Breaking Open the Black Box

The Secrets and Stories of Game Design

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Reactive Responses

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“Alex, what’s the most basic counter in the WoW?”, Mike asked me one sunny morning.

We had been working long nights creating abilities for Zangarmarsh and I was still quite sleep lagged.

“Obviously whatever the other jerk just did to beat me that I don’t have and am clearly underpowered without,” I sniped back.

This is not a rogue kicking.

Mike snorted, “Okay, lets narrows this a bit. What’s the most basic mechanic to counter a spell?”

I thought for a bit. Weeks of Mike’s deceptively simple sounding questions had taught me to resist the instinct to give the first answer that came to mind. “At first, I would think of the rogue ability Kick, but in truth, I think it’s actually something even more basic.”

Mike’s eyebrows raised slightly, “That was actually the answer I was thinking of, but go on.”

“I think the most basic counter in our game to anything is movement. The universally available tool to avoid a spell is to move out of range of it. Unfortunately, we’ve done a lot that reduces the impact of movement on avoiding spells.”

“How so?”

“You can’t move to avoid most spells once you’re in close, ducking around a corner only works in buildings. Hiding behind a hill flat out doesn’t work. The fact that most spells are targeted takes a lot of the counter fun out of the game.”

I have no idea what game this is.

“That’s true.”

“Why?”

“Part of it is that our movement validation isn’t very accurate. Other parts are because WoW was built on EQ and targeting is a legacy feature from EQ.  In the end though, I could see a game working either way.”

“I feel like movement is the one thing all classes share. It’s a shame we don’t put it to good use.”

“Maybe someday you will.”

Counterspell

The ability to prevent another from performing an action is a very powerful and very potent game mechanic. It’s a pervasive mechanic in many games. Having a clear and direct counter to a given ability makes you feel smart for picking that choice. 
The ability to kick a fireball, counterspell a force of nature or place the thief on a brick quarry when you roll a 7 are powerful, potentially game changing effects. As a result, they can be incredibly frustrating to play against. 
In Magic: The Gathering, a popular blue deck type was the Counterspell deck. Designed exclusively to prevent the opponent from acting and eventually force him out of the game from a steady stream of damage, it was a frequent source of complaints and frustration.  Likewise, the rogue ability Kick, can shutdown a caster for a fairly long amount of time and generated large amount of complaints when PvP opened in WoW Alpha. 
Consequentially, there’s two major ways to handle this: limit it to being used against NPCs, who don’t mind it, or restrict the frequency of its use.  This forces the player to choose the best time and ability to counter. When you add a counterspell to any game – make sure it exists for the right reason and at an appropriate cost.

Avoidance

Obligatory Neo reference – check!
As I mentioned earlier, another popular response is to GET OUT OF THE WAY!
In fact, 90% of the games created in the arcade and platforming era were based almost exclusively around this idea.  If the location is clear and sufficient warning is given, avoidable attacks compose the widest variety of response-triggering mechanics. 
Yet somehow, even after 25 years of gaming, people still seem to stand in the fire. 

Tool Change

In Legend of Zelda, a Link to the Past, there was a simple boss with three heads. One was weak to swords and bombs, the other was weak to fire and the last weak to ice. 
This is one of just many examples of swapping to the right tool for the job. It reinforces the natural instinct to counter cold with fire, fire with cold and to stab large, scary things in the face.
On its own, tool change is a simple thing, but is built upon reuse of tools the player has been trained upon earlier in the game.  The longer and more frequently the player has been exposed to the tool, the more consistently they will be capable of using it. 
In WoW, occasionally a fight will call for a rarely used tool, like Enslave Demon, Scare Beast or Water Breathing (just kidding). If you’ve gone weeks, if not years, without using that spell, players will take longer to realize that tool exists in their toolkit. Frequency leads to reinforcement, reinforcement to mastery.
However, you have to be careful. Sometimes you can create situation without a real solution. One my favorite examples was the use of the chromatic drakonids in Blackwing Lair. The Drakonid would be dramatically vulnerable to one of the major schools of damage in WoW and resistant to all of the others.  This was great when a common school like Fire or Shadow was picked, but Frost or Arcane types were both highly annoying and took a long time to kill. 
When creating a scenario for a tool swap, you need make sure the player has two things: the tool and the training to use it. 

Timing

Another super common tool is the use of an attack or blocking at the right time. Stab the heart before it attacks. Parry the blow before it lands. Block the attack to reduce the damage taken. Fighting games in particular are rich in these mechanics.

“What the heck, these are all obvious!”

This is true. None of what you’re going to be reading the next few weeks is very hard to understand. However, think of how many times you’ve play a game where they failed to provide these kinds of opportunities. 
When the only way to deal with damage is to heal through it, you become bored and your playstyle static. When the only option is to dodge or die, you become frustrated quickly. Creating and selling the windows of opportunity is a powerful tool that often distinguishes novice designers from great ones. 
Next time, I’ll be writing about the other two major categories of response: recuperative and preparational.

Emotional Resonance

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This week’s post will be short.

The second major factor of care has nothing to do with mechanics. Instead, you can often make someone care, simply by displaying factors which echo lessons, feelings or beliefs that are already ingrained into their habits.

My favorite example of this is the art of a huge, flaming fireball. Fire is dangerous, Red is dangerous, Burning Sounds are dangerous.  Little wonder then that player in a sidescroller naturally avoids the incoming attack.  These were not lessons you had to teach the player.

Which is why sometimes they are the most powerful and most annoying thing you can deal with.

I recall a time when we discussed having a dragon who breathed healing fire as a mechanic on a boss fight. While the creative director was stoked at the idea, experience quickly showed that players avoided the fire, unless they were utterly required to sit in it.

While players will often adapt if the rewards are high enough, the price of trying to break these ingrained lessons is rarely worth the cost.

Emotions

Just as visual cues can appeal to the ingrained survival instinct, so too can an appeal to the human belief in saving others. Place a small girl or helpless character at risk and players will often try to take steps to save them.  
Display a tragic moment, a horrifying scene, play a song of triumph and victory.  People respond to far more stimuli than we sometimes realize. 
Look for ways to shortcut your designs by appealing to the heart. 

Tuning: a Tool to Adjust Care Level

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Tuning is the first and most powerful lesson of the Wyatt Cheng school of Game Design. Are you ready?
“Any mechanic, no matter how lame, is considered fun when sufficiently overpowered.” – Wyatt Cheng


It is extremely important to note that this lesson is a WARNING to new game designers. It is important to not confuse good mechanics with overpowered ones. Tuning is a tool which must be used wisely.
If you want to increase how much the player cares about your mechanic, change its tuning. Tuning is a deep topic I intend to discuss multiple times in greater depth, but here’s a quick litmus test for tuning any game mechanic:

Step 1: Observe the Status Quo

Do players enjoy the mechanic as-is? Do they respond with excitement or disinterest?  If they haven’t even identified that the mechanic exists, you have a clarity problem and need to work on that. If they have noticed it, move on to the next step.

Step 2: Maximize the Power

When your game mechanic has the power to obliterate everything on the screen do they enjoy and use it? How do they feel about it? What bad side effects does it cause?  
If players don’t enjoy a mechanic, even when it results in overwhelming power, it’s a very good candidate for cutting or heavily revising.  Maximized power is proof that something is awkward, unclear or otherwise innately flawed.

Step 3: Minimize the Power

Next try to push the mechanic as weak as you possibly can. How far can you go before players stop caring and discard it? Knowing that limit will help you identify how far the usability, clarity and theme of the ability can carry you.  
You would be amazed at how far an incredibly clear, visceral and fantasy satisfying ability or mechanic can take you. If you find that you have very little flexibility to push a mechanic’s tuning downward, there’s probably a deep flaw in either your design or the scenario in which your design exists.

Step 4: If you can’t make Step 2 or Step 3 work… Stop Here!

If you find yourself constantly trying to find a number that works, but nothing reasonable is in the cards… STOP.  Numbers alone are never enough, but if the mechanic just doesn’t work on both extremes, you’ve got a deeper problem. 
Either your problem space is over constrained or you’re trying to force something to fit that just isn’t ready for showtime. Take it back to the drawing board, ask for input and look for alternatives.

Step 5: Balance the Power with the Clarity and Usability

Now that you know your limits, use what you know to pick the right spot for your ability.

The easier an ability to use, the less powerful it should be. The more difficult it is to observe, the less powerful it should be. These are the grey areas in which your will and judgement as a designer comes into play.

Step 6: Beware the Theme

While a deep enough topic for another time, be wary of your Theme.

Consider for example, an explosion. In the real world, an actual explosion is a very dangerous thing. A ball of fire would nearly kill or at least permanently injure anyone actually struck by it. While Super Mario 1 could get away with that, other games cannot.

Thus it’s important to try to give enough power to satisfy the expectations of the player, while keeping the value of the ability within the safe constraints of your game. If your fireball can only ever do a tiny amount of damage… consider changing the theme of the ability and make sure the art reflects its lack of power. Choose a tiny spark of light and not a nuclear holocaust.

(P.S.  My personal word of advice for multiplayer games is start as low as possible, then tune up until people consistently care and mention it, then nerf it by about 10% if it’s a player-used ability and buff it by about 25% if it’s a monster ability. )

Tuning is more than Power

It’s easy to be distracted by power. Tuning is frequently about adjusting power. But there’s a second, equally – if not more – important factor in tuning: time.
The Witch Doctor
A friend once asked me, “Hey Alex, Warlocks in World of Warcraft and Witch Doctors in Diablo 3 seem to have a lot in common. Were the same people designing it?”
My initial reaction was to just answer him, “Oh, no, of course not, but you know, we at Blizzard are full of common practices and do many things the same way! I’m so flattered you can’t tell the difference. Ah ha ha ha! Look at how awesome we are!” 
Then I thought maybe I could reply, “No, of course not! They are drastically different in both mechanics and kit! What kind of nonsense is this!” 
… but thankfully, I didn’t do either. Instead, my curiosity overrode my pride and I instead tried to understand him first. 
The Warlock
“That’s a really interesting comment, Steve*. Why do you say that?” (*name changed to protect the innocent)
“Well, I noticed that a lot of the spells do damage over time like Warlock DoTs and so I thought, maybe the same guy worked on it.”
“Well, Steve, you know… we do share a lot of philosophies and ideas at work, but you know when it comes to damage, we game designers really only have 2 tools.”
“Which are?”
“We either do all of the damage right now – or all of it spread out over time.”

Frequency

The second tool of tuning is frequency.  The frequency at which an event occurs can drastically change how the player feels about it. 
Imagine if the Star was as common and lasted as long as the Mushroom in Super Mario Bros. 1. 
The majority of your play experience would be something like this:
  • Play carefully until you get a star
  • Run recklessly around the level, killing everything
  • If you fall into a hole, die or otherwise lose the star, you become irate and frustrated until the next Star comes along.
With that change, suddenly the Star ceases to be a bonus and becomes a mandatory part of how you play. 
Instead, look at how Nintendo designed it:
  • You generally play very carefully until you learn a level
  • Slowly over time, your mastery over the level increases and you can play more recklessly
  • While exploring, you occasionally find Stars which allow you to play recklessly for 10 seconds.
The result is that Stars allow you an early taste of what will be possible once you’ve mastered the level, and give you a period of reduced tension and greater enjoyment. 
None of that would have been possible if Stars were common or long. 

Tuning is Not Everything

Power and frequency alone do not define what makes players love an ability. 
Consider the following two abilities:
Fireball – Deals 100 damage instantly. 10 second cooldown.
Corruption – Deals 15 damage every second. Limit 1 per target.
Pure math will show that Corruption is 50% better than Fireball. However, even given that difference in power, the average game player will greatly prefer the Fireball and be disinterested in Corruption. 
Furthermore, in many real situations, that decision will be 100% right. …Why?
The answer is surprisingly deep. I’ll talk about the first piece next time, as we explore my next topic: Responses.