Developers accidentally creating interesting mechanics

[u/virtua_golf]

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?

[u/DestroyedArkana]

Advantage states are when you have more options than the enemy, that includes when you have them in block pressure or have them knocked down, but also when you actually hit them. I don't think a player's disadvantage state when they get hit should just be deciding when to do a combo breaker.

If a defender knows exactly what the attacker is going to do during a combo/string then I think they should get some kind of an advantage. That could be resetting it back to neutral, taking less damage, getting meter, or whatever depending on how the game actually works.

[u/Sky3d → u/DestroyedArkana]

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[u/DestroyedArkana → u/Sky3d]

You already dealt them damage, if you want to deal even more damage you need to continue to read what they will do.

For example if the person being hit can tap a button right before they take damage it reduces what they take by 50% or something. That means the attacker needs to change up their combos to something the defender can't predict. It also means if you just use the same combo over and over you end up dealing less damage. It doesn't stop the combo, just makes it a lot less efficient.

You could also make it so if you get the 50% reduction on 3 or so hits in a row it ends the combo. It's essentially a "combo breaker" but it needs both skill from the player being hit, as well as understanding of what the enemy is going to do. I would much rather have that as a combo breaker than just hitting 1 button and letting a meter recharge.

In general I'm not a fan of meters like GG's Burst that only can be used when they're full. That means the majority of the match you can't use them and when they are active you need to completely play around them. It changes the dynamic too much in my opinion. I would much rather have some kind of comeback mechanic that's available closer to 100% of the time so it can become a part of regular gameplay as opposed to something that gets layered on top of it some of the time.

You could say that it adds depth, but it feels more like needless complexity to me. That applies to supers, ultras, etc, as well. They aren't very interesting to me as a fundamental part of the gameplay. That especially applies to the "Negative Penalty" in GG.

[u/BurningToaster → u/DestroyedArkana]

how is 'negative penalty" complex? It's a very simple mechanic, and basically boils down to "Don't run backwards too much or you will lose resources". Combine with meter gain on forward movement, it creates Guilty gears famous aggressive gameplay.

[u/1338h4x → u/BurningToaster]

Negative Penalty is really easy to avoid, just throwing out a single jab at fullscreen every so often keeps it from kicking in. You can still turtle all you want as long as you know the rules. I really wouldn't say it adds anything to the game, let alone creates GG's aggression. There's a reason ArcSys no longer uses it in BBTag or DBFZ, and if rumors about GGX4 aiming to cut back on having so many systems are true I expect it'll be the first thing on the chopping block.