I'm of two minds on this piece. Yes I would like better story modes, but I'm not sure looking for reference points in Smash Bros and Netherrealm games is really gonna get us there. The SoulsBorne...
I'm of two minds on this piece. Yes I would like better story modes, but I'm not sure looking for reference points in Smash Bros and Netherrealm games is really gonna get us there. The SoulsBorne games actually feel like a much better reference point. Each of the bosses and stages are designed to challenge you on specific key game mechanics and concepts. In the early game you have to master certain tactics and basic mechanics to advance. As you go it starts to make you integrate them together and make the battles increasingly complex.
Of course, fighting games are WAY more complex and it's hard to make an AI operate that way with the range of options a good fighting game offers. Your enemies would have to be completely different from how the player characters work. Also, the Soulsborne games are meticulously designed to manage the difficulty throughout. That's a level of detail and design work that would be detracting from making the actual fighting gameplay better, the roster bigger, etc. Is it worth the tradeoff?
Maybe, being as how the fighting game genre has a real onboarding problem. But there is some stuff that I don't know can ever be accessible. I'm doing the Mission mode in Strive now and some of the things it's asking me to do have a window of literally 1 or 2 frames to react in. I don't have the muscle memory and my brain isn't as plastic as it used to be. It's basically impossible for me to dedicate the time it would take to get that kind of mechanical execution down. But that is also what makes it a viable eSport, the fact that there is stuff that I just can't do is what separates me from SonicFox the same way it separates me from LeBron on the basketball court.
I was never mechanically gifted at video games, but as I age, I also can see the enormous advantage of youth in certain games and it puts me off of them. Given hardware I/O, polling frequency of...
But that is also what makes it a viable eSport, the fact that there is stuff that I just can't do is what separates me from SonicFox the same way it separates me from LeBron on the basketball court.
I was never mechanically gifted at video games, but as I age, I also can see the enormous advantage of youth in certain games and it puts me off of them. Given hardware I/O, polling frequency of input devices, networking hops, netcode itself, and various other variables, I never expect reaction time to be the fundamental skill separator in games that demand fast, mechanical reactions. But for single-player or local multiplayer games, as I get older, I do get miffed when there is an expectation of frame-perfect inputs. I'd prefer if devs could tune games (or offer user tunable knobs) to allow for older/non-athletic gamers to still have a chance. I'm not saying I want everything to be turn-based, though. The last game I played that had a skill ceiling I couldn't even come close to was Hyperlight Drifter. I could not for the life of me master the timing necessary for the dash challenge. It really put me off the game even though I was enjoying it a lot up to that point. A game like Heroes of the Storm (which happens to be based on the Starcraft II engine) I think finds a really nice balance. There are times when frame-perfect input will push your play ahead of other players. But most of the time, strategic planning and teamwork will overcome individual mechanical skill. Similarly, in FPSs like Halo, having a strong knowledge of the weapons and maps can help me compete with 13 year olds who absolutely have more dexterity and time to practice. And equalizing mechanics like grenades (which can do splash damage, so you don't have to be as pixel-perfectly accurate) can really help to tighten the skill gap between ceiling and floor.
For fighting games, I think there is probably an opportunity for machine learning to study expert players' styles and create tunable AIs that could challenge human players in specific ways. I know that there have been some driving games that have experimented with this sort of thing (though those games are much simpler in certain dimensions, so the modeling may be very different).
To be fair, as long as the ELO/Matchmaking system is working properly it shouldn't really hurt your chances of playing and winning, you just won't be able to compete with people at the peak of the...
I'd prefer if devs could tune games (or offer user tunable knobs) to allow for older/non-athletic gamers to still have a chance.
To be fair, as long as the ELO/Matchmaking system is working properly it shouldn't really hurt your chances of playing and winning, you just won't be able to compete with people at the peak of the game. I think the bigger impediment is just the difficulty of understanding what you did wrong or could have done better if you're not already deeply familiar with the underlying systems.
You can't actually practice or self-critique to improve if you don't really understand why you lost. Even if the game demands frame-perfect inputs it doesn't feel so bad if you have a sense for what the timing window you're supposed to hit is. The frustration comes when the animations don't make it clear whether you're too late, too early, or whatever to dodge properly or to connect on a link. The comparison would be to something like a rhythm game where both the music itself and the little pip flying by your screen both provide some sort of perceptible feedback to not just tell you that you messed up, but exactly how.
Yeah, I’m more talking about local multiplayer or single-player. I’m not expecting to do competitive speed-runs, but if I need the timing of a speed-runner just to play the game as intended, I’m...
To be fair, as long as the ELO/Matchmaking system is working properly it shouldn't really hurt your chances of playing and winning
Yeah, I’m more talking about local multiplayer or single-player. I’m not expecting to do competitive speed-runs, but if I need the timing of a speed-runner just to play the game as intended, I’m probably not going to enjoy it.
Like, in Super Mario Galaxy, there are speed-run challenges where I think they are tuned pretty well, maybe even too casual. Contrastively I remember the end of Diddy Kong Racing on the highest difficulty required extreme proficiency. But at least there was a difficulty scale, so players could traverse it at their own pace. I guess what I’m really asking for is for the floor to be accessible to the broadest audience. I don’t mind if my skill caps out below the ceiling. I just don’t want to be excluded just because I’m in my thirties.
I'm of two minds on this piece. Yes I would like better story modes, but I'm not sure looking for reference points in Smash Bros and Netherrealm games is really gonna get us there. The SoulsBorne games actually feel like a much better reference point. Each of the bosses and stages are designed to challenge you on specific key game mechanics and concepts. In the early game you have to master certain tactics and basic mechanics to advance. As you go it starts to make you integrate them together and make the battles increasingly complex.
Of course, fighting games are WAY more complex and it's hard to make an AI operate that way with the range of options a good fighting game offers. Your enemies would have to be completely different from how the player characters work. Also, the Soulsborne games are meticulously designed to manage the difficulty throughout. That's a level of detail and design work that would be detracting from making the actual fighting gameplay better, the roster bigger, etc. Is it worth the tradeoff?
Maybe, being as how the fighting game genre has a real onboarding problem. But there is some stuff that I don't know can ever be accessible. I'm doing the Mission mode in Strive now and some of the things it's asking me to do have a window of literally 1 or 2 frames to react in. I don't have the muscle memory and my brain isn't as plastic as it used to be. It's basically impossible for me to dedicate the time it would take to get that kind of mechanical execution down. But that is also what makes it a viable eSport, the fact that there is stuff that I just can't do is what separates me from SonicFox the same way it separates me from LeBron on the basketball court.
I was never mechanically gifted at video games, but as I age, I also can see the enormous advantage of youth in certain games and it puts me off of them. Given hardware I/O, polling frequency of input devices, networking hops, netcode itself, and various other variables, I never expect reaction time to be the fundamental skill separator in games that demand fast, mechanical reactions. But for single-player or local multiplayer games, as I get older, I do get miffed when there is an expectation of frame-perfect inputs. I'd prefer if devs could tune games (or offer user tunable knobs) to allow for older/non-athletic gamers to still have a chance. I'm not saying I want everything to be turn-based, though. The last game I played that had a skill ceiling I couldn't even come close to was Hyperlight Drifter. I could not for the life of me master the timing necessary for the dash challenge. It really put me off the game even though I was enjoying it a lot up to that point. A game like Heroes of the Storm (which happens to be based on the Starcraft II engine) I think finds a really nice balance. There are times when frame-perfect input will push your play ahead of other players. But most of the time, strategic planning and teamwork will overcome individual mechanical skill. Similarly, in FPSs like Halo, having a strong knowledge of the weapons and maps can help me compete with 13 year olds who absolutely have more dexterity and time to practice. And equalizing mechanics like grenades (which can do splash damage, so you don't have to be as pixel-perfectly accurate) can really help to tighten the skill gap between ceiling and floor.
For fighting games, I think there is probably an opportunity for machine learning to study expert players' styles and create tunable AIs that could challenge human players in specific ways. I know that there have been some driving games that have experimented with this sort of thing (though those games are much simpler in certain dimensions, so the modeling may be very different).
To be fair, as long as the ELO/Matchmaking system is working properly it shouldn't really hurt your chances of playing and winning, you just won't be able to compete with people at the peak of the game. I think the bigger impediment is just the difficulty of understanding what you did wrong or could have done better if you're not already deeply familiar with the underlying systems.
You can't actually practice or self-critique to improve if you don't really understand why you lost. Even if the game demands frame-perfect inputs it doesn't feel so bad if you have a sense for what the timing window you're supposed to hit is. The frustration comes when the animations don't make it clear whether you're too late, too early, or whatever to dodge properly or to connect on a link. The comparison would be to something like a rhythm game where both the music itself and the little pip flying by your screen both provide some sort of perceptible feedback to not just tell you that you messed up, but exactly how.
Yeah, I’m more talking about local multiplayer or single-player. I’m not expecting to do competitive speed-runs, but if I need the timing of a speed-runner just to play the game as intended, I’m probably not going to enjoy it.
Like, in Super Mario Galaxy, there are speed-run challenges where I think they are tuned pretty well, maybe even too casual. Contrastively I remember the end of Diddy Kong Racing on the highest difficulty required extreme proficiency. But at least there was a difficulty scale, so players could traverse it at their own pace. I guess what I’m really asking for is for the floor to be accessible to the broadest audience. I don’t mind if my skill caps out below the ceiling. I just don’t want to be excluded just because I’m in my thirties.