Asmongold Reacts to "What is Parasitic Design?" | By Josh Strife Hayes

what is parasitic design you've probably heard the phrase before either in relation to video games collectible card games or table top war games players will say this update is parasitic design or that system or mechanic is parasitic but what you say how does it happen how does it affect gaming what can we do to prevent it happening more let's discuss ladies and gentlemen welcome i'm josh drafe i love all types of games from video games like mmo rpgs to card games like magic the gathering or tabletop battle games like warhammer 40k especially role-playing games like dungeons and dragons there it is another thing all these games have in common is they're rather complicated they have an intense list of rules behind them and they're all built up of various game design systems yeah some of these games have core systems things that are super fundamentally important to the game the foundations the game comments wrong inherent to the gameplay the games also contain secondary systems things that link to the core systems and enhance it or have synergy with other secondary systems and allow complex interactions to happen within the game unfortunately some of the games also have parasitic systems these are ones that leach from the core mechanics and don't enhance them they take from the game without giving anything specifically back let's have a discussion about what parasitic design systems are and i'll tell you one example of this is the corruption system in new world the new world corruption mechanic is parasitic why they are bad before we begin consider dropping a like on the video or subbing to the channel ring the bell for all the future notifications as usual a massive thank you to all the supporters on patreon and twitch who keep the channel going more on how you can support at the end for now let's begin to understand what parasitic design is we first need to understand the more bass and essential levels of design in a game the core design so let's take a look at one of my favorite mmos and identify a few core design elements this is old school runescape it's a third person mmorpg where you click to move your character moves on a tiled grid so movement on a tiled grid is a core system of this game if you removed that it would no longer be runescape you can also carry 28 items in your inventory equip items to specific parts of your body and interact with the world by clicking on things the combat system is based on in-game ticks of 0.6 seconds and attacks happen every few ticks based on your equipped weapon all of these systems are core parts of the game remove them and you fundamentally change what the game is core mechanics are the things that's not kind of what happened with runescape three that was my understanding of it and yeah like the game like that's the same thing with wow is it like it's it's very very fundamentally like one thing and whenever you change that it just turns weird mission your game is built upon change them you change your entire game a quick side note some of you may have noticed my old school runescape inventory was quite valuable that's because youtuber callum upton recently held a 24-hour twitch stream where he raised money for charity he streamed continuously for an entire day and raised over two and a half thousand pounds that's a lot of fun with quite a risky gamble he decided to jewel me in old school runescape and risk his entire bank this mug is to commemorate callum doing that fantastic twitch stream and raising two and a half thousand for charity it is in no way to remind callum that he lost 338 million 238 593 coins worth of value to me anyway that's a lot of money god damn identifying them is usually a case of asking what is the okay basic minimum i can take this game down to without changing the experience it's trying to give me once you've established the core mechanics of a game you can begin to look at the synergistic mechanics things that interact with the core systems and enhance them mechanics that directly affect or are affected by the core elements of your game let's look at runescape moving around the world is a core mechanic running increases your movement speed for a short while but it drains the run mechanic has synergy with movement it enhances it within runescape you have the agility skill the higher your agility the more shortcuts saving traffic so the agility skill directly links to the movement mechanic but your inventory core mechanic is i actually think that there's no jump puzzle that exists that's too hard for me i think that every single one that's ever been made i could be aged as well because each item has weight and the more you're carrying the higher the chance you'll fail an agility obstacle and the slower your run energy recharges so the core mechanic of clicker tile to move has several synergistic mechanics linked to it run energy moves you faster the agility skill opens up shortcuts and recharges your run energy yeah and higher carried item weight reduces your agility success and decreases your run energy these systems all interact with each other and all relate back to the core mechanic of movement and importantly while these systems could exist independently of other secondary systems only interact with the core mechanic of movement they have been actively designed to support the core mechanic and all other secondary mechanics that interact with it they enhance more than just themselves and work with multiple in-game mechanics this means it's synergistic not parasitic it's important to understand that just because a mechanic causes negative things to happen to you as a player in the game does not mean it's parasitic an enemy hitting you and you losing health is not parasitic that sounds like toxic gameplay to me man that shit's [ __ ] up do you believe that wow you running and losing run energy is not parasitic design parasitic design is when it doesn't have synergy with systems outside of itself so let's have a look at what happens when design goes from synergistic to parasitic okay one of the most important design aspects of synergistic design is being backwards compatible if a new system is introduced into a game it needs to interact with and affect older systems it needs to relate to the core gameplay loop and core mechanics this is something that path of exile does really well and wow does really badly is that in path of exile like new systems generally augment the current progression and add in different opportunities and in wow often times the new systems end up invalidating and removing old systems exists within the already complex design the system often exists independently of other systems yet requires support from other systems to survive it leeches from the core mechanics of a game and yet doesn't actively give anything back to them it detracts it doesn't enhance this is why we refer to it as a parasite some of the hallmarks of parasitic design are it's often created later in a game's life and is not backward compatible with other more established systems it often requires inputs from other game mechanics or systems to survive yet provides little value to those systems itself it often exists within a vacuum of game design either a different physical space within the game or immediately this does sound a lot like tour guest like i hate to say it but like pretty much every single thing that he's giving examples for uh is basically tour gas or covenant yeah any game that's not related nothing related to the parasitic system is relevant outside of a very specific or specialized area or time frame or and this is probably the most telling aspect of a parasitic system it could be removed from the game and nothing would be affected let's look at some examples the term parasitic design despite being a general descriptor of this style of design was widely popularized by magic the gathering designer mark rose water where he uses it to describe the design of cards that cannot go into any deck without detracting from the deck or requiring very specific cards in the deck to set up and work in short the card doesn't add to the core mechanics of magic and doesn't interact with multiple systems it only interacts and works when built around the most pop like a dark steel colossus or platinum angel like i don't know if those are good examples that's what he means or not but uh i'm not sure the other example of this is the splice onto arcane mechanic which requires you to be running yeah you could remove splice onto arcane from magic and very little about magic would change when an mmo rpg releases an expansion they often come bundled with parasitic design elements because designing a parasitic system that the existing systems must warp and bend around to make work is actually much much easier than designing an evergreen system that naturally integrates itself into the core gameplay of your game yeah i would say azeroth in world of warcraft battle for azeroth it was a necklace item you equipped and then powered up suddenly every dungeon was about collecting azerite to power it up unlocking good powers of azeroth levels would provide new combat buffs or debuffs everything in the expansion was about the heart of azeroth you literally got given it at the start and everything was about making it more powerful it was a new item that brought a new mechanic with it that the expansion was almost entirely built around and then shadow lands happened and the heart of azeroth was forgotten so for a brief time world of warcraft had a very specific item which required dungeons to be run resources to be found and time to be dedicated to leveling it up and i i actually will go and say that i think that the heart of azeroth and the way that you can still use it in legacy content is really cool i like that and i think that's interesting exchange for all your effort focused on this singular time-gated mechanic it would affect combat in a very minor way while you were wearing it and then shadowlands released and the heart of azeroth was instantly forgotten about and no longer relevant and the heart of azeroth isn't even the first time they've done this world of war every expansion they release especially the recent ones there's a new big features of the game and then adds in a bit of parasitic design that will be relevant for this system alone remember building your garrison in warlords of draenor and then the garrison becoming irrelevant remember restoring your artifact weapon in legion and then the artifact weapon becoming irrelevant and then filling up your heart of azeroth and then that becoming irrelevant so it's basically par for the course right now because developing new core integral systems is hard developing a parasitic system you can throw away at the end of two years and then just add another one on that's easy i actually think that sucks because like this is kind of what happened with uh with wow i think it started in like uh in wod with like garrisons where they would add these like big expansion specific features and like you can even say it happened with mr pandaria but the cloak where like you start having this thing that you just have to have and you can't really get around it you just have to play into this system and i think that like if you look at burning crusade for example all of the core systems that were added into burning crusade were built around and expanded throughout the uh throughout the game so like you look at uh heroic dungeons those were built around and expanded throughout the game you look at uh tin man dungeons those were built around and expanded throughout the game arenas huge example uh you think about uh badge gear like badges of justice those were also built around and expanded throughout the game and these types of systems became part of the game and i think now every single time that they add in the equivalent to arena or badges of justice in the new expansions after that expansion they're gone and that's it like you don't interface with that system at all anymore and all of that time and effort is just thrown away acidic design mechanic is an aspect of gameplay a great yeah i think so and like there are maybe like let me think uh what did the bfa add anything cool that got like kind of put in the core game better i think no i think that mythic plus made the game better overall yeah i think so even though i don't like it corruption gear well then no but wasn't like integrated into the game weekly affixes but that was more just like i was it was not like a news war mode okay yeah you're right about that yeah bfa did add war mode war mode like i think is kind of a it like nobody gives a [ __ ] about it but like at least they did add that into the game and let me think uh shadow ends what did shadowlands add in well i guess we can't know until after the expansion's over or an update that requires other already established systems to support it often taking time and resources away from those core systems but not actually ingratiating itself into any of them in any meaningful way it is a side show for a few months it is the next hot trend that will inevitably die it's a designer saying hey wouldn't this be cool and putting something into the game that needs the game to exist but doesn't actually ever become an important part of the game yeah i've been playing and really enjoying warframe for a while now since i made the worst there's a lot of examples of that unfortunately how great as the core gameplay is i'm starting to see these parasitic design systems everywhere new ideas have been added over time but never expanded upon new systems half built and then abandoned still there but not contributing one of the worst this is one thing i was really impressed with with path of exile is remember they did the the maven expansion and then they went back and they iterated on every single old thing like they were making new systems for breach they were making new systems for incursion and like that was so [ __ ] badass that they went back and they brought everything forward ritual yeah i think it was ritual league yeah yeah that was the one i played a lot and uh chocobo racing is parasitic well that's a wrong opinion and you're banned and so yeah anyway i think this is something that i'd love to see other games do and i think final fantasy does this to an extent too with like having the uh the different versions of the fights like having the unreal versions of the i think like titan and a few other ones where you can actually do them at level 80 and they're scaled up aspects of parasitic design is how designers will add in a parasitic system players won't respond well to it and then instead of removing it they will just add in another this is one of the major causes of feature creep incomplete non-fleshed out shallow systems that don't enhance the core game design being left in a game and bloating out the in-game systems and confusing the hell out of new players who discover them and then don't realize they're abandoned parasitic design is one that needs the game to exist but doesn't enhance the game in any meaningful way it's a system that takes from others without giving back or it's one that must be specifically built around and support it because without the additional support it would not survive on its own merits this is what yeah i think that's the uh that's like a lot of the like azerite armor and i think also covenants fall into this i feel like that definitely for sure eureka and final fantasy i haven't i haven't gotten there yet when dungeoneering released originally in runescape people called it parasitic and i can understand that complaint it existed separately from the main landmass and required skills to be trained to be good at but having a high dungeoneering level didn't make you good at anything other than more dungeoneering this is why people said it shouldn't have been a skill but a mini game skills in runescape all interact with each other mini games don't need to they can exist on their own merits dungeoneering required support from every skill to exist but didn't supply any other skill with support it didn't enhance anything outside of itself now however it's been updated and become much less parasitic there are resource dungeons around the world that require a dungeoneering level to get into but it has been woven into the main game design over time it has gained its synergy slowly the main reason parasitic design exists and will continue to exist is because once a designer has built the core systems of their game and worked out the intricate connection matrixes between all of the secondary systems they step back look at their game as a whole and then players say add more and more people always want more designers think it would take a long time to add a new core system and work out a way that it affects all the other systems but it would be quite easy to add a parasitic system i can just remove later it's like building a baby yeah add in a little bit of [ __ ] people don't like it get rid of it that's it it's over it's done so you start off with a decent base then you add the sauce then you have the cheese then you add the toppings you step back and say this is complete if someone looks at you and says hey i've eaten all the pizza make it different you could go back and remake the base remake the sauce remake the cheese that's too much that would be complicated what's easier is just adding more toppings without stopping to think are these toppings actually making the pizza better or am i just adding them because people demand i add something it's highly likely that parasitic design will unfortunately continue because designing a temporary system that is supported and properly it's easier and can be removed at any time without actually affecting your core game is much easier than adding something new to your core game and enhancing every aspect of it design is lazy it's designed to be temporary and it's one of the fastest ways to annoy your player base when they realize hang on this system won't actually matter in a year if you're designing a game add your core systems then add synergy and leave the parasitic design on the drawing board where it belongs cheers for watching another massive thank you to the supporters on patreon and twitch who keep the channel alive you can support from just one pound a month check the video description for links to the patreon twitch twitter and discord and as always have a great day i agree with that a lot i actually think this is a good video because it brings to mind a perspective that i think a lot of people don't really have in regards to like game design and i think that perspective does matter a lot and it does have a big impact because once you can see like what this parasitic game design looks like i think it becomes much easier to identify it and give feedback because of it so yeah there's the video right there so yeah i mean i i like that a lot no choke about right listen the chocobo racing is not parasitic okay guys it's not at all [Music] you

Channel: Asmongold TV

Views: 440,111

Keywords: asmongold, asmongold reacts, asmongold wow, asmongold highlights, asmongold youtube, asmongold funny, asmongold tv, ZackRawrr, asmongold ffxiv, asmongold final fantasy, final fantasy 14, ffxiv, mmorpg, mmorpg 2021, mmo 2021, asmongold mmorpg, asmongold mmo, josh strife hayes, asmongold josh strife hayes, final fantasy xiv, world of warcraft, wow, parasitic game design, parasitic design, game design, most played mmo, worst mmo, worst mmorpg, wow expansion, shadowlands, mmo

Id: lPtJk4xEAjI

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 11 2021