Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mario meets Pareto

mayerowitz.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 184 posts

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#161

Post by atomicUpdate »

james_a_craig wrote: post #90

A dissenting opinion on the design - for me, this presentation was like watching a video to find information; too slow paced, and it made me impatient the whole time. The original notebook format was far better in that regard. The layout within each section is beautiful, but the animation and the scroll-sensitive layout (vs. just having a series of static diagrams) makes it unpleasant for me to read. The content's ex…

> the animation and the scroll-sensitive layout (vs. just having a series of static diagrams) makes it unpleasant for me to read.

I totally agree; I don't understand the fascination HN has with these types of sites. It all feels like extraneous design just for the sake of it, rather than actually making anything easier or better to understand.

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#162

Post by countvonbalzac »

What I wish this article had was a simulation that generated the best kart for each variety of stats. The article doesn't really address that different karts suit different driving styles, so as a Mario Kart lover I was hoping there would be a list of the best karts for each of a variety of different driving styles.

But this isn't _really_ about Mario Kart I suppose...

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#163

Post by thaumasiotes »

CameronAavik wrote: post #58
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #17

Do professionals use different builds per map? For example, a map has long straightaways (favoring top speed) vs a map with more sharp turns (preferring acceleration)?

For time trials, yes that is true. There are also other concerns such as that the speed stat is actually comprised of 4 different stats that have different values depending on the terrain: Ground, Air, Water, and Anti-Gravity. Some tracks that have a lot of water and so for that you would be better going for a kart that has high water speed. There are other less important statistics at play too that aren't mentioned…

> the speed stat is actually comprised of 4 different stats that have different values depending on the terrain: Ground, Air, Water, and Anti-Gravity

Weirdly, this has a huge impact on the game, and it's also not mentioned anywhere. To find it out, you have to go to mariowiki and look up the part statistics. The kart that looks like a boat has great water statistics. That makes sense, but without even documenting that water speed exists, it's mostly just an in-joke by the developers. Why did they do this?

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#164

Post by throwawayk7h »

rvba wrote: post #85
throwawayk7h wrote: post #19

Something not mentioned in this analysis is that after summing the stats from the different components, the value is rounded down, giving 7 possible outcomes per stat.

Why is it rounded down?

That's just something the game does. I don't know why. But it shows you the little ticks in the stat bar that it rounds down to.

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#165

Post by posix86 »

re wrote: post #45
posix86 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That'd make the heavy characters completely useless, once you're behind, there's no way to catch up anymore!

Heavy characters in Mario 64 have tighter handling than lighter characters and can cause them to spin out when bumping into them.

How, if both your acceleration and your top speed is worse?

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#166

Post by re »

posix86 wrote: post #165
re wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heavy characters in Mario 64 have tighter handling than lighter characters and can cause them to spin out when bumping into them.

How, if both your acceleration and your top speed is worse?

I'm not sure what exactly "how" is referring to, but by "tight handling" I mean having a smaller turning radius and losing less speed when turning.

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#167

Post by gwd »

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…

> 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".

Then why don't you make sure all the pretty wings are on the Pareto frontier?

Back when I was playing D&D 4th edition (fairly casually), I started by assuming that all the fighter "feats" were basically equivalent from a damage perspective, and only differed in application or aesthetics. Then I did the math, and determined that there was a 2-3x difference between the weakest and the most powerful feats; so naturally I chose the most powerful ones. But I didn't really enjoy that process -- I felt obligated to do it because... I mean, I'm trying to increase in power? That's the whole point of the game?

Why should choosing an aesthetically pleasing power mean my character is weaker?I would have had much more fun if they'd balanced the feats such that they were all about the same (or at least, all on the Pareto frontier). Then I could really have chosen based on personal taste or roleplaying reasons, rather than trying to avoid having a nerfed character.

ETA: I feel like StarCraft does this very well overall. If nobody's using a unit, they buff in the next balance update; if everyone's using a unit, they nerf it in the next balance update. The result is that there are millions of potentially successful strategies, even at the grandmaster level, as long as you play efficiently. That's a lot more fun to me than 700,000 strategies, of which only 20 are realistically going to win at high levels.

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#168

Post by CameronAavik »

prmoustache wrote: post #76
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #17

Do professionals use different builds per map? For example, a map has long straightaways (favoring top speed) vs a map with more sharp turns (preferring acceleration)?

"professionals"? This is Mario Kart we are speaking about, not formula 1 or counter strike.

Mario Kart has a large and flourishing competitive scene[1][2], including numerous competitions with prize money. In 10 days, Nintendo is hosting the Mario Kart World Championships where they are flying in the best players across the world to Tokyo for it. Obviously, not on the same level as F1 or CS, but there absolutely is a competitive scene for this with dedicated players.

[1] https://www.mariokartcentral.com/ [2] https://www.mk8dx-lounge.com/

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#169

Post by TheLegace »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #122
wcrossbow wrote: post #93

Nice article! The resulting Pareto front really highlights how hard game design is. You can get millions of possible combinations but the reality is that only a handful of them will ever happen in a competitive environment.

Keep in mind that the pareto front is not a two-dimensional line, but a surface in a some high dimensional vector space. In every game there are many, many aspects to min/max. As others pointed out even Mario Kart doesn't boil down to speed and acceleration. In a sufficiently complex game every build is on the pareto front as it optimizes some specific cost function.

The min/max cost functions make a lot of sense(easiest to visualize). It also can do a lot when you do multi-objective optimization. But I have always wondered how you go about evaluating other cost functions. I mean mathematically the concept is intuitive. i.e. just swap it for a quadratic or exponential, but which cost functions are useful in the real world?

Re: Mario meets Pareto

#170

Post by yawnxyz »

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'…

Right, it's like Photoshop shilling itself as "over 1bn builds!"

Well obviously, it's probably actually infinite number of things you can do with it. That... should not really be a selling point.

Post reply on HN