Ok, a major part of game design is the design of your rewards and penalties, the incentives and disincentives, in your game. Let’s talk about different types of reward/penalties and whether we like them, etc.
A lot of people have issues with “comeback mechanics” ie. things that reward you for losing. So that’s a pretty straightforward one. The form of the reward might be a factor too - ultras and x-factor can win you the game, whereas rubber-band mechanics in Daytona are more subtle and just keeps the race closer.
What about the reverse? “Slippery slope mechanics” - for example, dizzies: You’ve taken big damage, now your opponent gets a free chance to do even more damage.
Or in an RTS, when you lose territory, you lose economy, thus making it harder to gain territory? etc.
Back to FGs, what about “Guard break”? It’s often controversial, sometimes people say, “Oh, I get penalised for guarding correctly?”, but others say, “You should be punished for excessive turtling!”.
I’m not particularly advancing an opinion or position, just wanting to get people’s thoughts on the matter. Are there reward/penalty mechanics in FGs that you dont like? Are there ones that don’t exist in current games, but you would like to see them?
Getting dizzied and guard breaks are, I feel, on a different level than comeback mechanics. Guard breaks are a reward for forcing your opponent to guess frame traps/mind game them. There are instances where it can break balance, but for the 99% it is mostly to reward smart offense rather than a risk for smart defense, because the smart defensive player pays attention to block strings and frame traps and makes a risk when to escape these situations where the dumb defensive player just blocks “correctly”. For instance, in KoF having your guard broken is either due to immobility or being unable to read your opponent, and in SC it’s usually due to not taking advantage of the 3rd axis or a lack of smart mobility/reactions.
Sometimes people (not meant to OP, just in general) don’t realize what being patient and defensive means until they play some anime games (and I am certainly not saying anime fighters are better defensive players, lol). It’s not about just holding back/G.
I don’t like built-in comeback mechanics. Why should you be rewarded for getting your ass handed to you? If you want to make a comeback, through it through solid skill and excellent reads, and not because the game felt sorry for you, so it gave you some extra tools to use.
Dizzies are fine. Dizzies happen because you’ve accumulated a series of hits, and not usually because of a single combo. If you got caught by that many hits and/or mixups in rapid succession, you deserve to get hit. Hell, I would venture to say that damage scaling should be reduced when you get stunned after a long combo.
In RTS, if you’re behind on map control, scouting, economy, then you’ve basically lost the game. RTS is known for having extreme slippery slope mechanics, but that system rewards consistent players who perform well either early on, or throughout the course of an entire match. It’s similar to how a real life battle would play out.
It depends on what type of guard break you’re talking about. If you’re talking about Alpha series, that system is designed to favor aggressive, and offensive styles of play. Plus it kind of makes sense, if you block a series of hits in rapid succession, your defense will weaken, and you’ll eventually get cracked. If you’re talking about MVC2 guard breaks, well, that’s a bug, and not really intentional, but it didn’t seem to affect negatively at a competitive level. I personally don’t like guard breaks, I think defensive and turtle styles of play are very valid, and should be effective in a game.
Personally I think it’s dumb to be able to build meter by whiffing a special or normal move. Meter should only be built either by attacking and having the opponent be hit or block an attack.
I know that in Guilty Gear (and BlazBlue, don’t know if it’s in other Arc System Works fighting games) there’s a feature called “Negative Penalty”
It’s used to encourage “Active” play (attacking, dashing towards opponent, remaining on the offense, generally engaging your opponent) and discourage “Negative” play (back-dashing, excessive keep-away, standing in one place for an extended period, generally avoiding contact with your opponent). Excessive Negative play will result in a warning appearing above your Tension gauge, and any further Negative play will result in the player losing all of their Tension and their Tension gain rate cut down to 20% for 10 seconds.It’s not so much a penalty on turtling as it’s a form of keeping the players engaged.
Technically, the term “comeback mechanic” covers so many things (Supers can be counted as a comeback mechanic) that it’s hard just say that they should all be taken out.
Also, there are certain things that can be counted as a comeback mechanic but actually add to the game. For example, you may notice that we’ve been getting alot of Skullgirls reset theory videos for posting the front page. That’s because the game actually has a comeback mechanic that grants a player more meter the longer he gets comboed. This means that players are starting to look to resets as a way to increase damage without giving their opponents meter to mount a comeback.
Agreed. Turtling is a legit strategy. Take ST for example. Some matchups force you to turtle because that is the most effective strategy (ie - Turtle Boxer vs. Honda).
It doesn’t penalize as long as you’re using some form of Active play though. Seriously, you could keeping your opponent out using long-range attacks from full-screen and Negative Penalty won’t incur as you’re using some form of offense (even if it’s passive). The key word is excessive.
It’s not even that. Characters that might incur negative penalty are designed where their invincible moves require meter or it takes work to get in on them so the extra damage they take when in negative penalty is planned. It isn’t that easy to get into negative penalty, like downback or runaway for a few seconds you seriously have to actively be playing lame because you can just have to walk, dash, airdash forward or something and you’re not in danger of entering Neg Penalty (IIRC been a while since I looked at the conditions to enter neg penalty).
considering GG has no true guard break, several guard options, and movement options that cover grounds quickly. Make since to have negative penalty. Though I’ll wonder how the opposite penalty would be over aggressiveness. Only game that seem to have done that was SAMURAI Showdown sword gauge.
Negative penalty only takes effect for really excessive turtling/runaway play. And it really is straight up turtling/runaway. Throwing balls with Venom or any of the projectiles with Dizzy/Testament for example at full screen will not trigger negative penalty.