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[SirNiko]

I agree with Monster King as well. For some players, the appeal is that it is a game of pure skill, no holds barred battle to see who is better. You would not always use it, you would use it for specific types of games and specific types of players.

Balancing mechanics are good for when players want a game to have longevity. A roleplaying game has a lot of setup, for example, so it's in the interest of all involved to fudge a few numbers if it keeps the game swinging instead of hitting an early dead-end in the form of a TPK or aborted questline. The same for an RTS that has a substantial "Building up" period. It's not really fun if you play the building up phase for 15 minutes and get hammered into the ground before you can start really skirmishing.

Smash Bros is generally considered a poor choice for tournament play as a result of these mechanics - the heavy use of luck (random slipping, random items, random stage effects) marginalize skill. It's a social game, you play it just to laugh at the thought of Princess Peach clobbering Solid Snake with a 9 Iron. That seems like a strong market for Nintendo, so it succeeds despite protests by the tourney community.

There's also a market for pure skill games, especially between players who are very close in terms of play ability. Monster King's outlined reasons for that.

tl;dr Both skill based play and randomized balancing mechanics are good design, they're just for different people and goals.

[gimymblert]

Well there is a very strong competitive smash bros scene, and things in smash bros ask for more skills (ie: pit arrows) than your typical fighter.

It's NOT that The tourney community that's against him, that's the traditional fighting community, which is very different.

And luck is not all without skills, it's also a skill to use when it's "deterministic" and voluntary. Ex: the tripping is more a press your luck mechanics, you don't randomly trip, It only occurs if you actively trigger RUN, which is voluntary, you can still try to run only when tripping is safe and non decisive. You ponder the trade off.

It's all about play aesthetics and psychology, but fundamentally, "random" can be a skill to manage.

When valve introduce luck into TF2 without warning, the player, unaware, report that the game was "better". L4D use "deterministic" random (random that operate under certain condition: the ai director) to is own advantage to create compelling experience, that makes the game above average and endlessly replayable. Good random is never totally random, it's bounded and "predictable", it's READABLE (skills).

Sorry I didn't say you are wrong, but I wanted to bring the nuance out

[The Monster King]

while theres some very high-skill demanding moves in smash bros, i can assure you that its either equal or inferior to most modern fighters

but yeah random can be used effectively if it involves players adapting to a situation, i just prefer players adapting to the work of other players

as long as players have a minimum of time to adapt to random stuff and it affects them both then yeah sure i guess its fair

[gimymblert]

while theres some very high-skill demanding moves in smash bros, i can assure you that its either equal or inferior to most modern fighters

 

I could not agree, it's actually measurable quantitatively.

It's not just the skill but the mind game that goes on. The Pit arrow circling is not only skills, it allows for hi level mind game not heard in any other fighting game i know, it just beat VF5. AND the mind is entirely situational. You control up to 5 entities at the same times with a fine degree of nuance, it's hard but open endless possibilities. It's not just 3 yomi layer, it's about a complex pattern of all skills and mind game the game support at once in a single move.

While some gameplay mode should be (and can be) tone down (some items are really too powerful) the game has everything any competent fighting game have + it have environment (adding a layer of awareness, positional skill became important at a new level) + timed events (anticipating environment effect as a skills) + items (you can deactivate them for a "fairer" game, but it is just an illusion, it add another layer of depth concretely, there is deterministic way to anticipate them, especially when all the bad one are rule out) + it's multiple player game (adding social skills like in poker, but still playable with 2 only).

If you break down each movement type (dodging, attacking, special, moving, being hit, blocking, grabbing) there is more option and nuance than any other fighting game CONCRETELY.

The truth is that smash bros in full force is TOO complex (but still readable) regarding the traditional fighting game. The layer of complexity it remove (thankfully) onto controls (but not their depth), it put it elsewhere ten times. There is more nuance to action than any fighting game. The biggest flaw (aside from pikachu ) is that the game is less keen on PUNISHMENT which is a HUGE aesthetic of traditional fighting game (evo 2k4 justin vs daigo), it favor less timing input skills than mind game and reading the situation.

I just could not let you tell such a things!

[The Monster King]

haha you drive good points there thats a pretty nice analysis

i do agree there are added layers of complexity but theres a certain refinement i just dont feel when playing smash bros, but now thats a personnal opinion and theres no denying that there are much more elements to pay attention to in smash, so in that way yeah its deeper as you have to have different varied skills

i dont agree that player movement in smash has more options and nuances though, usually in fighting games theres way more effects and properties to moves

i dont think quantity of different factors to take in makes it a deeper experience though

this is only half on-topic though, but id be glad to talk about this in a different topic as fighting games are pretty much my favorite (id argue smash is a platform game with a vs mode but i dont seriously mind if you wanna call it a fighting game :V )

the one thing we can get from this is how many different elements you want to take in your small-scale turn based strategy game, are most things you have to adapt to coming from the other player like in a traditional fighting game or do you want the environment to be more important and even interact with the player like in smash bros

[gimymblert]

It's okay, just the casual rant

Well smash bros is not without flaws, the first is being some aspect are not readable, you have to know them first, it open only at very high level play and leave huge gap between intermediate and top skill player. Platform game are about navigating a vertical environment, fighting is about kicking opponent ass, you are right basically, but it work the other way around too! it's a fighting game with element of platformer

From a "playing" perspective what makes a game deep for me, it's when you have huge option to adapt a lot of different situation with risk/reward cost. I would advise to identify those when making your game, it really can make the difference!

[The Monster King]

yeah hes right, choose what you want to be risky and less risky! what behaviors you want to encourage, should you turtle? should you always go all out? should you rush kekeke? should you expand everywhere?

[gimymblert]

I recently learn that strategy game are based on a RPS system called turtle, boom or rush, based on how you spend your resource.

Turtle: Build early defense (strong against rush, weak against booming)
Rush: Create early attack (strong against booming, weak against turtling)
Boom: Expend early and gather informations (strong against turtling, weak against rush)

Booming is less clear that the other one, basically it encompass everything like researching better tech early, scouting area, Spying the opponent at the expense of the other strategy.

Of course an actual strategy is a mix of those. It's a good guideline to make a game by making mechanics that support it and to avoid making units that break the circle. Try to "time beat" the game, for example, in one minute beat: how much "rush" i need and how much it balance with "boom" and "turtle", which can be derive from the resource consumption rate. Everything else is level design.

The interesting things is that if you balance the game so that their is fallback when going into one strategy. What if expending could have counter measure to rush too, etc... a reverse RPS but in a defensive way instead of offense.

[The Monster King]

you could try adding different RPS to the mix, like i said i believe all competitive games are a strange RPS where rock is way better than everything, but thats all the more reason to go paper since everyone takes rock

you could try innovating and make something else than turtle, rush and boom! you dont have to though and you can play with those 3 and still get something really nice and new

[krasimir]

If you're talking about tactical turn based games, make sure to check out X-COM:  UFO Defense.

The key element for a small scale strategy game, in my opinion, is making sure every element is extremely interconnected with all the oth

Yes, X-Com is a great example. Specifically, if you do not save/load. When you send in a rookie team, you literally need 3 soldiers to handle the job of one. At least two will miss, sometimes, all three.

[pelle]

I want strategy games to simulate something, to provide some kind of role-playing experience, adventure, escape from real life. It can be a historic wargame or fantasy or scifi, as long as it gives me some feeing of "being there" making strategic or tactical decisions that makes sense. Obviously that means randomness must be part of it, to handle everything out of my control. Chaos and unpredictable outcomes are part of the theme of war, and if you want a non-abstract strategy game that makes any kind of sense you need chaos. Abstract strategy games like chess are just too dull to me. I lost interest in Advance Wars after a few scenarios when I realized combat was deterministic. Completely destroyed the suspension of belief. I wasn't in a fantasy world fighting a war anymore, I was just staring at a console version of chess with cute graphics.

I prefer deeper strategy games though. If the number of decisions to make, and the size of the game (in length and number of units) is big enough the best player will win no matter how lucky or unlucky players are. Managing risk/chance is just another skill to master and in many cases you can set things up so that no matter how bad you roll you will still win. For instance in the board game Advanced Squad Leader a good player will move his units in ways so that a bad player will often not even get a chance to fire, and when he (me, most of the time) gets a chance to fire it is at really bad odds. The better player will almost always win (just like in chess) despite the hundreds of die rolls. Don't trust me, go try to play in an Advanced Squad Leader tournament (yes, they have tournaments, and rankings... same players always end up winning btw, just like in chess or othe non-random games).

[IQpierce]

The discussion here of randomness and its role in games has been interesting. Personally though I've never read a better take on this subject that Greg Costikyan's, which I consider almost definitive: http://playthisthing.com/randomness-blight-or-bane

The only thing I could possibly add to it (which he somewhat covered as well) is the fact that managing probability can, and should, be an interesting part of the strategy. As pelle just mentioned, in a game that has an element of random chance, the best players should be best at understanding what that element of chance actually means and managing it best.

Poker is a game with very real and quite deep strategy; but it's largely a management of chance. Magic: The Gathering similarly involves management of chance as part of strategy in deck-building.

My point is simply that the presence of some chance doesn't completely destroy any chance of having strategy; for some games it makes the strategy deeper and richer. However it undeniably increases the chances of "bad" player beating a "good" player - while this makes games more fun and rewarding for new players, hardcore experienced players usually hate it and want to feel that they won purely from skill every time. See the TF2 community, where the hardcore competitive players turn off crits, even though crits are one of the things that make the game the most fun for more casual players and allow them to have a chance of occasionally killing a great player.