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[Graham-]

Coins should be like 20 to a life, and just be less of them. Maybe even 10. Yoshi coins aren't great because they don't stack - you need all 5 in one level for them to matter at all.

Coins were way cooler back when I was a kid and couldn't figure out their real value. When you get older they are a pass-time and some times monotonous. Coins are great, could be better.

[Evan Balster]

I take a little issue with the notion that strategy and challenge are mediums for self-expression.  By that logic any kind of motivation a player experiences induces a form of expression, which makes the idea a bit more broad than I'm comfortable with for game design purposes.  But then I suppose we're getting into semantics.

I guess I tend to regard anything that the player approaches as an optimization problem as a situation with no potential for expressive decisions.  Economics is a science, not an art.

[Graham-]

Whoa that is so not true my mind hurts just a little. Strategy for one is defined by its abstractness. Good strategists rely on instinct. That's what makes it strategy.

Second. Action, tactics, puzzles and so on may have right answers but varied execution. Watch pro Starcraft players play. Each one has a style. Look at sports. Exact same thing there.

A correct answer will always have insane freedom on the path to get there. Think about the Olympics. Olympians who win find novel patterns to run their lives by to squeeze the extra inches out of their abilities. Training hard is definitely not enough.

You have to make your training program, mental state, everything suit who you are as best as you can. Beyond that many strategic problems have many correct solutions, or as they are in games, have some solutions that require a different skill set to execute than others, making a strategic choice even more stylistic.

Good thought though.

[Alex Higgins]

I guess I tend to regard anything that the player approaches as an optimization problem as a situation with no potential for expressive decisions.  Economics is a science, not an art.

Not necessarily. I remember coming across a video that talked about there being two types of decisions in games: "problems" and "choices." The former are the optimization problems you are talking about (what do I need to do to get the highest score, kill these guys and take the least damage, get the best weapon, etc), while the later refer to decisions that do not have an optimal outcome (which character should I romance, what color should my character be, etc).

This raises the questions of whether only making "choices" in games are self-expressive, and solving "problems" is not, and whether allowing for multiple methods of solving a problem, none of which are clearly superior, allows for expression.

[mysteriosum]

I guess I tend to regard anything that the player approaches as an optimization problem as a situation with no potential for expressive decisions.  Economics is a science, not an art.

Not necessarily. I remember coming across a video that talked about there being two types of decisions in games: "problems" and "choices." The former are the optimization problems you are talking about (what do I need to do to get the highest score, kill these guys and take the least damage, get the best weapon, etc), while the later refer to decisions that do not have an optimal outcome (which character should I romance, what color should my character be, etc).

Right. Optimal outcome: I rescue the Princess. It's my choice whether or not to get the Yoshi coin, because it puts me in danger. It is frequently not optimal at all. I would spend multiple lives getting a Yoshi coin whose only purpose is to give me a life if I get all 5. But, afterwards, it's a point of pride - I got all the Yoshi coins in all the levels! (I actually haven't set out to do this... yet... but have in recent Mario games which have similar ingredients.) This decision is part of what makes me me; this is how I play games. It's not how my roommate plays games. :O

The more I think about it, the more I think of 1P games as a performance art. I was playing VVVVVV time trials at one point and I realized it's all muscle memory and flow - the same things required when I played cello.

Coins should be like 20 to a life, and just be less of them. Maybe even 10. Yoshi coins aren't great because they don't stack - you need all 5 in one level for them to matter at all.

Coins were way cooler back when I was a kid and couldn't figure out their real value. When you get older they are a pass-time and some times monotonous. Coins are great, could be better.

Coins serve multiple purposes, beyond simply giving lives, which wouldn't be possible if their value was increased so. If placed correctly, they can train a player to jump at exactly the right point, optimizing their height. On a mine-cart level, they could hint at where you're going to need to jump. There are rooms full of coins, where the challenge then becomes to collect as many as possible as the screen moves along steadily - it becomes just as urgent as getting to the end of the level, but it's just pure joy in collecting so many freaking coins. It even opens up a new level of potential strategizing and experimentation: should I make long, high jumps or lots of smaller ones?

Though one thing I must say: bananas > coins. Donkey Kong Country 2 made the best use of collectibles I can think of to date.

[rickardwestman]

I am very new to all this. But if feels like most of the arguments for Mario Coins are based on game design, where they are put to good use.

While being part of a small team I can see that being both a writer and a game designer can be done by one person. But isn't writing for a game different from designing a game?

In an ideal world there would probably be a unity between writing and design where things make sense in both terms, or as was mentioned above, a complete lack of sense where things have no resonalble connection, which then would create a sense out of not making sense.

Could the Mario Coins then have been 'anything' really, since they are mostly there for design purposes anyway? Of course they might be of a symbolic value, since money is something that we work hard for to collect and use, to pay for a living.
Though I don't think symbolism should be applied to a Mario game.

From a design point of view you would probably want to design a Mario Game, but solely from a writers point of view, not so much in my opinion.

[Graham-]

Coins are great. I know what their purpose is. What I am saying is that they wear thin after a while. Most coins don't become interesting after a while. You see coins accessible to a tricky jump and you don't go for them because they aren't worth it. They are often useless achievement points - not always but often.

A simple fix. Remove the Yoshi coins. Make 2 coins value sizes. Have the 1 cent ones, and then 5 cent ones.

Mario is a game about being terrible at Mario, and the coins are best suited to that. They are less useful when you are good.

Mario 64 made 'em health points, trying to shove their value back in. Then they made New Super Mario Bros 2, which was all about a million coins. Nintendo is trying to make the coin valuable. They want it to be valuable but not so much that it unbalances play. So they made 'em almost valuable.

I agree with DKC being better. Bananas there are much easier to collect, can come in bunches - x10 - and are often given for free. You also aren't given 3 bananas for a ridiculous jump. You are given 3 for a single jump. Crazy jumps give you 20, and not in some separate room that takes 10 seconds to move around, in 2 bunches that you glide through.

I find myself counting my banana supply in DKC, squeezing out an extra life when I need it, getting to the next save point on the edge. In Mario free lives are more like excitement points from coins.

Bananas also take up less space. Though I think both games could have improved their placement of their collectibles. They didn't always consider balancing. Makes the games far less replayable.

edit:

Another difference between Mario and DKC: Mario coins often require you to take a slower route to get somewhere. DKC bananas are often on the way though trickier to get.

[Graham-]

I don't see a huge separation between writing and level design. I think not seeing them as the same thing is often an issue in game design.

Screenwriters can to control the length of the scenes - approximately - in their work, their tone, who is in them, what order they come in. In games the scriptwriters can control only some of that stuff. The level design adds so much more, that controls the same feelings as the script does.

Imagine a script that at the end of every scene there is a blank page that says, "now a bunch of random things happen for 1-10 minutes." That's game script writing. You have to consider the level design because the player is always being traded between the two: script and level.

The idea that music and script and design and animation and environment art are these separate things are what can get you into trouble. The backbone are the mechanics I think then everything else grows out from there.