I miss the mechanics from the old games

During the existence of the game development industry, more than one hundred formulas for various mechanics that can entertain us have been invented. Some died after appearing in a couple of games, some disappeared over time, some still exist. There are also those who not only survived, but became mainstream, although they only spoil the nerves of the players. The game design of most old games, from the second fantasy to the first FarCry and five active perks, even if it was not the pinnacle of art, was no worse than modern sandboxes with a million activities. It’s a rare game that you’ll want to play through a second time, but when I remember that you can spend a hundred or more hours to complete it, I think, did I really need it? It was possible to do something more interesting. I know how the second foul ended, I know this for the fourth time, but every time the game surprises me with something new. But I abandoned the new “Avatar” halfway through, there is too much stuff and everything is unfinished, and transparent walls… just the scourge of the game. And here the question is, is there something missing in this bloated game, overloaded with hundreds of mechanics? Just think about it – there are more than a hundred basic mechanics in the avatar that affect the environment. Maybe something was lost in the games? Although “lost” sounds strange – over so many years the industry has just created a sea of ​​everything new. The article is aimed at “muttering”, so do not expect any great secrets and subtleties of craftsmanship.

Clear goals

All the games (that I played) had a goal somewhere until the end of the 10s. The same Fallout 2 (1998), Assassin's Creed (2007), STALKER (200x), do not lead the player by the hand, showing with a marker on the map where to run. I will say more, you yourself try to understand where to go, how to complete quests by talking with residents, hacking terminals, reading notes and diaries. And it’s interesting, it immerses you in the lore of the game better than any cutscenes. But the main goal still comes up in conversations, no matter what quest needs to be completed. Morrowind (2002), the main character is the rebirth of the legendary hero Nerevar, the goal is to fulfill the prophecy and defeat the great villain – the vampire Dagotha, who plans to use some ancient weapon of mass destruction, this becomes known in the first couple of hours of the game. What also makes these games different is that they gave you the opportunity to create your own goals and achieve them, and this was the most interesting pastime. Minecraft appeared in 2009, and it probably broke everyone 🙂 by putting the non-plot component of the game at the forefront of everything. And other developers, whether they wanted to or not, dragged these ideas into their games, but it’s not always useful.

The first assassin was wonderful: excellent, atmospheric setting, complete story. Almost complete freedom of action, you can climb anywhere and run across the rooftops from one end of the city to the other. The second part also did not lag behind and amazed with its historical views and locations; you could simply wander through the narrow Venetian streets, spending more than one hour of playing on it – they were so cool. There was no desire to quickly jump into the open world between missions.

System Design

The blurring or lack of goals in games has led to the fact that it has become possible to make games incompletely, to switch to the so-called non-systemic design – this is when you create mechanics in isolation from each other, and hope that closer to release it will merge into one whole.

Good system design conflicts with dlc, because you have to make a complete game right away, and dlc is the worst thing that could happen to the industry. But don’t confuse them with story and coloring dlcs, which were created when the game’s features rolled out because they didn’t have time for release. This refers to the planned cutting of parts in order to make more money after release, turning a full-fledged game into a service game. The very essence of the problem – dividing the game into such parts breaks the game, breaks the plot, breaks the mechanics, breaks the activities. But this makes it possible to release an “unfinished” version under the guise of a full-fledged game, making the flow of finances more controllable and understandable over time, this is exactly what management needs. On average, games with DLC earn twice as much money per copy. Do you know how many times Fallout2 was threatened with closure? From official sources – 8. Or maybe you're wondering how many add-ons have been released for Fallout76? 7 large ones and more than a hundred small ones. Non-systemic design allows you to make a game in parts, but in this case the integrity of the game is lost and it has to be made simpler. Simple games, of any size are easier to control, the studio unanimously reports on the levels made, everything goes according to plan, milestones are handed over and beta versions are played – but there is no “game”, because there is only half of the game, and the second half is in dlc, which will be released after , generating a controlled cash flow.

Missions and open world

This lost mechanic follows from the previous one; if there is no system design and a plot based on it, then you don’t need to think about creating interesting missions. Somewhere after the beginning of the 10s, for some reason the developers decided that creating well-staged, interesting, thoughtful and complex missions was unnecessary. And they have even forgotten about the double bottom and gray morality with different endings in quests (in quests, not in the game). But in return we got an open world and clearing of territories. Do you have a great plot, a well-written conflict, and a great narrative? Let's dilute all this with dozens of similar tasks, give, bring, chop. Watch the story video and run to clear the map. And so time after time, in every second project. How long have you had to jump on tiles with the name of a dead god, despite the fact that the book with the name is in the library in the middle of nowhere, or help an angel in investigating the disappearance of your sister with 8 different endings in a separate quest? Even in the latest parts of Hitman, as far as this game fits perfectly into such sandboxes, only 2-3 solutions are given per level and only with special items, although even in the first parts it was possible to use everything that was in the inventory, from a noose and poison to a fallen elevator There is such a concept in level design as behavior base – this is when a level is built so that any part can be reached in at least three ways, the founder of such level design was DeusEx – the levels themselves are closed and not particularly large, but they feel like huge sandboxes, precisely because for this reason. And even ten years after the release of the first part, they find new ways to complete quests. I only learned in the past that you can hire almost any companion to complete missions (through the console and cheats; this feature is not available in the original game). But such an opportunity itself was laid down. And with the help of a couple of mods, you can play co-op online in a single player, two JC Dentons will run around, and each can complete their own quests, which is not surprising for the originally networked Unreal Engine.

Enemy level

Everywhere getting rid of system design, in terms of creating a game as a single whole system, and not many small ones with attempts to make them friends before release, many developers are faced with the fact that they have to remove the enemy level system, because it is almost impossible to balance the resulting monster, and then who An idea comes to mind, let's raise the level of the enemies along with the player's level. After the “almost perfect and polished” system of levels, both for the player and the enemies, in Morrowind, TES4 comes out with an automatic increase in the “damage” of opponents parallel to the development of the main character. Damn, to kill some random rat you had to spend two minutes around it in top clothes.

Okay rats, another option is to “resolutely” play the role of a thief in the old scrolls, put more exp into stealth than into sword and shield. At one time we encircle all the houses in the city, all of us acting like invisible and merciless Robinhoods, growing in levels. And then “suddenly” we begin to go through the story combat quest, remembering that the missions have already been “corrected”, and we simply cannot complete it in stealth. The warrior from our Khajiit is worse than none, and there are many enemies in the quest and they are of a good level, if the virtuoso of master keys and dexterous hands were a warrior. While they were pumping the thief, the warriors were rocking the warriors, that’s it – they arrived. As a result, in the later stages of the game, every shabby Khajiit robber began to flaunt Daedric armor, while simultaneously carrying more clothes for “non-combat operations” and “magic quests”. Many simply created a new hero, because the progression branches for non-combat builds were simply broken. Other developers, looking at the cosmic sales of the fourth scrolls, began to think that auto-leveling was not such a bad thing. It took more than 10 years and twenty large projects with poor ratings to understand the disadvantage of this approach in story-based games, and even now in many games auto-leveling remains, albeit in a hybrid form, because it is much easier than balancing the game.

Learning through interaction

The desire to show every corner of the game, every mechanic, leads to the fact that the training is overloaded. From the context clues to the marker on the map, the directions are crystal clear, broken down into small steps that even a three-year-old can understand, and this is the case in almost all games. Setting clear goals is of course important, but it should not turn into a path from one waypoint to another. Older games also had tutorials and tutorial missions, but they were structured so that the player would figure out how to use a specific thing, system, or mechanic. And this made the learning more valuable than simple tips or explicit missions that teach such skills. In the first Thief, the player simply found a water arrow, and he learned how to use it at the level: you can extinguish the torch, you can shoot at the floor and walk more quietly, you can shoot at a jug of oil, and then the area of ​​its spreading will be larger, and the guards will not notice it . Unfortunately, the technology of the ancients to create this type of training was lost at the end of the tenth century.

Why do they make tooltips or explicit missions? Firstly, the creation of training is postponed until the very last moment, or even to the stage of final edits a month before the release. Sometimes this is caused by a changing concept, but the main reason is presentation, training almost always occurs at the beginning of the game, the feeling of carelessly created missions, even if they are training, remains later for the entire game. Dedicating an entire designer, or even more than one, to training missions is becoming too expensive. All that remains is to use universal and simple learning tools like pop-ups; they do not require context. Even if this is perceived as pulling the player out of the process, it does not cause negativity in relation to the rest of the game. These are words from an interview with Sheri Greiner Ray, in short, normal in-game training is long, expensive and unfashionable.

A good example of training is Half-Life2, I don’t remember if there were pop-up windows there (most likely not), but the levels are built in such a way that during training the enemies physically cannot harm you, but at the same time they show most of their capabilities, I remember well.

Reward and Punishment

All that remains are rewards for progress: new items, experience, story elements, etc. But such an important motivator as punishment has disappeared, this is not the designers’ mistake, people get upset if they don’t win. A frustrated player writes a bad review about a game, other people read it and don't buy the game. The penalty was removed because it leads to fewer sales. How long have you seen first aid kits in games, not just sitting in the corner? In the first two BGs, behavior with companions affected the chance of dropping items in chests; in TES3/4, an incorrectly assembled build closes quest lines and the ability to complete entire quests; Half-Life 2 forces you to solve physical puzzles in order to progress through the story. The first Thief fines the player for murders, using water arrows and high-profile thefts, and then sellers give less money for swag and caustically comment on the adventures of a noisy thief. This is one of the few games that honestly uses ambient sound for NPCs. The characters around you use the same detection system that is available to the player. Each surface has its own “noisiness” characteristic. The noisiest one is metal, it will quickly give you away to everyone standing nearby. The carpets noticeably dampen footsteps, so much so that you can run and jump on it, and so can the guards, by the way. Stone floor sounds different if you've been in the water before. And the green surface of the vegetation makes noise if you walk there. And sound is not only steps, but also the knock of the body of a fallen soldier, jumping from any height, the clanking of an thrown plate or mug, your and other people’s actions.

Modern games don't penalize this because it reduces sales: “Players money first' what is called. M&M3 – Don't know the characteristics of monsters? You will most likely lose the card even at an average level of AI; behind the beautiful picture there are calculations on a sheet of paper.

Don't respect the shooting mechanics in Max Payne? Welcome to the checkpoint. And so on until you learn to shoot. The game is unforgiving even on the simplest level, and there is no help on the gamepad.

Karma system

And this problem arises from the absence of punishment; if there is no punishment, then the punishment becomes a decrease in reward. In most modern games there are factions, relationships with characters, formally, karma remains in most games, but it practically does not affect anything. But before, actions really influenced the plot, in the same trick – somehow cutting out a random village of bandits on the world map (it happened by chance, word for word, the hedgehog got hit in the face) and returning there after some time, found people there from a random caravan encountered at the other end of the map. And only then I remembered that in the conversation I mentioned a free village in the dialogue. Completed some minor quest. And while passing New Reno, I met a resident of that village who helped with the quest to eliminate one of the mafia clans of the city. Yes, it was probably a written line of quests that fits well with random events, but what is its likelihood during roleplay that it would be specially designed that way? And at the end they showed a sketch of this village. And this is just one of the little things with karma, I probably can’t remember how many of them there were in each playthrough.

In Fable (2004), they won’t even sell you a house everywhere, and residents will refuse to talk if they don’t like your behavior. Moreover, there are two types of karma, local and global, for each resident. Local happens when local residents see or share information about your actions within the village, and it is “forgotten” over time. Global affects the overall impression and appearance.

And probably one of the best implementations of karma in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (2004)
In the game the player has a parameter “humanity” it is not displayed in any way, and you have to monitor it yourself. Even the kindest vampire on the level can fall into madness, it’s just very unlikely. When using certain actions and making evil decisions, the likelihood of falling into madness increases, when the player loses the ability to control the character and the latter massacres people around him without the participation of the keyboard.

Visible walls and restrictions

The developers began to be afraid of space limitations, the desire to show how large-scale and open the game is seems to overshadow everything else (thanks to Minecraft again). If you don't have an open world – fufufu, expect half as many ticks in your wishlist. That's why they sculpt him – whoever wants to. Of course, the game designer must keep the player within certain boundaries of the world, but restrictions (invisible walls) for no good reason cause another wtf!?. The worst thing you can do here is to put up invisible walls that will prevent you from exploring further. It's easier to put up an invisible wall than to add any limitation to the game. But now showing the wall is considered something shameful; you have to make a great view of it going into the distance and not let it go there.

Player Design

Fallout is cool. Let's make a new folych. Do you know why folych is cool? He didn't try to copy anyone. I don't see anything wrong with borrowing ideas from great games, but borrowing does not mean copying. Otherwise, the end result will be the same as in that cool game that came out last year, but worse and with cropped textures. And instead of asking themselves the question, “Why will this feature be of interest to people?”, designers begin to play tricks on well-known mechanics. And the result is a misunderstanding of why this mega-feature did not arouse interest. Well, how can that be? During tests, our QA said that everything was super cool.

The Uncharted developers model the levels so that they are interesting to play for the children of the company’s employees. I don’t know what this approach is called, but it’s definitely working for the fourth game in a row.

The trouble with many teams is that they stopped making a game for themselves, the Game of Dreams. They look at the graphics, the audience, without thinking about the fun and interestingness of the gameplay, they wind up making money. They look into the mouth of the publisher, who says do it once, don’t do it twice, because it didn’t pay off last time. They did it, hissed and cried because people went to play some kind of turkey game. Or the other extreme is to blindly believe in some principle, for example, in realism, without thinking that there is already enough realism around. Or the now fashionable belief in big projects – we need more mechanics, more realism, more map – let's add everything, just more, more, and ship it on Steam, there will be more people there, maybe someone will buy it. A lot of weapons, a lot of monsters, a lot of NPCs, a lot of activities – why all this should be interesting to the player is a mystery. More is not better, more is just more. The main criterion for evaluating a game is pleasure. The phrase “this was also in the game six months ago” does not give the project +2 to success, and certainly this mechanic will be less interesting than in that game six months ago.

Complexity

Games are no longer made difficult because there is no demand from the audience for such games. The complexity of a game directly correlates with the amount of text information in it; in complex and interesting games there has always been a lot of text that needs to be found, read, comprehended and found somewhere else to apply this knowledge – this is all the time, and you need a lot of it for all these actions. But there is a request for casual games, and short session games of 15 minutes. In “narrow” development circles for PCs and large consoles, they honestly look down on “Casual Games” and are a little jealous of the money that is circulating there. But casual doesn’t mean “for idiots”, it means they are made so simply that even children can understand them. But to explain and show complex things in a simple and, most importantly, interesting way – the task is far from being for the average person, try to captivate even a 10-year-old child with CK3, but Civ6 is easy. It's like trying to explain the PhysX source code to a junior. And where the bulk goes, that’s where the money is. Then the publisher comes and asks – “$$$ ???”, come up with the rest of the arguments yourself.

Distribution sizes

In 1998, I carried Caesar III on my home computer with such flash drives for a couple of days, because there was only one CD drive for the entire entrance of my neighbor on the fifth. And the game size was something like 100MB.

I’ll leave here, maybe someone will be interested, Moore’s law from game developers – the size of the distribution of an average game doubles every three years, and don’t be fooled by the lull in the size of distributions over the last couple of years, part of the size has simply gone online. From about 50% of the size of the distribution on the local machine, it is now rummaging around on a CDN for on-demand access, but the psychological barrier of 100Gb is not far off, and I believe it will soon be overcome, and then it will again go to a new level of size.

Mutter

This is not all the lost knowledge of the ancients, and probably not most of it. But there are still orthodox studios that know how to put together “complex and inconvenient” games, although there are fewer and fewer of them. It is clear that before the smoothies were greener and the flash drives were squarer. Maybe there were fewer games, the audience was smarter and the developers were cooler. But look at the current situation from the other side, perhaps we are simply at the beginning of a rise in quality, I forgot what this term is called: the expected quality of projects is growing from year to year, along with this the accumulated experience of teams and the industry as a whole inevitably grows, and who doesn’t mastered ends up overboard quickly enough. And someday this quantity should turn into quality; I hope that chatGPT will catch up soon.