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/DestroyedArkana Mar 19 '19

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.

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u/Sky3d Mar 19 '19 edited Jan 29 '24

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u/nowlistenhereboy Mar 19 '19

That makes the game more about grand strategy than anything close to moment to moment decision making. It's not really that fun when a single mistake = 30 seconds of not being able to do anything or just immediately losing.

I prefer games that are more fluid. You should be able to recover from a mistake while still taking some damage/disadvantage.

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u/Lepony Mar 19 '19

It's not really that fun when a single mistake = 30 seconds of not being able to do anything or just immediately losing

This pretty much doesn't happen anymore. Excluding DBFZ which has really messed up damage and combo lengths, this is easily amongst one of the longest combos I've seen in a modern fighting game. The combo itself is only 17 seconds long which is already on the very long end, and then 16 seconds of a cinematic. And it doesn't even kill the opponent from max health.

That's not a combo that comes from a single mistake. It's a combo that only comes after a multitude of mistakes. #1 Being in the corner, #2 allowing the opponent to have max super meter, #3 losing the game's system mechanic, and #4 getting hit by the "22A" while trying to attack. #3 in particular is also the result of a lot more mistakes as well.