Biggest Gamedesign mistakes?
1. Not knowing what your vision is. Something has got to tie in all the possibilities.
2. Not testing.
3. Leaving decisions to be made by the coders as they''re working on that feature. I know that, from my personal expierence, if I have to decide on something as I''m writing it, the answer is almost always the one that requires the least amount of work.
4. Not running the ideas past someone else. If it''s too complex to explain it quickly, it may not be sucn a good idea. Also, other people migh tcatch things the initial design might have missed.
This is all from personal expierence, the things that have bitten me in the butt the most.
biggest gamedesign/gameplay mistakes
getting stuck in the damn scenery really grates me
even big modern games still get it wrong (Unreal Tournament 2 had one part of a coridoor where i got stuck almost every time i took cover there)
********
A Problem Worthy of Attack
Proves It''s Worth by Fighting Back
even big modern games still get it wrong (Unreal Tournament 2 had one part of a coridoor where i got stuck almost every time i took cover there)
********
A Problem Worthy of Attack
Proves It''s Worth by Fighting Back
I think that about the whole saving feature, you should transparently autosave every minor checkpoint. These are not major checkpoints at all, they are just places that are maybe five minutes of gameplay away from each other and are small achievements (e.g. 00:00:01 entered house - save; 00:03:43 exited house - save; 00:07:24 fought four bandits - save; 00:09:25 enter Tavern - save; 00:10:36 meet X - save; 00:14:40 fight five soldiers of Y).
This would be the best of both worlds. Instead of doing it the artistic way and making the player not be able to save and only save every major event or the down-to-earth way and letting the player save every second, this will keep the flow of the story, keep replay to a minimum, and not anger the player.
It might also be a good idea, in addition to saving at minor points, to let the player quicksave the game every three minutes or so.
This would be the best of both worlds. Instead of doing it the artistic way and making the player not be able to save and only save every major event or the down-to-earth way and letting the player save every second, this will keep the flow of the story, keep replay to a minimum, and not anger the player.
It might also be a good idea, in addition to saving at minor points, to let the player quicksave the game every three minutes or so.
quote:Original post by walkingcarcass
getting stuck in the damn scenery really grates me
even big modern games still get it wrong (Unreal Tournament 2 had one part of a coridoor where i got stuck almost every time i took cover there)
Knowing the graphics of UT2k3 they probably intentionally stuck that in there so you would have time to appreciate the scenery...
About saving: I think the biggest problem with save systems is the "Groundhog Day" syndrome a lot of games encourage - where you replay the same section of game again and again until you get it "right". Having everything the same every time you reload is part of the problem - I''ve reached the stage in some games where I know a near optimum sequence of steps and shots to get through certain stretches with no damage and minimum ammo expenditure... Of course, having things change too much every time you reload is also bad because it encourages players to just keep reloading until they get something easy. The transparent autosave is a solution, as is the save-points system in FF style games (though it does suffer from not being able to interrupt-save). I also like the "step-back" system in Zelda games - you can save whenever you like, but you get dropped back to the last restart point - though "plot advancing" actions stay happened. I guess what I want is a system where you can save freely, but reloading has a price.
A very annoying system was the GTA save system where you could only save between levels - I reckon the last level takes around 6 hours to complete, and the first level is probably around 1 hour, meaning that you end up having to schedule game sessions in advance in order to get a large enough block of time to actually progress in the game... That one thing managed to put me off the entire series of games (though I hear they did fix the problem in the later games)
I think the most annoying thing I''ve met in a game recently is in Half Life: a couple of places where you''re going up or down in lifts and when it stops moving, you end up stuck in the platform - one place in Xen, I got stuck in the lift soemthing like 20 times in a row (for lethal damage most times) before finally getting the right combination of ducking and jumping to not get stuck...
A very annoying system was the GTA save system where you could only save between levels - I reckon the last level takes around 6 hours to complete, and the first level is probably around 1 hour, meaning that you end up having to schedule game sessions in advance in order to get a large enough block of time to actually progress in the game... That one thing managed to put me off the entire series of games (though I hear they did fix the problem in the later games)
I think the most annoying thing I''ve met in a game recently is in Half Life: a couple of places where you''re going up or down in lifts and when it stops moving, you end up stuck in the platform - one place in Xen, I got stuck in the lift soemthing like 20 times in a row (for lethal damage most times) before finally getting the right combination of ducking and jumping to not get stuck...
I agree w/ Andrew Russell, in Diablo II you could only exit on saving, on reload you appeared in the last visited town (might not work in some rpg's), and when you died you lost virtually all gold you were carrying on your person (you could store a lot of gold in a stash back in town, but anything you picked up on that sortie would be lost) and a noticeable portion of xp. (It also did transparent saves every few minutes in case the game crashed or something.)
Another good system was in Hitman 2, where you could save whenever but you only got so many saves per level.
Merle's mention of 'hunt the pixel' games was good. Such things caused problems for a lot of Sierra rpg's.
I'd also go with entivore and Waverider: options are good. One possibility is allowing the player to determine some of the game variables before starting (frequency of random encounters, difficulty of monsters relative to your party, amount of xp lost on death, etc) instead of just having an 'easy, medium, or hard' option (it would probably list a difficulty rating for the selected options).
Also, the only problem I've had with anything out of blizzard entertainment (excepting blizzard north, they got this right) is that they use the F10 key to access the menu. This makes no sense.
I also think that everyone should go here
:
http://www.adventurers-comic.com/d/20030204.html
[edited by - wraith20 on February 6, 2003 1:32:08 PM]
Another good system was in Hitman 2, where you could save whenever but you only got so many saves per level.
Merle's mention of 'hunt the pixel' games was good. Such things caused problems for a lot of Sierra rpg's.
I'd also go with entivore and Waverider: options are good. One possibility is allowing the player to determine some of the game variables before starting (frequency of random encounters, difficulty of monsters relative to your party, amount of xp lost on death, etc) instead of just having an 'easy, medium, or hard' option (it would probably list a difficulty rating for the selected options).
Also, the only problem I've had with anything out of blizzard entertainment (excepting blizzard north, they got this right) is that they use the F10 key to access the menu. This makes no sense.
I also think that everyone should go here
:http://www.adventurers-comic.com/d/20030204.html
[edited by - wraith20 on February 6, 2003 1:32:08 PM]
quote:Original post by wraith20
Another good system was in Hitman 2, where you could save whenever but you only got so many saves per level.
I''m not sure if this is such a good idea. When I was playing Hitman 2, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about where the best place to save would be. I didn''t want to replay half the level, but I didn''t want to run out of save games before the end of the mission either. Anything that reduces immersion for the player is not good.
-Mike
quote:
I''ve just started playing Project IGI again (a stealth style fps) and by far the most frustrating thing is getting 3/4 through a level (say around 5-10 mins per level) over and over again because I can''t figure out the best approach at the end. Its not the complexity or frustration of working out how to finish the level off which gets to me, its having to play the same 4-8 mins again and again to get to the end of the level to try something new which annoys me. Normally I turn a game off when I should, or more often when I REALLY need to sleep. This time I find myself turning the game off coz I just can''t stand playing the same 4 mins yet again. Not a good thing for a game thats supposed to be fun.
This sounds alot like when you are playing one of these mmorpgs, camping some monster spawn and killing them over and over and right when you''re about to level up, you freeze up and die and you lose all that experience you gained. Not only was it not fun to gain the experience the first time but the 2nd, 3rd and 4th time, it gets to the point where you wish you were playing solitaire instead of this crap.
The bad thing is that it still looks like most of the newer mmorpgs are using this method. I guess they make more money, the longer it takes for people to reach the last level. sucks.
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
