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Mario meets Pareto

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Re: Mario meets Pareto

#131

Post by davemp »

This great visualization/article highlights one of my pet peeves with current game design--options for the sake of options.

I feel like the common trap for designers is to put too much stock in tag lines like "Over 700,000 different builds!"

You're dumping a combinatorial explosion of overhead onto players. If all those choices don't significantly enhance the core game experience, you as a designer as wasting people's time. Doubly so if most of the choice space can be safely eliminated by savvy players. The internet exists after all and someone is going to do the math. Why would you gate the competitive portion of your game behind convex optimization problems? Certainly not to make things more fun.

Some examples of these trends are load-outs in FPS games. Every gun now has tradeoffs for sights, barrel, under-barrel, magazine, ammo, etc. and these choices only come after you've chosen a class/weapon. When the core of an FPS is tactical positioning and aim, these options feel like a cheap gimmick in order to milk slightly more time out of players. Franchises like Halo and Battlefield fell for this trap and have completely ruined their reputations.

You can still give players choices that _add_ to the core gameplay like counterstrike does with the round economy. If the entirety of a choice you're giving a player happens in a menu, that should be a red flag. The game design industry needs to less emphasis on statistics/combinatorics and more on gameplay/narrative.

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#132

Post by Cthulhu_ »

davemp wrote: post #131

This great visualization/article highlights one of my pet peeves with current game design--options for the sake of options. I feel like the common trap for designers is to put too much stock in tag lines like "Over 700,000 different builds!" You're dumping a combinatorial explosion of overhead onto players. If all those choices don't significantly enhance the core game experience, you as a designer as wasting people'…

It depends on why you play though; the "combinatorial explosion of overhead" is only a problem if you're trying to min/max, if you play for fun it's more "What character do I like" or "What wings do I find pretty".

The most important thing: Don't tell others how to play. Don't tell them "you should pick X because it's the best" unless they explicitly ask for it. Let people play their own way, and don't push how you play games onto others.

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#133

Post by Cthulhu_ »

sspiff wrote: post #75
hypercube33 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can add that as a dimension to the chart!

Hard to quantify into numbers, no? I like Luigi more than Mario. But do I love Mario like a 6 and Luigi like an 8?

Time for binary sort or an elimination chart; take every character, compare them to another, sort them as to which one you prefer. Then assign a number to each one of them.

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#134

Post by andai »

micheljansen wrote: post #89

This article was way more interesting than the title suggested. Well done!

The submission originally had a much more descriptive title, but it was changed to match the article's title as per the rules.

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#135

Post by redman25 »

xanderlewis wrote: post #9

Well... that was a seriously impressive presentation. I already knew about Pareto efficiency/the Pareto frontier, but now I'll never be able to forget it. And I'll think of Mario Kart (and poor Koopa being dominated) every time.

I wonder if Koopa does better with different customization?

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#136

Post by pksebben »

davemp wrote: post #131

This great visualization/article highlights one of my pet peeves with current game design--options for the sake of options. I feel like the common trap for designers is to put too much stock in tag lines like "Over 700,000 different builds!" You're dumping a combinatorial explosion of overhead onto players. If all those choices don't significantly enhance the core game experience, you as a designer as wasting people'…

Gameplay and narrative don't hook into that acquisitive gambler's streak nearly as well as "all the unlockable things".

I do agree with you, generally, that this is a bit of a cheap trick and far too ubiquitous. However, there is something to be said for giving the player "things to do" like unlocking content. It does add to the experience to have a sense of "this is why I'm still playing".

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#137

Post by cout »

davemp wrote: post #131

This great visualization/article highlights one of my pet peeves with current game design--options for the sake of options. I feel like the common trap for designers is to put too much stock in tag lines like "Over 700,000 different builds!" You're dumping a combinatorial explosion of overhead onto players. If all those choices don't significantly enhance the core game experience, you as a designer as wasting people'…

I have not played many recent games but Scorched Earth was always one of my favorites. The economy allowed you to discover new weapons as you progressed in skill. I do agree as the number of combinations increases that seems like it would take away from the novelty of getting a new item. After all, novelty seeking is what we want, not mindless optimization.

Storyline is nice but if I want to watch a movie I'll pop in a DVD and get popcorn. Cutscenes get in the way after the first play through. Timeless games have some storyline but let you enjoy the game even if you skip the cutscenes.

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#138

Post by cout »

HiJon89 wrote: post #123

Really cool analysis and visualizations! Although there’s an interesting wrinkle with Mario Kart 8 + 200cc - most players don’t want speed over a certain level because you’re too fast to control. So rather than trying to maximize absolute speed stat you may want to minimize the delta from your optimal speed stat

That sounds not so different from building a race car irl. There's no point in a big engine if you have to brake so early that you get passed in the corners. Plus all that braking will cook the brakes. It's often letter to have a lower top speed and never have to slow down.

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#139

Post by cableshaft »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #132
davemp wrote: post #131

This great visualization/article highlights one of my pet peeves with current game design--options for the sake of options. I feel like the common trap for designers is to put too much stock in tag lines like "Over 700,000 different builds!" You're dumping a combinatorial explosion of overhead onto players. If all those choices don't significantly enhance the core game experience, you as a designer as wasting people'…

It depends on why you play though; the "combinatorial explosion of overhead" is only a problem if you're trying to min/max, if you play for fun it's more "What character do I like" or "What wings do I find pretty". The most important thing: Don't tell others how to play. Don't tell them "you should pick X because it's the best" unless they explicitly ask for it. Let people play their own way, and don't push how you p…

Yeah, especially for a game like Mario Kart, I'm not too obsessed with making sure I'm picking the most efficient combination of things. I'm picking what I think looks cool or has the most fun personality (in the case of characters) for me in the moment. For that, having more choices is (mostly) better.

Even something like Counter-strike, where a lot of the differences are pretty subtle, I liked having a good amount of choices just to play a couple rounds with a gun that feels slightly different and see how well I do. I had my preferences but I played with them all.

That being said I do think there's something to be said for not just dumping a bunch of options on a player and be like "you figure out how you want to play", even though I've been guilty of that in a couple past games I've designed, thinking more options is better.

Like I remember on of my sequels to a game I tried all sorts of ideas for how to change up options, and instead of pinning down that "okay the hand size is going to be 5 tiles, and if you place next to an ally tile you'll bump them up by X amount, and you can choose what set of numbers the tiles can be (like 1-5, or 1-10, or 1-20)... with my new sequel I've mostly pared it down and I'm taking away game options, because I bet almost no one did anything but use the defaults anyway. At least before I hid them in an options menu you had to choose to open.

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#140

Post by kibwen »

pksebben wrote: post #136
davemp wrote: post #131

This great visualization/article highlights one of my pet peeves with current game design--options for the sake of options. I feel like the common trap for designers is to put too much stock in tag lines like "Over 700,000 different builds!" You're dumping a combinatorial explosion of overhead onto players. If all those choices don't significantly enhance the core game experience, you as a designer as wasting people'…

Gameplay and narrative don't hook into that acquisitive gambler's streak nearly as well as "all the unlockable things". I do agree with you, generally, that this is a bit of a cheap trick and far too ubiquitous. However, there is something to be said for giving the player "things to do" like unlocking content. It does add to the experience to have a sense of "this is why I'm still playing".

Indeed, like it or not, the idea that the game of Mario Kart (for example) is exclusively the part where you drive around the track is both simplistic and naive. It comes across as a values statement of the following form: "good games are only concerned with moment-to-moment mechanical execution and tests of reflexes, and not any of that other Skinner-box frippery". But (again, whether we like it or not), for a lot of people the frippery is crucial to the enjoyment of the game. (And these are hardly the only two reasons people play games, e.g. there's socialization, mastery, etc.)

And even in the case of the OP, concluding that most items are useless is not a substantiated conclusion. As the OP notes, a Pareto frontier is N-dimensional, and the number of points lying on the frontier grows exponentially as we expand to consider all the other variables. Just because a meta exists among "top players" doesn't mean that's the only valid choice; different people can optimize for different things (and even top players are frequently irrational, lazy, and/or cargo-culting).

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