Game Design: What makes a combat fun?

[Music] what does make a fun video game combat hey what's up if you're are a hobbyist video game developer like myself probably you already ask yourself that I want in this video explore a bit what I think makes a combat fun I want to analyze some other games combat design and also show some examples so let's do it before we start I would just like to Define what's a combat in a video game what I consider that is a combat because combating video games have a lot of variety have a lot of different ways that you can have combat so let's define that a combat is when the player needs to defeat an enemy that has an AI and this can be any kind of game this could be a Action Battle system for example in the glassic zeldas where the player press a button and the character swings a sword and the combat is dead or it could be even a card game for example in King the heart chains of memories the player use cards to give damage to enemies and that's the combat so far for me a combat is when the player needs to defeat a f that have an AI but what makes a combat fun some developers will say that what makes a combat FS the action but I don't really agree with that because you have some amazing games that have turn based combat and these two are really fun to play so action by itself doesn't make a combat fun of course what makes a combat fun is a variety of many points but there is a point that for me is core that every game that has great combat have that is story and here not talking about the story presenting games that have thousands of lines of dialogue with characters with a dramatic backstory or nothing similar here I'm talking about the story told while the player is interacting with your game mechanics and what exactly I mean by that let's take for example a game that is loved not only for its combat but for many other things but let's explore its combat I'm talking here about Hollow Knight Hollow Knight in the beginning of the game has a really simple combat you can do is move jump and attack of course that when you advance in the game you get new abilities and new skills that will change how the combat works but let's focus in the beginning of the game let's go back to the beginning of the game one of the first enemies that the player will encounter is this little BTO guy that you can see in there so this little BTO guy have a really simple pattern everything it does is move forward and if it sees the player it will play a little animation that will tell the player that they enem is ready to attack and then it will attack the player how this combat creates stories and how these stories can make a combat fun especially in Hollow Knight let's take for example the first time that the player Encounters this little BTO the player gets near to it but let's suppose that the player didn't notice that this little bito is changing the animation it's getting ready to attack so the enemy attacks the player and the player receives the damage but the player recovers and counters attack and defeat the enemy and this is one story that this combat can produce but it can produce many other ones let's take a look on one more imagine now that the player saw the B making this animation and now the player is ready to avoid this damage so when the B attacks the player jumps over it and counters attack it and defeat the enemy now we have another story now you can see that the simple mechanics can create many different stories let's put that on the board so we can understand how we can create more stories from the same mechanics now if you draw the choices of action that the player have in the beginning of the game you can see that the player only have four are basic mechanics those are uh attack the player can just attack the enemy the player can avoid the attack by moving backwards or the player can jump to avoid the attack and the player can also suffer damage so these are all the choices that the player can make in the beginning of the game if the player chooses one of these actions you're going to notice that the player can repeat those actions so the player will be opening four more options four more choices that the player can make and if the player chooses again another action you're going to notice that it can be repeat again so four more actions will be available for the player you notice that when the player makes one choice here it opens four more options and then if it chooses again we open four again it goes from four options to eight options to 12 options to 16 options and so on so from only four actions you could create many thousands of stories it's really important to notice that all these actions was chosen by the player it's not the game designer that went there and forced the player to do something the player actively decided to attack actively decided to jump and avoid the attack and so on even taking a damage could be an option of the player now that we saw how simple mechanics can create many stories let's take an example of a bad combat that's not fun to play if you remember they M RPGs from the 2005 2006 that were just copies of World of Warcraft and had really simple combat where the player just clicking the enemy and wait for the combat to happen let's put in the board how this combat looks like so we can understand better why it's not fun so when you are starting the combat in this kind of a game the player don't have many options all the player can do is click on the enemy when the player clicks the player will have to wait for the attacks to happen and he don't have any more inputs the only thing that the player can do is cast a spell or maybe try to flee from the enemy if the player cast a spell it will open another branch of options having two options cast another spell or F and if the player fleas it doesn't open any other branches because if the player fleas uh the player will be far away from the enemy and the combat is over you can noce that in this kind of combat the player doesn't make many choices and this makes the combat boring also are not all these stories that are considered good stories there are some stories that could be frustrating to the player and is the game designer job to remove the possibilities of these stories to happen let's take for example enemy that trolls Fireballs but this enemy doesn't tell the player when it's just about to throw a fireball it doesn't play any animation it just shows the fireball in that way you're removing choice from the player because before the player could choose if it would attack the enemy first before it thrs the fireball or if it would avoid the fireball but now if the player avoids the fireball it's just by chance because the player have no way of knowing when the enemy will throw the Fireball and in this case chance is not a choice made by the player so you're removing choices from the player and when you remove choices from the player you make the combat not so interesting to play and the same happens if the game designer put traps for the player to fall without putting any visual cues to the player that there's a trap in there so the player can avoid it just to wrap up we can take an example from Counter Strike that's a game that was released in the 2000s it was played even before as a mod but the official release wasn't the 2000 this game have today the same mechanics it had 20 years ago and people still plays it people still find it to be really fun if you open the streaming websites nowadays you're going to see that Counter Strike is still one of the most played games and why this game that didn't change its mechanics from 20 years ago is it still being played and people still find it really fun it's all about the stories that this game tells each Counter Strike match that you play it will tell a different story because the players will be different the positions that the players are in are different the rules are still the same Counter Strike rules are the terrorist needs to go there and plant a bomb the counter terrorist needs to go there and diffuse this bomb or if no bomb was planted one thing needs to opposing thing and people still play it because it's mechanics even being simple opens the branches for so many player choices that the combat is never boring in this game well that's all I had to say leave in the comments your opinion and what do you think about what makes a combat fun and let's have a discussion about it thank you see you in the next video

Channel: TheWizardToucan

Views: 4,638

Keywords: Gamedev, Indie, videogame

Id: rNGEU8tI0Wk

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024