Hello Any Forums. Tommy Millar here, professional game developer. I would like to share a game design lesson with y'all. I hope you don't mind.
> With #ELDENRING rapidly approaching, I’m going to discuss why I believe the iconic Soulsborne “YOU DIED” screen (and the preceding “falling piano” death design theory) is actually a fairly bad #gamedesign tenet to follow, in the traditional sense. One of the fundamental game design tightropes you walk in #gamedev is, “how do I punish a player whilst allowing them to continue learning?” - in Super Mario Bros, for example, you’ll notice many “safe pitfalls” precede a bottomless pit. Even if they fail, they do not die. In more complex games, we offer this by increasing margin for error, or ability to recover from mistakes.
>The player should be punished without stopping the session - if you stop the game (game over) to force a restart after one mistake, the player is not learning anything. Glibly, we refer to tiny margin for error moments or sudden game overs as “piano falls” (referring to the Looney Tunes trope of a grand piano falling on a character out of nowhere). If the player has no opportunity to recover before game over, the “learning momentum” stops. Imagine a hypothetical Dark Souls-like where, instead of being punished by a “YOU DIED” game-over screen, your immortal character simply resurrected on the spot with a new “Soul Scar” - you could continue to learn/fight the enemy, but have that visual reminder of failure. This is just one solution to maintaining the difficulty whilst removing the archaic trial-and-error style of design which was largely dropped in the 1980s. We should always strive to keep the player **in** the game to teach them. If we slapped the clarinet out of a musician’s hands the second they played a bum note whilst learning a new song, forcing them to restart the whole thing every time, learning that song would take forever.
I bet this guy felt like such a fucking idiot when Elden Ring actually came out and BTFO his argument
Aaron Anderson
tl;dr Why do you dress like a fag?
Robert Morris
I can dress however I like and it's none of your business. It's not the 1950s anymore.
Kevin Wright
The irony is that Souls having you die but keep all obtained items and only need to run back to your corpse to get your souls back was a step forward in leniency towards the player since the previous standard was just dying and losing all progress.
Elijah Adams
>if you stop the game (game over) to force a restart after one mistake you have to make a lot of mistakes in elden ring to die, not "one mistake"
But nugamers don’t have the patience to actually play through the sequence again and not suicide run for their souls so it’s le hard.
Camden Allen
the way he's saying that makes it look like if you die you die forever and can't come back. What's the difference in running from a checkpoint to your soul compared to spawning directly where you died?
Dylan Campbell
>totomimo >bald look tomar, its you
Isaac Allen
>after one mistake That's what health bars are for, making multiple mistakes >(game over) to force a restart That doesn't happen you just are sent back to a checkpoint >ability to recover from mistakes That is what the bloodstain system is for. In fact, you will end up accumulating much more souls going through a level, if you keep picking up your bloodstains. The only punishing thing is making the same mistake twice and losing your accumulated souls.
>in Super Mario Bros, for example, you’ll notice many “safe pitfalls” precede a bottomless pit. Even if they fail, they do not die. In more complex games, we offer this by increasing margin for error, or ability to recover from mistakes. Yea, and in Elden Ring/Souls game, you rarely if ever die to 1-shots. The hit you take and survive is analogous to the "safe pitfalls". This guy must be batshit retarded.
Ayden Clark
How did developers get it right in the 90's? They absolutely perfected gameplay structure, visual impact, controls, sound, and feel. Souls became popular for going back to what was basically the standard before the normiepocalypse of the 2000's. No matter how many new games are made, it's proven time and time again that old school game structure just works.
>I would like to share a game design lesson with y'all this guy is peak midwit game designer. He thinks he has it all figured out. He thinks there are magical rules that apply to all games, when in reality, the right rule for your game depends on all the other elements in the game. He probably makes soulless AAA cookie-cutter garbage. If he's lucky, one day he will understand how little he really knows.
Ayden Turner
desu, lucasarts removing deaths made point n click adventure games 10x better so I don't have a problem with devs designing around it
Levi Mitchell
Kill yourself
Tyler Sanchez
not op but, they didnt get t perfect, if youre comparing it to today. in the 90s the standard was coming off of the arcade philsophy which was essentially: >ballbusting difficulty that isnt necessarily fair to keep you invested longer and extend the life of the product
today theres more aspects that a game can shift that into like multiplayer or overall game size, among other things. not to mention theres an entire new axis to explore rather than just a 2d space. i still disagree with the idea of making games "easier", but tere are other ways to punish the player for fucking up that arent making them redo 10+ minutes of gameplay. there are definitely creative solutions that can be done in place of that
Ethan Mitchell
>We don’t learn by having our tools taken away. You learn to adapt and improvise. But he's just a UI """artist""", fuck does he know about game design.
Jack Moore
I agree, when I watch football and someone fumbles a play I think to myself, "They should stop the game and let that guy try again."
Luis Brooks
What if players want "bad" design sometimes?
Christian Harris
I guess if you were going to post a retards opinions, including a picture that shows me I don't need to read it to know he is a retard is at least helpful.
Connor Sanchez
all memes aside i think soul reaver handled death in a unique way and made the game interesting in the way only your corporal form was destroyed. Loved that game. I don't like elden ring much having to die to leave the tutorial area is just poor design.
