Like Power Grid sort of haves the race to victory points, the race to fill out places. Obviously, it's a little more abstract but even then, look what happens. If you end your turn and you've got one or two electro's as opposed to zero you've probably played sub-optimally.
You could've done something to where you could've spent those electro's. You'll notice players who win Power Grid more often end their turn with either zero or a whole bunch, every single turn. Pay attention to that. Those players know what they're doing. Also things that don't appear to be races, are races. Any board game you play where it's like, the game is over when someone gets 100 points. Vinci was like that. That's a race. It doesn't look like a race because you're not physically running. You can't see that you're ahead of someone but it is a race. Now, Vinci is the game that Small World became Casinoslots . Small World is based on Vinci. I don't think anyone would... No one knows Vinci anymore. If you like Small World, you should play Vinci once if you can find a copy, just to see what the differences are. It's pretty interesting. There are some misprints, errata and stuff like that. All right. So, if you're a game designer, you're making a game, when would you put in a race? When you put in a race is when you want to test how well the players can calculate efficiency. If it's just a game where someone wins by defeating the opponent, efficiency might not matter. Someone might be able to play a very long game. - I can go a whole lot of Zerg. - Right. It's like, there's no time limit here. This thing is only going to end when it ends. I guess fighting games usually have a clock, but let's say you had a fighting game where there's no time limit, right? Well, I don't need to be efficient. I can be super defensive and just wait until I get their last hit point. There's no rush here, no time limit, no nothing. It's not going to end. But if you want to say, "We need to force these players," to make them find the more efficient path instead of the slow build, which is really easy to come up with, then you need to put some sort of race in your game. If there's no ending, no way to push people forward that they need to reach there on time, then they're not going to. It's like, "Oh, I don't have to." Now, making a good racing mechanic you need some way for the people behind to feel like they're catching up. Now, I say feel like because... and this is kind of an advanced topic, but basically, there's no such thing as catch up mechanisms in games. If you could catch up, you weren't actually behind you just didn't understand the actual state of the game. Right. And the best way to explain this is; think about Mario Kart, right? You look at Mario Kart and you look at who's winning. And it says 1st place: Mario. 2nd place: Luigi. 3rd place: Princess. Okay, it says Mario, first place. We're on lap two out of three. Who is really in first place? It's not Mario. It says he's in first place, but he's not actually in first place because blue shell Everyone knows blue shell is coming. Now, you'll see advanced players in games like this, it's called a positional heuristic. A way to figure out where you actually are, who is actually winning. People who win games like Mario Kart are playing with their own complex heuristic. They know who is really winning. They're not paying attention to 1st, 2nd, 3rd. That's the guy who hangs in the back in Power Grid the whole game, and then rubber bands into the front at the very end. So, it looks like a catch up mechanism, right? When Luigi wins that race from 2nd it's like, "Oh, he caught up." Right? No. He was in first place the whole time, you were just incorrectly calculating who was in first. Now, that's all well good in theory but in practice, catch up mechanisms basically do exist. A good example of this is in a racing game, you want players to have the ability to risk more for a greater reward at any point. That way, any player who is falling behind, will take every increasing risk to be able to catch up. You look at American football, right? It's like, oh shit, there's 30 seconds left in the game. We just scored but we need some more points to actually win this. Let's go crazy! On side kick, guys! Let's do a hail Mary! There's all these crazy things you can try that are very high risk. They're probably not going to work, but there's a way you can make it. Go for it. Now, there's sort of three purposes. One, if you want to win games, always add randomness and always take extra risks when you're behind or you think you're behind. That is the best chance you've got of catching up. Two, these add excitement. If I'm watching football and an onside kick happens, holy crap. That is awesome! Especially if it succeeds. All right, let's move on. The rondels! Something that is rarely seen. Who here has ever seen the word "rondel" before?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |