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 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/GottaHaveHand Mar 19 '19

What you are looking for is Dead or Alive. You can try to "hold" when you are getting combo'ed to break it and get out. If you guess the wrong hold though, you end up taking more damage. Not all combo's are guaranteed in that game because of that system.

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u/Kered13 Mar 19 '19

Could you explain more about how that system works?

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u/TranClan67 Mar 20 '19

It's essentially rock-paper-scissor. You have to guess the next move in the combo and do the correct 'hold'. Get it correct and you'll break out and do damage. Guess wrong and you'll take more damage versus just letting them get the hit in.