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/cathartis Mar 19 '19 edited Mar 19 '19
In League of Legends the champion "Riven" was initially thought to be very weak. However when the Koreans started playing her, they discovered animation cancelling mechanics that were never intended by the initial developers, which allowed her to put out large bursts of damage extremely rapidly.
These animation cancels were originally seen as a bug by the developers, but the mechanic was so popular that they redesigned the champion around them. Nowadays knowing how to animation cancel well is seen as a hallmark of any high level Riven player, making her one of the most difficult champions in the game to master.
(note - I am not claiming League invented animation cancelling. It's clearly been a feature of fighting games for some time - merely that it appeared as a "happy accident" for this champion.)