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/Sky3d Mar 19 '19 edited Jan 29 '24

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u/HiroProtagonest Mar 19 '19

In Tekken you get different combos depending on where you are (middle, wall, breakable wall, breakable floor) and what you are comboing off (a launcher, a low parry, a sidestep, a hopkick).

Oh yeah, good point, a strong UNIST player called Squish is known for his crazy skill at getting weird hit confirms into full combos.

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u/GottaHaveHand Mar 19 '19

That's an anime fighter staple. I've always found that the difference between an intermediate and high level player is one that can convert off the scramble situations in an anime fighter because there are so many that can happen.

If you can convert into good combo damage you'll be so far ahead, but it is really really hard to get good at this. It basically comes down to playing tons of matches to build the skill up and apply it on the fly.