Ask A Game Dev! - We Are Your Friend's Uncle

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Ask A Game Dev! - We Are Your Friend's Uncle

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

Songbearer posted:

During development, how often do you run into bugs or glitches that are so drat funny you're almost tempted to keep them in?

Absolutely all the time. I know that personally it's weird to see "FUNNIEST GAME GLITCHES" videos because during development, we see "Oh no everyone has no face" and stuff like that absolutely all the time and the idea of writing 4 paragraphs about it is odd.

But yeah, almost everybody sees weird conditions that make the character never stop dancing as they move or something.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2017 15:55

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 09:23

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

John Murdoch posted:

As for tutorials, there's a vocal contingent out there that seethes at "condescending" tutorials giving "obvious" information like using the left stick to move.

These people are wrong.

Obviously, there are exceptions - you can make games for only people who are super into them, as everyone always brings up Dark Souls. But most people have completely forgotten how intimidating and terrifying it is to hold a controller for the first time, and your game should, in most cases, be accessible to that person. You actually want 8 year olds to be able to play your game - and you want his parents who have never played a video game before, too.

"Condescension" is insanely stupid to care about - it costs you right next to nothing as the player and it's a lifeline for people who are new/bad.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2017 00:13

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

John Murdoch posted:

There's definitely a real conversation to be had about tutorial design, but usually the complaints are pure pass/fail. If a tutorial has to actually pop up a box that says "press A to jump" then the game is 100% garbage. Why can't every game be like Megaman X???? (Manual? What manual?)

Yeah, these kind of examples drive me crazy - Megaman X works because it's a 2D plain and you inherently do what the game wants because all the necessary information is on your screen at the same time. But it's actually possible to do things like "look straight up and miss something important" or "not understand how to use 2 control sticks together" really easily.

I love Dark Souls, but it's existence has made arguing about game design REALLY stupid, as well.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2017 00:42

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

GC_ChrisReeves posted:

I'm a big believer in giving the player the information they need to get started and then build difficulty on top of that. There is no challenge in Dark Souls simply not explaining to you what stats or certain mechanics mean, that's just obfuscation and some players will check wikis and others won't.

I get so irritated by the amount of stuff in the Souls games where you can make permanent bad decisions, and you'd really need to go to the Wiki to make sure you don't. I shouldn't be able to fail because I didn't check the internet. In general the games are fantastic and I love them and the vast majority of their design decisions are real good

mutata posted:

I generally agree with all of the above re tutorials, but I also agree that many in-game tutorials are last minute additions, but more than that, they are designed by people who do not understand teaching and learning. The opening moments of a game are extremely important (as dropout data has shown) and they have to accomplish a lot of things. I suspect that the most grievous on-boarding sequences (like possibly the Cuphead tutorial that's been in the news lately? I dunno, I haven't played it, but it looks intensely boring) fall in the category of "We're out of time, just make it real quick." These are fine because it's better to have SOMETHING there than nothing (unless you're Minecraft).

The big companies honestly don't put enough thought into tutorials most of the time, and it's real dumb how tacked on they are sometimes. The medium-and-down companies are somewhat excused because they made a mad dash to even get the game functional.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2017 03:03

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

A.o.D. posted:

I have a question about patching/game balance.

What are some thought processes on priority?

For example, there's a game based on a famous horror franchise that is loved/hated for some of its buggy behavior. They made a patch that nerfed some game play aspects that, at the same time ignored non-functional gameplay elements that are not dummied out. You can probably guess which game/developer I'm referencing, but I'm not trying to call them out. I've seen decisions like this happen a number of times from a wide number of developers and I've even seen it on non-competitive titles where it seems that game balance shouldn't be as high a priority as functionality.

Tl;Dr how come patch balance over functionality??

Broken functionality is usually broken due to bugs, which can be difficult to find the root cause, or require heavy reworks to fix.

Changing balance usually involves tweaking a set of numbers. You can fail to do it WELL, but you can't fail to actually do it.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2017 15:04

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

Dr Cheeto posted:

Thanks for this, it's hard for me to understand just how much crap literally everyone in games gets from a loud and intensely lovely group of gamers. It's really sad to me that most of what a developer will receive as feedback comes from these kinds of people, what can gamers do to foster a less lovely community?

I worked on a smallish MMO a few years ago. We were dying, and had only 5 people left on staff, and we were still putting out (slowly, painfully) content.

Because of this, we had a closer relationship to the players - and the way I found critical bugs was literally "Log into the game, chat with players for a while, find out what issues are important to them".

One day, at the end of the workday, I hopped on just to be friendly. Said hi, turned into a critter and followed a player around, just goofy stuff.

A player starts SCREAMING at me in chat - "WHY ARE YOU BUSY CHATTING IN GAME WHEN YOU SHOULD BE FIXING IT. YOU LAZY BLAH BLAH BLAH"

I responded - "It's after 5PM. I'm done working for the day. The alternative isn't that I'm doing more work, I'd instead be going home."

Him: "STFU and go code, bitch"

So yeah that's what we're dealing with. It's only about 10-15% of players, but they're nasty, NASTY human beings.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 15:08

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

exquisite tea posted:

Players can be good at identifying problems but are often very bad at proposing solutions,

This is something that good designers recognize. Players are actually really good at telling you what sucks about your game, because they're experiencing it! There's very little reason for their opinions about what they don't like to be wrong.

But holy poo poo, don't listen to their ideas of how to fix it they're real bad

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 15:32

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

cubicle gangster posted:

So here's a question for the game dev's - have you ever had co workers that still act like stereotypical gamers and feel games owe them something, despite working on them for a living? I imagine it's mostly limited to junior level, but is it ever a problem?

The reality of watching those decisions get made usually purges those ideas real quick.

Jeff Kaplan, who oversees one of the most popular/profitable games of all time (Overwatch), wrote this back when he was a guild leader in EQ. Development changes a person's perspective.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/4g2ler/jeff_tigole_kaplan_forum_rant_from_his_eq_days/

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 21:11

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

GC_ChrisReeves posted:

Overwatch particularly. With some games you can either grind for random drops with the option to pay to buy the thing you want outright, but OW goes a step further and denies you that, giving you the choice of grinding or paying for more rolls of the dice.

...very nearly everything in Overwatch can be gained by playing the game more? Very nearly everything currently available has a gold cost or comes from loot boxes.

A major reason people hate free-to-play models and microtransactions so much is that it's one of the only ways people have monetized their product that doesn't involve making the game better for consumers. Almost everything else developers do is strictly to make their product more fun for more people, but microtransactions don't, they just generate money. It's sad but I get why everybody does it.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2017 17:58

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

That said, I don't *really* have a problem with it. It kinda of gets a grandfather pass as I think it gets credit for being the first major game to introduce crates. Then there was the whole trading system to support it and if we are being honest, most base weapons are effectively free if you know how to navigate the trading communities. The problem is that that is a big 'if'. TF2 is an easy game to get into, but a difficult community to navigate.

Also weren't the stock weapons best-in-slot for a great number of the classes?

# ¿ Sep 27, 2017 19:40

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

For pretty much every class that was 'important' (Scout, Soldier, Demo, Medic), this is mostly true with a handful of exceptions here and there. I don't really want to welcome that argument as a justification because part of the fun of modern TF2 is the huge number of loadouts, but it didn't really introduce power creep either.

People are pretty chill about weapons for loadouts being non-selectable as long as none of them are viewed as "necessary to play the game".

Which means "Can be slightly more optimal on paper, even in situations that will never happen"

# ¿ Sep 27, 2017 20:06

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

GC_ChrisReeves posted:

But my point is I can't just go "hey I want *that* Symmetra skin right now, it looks great I'd even throw you a couple of quid for that!" Instead the game would rather I either play the game for a long time, or game modes i can't stand hoping for that to drop or til I eventually accrue enough in-game credits to buy with that or use actual money to buy more loot boxes - more rolls of the dice

It IS strange that you can't just buy a pile of the currency

# ¿ Sep 27, 2017 21:58

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

Discendo Vox posted:

As a completionist trying sadly to eke the last handful of percentage points of completion out of that horrible game, I'd love to hear more about your perspective on what went wrong there, in as much detail as possible. Ubisoft open world games are a sick fascination for me, both to complete and to ogle the mechanical results of such a massive development enterprise.

I mean - they really needed to pare down their feature set. They clearly just threw everything they thought of into the pot, and then they didn't do anything to slowly teach you the mechanics, they just unleashed you on Chicago. And they didn't make sure they were communicating effectively - I was like 5 hours into the game before I realized the girl who died was my niece, not my daughter.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2017 21:49

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

we use birds

you guys have more fun systems

# ¿ Oct 17, 2017 06:31

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 09:23

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

typically the sound department is the most forgotten department at the studio

i never talk to our sound guy about anything

# ¿ Oct 17, 2017 22:40

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