Design Blog

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Blazblue: Pushing Design Limitations Part 5

BlazBlue releases on the 30th of this month in the US so today I'll be finishing up my multipart design analysis of the game.

First I'll be rounding out the cast analysis.

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Carl Clover - Auto Maton

Carl's ability is rather unique in terms of the fighting game genre, though there was a character in Guilty Gear who had a similar ability. The gist of Carl's drive is that it allows him to control Nirvana, a robot that shares the battlefield with the other characters. This allows a Carl player to control essentially two characters at the same time. There is a meter associated with this however, which recharges when Nirvana is inactive and depletes when Nirvana is active or taking damage. Depleting it completely prevents Nirvana from being used for a long period of time while she recharges. While Carl's Guilty Gear counter part, Eddie, had a similar ability, Carl's is unique in how Nirvana occupies space and absorbs hits.

When inactive, Nirvana is like a piece of the background. she doesn't move and both players can walk right through her. When active however, players can no longer pass through her and Carl can even push her around by running behind her. Additionally, in this state she can absorb projectile attacks. Interestingly enough however she will not absorb non-projectile attacks for Carl, these attacks will hit both Carl and Nirvana.

The balancing issues here are rather interesting, as the dynamic of a fighting game is partly defined by the number of opponents that fight at once. Going against this trend opens up all kinds of opportunities for game breaking setups that need to be addressed when designing the character. The ability to attack both high and low simultaneously as well as the ability to attack a player from both sides at once are both dangerous results that can result in unblockable combos. For the most part Blazblue addresses these concerns by increasing the reliance on Nirvana by the player. On his own, Carl is an incredibly weak character having some of the lowest damage and health of the entire cast. Most damaging moves or combos rely on the player to use Nirvana for the damaging hits. This does however have the result of making Carl very difficult to learn to play while at the same time incredibly effective at high levels.

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Hakumen - Zanshin

Hakumen isn't necessarily an interesting character because of his drive attack, which is basically a set of counter moves, but more because of how that factors into his overall character design. When activating Hakumen's drive, the player can activate a series of counter stance which have differing activation times and effects, but only if the enemy attacks Hakumen during this state.

The real interesting part about Hakumen is how his super meter and special moves work. Hakumen does not have a normal super meter, instead he has a small meter and eight special "orbs". The small meter fills up automatically over time, and faster when taking damage or attacking and when it fills up the player gains one orb. Additionally certain counters using Zanshin will also give you a free orb. All of Hakumen's special moves and supers require varying numbers of orbs, from 1 all the way up to 8.

This turns Hakumen into an interesting defensive and offensive character at the same time. On the one hand, a Hakumen player needs to wait for the orbs to do many of his combos. On the other, he never stops building his offensive options. Due to his overall low speed and high average damage, Hakumen tends to be played as a defensive character however, though this works well in conjunction with his drive attack, which promotes an active defense.

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V-13 - Sword Summoner

Her name is actually pronounced "Nu" like the Greek letter. (Which incidently is the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet.) She is the last boss of the normal arcade mode game and has a somewhat strange drive attack. When activated, she summons a sword at a specified location that flies a certain distance forward. The drive button can be chained into itself twice, which shoots two different swords. Multiple versions of drive can also be chained together so a player can press drive twice, the forward and drive twice, then down and drive twice.

The result of this sword summoning ability is that her effective attack range becomes skewed. There is a blind spot for her drive attack right in front of her but generally she can attack players from entire screen lengths away. Combos with the drive attack tend to look very strange as Nu stays a modest distance from the enemy while assaulting him with swords from all directions.

Nu is considered to be one of the top characters in the game because of this ability. Despite the blind spot in her drive ability, it's generally useful because the risk/reward ratio is very good due to the high damage and pressure that the swords can achieve. The gameplay style that results from this mechanic is also fairly different from a standard "poking" character style as well since the swords can combo into each other, allowing high damage combos while staying safe from retaliation.

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And that brings us to the end of my BlazBlue segment. I hope it makes sense now why I'm so interested in this game. A combination of incredibly original gameplay mechanics coupled with colorful characters and a lot of extra features not common to fighting games before it make BlazBlue one of the definitive fighting games for the year.

There is still a question of balance of course, and to this effect it may not be surprising that many hardcore fighting game enthusiast find BlazBlue to be a poorly balanced game. The variety of spectactular new mechanics were likely very challenging just to come up with much less balance. However despite this, I think it's important for designers to push new ground like this in all aspects of their work. I think even if the game isn't considered to be balanced well at the moment, future iterations as well as continuing improving strategies will help push it to a level that casual and hardcore players can both appreciate.

Now if only my pre-order would get here faster...

Labels: blazblue, game mechanics

posted by Saikyo at 12:11 PM

Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Three C's of Design

I've been trying to come up with some interesting ways to express how good design works, and I've been toying with this new idea recently I'm calling "The Three C's of Good Design". The gist of it is that it is the three core skills that someone needs to be successful in design. It's still a new idea that I just thought up a little while ago, so there is definitely room for revision, but I'd like to share what I have so far.

The Three C's of Good Design are:
1. Creativity
2. Confidence
3. Communication

I'll go over each point individually, but before that I want to clarify something. There used to be 4 C's the last one being "Competence" but I thought it was a little redundant, since if you gain the other three you will already have competence. Or rather, having these three skills will make you competent at design.

So onto the individual parts...

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Creativity

This one is probably the most obvious. The job of a designer is to CREATE new experiences in every game and to find ways to make these experiences fun for the majority of the players.

I think it's a little deeper than this however, since simply coming up with the ideas for the experience is only part of the challenge. The creativity of designers has to extend to all aspects of game creation. Besides just coming up with the experience, creativity is needed to solve problems which come up during implementation, it's needed to come up with ways to use the script to support the experience, and it's even when testing levels in order to find new ways to break the very thing you worked so hard to create.

Creativity is definitely a core skill for any designer, but it's important to be creative when it comes to a broad base of design aspects and not just be someone who comes up with ideas, but someone who can see them through to completion.

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Confidence

I think it's important not to take this principle too far, because then it becomes arrogance, which isn't helpful and can be counter-productive in the worst case.

By confidence I mean the assurance to stick with what you think is good design. I think it's fine to look at what the player wants, but also that it's important for designers to understand that even if players say they "want" something, that is not necessarily what the game "needs".

Being confident in your own designs means that you understand what makes them good and recognize when things need to be changed, and also when it's better to stick to your original plans. Changing ideas and levels can happen frequently in the design process, but it's important to maintain a confident stance so that that you know when to stop and finish your work.

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Communication

Probably the least obvious of the three, this one tends to end up being the most important. As a designer, it's important to be confident, but also to realize that the majority of your work will usually depend on the hard work of other people, most often programmers and artists. Very rarely does one person do everything himself unless it's something small like a flash game or short indie project.

The final works of designers require many raw materials that are generally provided by others. While the designer is the one who creates the end result it's incredibly important to recognize and understand the work of those that come before you. Being able to communicate effectively with other designers in a confident manner that gets your creative design ideas across is what allows great games to be made.

Communication with artists and programmers can be difficult sometimes as the differences in disciplines sometimes result in designers seeing things differently than artists and programmers, but being able to communicate and understand the people who are not in the design department is just as important (and possibly moreso) than simply being able to communicate with your fellow designers.

Great ideas and a confident pitch aren't going to get you a finished game unless you can get the idea across to your peers and co-workers.

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And those are the three C's are the things I'm thinking are really important for being a good designer. They are aspects I try to focus on when designing and when working with others. I may think up more in the future, but for now I think these sum things up nicely.

One more thing before I sign off for today. BlazBlue is slated for release 6/30/2009 in the US. Pre-orders are currently available here. I'm still trying to figure out which version I want and where I'm gonna end up shipping it. But I'm definitely going to make sure I pick it up.

Labels: blazblue, design philosophy, game industry

posted by Saikyo at 2:32 PM

Monday, June 8, 2009

Blazblue: Pushing Design Limitations Part 4

And now today we continue with the long delayed Blazblue posts! If you remember we are discussion the individual character drives and why each is a radical departure from traditional fighting game mechanics.

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Rachel Alucard - Sylpheed

Rachel has my favorite drive, because it's one of the most unique ones I've seen yet. Her drive ability is to create wind on the battlefield. She can create wind in any of the 8 cardinal directions on the joystick by pressing the drive button in conjunction with that direction. The wind lasts for several seconds and affects the movement of both her and her opponent. Rachel uses a special wind gauge to determine how many times she can use this drive before it runs out. The bar stocks 4 uses of wind, and actively recharges as long as Rachel is standing on the ground and not defending.

Now this drive would be interesting on it's own since it affects the movement of both characters when its used. For example a player can use wind to blow himself at the enemy or use wind to blow the enemy away. While the wind affects both characters, it affects them more strongly when jumping, so it's possible to use it to mess up an opponent's jump in attack as well. In fact some of Rachel's moves and combos require wind to get the maximum effect.

I said it would be interesting on it's own, but in fact there is also more to it. Rachel has a set of projectile moves which are also affected by the wind. One of them shoots a projectile in an arc which has three variations on the ground and in the air. The wind affects these projectiles so the player can determine where they land. In some instances it's actually advantageous to blow a projectile back towards you to hit an enemy. The second projectile actually does nothing on its own. It just sits there and slowly floats upwards. However when the player uses wind, it becomes an active projectile, which can hit the opponent or cancel other projectiles. This creates a dynamic multi-directional projectile that can even come from behind the enemy.

The originality of this drive as well as the fact that Rachel's movelist builds upon the mechanic is what makes it my favorite.

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Arakune - Crimson

Moving on to the next drive reveals not only an interesting mechanic but also a very oddly designed character as well. Arakune has the appearance of an amorphous blob and as a result many of this attacks change his shape in addition to his size on the screen. This has interesting effects on the gameplay since he even dissapears completely when performing a forward dash.

His drive ability is a set of moves which "curse" the opponent when they hit. (One variation curses even on block.) Once cursed, a small meter appears that represents how long the opponent is cursed for. After this point pressing any of the attack buttons (including drive again) causes a small bug to fly on screen from a preset location to attack the enemy. This action also causes the meter to deplete slightly although it can be renewed by connecting with another drive attack.

Outside of this very different drive attack comes a very different style of play. While most characters focus on combos (and Arakune does have combos) his drive mechanic and moveset seem to support a style of play which involves tricking the player into blocking incorrectly. Since the bugs can attack from multiple angles, this allows Arakune to switch sides with the enemy several times using his unique array of teleport and short movement skills. The bugs enhance this ability to do strange and different combos when the opponent blocks incorrectly.

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Bang Shishigami - Burning Heart

Bang has a more natural feeling drive attack, but this is offset by several other game mechanics that he has and how they factor into his overall playstyle. His drive attack causes him to do a slow and telegraphed powerful attack. However the start of the attack guards against incoming attacks. Some version guard against more types of attacks than others, but all of them guard against something.

This "guard point" style is actually present in other games so it might seem strange that I still call it very unique. The reason for this is the other systems linked into this guard point system. First, when Bang successfully guards an attack with his drive he has the ability to instantly teleport before finishing the attack. This allows for movement options if the guarded attack has more hits coming and allows Bang to even appear behind his enemy while completing the attack. Second is that the attack itself is linked to one of Bang's supers commonly refered to as "Bang Install" which completely changes his base mechanics. Activating the move requires the player to land 4 hits with his drive and changes his movement options to allow dashes in 8 different directions as well as allowing him to move through opponents. This causes him to become even more mobile than Taokaka, however it also strips his ability to block attacks, making the guard points more important. Bang becomes a unique character because of how his drive mechanic factors into his other moves.

If that wasn't enough Bang also utilizes a supply system of "nails" which limit the amount of certain attacks he can do. He starts with 12 nails and uses them up as he performs certain moves. These moves consist of different styles of projectiles which give him strong options for attacks and a move which creates a "bumper" in the air which persists for the entire round. The presence of the bumpers is yet another unique thing about Bang as he is allowed to dash in any direction as soon as he touches one. This allows him to control his movement with a high degree of precision, but only in locations where the bumpers are.

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Litchi Faye Ling - Mantenbou

The last character is Litchi, who's drive allows her to control a special staff weapon that floats alongside her as she fights. Pressing the drive button sets the staff on the ground (or throws it to the ground in some cases). Pressing the drive button again calls the staff back to her, hitting anything in its way. Certain special moves also plant the staff to be called back later. Litchi's drive can be used in a variety of ways to create unique custom combos. Traditional combos with the staff involve knocking the enemy to the ground with the staff, only to relaunch them when the staff is recalled.

This mechanic is similar to a character in Guilty Gear (not surprising since its the same company) though Mantenbou adds onto the previous ideas. First is that Litchi's attacks change depending on whether or not she is in possession of the staff. She basically has two sets of moves with differing properties depending on if she is holding the staff or not. Additionally besides the special moves she can only do with the staff, certain special moves require her NOT to have the staff in her possession. Things get even more interesting because some normal moves with the staff cause her to lose possession of the staff for parts of the moves. This means that the available move list can change in the middle of combos which creates not only an intesting gameplay element, but likely a challenging aspect of this character for balancing.

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That's it for this week, one more post of characters, as I push to the end of the list of characters.

Labels: blazblue, game mechanics

posted by Saikyo at 7:21 PM

Monday, June 1, 2009

Team Based Games and Healer Classes Part 1

I was planning to write about Blazblue today, but something else came up that has been dominating my thinking time recently so I'll get that off my chest first. Blazblue updates will continue soon, since I want to finish before the game is released. It seems bad to start another multipart post when I still haven't finished my first one but I think this is worth it.

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Today want to talk about healer classes and their presence in team based games. I speak primarily of MMO style games like Guild Wars, as this is where the majority of my experience comes from, though I feel it has relevance to other games with healing roles as well, such as Team Fortress 2, to a lesser extent.

So my main issue with healers is that I don't believe that it's possible for them to be balanced. Certainly healers can have a degree of balance and games with healers enjoy what can be construed as balanced play with occasional updates, but I think in general the concept itself has flaws at the game mechanic level. Let's set up some premises first on which I'm basing my argument.

1. In a team based game, it's possible to focus fire. Which means that one person can potentially be ganged up on by several enemies, causing him to die very quickly.

2. Dying is bad. This is common to all games, but most of the time it carries a penalty so that players will avoid it.

3. To counter dying as a result of many simultanious attacks, the designer creates a healer class.

4. A healer is a class dedicated to the defense of his allies, while he may have some offensive skills, in general his assumed role in the team is to keep his allies fighting while being attacked.

Based on these premises, a few conclusions quickly develop:

"A healer must have the potential to protect an ally from the damage from at least three enemies."

Let's start from the beginning here. If a healer can only keep himself alive, he is worthless, if he can only keep one ally alive, then you should take another damage dealer instead. Because healing classes typically contribute very little in the way of offensive power you can consider that they add a value of zero (0) to the parties offensive capabilities. If we assume that any other class contribues equally to attack and defense in a ratio of 1/1 then a healer must contibute at least 0/2 to make him worth taking. In fact, because he does not contribute significantly to attacking which is the ONLY way to defeat opponents in most games he must be worth more than 2 in terms of defense to warrant a spot on the team.

The next logical following is where things start to fall appart:

"Because healers are worth so much defensively, they become priority targets."

This conclusion is backed up from emperical evidence. If you look at any Guild Wars PvP game or even many situations in PvE the first target is always the healer. This is because every player on some level inherantly recognizes that he is more valuable than the other classes. Looking at TF2 yields this example as well if anyone remembers the Penny Arcade strip about "shoot the doctor".

Another thing to consider here is a situation where a healer class fights any other class in a 1v1 situation. If we consider the non-healer's goal to kill the healer and the healer's goal not to get killed then the result will commonly be that the healer "wins" and the attacker "loses" even though the match is technically a draw.

Expanding this to larger groups, the case tends to be that groups with healers tend to have the advantage over groups without healers. Take a 4v4 situation where one group has a healer, assuming average players the team with the healer is more likely to win. The reason is because if a good healer can heal the damage from up to three enemies, then that one healer is already worth three members of the opposing team. Taking them away means it is a 3v1 situation. The condition only escalates when more healers are added, though there is obviously a limit (which I will address in a later post).

So in the end the final conclusion we arive at is:

"Healers are objectively worth more than other characters."

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Now that we've established the basic idea, the next post on this topic will go into arguments in favor of healers and why they still do not address the problem. Stay tuned!

Labels: game mechanics, guild wars

posted by Saikyo at 1:43 PM