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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperDesign"Snowballing" mechanics in 1v1 - should I care how this effects new player?
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Author Topic: "Snowballing" mechanics in 1v1 - should I care how this effects new player?  (Read 995 times)
usabunbun
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« on: August 29, 2018, 09:56:18 AM »

So I'm working on prototyping a hardcore 1v1 rhythm game designed to allow competitive freestyle play between top-level players of VSRG like DJMax, IIDX or Guitar Hero.  I've always been a fan of fighting games like old school KOF that have clear snowballing mechanics (stun, infinite corner combos), primarily because losing doesn't just feel frustrating - it's downright humiliating most of the time.  For someone like myself, this is great motivator to "git gud", because winning feels so good, and losing feels so bad.  I think these two are directly related.

But how much is too much?  In my game, it's already ZERO fun to be the losing player in a match with any sort of skill gap, even though I've set several hard limits on how much one player can abuse another.  Rhythm games are about raw execution instead of strategy and even though my game is unique with freestyle emphasis, it's still a far cry from a fighting game where upsets happen easily.  I feel like if I add some of the snowballing mechanics I'm thinking about, it would make that problem even worse, but at the same time, it could make matches between two evenly-matched players much more intense. 

Considering my game is already so niche in its appeal, maybe I should just go all-in on what I think hardcore players like myself will enjoy and abandon new players to the wolves?  But at the same time I would feel bad for new players, who would unpack after a match and realize they never even had a chance at winning.  Too much of that could have the opposite effect that I want (player feels drive to get better), and instead be very demotivating.

I realize this is all a matter of taste and knowing my audience at the end of the day, but I think that my view of the situation is kind of warped since most people are not rhythm game addicts who play every single day and stress over their leaderboard position lol.  When a game is already extremely difficult just to learn, and the only way to learn the game is in 1v1 setting, common sense tells me to cut them some slack, but the player in me wants to just throw them in the deep end and see who swims  Evil 
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Unknown33
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« Reply #1 on: August 29, 2018, 01:57:59 PM »

As a casual player, if you put a mechanic designed to humiliate me, I seek a refund on the game and play something else and leave a bad review.

Now that's funny.
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pilchards
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« Reply #2 on: August 29, 2018, 11:11:26 PM »

One thing that made me feel better in tough multiplayer games is decent spectating options. Like it is a terrible and humiliating  experience to lose so horribly to someone when you can't like even get a single hit back or whatever. But if you can watch that same person who beat you, and see them lose then to someone else in even worse fashion, that is kind of exciting. You think wow this game this has lots of depth and I wonder when I can get that good etc.
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usabunbun
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« Reply #3 on: August 30, 2018, 11:42:19 AM »

As a casual player, if you put a mechanic designed to humiliate me, I seek a refund on the game and play something else and leave a bad review.

Now that's funny.

Lol that is actually a very useful perspective for me to hear.  But do you think that you would even be attracted to a game like this in the first place?  Even the easiest difficulty assumes a base level of rhythm game competence that few "casual" players probably have.  If you can't follow something like this: (

) then you really can't even play the tutorial chart.  That's not me trying to be exclusionary either, it's just that the game's mechanics literally do not work without a certain note density, and you need to be able to time independently in freestyle mode as well. 

Also, just to be clear, it's not intentionally humiliating, like a fatality in Mortal Kombat for example.  It's more that a good player will be able to beat a bad player effortlessly, every single time, and probably never take a single hit of damage no matter how long they play.  It's not a fighting game so there are no mindgames and there's little to no room for an underdog victory.  The winner will always be whoever has better mastered the 3 core skills of reading, execution and timing.  These snowball mechanics would simply reward mastery of those skills more than the game currently does, and naturally tilt the game further towards frustration for those who lack them in the process.
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usabunbun
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« Reply #4 on: August 30, 2018, 12:25:11 PM »

One thing that made me feel better in tough multiplayer games is decent spectating options. Like it is a terrible and humiliating  experience to lose so horribly to someone when you can't like even get a single hit back or whatever. But if you can watch that same person who beat you, and see them lose then to someone else in even worse fashion, that is kind of exciting. You think wow this game this has lots of depth and I wonder when I can get that good etc.

Well ideally the game is meant to be played live on the (super fucking loud) arcade cabinet we're building for it, so the "spectator mode" is built in.  This project really is a culmination of a whole bunch of different skills me, my family and my friends have picked up over the years, from woodworking and electronics to producing music and programming.  It's pretty much just for fun still, but that doesn't mean we don't want to show it off when we're done and possibly build more cabinets if people actually want them.

I personally have a lot of doubts about trying to sell the game to people on PC or something because even though it uses a fightstick instead of a weird music game controller, it's only 1v1 and there is no bot or training mode. I am the only one really designing the game or writing any code for it and I don't think I'm up to making any online multiplayer, let alone multiplayer that would be lag-free enough for the game to feel right.  Compensating for input lag when reading and playing notes is one thing, but doing that when you are actually laying down notes yourself is completely different.
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Unknown33
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« Reply #5 on: August 30, 2018, 05:44:18 PM »

As a casual player, if you put a mechanic designed to humiliate me, I seek a refund on the game and play something else and leave a bad review.

Now that's funny.

Lol that is actually a very useful perspective for me to hear.  But do you think that you would even be attracted to a game like this in the first place?  Even the easiest difficulty assumes a base level of rhythm game competence that few "casual" players probably have.  If you can't follow something like this: (

) then you really can't even play the tutorial chart.  That's not me trying to be exclusionary either, it's just that the game's mechanics literally do not work without a certain note density, and you need to be able to time independently in freestyle mode as well. 

Also, just to be clear, it's not intentionally humiliating, like a fatality in Mortal Kombat for example.  It's more that a good player will be able to beat a bad player effortlessly, every single time, and probably never take a single hit of damage no matter how long they play.  It's not a fighting game so there are no mindgames and there's little to no room for an underdog victory.  The winner will always be whoever has better mastered the 3 core skills of reading, execution and timing.  These snowball mechanics would simply reward mastery of those skills more than the game currently does, and naturally tilt the game further towards frustration for those who lack them in the process.

I'm not attracted to competitive games, in general. That's why I play games casually. So no, to answer your inquiry, I would probably not be attracted to your game if it only offered competitive gameplay. I was a pretty enthusiastic DDR player for a while in my early 20's. Not great, but if you would throw this song on the foot pad I could keep up with it for a while.
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