10 ms·

I'm glad the article mentioned movement. Games today make so many decisions when it comes to movement where the goal is to make it feel 'realistic', with sprin

by ivl 10y ago

I'm glad the article mentioned movement. Games today make so many decisions when it comes to movement where the goal is to make it feel 'realistic', with sprinting, ducking and the like, but they end up feeling like they don't have any depth. An average player will have fairly similar movement to a fairly good one, with incremental differences on small things, and a player with amazing movement won't hugely stand out. In Quake 3? A player with amazing movement could do way more to control the map. Quake 3 really mastered that depth, especially with how much there was to learn between the two physics rule-sets (with CPM allowing for a bit more than VQ3). And the reason I say that is because the classic arena shooters (Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc) had their movement systems as a key part of the game. It's why Defrag became such a (relatively) big thing. And it's why Overwatch just doesn't feel as fun as it could, to me at least. For a game to look like that, but to leave out bunny hopping? Disappointing.

rangibaby 10y ago
I felt the same way when grenades were removed from TF2. In TFC they were hard to learn, but very rewarding to players who did. Conc-jumping was severely OP and fun. I guess they remove advanced gameplay mechanics to make the games more appealing to noobs and lower-skilled players. I think one of the reasons for CS' enduring popularity is even noobs can get lucky or trick a better player and kill them. In Q3? Nope.
- kbenson 10y ago
  > I think one of the reasons for CS' enduring popularity is even noobs can get lucky or trick a better player and kill them. It's probably better for the better player as well. No matter how good you are, a stray bullet or two could take you out. There was no relaxing, and the game promoted caution enough that if you felt unchallenged, there were risks to take.
  - ManlyBread 10y ago
    >No matter how good you are, a stray bullet or two could take you out. And this is why I never really liked this game: it takes the control out of the hands of the player and gives it to a random number generator. If I'm good at the game, I should be the one who is in control, not RNG.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      I think this is one of those situations where most people don't really know why they like what they like, or at least have a hard time comparing between two things. People like winning, but people like challenge. In a game where the more skilled or already winning player continues to win, that's enjoyable for them short term until it gets boring, but importantly it's often not enjoyable for the other players. In a game where some randomness is introduced (and/or other mechanisms to reduce the advantage of an already winning player) which prevents a single person from completely controlling the board/map, that person may feel it's less fun than situations where that is allowed, but I think that level of less fun (but still fun!) may last much longer, since challenge remains. In fact, to remain consistently at the top actually requires more skill, IMO. Personally, I never liked Quake deathmatch (all the way back to the original). To me it seemed to reward prior map knowledge too much, and allowed someone with a known path that optimized item respawns to deny pickups to other users. Anything that makes the game easier for the person in the lead in a multiplayer game is a net negative IMO, as much fun as it feels to be that person.
      - feintruled 10y ago
        And let us consider the infamous Mario Kart blue shell, a weapon that specifically targets the player in first place. Still, for all the complaining about it making races random, the better players still seem to win most of the time.
        Asooka 10y ago
        In some iterations you can avoid the blue shell. IIRC the 3ds one shows you what items the others are holding and if you see a blue shell pop up, just move behind the guy in second place. Even if the blue shell is fired, it makes a distinct noise and if you aren't too far ahead, you can duck behind the second place guy and let him take the hit.
- edem 10y ago
  I have a friend who played Q3 for 6 years in a hardcore manner. I have played fps games for like 10 years but when we fought the result was 50 to -1 in his favor. (I managed to kill him once but I landed in lava 2 times) 4 years later we played again (he was not playing Q3 for 4 years) the result was 50 to 2 in h is favor. The skill cap in Q3 is just so damn high but it is also a rewarding experience.
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  I abstain from rocket jumping in TF2 because I feel it's such an outrageously unrealistic thing that it shouldn't be there in the first place. I also don't use anything but the default equipment, because I feel everything else gives an unfair advantage to players who hace played a lot and thereby gained items. I mean, what is this? Play to win?!
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  This. Overwatch is fun, but Weapons Factory Arena was much more so, esp with half of the classes (including the sniper, engineer, and some of the attack classes) given off-hand grapple, which could be used to "grapple jump" and massively increase the movement speed and agility of a skilled player. Here's a video showing some fairly high-level play: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3UW7eCYqGpQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3UW7eCYqGpQ More: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-IDF_wWPUME https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-IDF_wWPUME IMO it's a massively more fun game than Overwatch, but it no longer has an active player community. The best shot I have at playing with others is QuakeCon, but there used to be a few servers with 32 player limits, and I can tell you that anything beyond about 8x8 was just stupid fun. I've played hundreds or thousands of hours of this and it was amazing. I've never found another game which did it for me quite like WFA did. As the cherry on top, it runs great on a Pentium 3 500 with a Voodoo 3 MP on 56K at 1024x768 on a CRT. It also runs fine with 60fps constant on the original Motorola Droid. Better graphics and loot boxes don't make a game fun IMO. Great mechanics and an awesome tight-knit community do.
bluedino 10y ago
>> where the goal is to make it feel 'realistic', with sprinting Calculations to figure out that doomguy ran ~ 55mph: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/56505-trying-to-calclate-doomguys-real-speed/ https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/56505-trying-to-ca...
- animeweedlord 10y ago
  Ludicrous speed is good, the "hold down a button to temporarily run a tiny bit faster until your stamina bar runs out" mechanic is what sucks.
cm3 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMEQp5BZHO8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMEQp5BZHO8
pvg 10y ago
Some of these decisions (slower speeds and cover mechanics in particular) are driven by the need to make the games playable on consoles with handheld controllers.
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  Yet Doom plays great on a console in terms of movement...
  - pvg 10y ago
    The article addresses this - Doom is 'first person Robotron' and it was designed without 'mouselook' absolute positioning control in mind. I don't think it's an all-encompassing explanation (tastes and fashions drive change too) but the fact that designers have to accommodate two fundamentally different control schemes in the same game has had a very big impact on the way FPS games are designed.
    - abritinthebay 10y ago
      True, but I'd say the larger impact is in how levels are designed and the aesthetics - not so much the platform.
      - pvg 10y ago
        Well, the point is Doom's levels and controls are designed for the constraints of a 1992-ish pc. It's not too surprising it worked on consoles as well. Quake on consoles was, predictably, poop.
      - randomacct44 10y ago
        I think it's broader than just "designed for easy control on a console". There were other factors at play. I think what actually set this type of design in motion can be traced back to that point in time when Half-Life came out and all of a sudden everybody seemed to criticize Quake (and indeed id Software in general) because their shooters lacked a story (actually, my recollection is a little fuzzy - games like Thief and System Shock were certainly exploring the 'story' space as well, I'm just not sure off the top of my head in what order the games arrived on the scene). The realistic movement (head-bobbing, slowness, inertia, etc) seems like it's meant to convey a vague sense of what the physical impact of running would be, in the same way that camera shake is used to accentuate punches in a fighting game or a movie with fighting scenes. It's something that conveys momentum and mass. It's an element to convey story and immersion. I feel like there's probably an axis here, where you have pure arcade games like Geometry Wars on one end and ultra-cinematic shooters like Battlefield 4 on the other. I'm really guessing here but I imagine Battlefield 4 (or let's say even the original Call of Duty, though I've only heard/read about it and never actually sat down to play it) wants you to actually feel the things that the soldier in the story is feeling. In some sense, it wants to be an interactive movie experience. As opposed to Geometry Wars and Doom, where the gameplay comes first and the story is nearly non-existent or very secondary. I remember one of the biggest praises given to Call of Duty (EDIT: actually, reading further down, I think it was Soldier of Fortune that I was thinking of!) that it felt like you were in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. I can't help but think that must have been a huge contributor to the tone of console shooters that came afterwards.
debaserab2 10y ago
I couldn't disagree with that more - I am so glad they kept bunnyhopping out of overwatch and instead focused on adding depth and skill to the actual game itself. There's enough high skill floor things to master in Overwatch that there doesn't need to be a gimmicky movement system to separate the good from the bad. The games intended and obvious mechanics leave plenty to be mastered.
- ivl 10y ago
  What bhopping would add to Overwatch is a huge increase in pacing and aim and prediction needed. I don't think it would really take away from the rest of the game, as it's not like bhopping and shooting at the same time has to be viable. The huge number of movement abilities wouldn't lose anything because of it. The skill ceiling would go up, but the skill floor wouldn't. I' will concede that the number of movement abilities, and how they're trying to balance the game, bhopping might feel gimmicky in the case of Overwatch. I don't believe it's gimmicky in general. It certainly didn't feel that way for Quake. Or in a more recent case, Reflex.
  - debaserab2 10y ago
    Bunny hopping adds a skill floor to the game competitively because everyone who can't do it simply gets blown out. You cannot compete without being able to master this skill. That's a skill floor.
    - ivl 10y ago
      Competitively, sure. But there are always people who can't do certain things in games.
knn 10y ago
That's very interesting. In competitive SSBM (smash bros melee), movement is one of the integral parts of the game that give it its depth. Top player's movements can differ greatly from each other.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
What is good about bunny hopping? It raises the skill ceiling, but it doesn't do so in an interesting or challenging way. It's basically just a "rub your head and pat your belly" test, what TVTropes calls "fake difficulty." It doesn't test your tactics or your aim or your situational awareness; it just tests your ability to stay focused while hammering the spacebar continuously.
- ivl 10y ago
  Because it completely opens up map geometry. New paths open up, and it makes landing shots on you harder. It lets you put yourself in an advantageous situation. Aim and situational awareness aren't the only aspects that matter in a 1v1 game. Because of that, I'd say it raises the skill ceiling in a very meaningful way. It can be hard to master, and it's not critical to understanding the map, but if you want to have real success, you need to be able to take advantage of the new paths that open up to you with bhopping. It raises the amount of aim and situational awareness needed. And I'd say it does so in a fun way.

by ivl 10y ago

rangibaby 10y ago

I felt the same way when grenades were removed from TF2. In TFC they were hard to learn, but very rewarding to players who did. Conc-jumping was severely OP and fun. I guess they remove advanced gameplay mechanics to make the games more appealing to noobs and lower-skilled players. I think one of the reasons for CS' enduring popularity is even noobs can get lucky or trick a better player and kill them. In Q3? Nope.

kbenson 10y ago
> I think one of the reasons for CS' enduring popularity is even noobs can get lucky or trick a better player and kill them. It's probably better for the better player as well. No matter how good you are, a stray bullet or two could take you out. There was no relaxing, and the game promoted caution enough that if you felt unchallenged, there were risks to take.
- ManlyBread 10y ago
  >No matter how good you are, a stray bullet or two could take you out. And this is why I never really liked this game: it takes the control out of the hands of the player and gives it to a random number generator. If I'm good at the game, I should be the one who is in control, not RNG.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    I think this is one of those situations where most people don't really know why they like what they like, or at least have a hard time comparing between two things. People like winning, but people like challenge. In a game where the more skilled or already winning player continues to win, that's enjoyable for them short term until it gets boring, but importantly it's often not enjoyable for the other players. In a game where some randomness is introduced (and/or other mechanisms to reduce the advantage of an already winning player) which prevents a single person from completely controlling the board/map, that person may feel it's less fun than situations where that is allowed, but I think that level of less fun (but still fun!) may last much longer, since challenge remains. In fact, to remain consistently at the top actually requires more skill, IMO. Personally, I never liked Quake deathmatch (all the way back to the original). To me it seemed to reward prior map knowledge too much, and allowed someone with a known path that optimized item respawns to deny pickups to other users. Anything that makes the game easier for the person in the lead in a multiplayer game is a net negative IMO, as much fun as it feels to be that person.
    - feintruled 10y ago
      And let us consider the infamous Mario Kart blue shell, a weapon that specifically targets the player in first place. Still, for all the complaining about it making races random, the better players still seem to win most of the time.
      - Asooka 10y ago
        In some iterations you can avoid the blue shell. IIRC the 3ds one shows you what items the others are holding and if you see a blue shell pop up, just move behind the guy in second place. Even if the blue shell is fired, it makes a distinct noise and if you aren't too far ahead, you can duck behind the second place guy and let him take the hit.
edem 10y ago
I have a friend who played Q3 for 6 years in a hardcore manner. I have played fps games for like 10 years but when we fought the result was 50 to -1 in his favor. (I managed to kill him once but I landed in lava 2 times) 4 years later we played again (he was not playing Q3 for 4 years) the result was 50 to 2 in h is favor. The skill cap in Q3 is just so damn high but it is also a rewarding experience.
Bromskloss 10y ago
I abstain from rocket jumping in TF2 because I feel it's such an outrageously unrealistic thing that it shouldn't be there in the first place. I also don't use anything but the default equipment, because I feel everything else gives an unfair advantage to players who hace played a lot and thereby gained items. I mean, what is this? Play to win?!
seanp2k2 10y ago
This. Overwatch is fun, but Weapons Factory Arena was much more so, esp with half of the classes (including the sniper, engineer, and some of the attack classes) given off-hand grapple, which could be used to "grapple jump" and massively increase the movement speed and agility of a skilled player. Here's a video showing some fairly high-level play: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3UW7eCYqGpQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3UW7eCYqGpQ More: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-IDF_wWPUME https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-IDF_wWPUME IMO it's a massively more fun game than Overwatch, but it no longer has an active player community. The best shot I have at playing with others is QuakeCon, but there used to be a few servers with 32 player limits, and I can tell you that anything beyond about 8x8 was just stupid fun. I've played hundreds or thousands of hours of this and it was amazing. I've never found another game which did it for me quite like WFA did. As the cherry on top, it runs great on a Pentium 3 500 with a Voodoo 3 MP on 56K at 1024x768 on a CRT. It also runs fine with 60fps constant on the original Motorola Droid. Better graphics and loot boxes don't make a game fun IMO. Great mechanics and an awesome tight-knit community do.

bluedino 10y ago

>> where the goal is to make it feel 'realistic', with sprinting Calculations to figure out that doomguy ran ~ 55mph: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/56505-trying-to-calclate-doomguys-real-speed/ https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/56505-trying-to-ca...

animeweedlord 10y ago
Ludicrous speed is good, the "hold down a button to temporarily run a tiny bit faster until your stamina bar runs out" mechanic is what sucks.

cm3 10y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMEQp5BZHO8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMEQp5BZHO8

pvg 10y ago

Some of these decisions (slower speeds and cover mechanics in particular) are driven by the need to make the games playable on consoles with handheld controllers.

abritinthebay 10y ago
Yet Doom plays great on a console in terms of movement...
- pvg 10y ago
  The article addresses this - Doom is 'first person Robotron' and it was designed without 'mouselook' absolute positioning control in mind. I don't think it's an all-encompassing explanation (tastes and fashions drive change too) but the fact that designers have to accommodate two fundamentally different control schemes in the same game has had a very big impact on the way FPS games are designed.
  - abritinthebay 10y ago
    True, but I'd say the larger impact is in how levels are designed and the aesthetics - not so much the platform.
    - pvg 10y ago
      Well, the point is Doom's levels and controls are designed for the constraints of a 1992-ish pc. It's not too surprising it worked on consoles as well. Quake on consoles was, predictably, poop.
    - randomacct44 10y ago
      I think it's broader than just "designed for easy control on a console". There were other factors at play. I think what actually set this type of design in motion can be traced back to that point in time when Half-Life came out and all of a sudden everybody seemed to criticize Quake (and indeed id Software in general) because their shooters lacked a story (actually, my recollection is a little fuzzy - games like Thief and System Shock were certainly exploring the 'story' space as well, I'm just not sure off the top of my head in what order the games arrived on the scene). The realistic movement (head-bobbing, slowness, inertia, etc) seems like it's meant to convey a vague sense of what the physical impact of running would be, in the same way that camera shake is used to accentuate punches in a fighting game or a movie with fighting scenes. It's something that conveys momentum and mass. It's an element to convey story and immersion. I feel like there's probably an axis here, where you have pure arcade games like Geometry Wars on one end and ultra-cinematic shooters like Battlefield 4 on the other. I'm really guessing here but I imagine Battlefield 4 (or let's say even the original Call of Duty, though I've only heard/read about it and never actually sat down to play it) wants you to actually feel the things that the soldier in the story is feeling. In some sense, it wants to be an interactive movie experience. As opposed to Geometry Wars and Doom, where the gameplay comes first and the story is nearly non-existent or very secondary. I remember one of the biggest praises given to Call of Duty (EDIT: actually, reading further down, I think it was Soldier of Fortune that I was thinking of!) that it felt like you were in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. I can't help but think that must have been a huge contributor to the tone of console shooters that came afterwards.

debaserab2 10y ago

I couldn't disagree with that more - I am so glad they kept bunnyhopping out of overwatch and instead focused on adding depth and skill to the actual game itself. There's enough high skill floor things to master in Overwatch that there doesn't need to be a gimmicky movement system to separate the good from the bad. The games intended and obvious mechanics leave plenty to be mastered.

ivl 10y ago
What bhopping would add to Overwatch is a huge increase in pacing and aim and prediction needed. I don't think it would really take away from the rest of the game, as it's not like bhopping and shooting at the same time has to be viable. The huge number of movement abilities wouldn't lose anything because of it. The skill ceiling would go up, but the skill floor wouldn't. I' will concede that the number of movement abilities, and how they're trying to balance the game, bhopping might feel gimmicky in the case of Overwatch. I don't believe it's gimmicky in general. It certainly didn't feel that way for Quake. Or in a more recent case, Reflex.
- debaserab2 10y ago
  Bunny hopping adds a skill floor to the game competitively because everyone who can't do it simply gets blown out. You cannot compete without being able to master this skill. That's a skill floor.
  - ivl 10y ago
    Competitively, sure. But there are always people who can't do certain things in games.

knn 10y ago

That's very interesting. In competitive SSBM (smash bros melee), movement is one of the integral parts of the game that give it its depth. Top player's movements can differ greatly from each other.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

What is good about bunny hopping? It raises the skill ceiling, but it doesn't do so in an interesting or challenging way. It's basically just a "rub your head and pat your belly" test, what TVTropes calls "fake difficulty." It doesn't test your tactics or your aim or your situational awareness; it just tests your ability to stay focused while hammering the spacebar continuously.

ivl 10y ago
Because it completely opens up map geometry. New paths open up, and it makes landing shots on you harder. It lets you put yourself in an advantageous situation. Aim and situational awareness aren't the only aspects that matter in a 1v1 game. Because of that, I'd say it raises the skill ceiling in a very meaningful way. It can be hard to master, and it's not critical to understanding the map, but if you want to have real success, you need to be able to take advantage of the new paths that open up to you with bhopping. It raises the amount of aim and situational awareness needed. And I'd say it does so in a fun way.