Game Mechanics you always love, and always hate

[cfx]

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[Sumez]

It's a tough one because historically it's not really a genre name as much as its just a couple of English words used to describe a game's structure.

I distinctly do remember it being used commonly about Morrowind, but would find it surprising if no one said it about earlier Elder Scrolls games. Though going back to earlier RPGs it was almost an assumed aspect of the genre.

It's like, if I describe the Super Mario Bros structure as "strictly running right", would that be less correct if because no one said that about the game at the time?
But even for genre names - I doubt anyone called Ufouria a "metroidvania" in 1992, but I'd like to see you argue it isn't one.

[BIL]

:



DEATH FROM ABOVE BOYEEE (｀w´メ) Huntdown, a preternaturally well-observed Elevator Action Returns Once Again. There is a primal tactile satisfaction to stomping the enemy!





As HORASUTORI's recent Toaplan Arcade Garage v3 debut reminded me, I somehow went nearly a decade ITT without citing The Darkness Bop™ - that is, Marioesque hop/bop in active combat scenarios that would make Mario shit his briefs. Now, anyway! Back in the day when he fought in the streets just to eat sleep and fuck, he held his own. Tale old as time!





It's contingent on the designers not gumming up the input with a bunch of extraneous bullshit, but good gravy do I enjoy a good ceiling run. Metal Storm is also an exemplar of INVINCIBLE BODY RAM and Jump Arc Modifying Attack





VENGEANCE FROM BEYOND TEH GRAVE is always nice, even in checkpointers!



Critical damage feedback. The LUDOSYNERGISTIC REWARD is profound! If you've put your neck on the line to hit a cunt so hard he's shitting gold hexagons, it befits he lose more momentum than the "eh" of a meaningless 1hp snipe!

[AyeYoYoYO]

Always love:

In beat em ups:
Walking away from a crowd, then Grabbing the lone enemy off to the side, then throwing them the opposite way back into the crowd you just ran away from, knocking down almost every scumbag in said crowd. Favorite thing ever in that genre.

Always hate:
Turn based combat. It’s antithetical to reality. And it must be stopped. We can’t let anyone do such a thing to themselves, and find enjoyment & get used to, such blatant life-threatening dishonesty. Fk ur comfort, and fk ur anxiety, you can’t do this to yourselves. *Fred Armisen dictator character* “STR8 2 JAIL!”

[Air Master Burst]

Favorite thing ever in that genre.

The only thing better is grabbing the lone dude with the strong character and doing a jumping powerbomb into the middle of them all. Just like in real life!

Turn based combat. It’s antithetical to reality.

Turn-based games usually don't even have fresh-cooked chicken dinners in random sewer barrels, how could you ever expect them to simulate combat as realistically as Final Fight?

I will gladly go to turn-based jail if it means sitting around playing D&D with a bunch of other disabled stoners. Why yes, officer, that IS my copy of Fallout 1!

[Sima Tuna]

I am a slow thinker and turn-based allows me time to make decisions.

I don't make decisions when I play beat em ups. I play on instinct and that instinct is to punch the air repeatedly while enemies walk into my fist. "I'm just going to stand here swinging my arms, and if you walk into them that's your problem."

[Lander]

Please show us on this diagram - in discretely separated steps, with a well-defined order, taking as long as you need, but not long enough for this bar to fill up - how turn-based systems hurt you.
(Failure to comply will result in a 10% chance of instant party wipe.)

In fairness, I kind of get it. Used to feel the same way, but warmed back up to the genre after revisiting FF8 and gleefully breaking all of its systems.

Which is a nice segue into: Mechanics that appear balanced on the surface, but can be absolutely destroyed with a bit of critical thought. Rare, but most pleasing!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I'd take turn based combat over Dungeon Master style realtime dungeon crawling where you manually control the limbs of 4 members like you're some kind of octopus. Turn based or real time single character (KF, Souls, etc) or single character + CPU teammates (Tales of series) for me.

DEATH FROM ABOVE BOYEEE (｀w´メ)

Shoutout to Doris from Wild Guns Reloaded for having her melee drop attack in midair that also cancels bullets. /chefskiss

[Sima Tuna]

I'd take turn based combat over Dungeon Master style realtime dungeon crawling where you manually control the limbs of 4 members like you're some kind of octopus. Turn based or real time single character (KF, Souls, etc) or single character + CPU teammates (Tales of series) for me.

I like those games in theory because they're DRPGs and I love DRPGs... But I cannot play them at all. The real-time element of a Menzobarrenzan or Stone Prophet is too much for me. The play field runs at like 15FPS in the first place, and then you have to mouse over the weapons/spells/items for four characters while shit is happening (at 15fps) on the main screen.

By comparison, Dark Sun: Shattered Lands is turn based and combat not only feels faster but is way less overwhelming.

[AyeYoYoYO]

Favorite thing ever in that genre.

The only thing better is grabbing the lone dude with the strong character and doing a jumping powerbomb into the middle of them all. Just like in real life!

Turn based combat. It’s antithetical to reality.

Turn-based games usually don't even have fresh-cooked chicken dinners in random sewer barrels

Steaming hot entire turkey, eaten in a single gulp, while dashing forward, instantly repairing all stab wounds ! Almost as good as piping hot, medicinal-grade pepperoni pizza, perhaps heated by news-van-exhaust:

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I don't like dynamic difficulty much. It's not so big of a deal in more modern shmups that make rank more visible to the user (SDOJ, Rolling Gunner) or where rank isn't crazy different at max vs minimum, or is intended to be at max rank if scoring well (Progear). It's more a problem in RPGs, particularly ones that have an open world kind of design where enemies will scale faster than you if you level up too quickly. Offenders include Ultima III, Romancing Saga, Final Fantasy 8, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and so on. Final Fantasy Tactics is unusual, story battles against humanoid enemies happen at a fixed level so you can level up to overpower them, but against random battles and monster type enemies their level scales with you, and it's possible for them to overpower you if you're levelling faster than new equipment is available (using a Monk class or stealing items from random humanoid enemies helps somewhat if you're trying to do something bizarre like powerlevel in the first chapter).

I just don't like the idea of being able to softlock a game by having enemies suddenly be too strong for you because you also became stronger.

Some games do have it without having any real issues though. Ultima IV has it for overworld fights only, not for dungeon fights, so you can always find an easy dungeon room to grind on, and the max rank fights are not actually all that bad. Starcrawlers has enemies level up with you, but it's not too bad as long as you keep up with equipment and skills. It's also got hard level caps on each playthrough, starting up to 30, then 60, then 100, so eventually you reach a point where enemy stats are capped and you're just hunting better equipment to tackle fights more easily. Interestingly, the balance changes as you play. On a first playthrough, heavy armor is incredibly useful as it has a flat damage value mitigation (not a % damage). But on subsequent playthroughs and at level 100, heavy armor is worthless and doesn't scale properly. The second and third playthroughs are all about dodging attacks and building for evasion.

[Lander]

Real-time DRPGs are my favourite kind - pick up all the trash you can get your hands on, then have the party walk backward unloading it as projectiles instead of risking actual combat. Like the great-grandfather of the Suck Cannon from Ratchet and Clank

Dynamic difficulty is particularly odd in RPGs. I can see it in something like RE4, where gameplay is dynamic and split-second, but stat-centric games already obfuscate the challenge via levelable characters.

In some sense I like the way FF8 has whole new encounters that cycle in as you level, but it doesn't really do anything to exploit that for entertainment or challenge; shit just takes longer with a higher-level party. Perhaps if there were more of a focus on extra-good rare drops from high-level random encounters, to give the player good reason not to avoid EXP. Though the fact that you can do that to begin with gives it an edge over games that make leveling + scaling a guaranteed attritive process.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

How do you manage to control everything at once though? It feels like you're operating some weird multi-limbed octopus with mouse clicks. O_o It's something I found it hard to wrap my head around, I have a copy of the second Dungeon Master game sitting unfinished because I never got terribly far in it.

[Lander]

By playing Frogger with the left hand, and Osu! with the right

(Which segues into another mechanic I always love - taking two disparate genres, and smashing them together like Knights in the Knightmare)

I've certainly found myself wishing for hotkeys before now, though I get the feeling that mouse-first controls are more intention than oversight in most cases - they're fiddly, but add enough of an obfuscation to prevent oft-simple combat from becoming a rote MMO rotation.

Though it'd be nice to see it innovated a bit in the subgenre, like Dragon Quest Swords or the magic system from Arx Fatalis.

[Air Master Burst]

Though it'd be nice to see it innovated a bit in the subgenre, like Dragon Quest Swords or the magic system from Arx Fatalis.

Arx Fatalis has a great magic system! If you like this sort of thing, there's also LostMagic for NDS. There's also weirder stuff like In Verbis Vertus and Loom.

I really want to try Dungeon Magic (no, the other one) someday, because this sounds dope for a NES game:

One of the interesting aspects of the game was a magic system where a caster could combine runes from various elements to form new magic spells based on the elements: earth, water, wind, fire, and fairy magic.

Each element has three unique runes, which can be combined to cast 243 different spells. The spells are incredibly imaginative and each magic has different purposes. Fairy magic can reveal a world map and location of treasures; fire magic can cast powerful damaging firewalls; earth magic can cast protective or curative spells. There are even rare spells that when discovered can let players walk underneath the water and find underwater temples; or even teleport themselves to the world of the fairies, or fly to the clouds. This game had no "magic point" system, so some spells drained the player's hit points instead.