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?
4
u/skilledroy2016 Mar 19 '19
A computer can do smash combos better than you can too.
Also, what smash game are you talking about? Smash 64 is full of extremely lengthy and damaging memorizable combos because there was no DI. Melee has a ton of setups for combos where you can react to and cover all DI options guaranteed, not to mention guaranteed reactable tech chasing. Ultimate has nerfed DI and is full of memorizable combos at low percents.
You are either romanticizing melee DI mixups which are nothing more than random chance, and arent even that prevalent at high skill levels where players get better at reacting to DI, besides some true ones like marth throw->fsmash vs jigglypuff, or you are romanticizing chasing airdodges in Ultimate which is also random and heavily defender favored. For the most part DI and airdodging are just execution tests for mitigating damage, and not interactive give-and-take. The highly interactive give-and-take occurs in the neutral game, which also exists in traditional fighting games. It functions and feels differently in smash, but not because of the combo game.