, you cancel 4/10ths of your landing lag, a little more than if you had failed, but a little less than if you didn’t have the training wheels. This would have several interesting applications:
1. It would provide for those who are still learning or don’t want to learn a means to fight against more experienced players and not feel as helpless.
2. It would still reward learning players whenever they successfully L-cancel, but the lack of the full benefits of the L-cancel would encourage taking the training wheels off eventually.
3. The advanced players would be faced with more of a challenge while playing with the learning player.
Keep in mind that this is the kind of thing that would likely and rightfully be banned from a tournament setting, but a safety net would make the process of learning these techniques less grueling while allowing non-competitive smashers to somewhat keep up in friendly matches without gaining the full benefits of mastering the technique. No depth is lost, but accessibility increases. The skill gap for friendly matches also lessens with no cost to the depth of the mechanics. The visual aspect of the white flash is great, but another one could be added while the smooth lander is equipped. For instances, small prompts like “Too early!, Almost! or Perfect!” could appear to provide feedback to those attempting to L-cancel with the add-on equipped. That would serve as a great way to teach the timing.
This kind of training wheels function could easily be applied to other advanced techniques. For example, the very same feedback prompts I have just mentioned could be utilized to teach power shielding. A reflective shield add-on could exist and very briefly increase the duration of the reflective state of the shield when raising it against a projectile. Again, there would be a drawback. The reflected projectile from a slightly off powershield would have its power a third of the projectile’s original power, whereas a perfect powershield with the reflective shield might send if back at half power.
For wavedashing, now that would seem rather difficult as that would be more difficult to evaluate and get feedback on. While not possible with a current Gamecube controller, I turn to the Hori gamecube controller for inspiration. Now, I am not advocating using this controller for smash, but there are things about its design that fascinate me. You may notice from this controller that is has a very similar layout to the Gamecube controller, but also has additional buttons such as an additional set of shoulder buttons. That is because it is a Wii classic controller, and thus requires more buttons. In an ideal world, this design solution would require Nintendo to remake the Gamecube controller but add two shoulder buttons. Imagine yourself in this ideal scenario. Now you take one of these shoulder buttons and make one of them make your character jump and air-dodge diagonally, working as an auto-wavedash. Of course, you need to point your stick in the direction you want to wavedash. In the air, it would air-dodge you diagonally towards the ground in any direction held, basically acting as a waveland. That would be a good tool for the less-experienced smashers to fight on better grounds with skilled players. Of course, they could only wavedash at a fixed distance, limiting their options somewhat. If need be, this feature could be deactivated.
The key point to remember about these conceptual ideas it that it is important for those learning advanced skills to feel rewarded for their efforts and they should always have a distinct advantage over those who do not put in the effort required to improve, or else, what would be the point in trying? However, it is also important for newcomers to think “I can do it!”. Many believe that depth and accessibility are mutually-exclusive concepts, but the truth is that they can co-exist, and Melee has been a living proof of that by allowing for both engrossing competitive play and intense party experiences. Project M’s white flash upon L-cancelling seems like such a small addition, almost insignificant even. However, that alone has improved accessibility to the competitive meta in a very significant manner. Communities are like vampires, they survive on new blood. Hopefully, they'll never sparkle though.
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