Interface, to whom we showing it, to a player or a character?

Interface and UI are not my area of expertise, but i had to learn much about it during my work as a creative director.

One of the main lessons i learned is always to ask yourself: is the game character aware of the information, shown on a particular interface? Who’s actually looking at the interface, character, or player? Answering this simple yet important question will lead us to answer the more complex question: is the interface exists in a game world, or is it exist outside a game world and only in a player’s reality? Is a playable character a player’s avatar and doesn’t exist in the game world when the player don’t play it, or the player is just controlling a character and the character exists in the game world even if the player doesn’t play the game? Is your game’s character aware of the existence of the interface?
And the most important question: is your game’s world aware of a player?

The questions answered, with that important information, it will be easier to decide, how exactly to make interfaces for a game, to stylize interfaces in the game’s world style, make them physical and real in the context of the game’s world, or just make interfaces clean and readable for a player (of course interfaces should be readable in both cases, but you know what i mean).

Let’s try to analyze a few games using this approach.

For instance, let’s compare NFS: Unbound with it’s stylized FX and graphics and Forza Horizon 4 with it’s realistic approach. So, considering the questions i asked above, what do we know? Well, the player exists in both these games through the avatar. What’s important, other characters and NPCs in both these games only communicating with an avatar, not with a player. So the game’s world isn’t aware of the player, so the player sees only what the avatar sees. This actually explains a lot. Unbound uses a stylized interface for in-game markers because the game’s world is such. Player’s avatar is stylized cell-shaded, and so is the car FX’s. Game markers are colorful, bright, and noticeable not only because it’s convenient for high-speed gameplay, but also because the world of the game itself, and the characters who live in this world are such.
Forza Horizon 5 is actually very similar, despite its more realistic approach. Game’s world is also communicates with a player through the player’s avatar, but the world itself is less stylized. It is assumed, that some characters in the Forza Horizon 5 universe did a job of placing racing gates at racing tracks: flags with fans on day races and red flares on night races.
So in both games, the interface is consistent with the game’s world (not to miss with being consistent to the game itself).

What about a different approach? Let’s add another racing game to a comparison.
Grand Tourismo 7, for an instance. What do we see there? There’s no such thing as in-game avatar, even though we have a driver figure that we can customize, the game itself always communicates with a player directly. Grand Tourismo 7 is aware of a player, and all the interfaces it has, it has for a player and it shows it only to a player. So all the interfaces in the GT7 are interfaces for the real world, they don’t exist in the game’s world.

So, i hope this will be helpful to someone reading this: if your game has something like a quest journal, always be aware of that, who exactly reading it. Is it a player, or is game character?

Importance of direct and indirect Objectives in PvP matches

Objectives have a critical importance of player guidance through the level. They can be direct (capture point) or indirect (take power-up). As i'm now developing maps for AW, all the power of objectives and their critical importance present to me. If tank games are common to you, you may know, that best strategy to win a match is to stick together. Those, who can gather up, win. But, with current matchmaking systems, where teams all the time is random, you can not hope that players will act as a team. So, how do you approach this problem, as a level designer?

AW6kK.png

Let's locate the problem. You need to guide people to the place where you want them to fight, right? What do you do? You build a corridor, so players can only move in two directions: to the fight, and from the fight. But that is not design, that's a cage. Of course, some games are designed to be a fight in a cage (fighting games), but i don't think we can talk about any meaningful level design there (or, we can, but it will be very special talk).

Of course, you can totally deny the existence of that problem and just leave players to themselves, giving them no meaningful explanation of your level topology in terms of using it as a tool for achieving victory.  Just fight, i don't care, where on my level you will kill each other, that sort of behavior. But that's just rude, we don't want to be rude, are we?

Ok then, let us move on. Next solution, is to invent some sort of "sport" rules, like "capture the flag". This is not a bad solution, but it only good for certain games, if you want to achieve a feeling of serious war act, you have to step away from any kind of "sport rules".

Designating points on the map, as important for victory (domination) is good too, and it often can have good lore explanation, but this solution is quite far from being fresh. It is easier to name a game which is not using it, then count all the games that do. Although, this solution is still very good.

What else can we do? Well, i think it is time for us to get back to the roots, and recall the glorious PvP game of the past. For instance, Doom and Quake. Power-ups! Only now i start to understand all the glory of the design of pickable weapons and different bonuses, as a tool for navigating player through the level and into the fray. What do you need to do to win? Kill the opposing player. You can do that with weak starting weapon, or pick up that rocket launcher located over there, but your opponent also can pick it up. Brilliant, brilliant solution, a player knows, that other player knows, that player knows about a location of bonuses on the level, and that makes a whole new level of psychological tricks and traps for players.

So, why we don't do that in tank games? Well, actually we do, but first, let me explain why we don't. Let's face it: you can not make a tank to pick up a weapon that it does not have.  This is far from being realistic, unless you are making a game about not realistic tanks, which, i hope, you don't, because such games - sucks (no offence here, just observation). And you can not make "realistic bonuses" that somehow make a tank stronger that it already is, for the same reason.

Ok then, what can be realistic indirect objective, which gives a player such power, that can lead to victory? My colleagues from Obsidian Entertainment made a great decision while designing GLOPS mode for AW. In this mode, player can "capture" a point, and that gives him opportunity to use one of the strategic abilities on the map, like: call an recon drone, that will scout part of the map for enemy vehicles, or call an airstrike at the small area. Such objectives, despite not giving a player victory itself, can lead to it, if used wisely.

Now, as a map designer i have one more tool to guide player movement through the map. Of cource, i still have other tools: clever use of map topology, that will give advantage to player holding this position, but those sometimes are too indirect and not very friendly to new players. Also. "advantage points" tend to work too well: once player hold is, he don't want to leave it.

Mate, you are pushing that green bar in a wrong direction...

 There is a problem in games, that I want to discuss.

Heal in PvP.

Cons:

- No natural mechanical counterplay (or you have to invent counterplay), most games can introduce only tactical counterplay to heal (burst damage, focus healer).

- Too long combat (can be infinite, in some cases)

- Lack of feedback in some cases (why am I not doing any damage???)

- Problems, caused by "solutions" (oneshots, artificial. hard to understand mechanics, such as heal reduction)

Pros:

- You can shout "Focus healer!" if you playing with voice communication.

In resource managing gameplay, which many games have in, at least, some sort, health points of a character is a foundation. I mean, name a game that don't have health points, or hit points of some sort?  We are raised in the concept, where when a green bar of health points comes to mark 0 - character dies. That means, that you, as a player, crossed a line, designed by a game developer... Well, come on, everyone knows what is Hit points are, and why they are here.

Someone, very long time ago, thought, that it will be a damn good idea if one player can replenish health points of another player, though that player could withstand more damage.

Good, now we can show to the player that he is powerful, look: you, guys, just slaughtered that dragon, it was very powerful, it had 10 times more hitpoints then your generic tank character and been capable of 10 times more damage than your generic damage dealer character, you are so strong. Oh yeah, that was possible, because you had a generic healer character with you, who was pushing your green bars all the fight, back to the top. That's quite fair when we are talking about PvE, but what about PvP? Problems started, when someone came out with a bright idea, that characters can fight not only monsters, they can fight other characters, controlled by other people, with exactly same rules and mechanics, as in PvE setting. 

Everyone knows about balance rock-paper-scissors concept. But, (remembering famous WoW meme) what about mushrooms? Suddenly, you can not balance your game at all, because there is this guy, who pushes green bar to the opposite direction, he is undoing the damage players do to each other, converting what was a fair fight, to the endless torture, where DD's can take more damage then tank and tanks became totally unkillable, yet useless, because they can not overtake all those heals! Of course, I am hyperbolizing, but you probably can recognize a few games that suit the description. 

Yes, you can bring some ideas how to fix this mess: implement burst damage, try to balance the numbers more carefully, invent heal reduction, etc etc. That all is nothing but canes that you need for your lame gameplay to be able to stand and not fall down. But then, you will need canes for your canes, because burst damage associates with "oneshot" problem, and too much heal reduction is making all healing classes (which are the root of a problem) useless, etc, etc. And yes, how could I forget, you will need a healer in each team, or you will have huge (well, maybe not huge, but some) matchmaking problems (if you have it in your PvP game). And the other thing, heal mechanic (i mean the amounts of heal compared to amounts of damage) does not have good counterplay, so you will need more canes, to implement that.

So, probably, you can see a picture I'm painting.

- But Sergey, you would probably say, - you are just hating healers for no reason, we know all the problems for decades now, we have huge experience how to deal with them, and even, who are you to lecture? And you don't even offer a solution! We have a large group of players who enjoy playing healers, because they care about other people, and tend to make good, to keep other people alive!

Well, that's not true. First of all, remember, we are talking about PvP game. And those who play healers (probably, not all of them, maybe just a tiny part, ok, its just me), are keeping their teammates alive so they could enjoy the slaughter a little bit longer, like a little sidekick of a villain, who is laughing, watching at his master is making others suffer, but too weak to inflict suffering by himself. Believe me, I'm playing as a healer a lot.

And second, I can offer something, I will get to that point, just a little bit later.

First, let me explain, I do not think that regeneration of hit points of any sort is bad. Heal can be good if done properly. What is bad heal, exactly? That's easy. Heal that has ruffly the same influence to the character as damage, it can receive in the gaming process, is bad. It should be avoided in games with a possibility of PvP action by all costs. What about regeneration, heal over time, and other stuff, that can not overtake damage? You definitely can use it, but carefully. But everything, that can undo the damage with the speed, comparable to the speed with that damage was inflicted, is a bad solution. It steels the dynamic from gameplay. It lacks feedback.

So, what are my propositions, what can replace heal?

1. As a first solution: don't make heal. At all. Let characters die with honor.

2. If you desperately need a support class or anything that helps friendly characters to stay alive longer, think about preventing damage, not undoing it. This can be many things, and in past few years many of them find implementation in games, like shields (buffs on players that can withstand some damage, then they fall off), if your damage is done by any projectiles that have travel time - player placed walls that block those projectiles (bullets, spells, whatever).

3. You can even split your health bar in few sectors, or make multiple health bars, only one of which can be "healed" (this solution is often used in arcade games in a space setting, or in other futuristic settings). I would not call this best solution, though, because it does not solve a problem, it just makes it smaller.

That's all for now, be creative and don't do bad mechanics in your games.

R for Random

Here is the story, that I want to share.

When I've been making a Goblinobol, when activity hit test servers, and we started to gather some stats from it, something strange discovered. Blue team had 10% more winrate then intended. That make me double check all mechanics, and then triple check it again. Nothing was found. Then I've started to watch videos taken from the matches by QA.

Here I must explain some mechanics, though my story would make sense. All mechanics is made through the ball, it has certain amounts of auras, each aura does its thing. There is an aura, when it "sees" a player in it, it "attaches" ball to the player, which it sees first in server tick, and disable itself, and enable other mechanics, though the player can interact with the ball. But what will happen, if two players will enter the "attach a ball to a player" aura in the same server tick?

Well, I thought, it will be random, they all there, in same tick, aura can not prefer one player to another. Or did it?

On the video, each time two players from the different teams run to the ball in the same time, every time, it was player of Blue team who gets the ball. (The team called Red and Blue in mechanic). The tests confirmed it, when two players are in the same aura in the same server tick, aura prefers the player from the Blue team each time.

Because Blue is higher in the alphabet.

I had to add additional "randomize" there, problem was solved. winrate hit "magic" number of 49.9%/49.9% (there were some draws), and the activity went to live.

And I got a good story to tell to colleagues.

 

 

Always log your work

While developing this website, i had to google lots of projects that i worked on. What can i say, some of it is no longer there. The website of my first job: MilAnium design studio is only in google's cash, and of course, no pictures that i needed. What a shame, i have my drawings, but actual architecture photos is lost.