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How games cheat to help players

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Re: How games cheat to help players

#21

Post by greendestiny »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #13
mey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think rubber banding, part of the fun for the player is thinking they have a chance. Either by splitting up the players into leagues based skill levels (star craft 2), or fudge the game slightly (or significantly in mario kart's case)

I agree with you, but here's my core problem. My gameplay involves 32 human players playing against each other in football for a title that only one can win. Each season takes a month. That's 32 shades of grey, with 31 of those shades being losses. How do you rubber band that? I'm about to build a facebook app for our game, and I'm trying to brain storm solutions to this problem. The only answer I have so far is make…

The problem is in seeing it as a single competition. Have small sub-competitions with a higher luck component, so that people can experience winning a game, or even a round on the way to getting good enough to win a whole season. Make those wins satisfying and people will happily take a beating overall.

Re: How games cheat to help players

#22

Post by wlievens »

gujk wrote: post #16

It is interesting how games differ from sports or academic contests. In sports, losing is OK because it makes you work harder to become stronger or smarter. In games, losing (or winning) is almost pointless because getting better at the game doesn't make you better at anything else in your life; so the value is in feeding some emotional or anesthetic aspect.

That probably only applies to single player games. You can compare single player games to movies: you can't "lose" in a movie. Multi-player games are more like sports, in which case losing has a different meaning.

Re: How games cheat to help players

#23

Post by bprater »

Cool. I just bought the game to support the author in taking the time to write this article. I think we all remember early video games when being pixel perfect in landing a jump was enough to pull our hair out.

Re: How games cheat to help players

#24

Post by narag »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #10

I run a simulation football game called http://deeproute.com So far the biggest mistake I believe I've made is not cheating to help players win. I made a brutally difficult simulation game. We have tons of players quit simply because the game is too hard. Because you are 1 person versus 31 other people, there is only 1 winner, and 31 losers. People don't like this. Compare this to our competitors, and they make losse…

You could get some ideas from chess "swiss" tournaments and rating system. The idea is to couple players of similar strength in each round.

A very weak player will likely lose the first two or three matches in a row, but then have a real chance against some other weak player.

Re: How games cheat to help players

#25

Post by digitallimit0 »

tobtoh wrote: post #8

> The goal of good handling code isn’t to maintain a “correct” simulation, it’s to provide a fun game. It sucks to miss a jump by three centimeters. That statement really resonated with me. I'm currently playing Battlefield 3 on the Xbox and the number of times I've died because I went to duck into a doorway to avoid enemy fire, only to get halted because the door frame has a 3cm ledge that my battle hardened soldier…

It is honestly baffling to me that DICE has not addressed the "need to press the jump button to get over curbs and small rocks" issue since even their very first game, an issue ironically even more prevalent now with the added details afforded by advancing hardware. I do appreciate the leaps (hah) they've made with their vaulting system, but it too has its own frustrations.

Re: How games cheat to help players

#26

Post by pantaloons »

tobtoh wrote: post #8

> The goal of good handling code isn’t to maintain a “correct” simulation, it’s to provide a fun game. It sucks to miss a jump by three centimeters. That statement really resonated with me. I'm currently playing Battlefield 3 on the Xbox and the number of times I've died because I went to duck into a doorway to avoid enemy fire, only to get halted because the door frame has a 3cm ledge that my battle hardened soldier…

Reminds me of games with lag compensation. It has been observed that players missing their shots due to lag get incredibly frustrated.

The best way to deal with this is to use the latency of the shooter to predict what their bullet would of hit at the time they fired on their screen. This just cleverly shifts the lag from the shooter to the target, but players getting hit by lag compensated shots will rarely notice or care; certainly not as much as a shooter would when their shots miss.

Re: How games cheat to help players

#27

Post by v21 »

shabble wrote: post #20

There was a bit I'm reminded of in the write-up on the Crash Bandicoot series,[1] where they mention 'Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment.[2] Essentially, fail enough times at a given point, and it gets a little bit easier (sloppier timings, more power-ups nearby, etc) until you get past it. "Good player, bad player, everyone loved Crash games. They never realized it is because they were all playing a slightly different ga…

Yeah, Mario Kart is infamous for it's rubber banding. It's possibly a case study in going too far - it's prominent to the point that almost all players notice it. And it's frustrating to get spammed with blue shells when you're in the lead and not be able to do anything about it. Ideally, as the article says, you'd never notice.

Re: How games cheat to help players

#29

Post by dagw »

latch wrote: post #2

A lot of which is probably what makes us old-timers complain about how easy games are these days. I don't think i ever finished battletoads! On the flip side, someone once commented that games should have a "toddler mode" where anything the player does just adds up more points and won't kill you. Obviously wouldn't work for every game, but I thought it was a brilliant idea.

I think most current games already strike a good balance with the use of ratings, bonus quests and achievements. Basically anybody is able to complete the game by simply spending 8-40 hours playing, but getting a perfect rating, completing all the hidden quests and completing all the achievements will take the same sort of skill and dedication that those fabled games of old required.

As an old-timer with a job and a family I really appreciate being able to enjoy and make progress in games despite only having a couple of hours a week to play.

Re: How games cheat to help players

#30

Post by icebraining »

v21 wrote: post #27
shabble wrote: post #20

There was a bit I'm reminded of in the write-up on the Crash Bandicoot series,[1] where they mention 'Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment.[2] Essentially, fail enough times at a given point, and it gets a little bit easier (sloppier timings, more power-ups nearby, etc) until you get past it. "Good player, bad player, everyone loved Crash games. They never realized it is because they were all playing a slightly different ga…

Yeah, Mario Kart is infamous for it's rubber banding. It's possibly a case study in going too far - it's prominent to the point that almost all players notice it. And it's frustrating to get spammed with blue shells when you're in the lead and not be able to do anything about it. Ideally, as the article says, you'd never notice.

And it's frustrating to get spammed with blue shells when you're in the lead and not be able to do anything about it.

I wouldn't say anything; a decent strategy for when you see someone else with a shell is to slow down to 2nd place and let the new 1st get hit (which will then put you on 1st again). Timing is essential, though.

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