Comeback mechanics by their very nature disincentive aggressive play which makes for an overall passive and uninteresting game the more they counteract snowballing. They are bad for the game unless they are there to deliberately counteract snowball mechanics in specific and calculated ways.
SF4, before the discovery of a variety of option selects, had really poor snowballing and was a terrible game for it.
Ah, I see. I didn’t notice since I never got bored of watching competitive matches nor do I have any friends that stray away from aggressive play.
And yet vice verse is consider godsend for others. I swear I’ll never understand the antics of that is the FGC.
Snowballing is a balancing act where you have to hit a magic threshold where the game doesn’t feel like it ends for the the loser without them actually losing. Too much snowballing means your health bar is the round counter
example: [media=youtube]rJr2YfghS3U[/media]
Once the person connects, if snowballing is too powerful, they’ve effectively put the opponent in a situation where they effectively cannot recover, this video is that taken to the logical extreme and subtracting the “nothing opponent can do” portion of the game.
There NEEDS to be some level of snowballing so there’s an incentive to take action.
That’s the very reason comeback mechanics exist in the first place. Basically, to avoid the situation where the opponent has “lost” without the round ending because of snowballing. These situations are frustrating and merely waste BOTH players time. If the snowball mechanics you have are intended and satisfying, the use of comeback can remove these kinds of situations or dampen their damage to the experience.
The way I see it, reversals are fine for that. A little damage and momentum is reversed. It should be on you to make the damage happen.
I don’t like how in IV I have to pressure in specific safe ways since getting hit by a full ultra is so much damage.
-trolls suck-
No, that term is actually not applicable for this conversation, as almost no one uses it.
I use it. I haven’t ever heard someone use the term “snowballing” before.
The only “snowballing” I know of involves killing presidents and getting your own “protein” back.
Most folks in the fighting game community are familiar with the term “slippery slope” (and “perpetual comeback”).
Not exactly. Magic: The Gathering has a comeback mechanic that is neither of those things. You are absolutely right about the need to be pitted against snowballing/positive feedback/slippery slope, though. I posted a quote from Mark Rosewater earlier in the thread that goes into it with a fair bit of detail.
Incidentally, I get the impression that the comeback mechanic hate is an artifact of tangible details effect. Way back in 2009, people just couldn’t quite put their collective finger on just what’s wrong with SF4, and subconsciously jumped to the big new flashy-ass mechanic. Now, ultras are by no means perfect, but it also plays into an apparent tendency of FGC people to prefer games they see as more pure or legitimate competition, manifesting in the most extreme case as HF diehards, even though we know that game has a catchup feature, too. It’s totally understandable, if a little neurotic. X-factor actually living up to the hype and being totally broken in MvC3 probably didn’t help, either. So, it just sort of became an accepted idea.
If you’re going to use a counter example, could you at least describe it rather than saying “x has this”? From all my knowledge of M:tG, I cannot think of what mechanic you’re talking about here that can also be adequately described as a comeback mechanic exclusively.
Mind you, you can have mechanics that enable the ability to come back without it actually being a comeback mechanic. This is what good design of snowball mechanics usually ends up being.
Yes, and most (all?) game designers I speak to use the term snowball mechanic because it is much easier to say and is actually easier to fathom if you don’t know the definition.
As stated, most folks in the FIGHTING GAME COMMUNITY are familiar with the term slippery slope, not snowballing.
Could you explain to me what comeback mechanic M:TG has exactly?
Which is why I made a deal about comeback mechanics not having to give the losing player any kind of special advantage much earlier. Most classic examples are stuff like this that doesn’t do that.
I don’t think Rosewater understand what he says about this. Having lots of lands is not a catch up feature in magic. All it usually means is that the game has dragged on for quite a bit for various reasons.
There are no comeback mechanics in magic. Especially since the late game in M:TG is severely lopsided given the amount of matchups. There’s a lot misinformation spread about the game in this site, particularly because of offhanded comments by Sirlin, but there are no comeback mechanics in M:TG. None.
Rosewater, a Cross between Neo G, Ono and Sirlin: which one you get depends on the day and he is ALWAYS in charge of the game you play.
Huh? That’s not even close to actually addressing his argument.
From Gotcha Force?
There are comeback features not based on skill in Magic, as a result of luck and extremely high-yield cards. See Gabriel Nassif drawing Cruel Ultimatum as a top deck at Pro-Tour Kyoto, or hell, go to a limited tournament for some sets and look at all the bombs that win games.
As mentioned before, Online activation codes. This cancer is spreading in every game nowadays (even purely single player games like Arkham City). Locking out the mutliplayer aspect in a fighter is retard to me. I was pissed when MK9 had it. I hope whatever upcoming fighters do not follow it’s example.
The stat tracking shit that Blazblue does. I don’t want for my player card to show who my mains are and how often I play them. I can’t begin to tell you how often I would get kicked out of rooms or have people back out of matches because Tager shows up by my name. It only encourages ducking
this, i fucking hate anything related to stat tracking shit on FGs in general, like Haekingbird many times i got kicked only because i main tager 