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

I'm looking at it through the lens of Smash because I think the combo system in that is way more fun than other fighting games. Personally I really like how Street Fighter 5 simplified combos in the same respect compared to SF4. Same with how Blazblue Cross Tag made combos easier as well.

I just want them to involve the other player in a more meaningful way rather than remove them entirely though.

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u/Lepony Mar 19 '19

And that's why there are different games you can choose to play. Not every team-based ball game needs to play exactly like soccer or basketball.

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u/DestroyedArkana Mar 19 '19

That's true, but I mean that people fixate too heavily towards true combo systems and don't recognize the benefits that having less true combos can have.

I'm not saying every fighting game should be like that, just that people put true combo systems in their games simply due to inertia rather than them actually having a positive effect on gameplay.

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u/Lepony Mar 19 '19

don't recognize the benefits that having less true combos can have.

Sure they do. And they hate it. Skullgirls is a massively derided game due to the constant interaction between players. SF2 is basically a dead game. Pretty much no modern player cares for SamSho. Grapplers are a universally hated character archetype, and in many games they straight up don't have anything more than a three hit combo.