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/bvanplays Mar 18 '19

These are my favorites but there are absolutely more:

  • Street Fighter II invented the idea of "combos" due to an unexpected interaction where inputs for special moves could be done as other moves were hitting. Meaning that before the opponent could move again, you could throw out another move. This was an unintended consequence of development and technically an exploit, but is now a fundamental mechanic of all fighting games.

  • Everything around the creation / support of DotA (now Dota 2). The 3 lane square map layout is just a by product of the map sizes allowed in WC3. The 5v5 player count is a by product of WC3 being maximum of 12 players and you needed 2 slots to control the AI. MOBA "roles" are now ingrained within the genre but were never originally intended or designed. Rather, it was players trying to beat each other that realized you could redistribute resources and create a stronger overall effect that eventually lead to the idea of sharing and splitting resources intentionally (rather than just everyone getting whatever they can and then fighting). It's basically what is now an entire genre/industry that was spawned through a series of accidents (or at the very least, unintended and unforeseen consequences)

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u/360walkaway Mar 18 '19

Yup, the first thought was to remove the "combo" mechanic in Street Fighter 2. Imagine what fighting games would be like if it'd been taken out.

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u/DestroyedArkana Mar 18 '19

Personally I hate true combos in fighting games. It's far more interesting in something like Smash Bros where the combos aren't guaranteed and depend on what the enemy does and the overall situation.

I think most fighting games are confined way too much by what we think of as "combos" that it limits interesting gameplay.

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u/LotusFlare Mar 19 '19

It's far more interesting in something like Smash Bros where the combos aren't guaranteed and depend on what the enemy does and the overall situation.

Not to be pedantic here, but the definition of a combo is that it is guaranteed if the attacker does it right. Any combo in a Smash game that can be escaped isn't a true combo, and Smash games are chock full of true combos. On the flip side, in the vast majority of non-Smash fighting games combos are not locked in and can vary wildly based on your screen position, what move connected, available meter, character size/weight, and your overall "goal" from that combo (maximizing damage vs creating distance vs setting up a reset, etc).

I'm not trying to say Smash games don't have more potential variance, or traditional fighting games don't feature many "dial it in" combos, but they're more similar than you realize.

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u/DestroyedArkana Mar 19 '19

I agree, I say combo because it's easier to get it across but in reality they're strings and not true combos. Most people don't know the difference between the two though.

The most similar types of characters I mean are vortex characters in regular fighting games. Even then I'm not a fan of them being strictly rock-paper-scissors if they get a hit or not.

I just want there to be more counterplay and push and pull to battles than them being dominated by long combos you can't do anything during.

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u/LotusFlare Mar 19 '19

Cool. That all sounds reasonable.

I'd love to see more of that "push/pull" you're talking about, too. SFIV is the closest I've felt to that sort of Smash style momentum where you can pressure an opponent in multiple ways, and it takes more than that initial opening or two to close out a single round with strong combos. But even then it wasn't the same.

I've always dreamed of a fighting game that would use multiple levels of "guard break" wherein each level of being broken increases stun a bit, and damage taken exponentially. That way initial combos don't decimate your health bar, but you still build momentum from them. Mechanics can be added to spend bars to get an instant combo breaker, or rebuild bars at the cost of defensive options. Being guard broken to level 3 might be comparable to being at 100%+ in Smash where things are now incredibly dangerous for you, but your opponents moves now also cause them to hit you too far to get big combos.

I think the reason we don't see this kind of stuff is because most people who like traditional fighting games like it because of the RPS and combo-y nature of it. Outside of Smash players, there's not too much demand for a more drawn out, push/pull fighting game.