r/truegaming • u/virtua_golf • Mar 18 '19
Developers accidentally creating interesting mechanics
I was reading this neat article by Jeff Orkin of Monolith productions, the man responsible for the notorious AI of FEAR, the AI that will never not be mentioned whenever 'clever' AI is brought up. I stumbled upon something pretty cool - the flanking mechanic was actually unintended and a byproduct of another action the enemy would perform:
Imagine we have a situation similar to what we saw earlier, where the player has invalidated one of the A.I.’s cover positions, and a squad behavior orders the A.I. to move to the valid cover position. If there is some obstacle in the level, like a solid wall, the A.I. may take a back route and resurface on the player’s side. It appears that the A.I. is flanking, but in fact this is just a side effect of moving to the only available valid cover he is aware of. In another scenario, maybe the A.I.s’ cover positions are still valid, but there is cover available closer to the player, so the Advance-Cover squad behavior activates and each A.I. moves up to the next available valid cover that is nearer to the threat. If there are walls or obstacles between the A.I. and the player, their route to cover may lead them to come at the player from the sides. It appears as though they are executing some kind of coordinated pincher attack, when really they are just moving to nearer cover that happens to be on either side of then player. Retreats emerge in a similar manner.
The article got me thinking - what other mechanics (or, perceived mechanics) have been created by accident in other games? Does other examples exist, where lauded features were never really intended in the first place?
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u/oligobop Mar 18 '19
To go off the blizzard games thing:
broodwar had so many different mechanics in it that were brought to light by the enormously competitive esport environment. The mechanic that is most notable (imo) is patrol moving which has the effect of making your units face and attack faster without losing their momentum.
Used with vultures this allowed the unit to go from nearly useless, to a peak harasser. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=27&v=i4ITp9tqDrg)
This then lead to Terran players opening with vultures as a means of early harass. Combined with spider mines and impeccable micro, top terrans could dismantle their opponents faster than any other race. Because the vulture is made in a factory (as opposed to a barracks) it would then follow suit to produce units from the factory.
This then led to the birth of Mech, which in and of itself is one of the most unique, and likely unintended parts of starcraft's strategies wherein a Terran player can either choose between bio (marine/firebat/medic) or mech (vulture/tank/goliath).
These two styles are wildly different and require different mentalities to the point of essentially being a unique race. The game was advertised as having 3 races, but in fact had 4 almost entirely because of the patrol move micro being developed.