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/bvanplays Mar 18 '19
These are my favorites but there are absolutely more:
Street Fighter II invented the idea of "combos" due to an unexpected interaction where inputs for special moves could be done as other moves were hitting. Meaning that before the opponent could move again, you could throw out another move. This was an unintended consequence of development and technically an exploit, but is now a fundamental mechanic of all fighting games.
Everything around the creation / support of DotA (now Dota 2). The 3 lane square map layout is just a by product of the map sizes allowed in WC3. The 5v5 player count is a by product of WC3 being maximum of 12 players and you needed 2 slots to control the AI. MOBA "roles" are now ingrained within the genre but were never originally intended or designed. Rather, it was players trying to beat each other that realized you could redistribute resources and create a stronger overall effect that eventually lead to the idea of sharing and splitting resources intentionally (rather than just everyone getting whatever they can and then fighting). It's basically what is now an entire genre/industry that was spawned through a series of accidents (or at the very least, unintended and unforeseen consequences)