The coolest feature in Gears of War is,
definitely, the active reload. Here's how it works: every time you reload your gun,
you're invited to play a tiny mini-game. A cursor swipes along a line and you can hit
reload again to try and win a prize. Land here, and you'll reload super fast. Land here,
and you'll also get a weapon boost - like, more powerful bullets. But land
anywhere else and your gun will jam. It's a great feature - adding tension,
skill, and flourish to one of the most basic actions in shooters. But, it also left
Epic with a problem. You see, in playtesting, the devs found that advanced players
were nailing that perfect reload, constantly giving them better
bullets and, thus, an advantage over the enemies. So they had to rebalance
all the foes, making them more resistant. But, beginner players often ignored the
active reload entirely. So they didn't get that weapon buff - and were now fighting these
overpowered bad guys with weak bullets. Agh! So much of game design is about solving problems
like this. You come up with an idea - and then find out that it's flawed in some way. It's
unbalanced. It's confusing. It's not leading to the gameplay you intended. Or it's clashing
with some other feature in the game. And, as a designer, you can often find yourself going
around in circles to find the right solution. Surely there's a better way? Well, in this episode, let's look at how the
best game creators go about solving problems in their design - to give us some take
home tips for fixing future issues. Oh, and I'll also let you know how Epic fixed
the active reload. The solution is... pretty ingenious. I'm Mark Brown,
and this is Game Maker's Toolkit. So, before we start coming up with
solutions... we need to make sure that we've accurately identified the problem. During the development of Dying Light, the game's
director had an issue: weapons break too fast, and so he told the designers to increase their
durability. But, lead designer Maciej 'Matt' Binkowski didn't want to fiddle with that stat
because it might mess up the game's economy. So, instead, he dug deeper, asked more questions, and got to the real problem - players could only
kill a few zombies before their weapon broke. So, to fix this, the designer didn't touch weapon
durability at all, but instead lowered the health points of the enemies. It solved the
problem, and basic combat felt better too. Binkowski suggests designers step back and
figure out the root cause of the problem, before trying to solve the
issue that's been reported. We also need to make sure that everyone
is on the same page about the problem. Just before Astroneer left Early Access, the
designers wanted to improve the game's crafting system - but had very different ideas about the
issue. One designer thought it was too simple, and so wanted to add more machines
and resource chains. Another actually thought it was already too complicated,
with fiddly, unintuitive processes. This, naturally, led to disagreements - but it
was only when they stepped back and really broke the problem down, that they realised they were
talking about two completely different issues. One was looking at the shallow gameplay loop,
from a wide-angle systems perspective. The other was looking at the operation of complex machines,
through the lens of moment-to-moment interactions. Now, seeing eye-to-eye, they could
solve the underlying problem, and fix both issues at once. Those
fiddly machines could be overhauled, and then used to expand the simple crafting
loop to create a more interesting economy. Okay, so hopefully we now know what the
real problem is. So how do we fix it? Well, here are some best practices
from across the industry. Approach one - quickly iterate
through possible solutions. When Blizzard was making Diablo 3, they wanted
to fix a problem from the previous game: potion spamming. Players would often
just guzzle endless potions during combat - and so enemies needed to
do massive one-shot hits to have any chance of actually killing the player.
Unfortunately, Blizzard didn't really know how to solve this thorny issue -
so, they just tried a bunch of ideas. How about - potions become less effective
if you drink them in quick succession? Slap a build together and... that didn't
work - if a potion only heals for 25%, players would just chug four of them. Okay, how about you automatically heal - but only
if enemies are unaware of your presence. Make a build and... no good. Enemy awareness just wasn't
obvious enough. Alright, let's simplify the rule: if three seconds pass without you taking
damage, you start to heal. Build the game and... didn't work. Players would run away
from fights, acting passive and defensive. That's the opposite of what Blizzard
wanted - players should be aggressive. Ah! But, that did point to the solution:
make enemies randomly drop crystal balls filled with health, when you kill
them. This removes potion spamming, it's simple to understand, and it makes
players act aggressively. Job done. This approach is all about trying stuff and
using the results to guide your way to the solution. Like, that first solution with
the diluted potions, designer Wyatt Cheng says "we weren't totally thrilled with
this solution as we were putting it in, but we did it anyway. We knew that even though
this might not be a solution that we're willing to ship with, it was something that was going
to teach us a lot more about the problem". Approach two - identify the levers In a fascinating GDC talk about game
balance, Bungie's Jaime Griesemer explains how his team fixed the sniper rifle
in Halo 3. You see, the rifle was broken: players were able to acquire long-range
targets too quickly between shots - and, they could also use the sniper rifle in close
quarters for massive damage. It was overpowered. Fixing an issue like this means first identifying
which levers can be pulled - and which ones can't. For Griesemer, you can't shorten the range of
a sniper rifle. And you can't nerf its damage, reduce its accuracy, or stop it doing insta-kill
headshots, either. Those factors all define the sniper rifle - you can't change those stats
without breaking the very identity of the weapon. So by removing those options, it became clear
what can be changed. Stats like the number of shots in the clip. The length of the reload. The
time it takes to zoom in. The time between shots. Whether you can do insta-kill headshots outside
of the scope. And the maximum ammo you can carry. The right call was changing the
time between shots. It stopped players from instantly acquiring and
shooting a target after each bullet, and it made it much less effective in close
quarters now you can't spam the trigger. In the end, it was enough to increase the
time from 0.5 seconds, to 0.7 seconds. By figuring out what can and can't be changed,
you can better focus your attention on potential solutions. However - this must be done carefully.
Sometimes the target really is that thing you've convinced yourself cannot be changed. As
always, be prepared to kill your darlings. Approach three - make big changes Okay, so I just talked about a change of 0.2
seconds - a pretty small change that had a big impact on the game. But sometimes,
you want to swing for the fences. Less than a month before the first Civilization was
released, Sid Meier realised that the game had pacing issues. So he decided to solve the
problem by reducing the size of the map. Not by a few tiles. Or a few
percentage points. He cut that sucker in half. And this worked wonders
- the game moved faster, felt snappier, and it better captured that true Civ
feeling of relentless forward progress. We've already talked about iterating on a problem
- but development time is limited, so if you're only ever changing things by tiny amounts - a
5% nerf here, a 6% buff there - you may never get to the right answer. Or you'll find out too
late that your solution would never have worked. Meier's advice is to "double it, or cut it in
half". With such dramatic changes, you'll very quickly see if the change has an effect - and if
you go too far, you can always drop back down to readjust. Talking about that Civ map, Meier says
"if I’d been afraid to deviate too severely from what we already had, I never would have gotten to
the right size in time before the game shipped". Approach four - flip it on its head In Shovel Knight, Yacht Club wanted to
put an interesting twist on saving your progress. They wanted a system where players
could risk skipping a checkpoint, in order to get a reward. So they made a checkpoint
that you have to pay to use. If you want, you can skip it and save the cash - but at
the risk of losing more progress when you die. But this system didn't really work. It was
complicated to use and visually unintuitive. And, worse still, it had a big balance problem: novice
players, who needed the checkpoints the most, were also least likely to have the
funds to save their game. No good. So the solution was to flip
the concept upside down. Instead of paying money to save your game...
what if you get paid if you don't save? So now, saving is automatic - removing that
complexity. And it's free - so novice players never lose out. But it also has
that spicy twist of risk and reward - cocky platforming experts can intentionally
break the checkpoint to make more money. Sometimes you're close to the right solution,
but you just need to reverse the formula. Approach five - find the solution elsewhere So when Naughty Dog was working
on the UI for The Last of Us, they initially let Joel upgrade his weapons at
any point, from a tab in the inventory UI. But that created problems - it added complexity
to the minimalist interface, some players missed the option entirely, and because
players could upgrade whenever they wanted, they'd typically just upgrade as soon as they
could afford something. Whatever was cheapest. Now the developers could have iterated
on this UI design for ages, moving the upgrade button to different screens or
changing how it was communicated to the player. But the ultimate solution was to
pull upgrading out of the UI entirely. Now, the game has upgrade benches. These are
specific points in the world where you can modify your weapon, meaning you might not have a
chance to upgrade for an hour or two. This ensured that players actually engaged with the system.
And because they had more resources saved up, they were able to boost the weapons they enjoyed
using the most - not just the cheapest. They also spent more time assessing all the options,
and made plans for the next upgrade bench. Remember that games are a massive
web of interconnected systems - so sometimes you can fix a problem in one area,
by actually making a change somewhere else. Approach six - solve multiple issues at once During the madcap multiplayer
sessions of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the designers found it annoying to die - and
then have to wait until the end of the level, or a checkpoint, to come back
to life. So they needed a fix. The first idea was that knocked-out players
could randomly spawn inside question mark blocks. Which is pretty cute. But they kept going
until they found a better solution: players would come back in a bubble, and their team mates
have to pop it to get them back into the game. This didn't just solve the original problem.
It also helped fix another one - sometimes, novice players get to a tricky bit that they
can’t tackle. So, now, they can intentionally put themselves in a bubble, let the better players
make progress, and then pop back out when it's safe. This one feature made dying more fun, and
also let players dictate their own difficulty. Mario's daddy, Shigeru Miyamoto, has that
classic quote - "A good idea is something that does not solve just one single problem, but
rather can solve multiple problems at once." So, sometimes, it's best to wait for a solution
that also has other benefits for the game. Approach seven - study player behaviour Okay, let's finally get back
to that Gears of War story. So, remember - Epic had to boost the health
points of enemies, because advanced players kept doing perfect reloads and getting a damage
boost. But this screwed over beginner players who ignored the system entirely and were now
getting wiped out by these amped up bad guys. But Epic noticed another difference between
these two player types. Top shooter players rarely finish a clip - they reload before they're
out. But novices would typically shoot until the clip is empty, and let the game automatically
reload. So this offered up a solution. The devs secretly boosted the power of
the last few bullets in a clip. Dubbed them "magic bullets". And so - on the whole
- only novice players would get this buff, giving them a similar advantage to the
expert players with their perfect reloads. Most of the problems in game design are
derived from watching how players interact with the game. So why not that use that
same approach in order to find the solution? Okay, so now we have a solution, we can implement
it. But there's still a few more challenges ahead. The first is second-order effects. In Rainbow
Six Siege, Ubisoft knew that it needed to fix its overpowered shotgun. So they nerfed
it - and it had the intended effect. The shotgun was no longer outperforming the other
weapons. But it also had a knock-on effect: because the shotgun is a great defensive
weapon, this nerf made it much harder for defenders to win against attackers.
They just couldn't hold them back. Fixing a problem in one place can create another
problem elsewhere. Designers should be aware of how different systems might interlink, and
be smart about avoiding these issues. Or, perhaps, figure out how to solve these
new problems. The solution for Siege was to reduce the time limit on rounds. Because
defenders automatically win if time runs out, this made that side more likely to
succeed, bringing the balance back in line. Another challenge is finding the resources to
implement those changes. Late in development of Prey, Arkane's designers realised they
needed more monster variety on the space station - but they didn't really have the time,
artists, or AI programmers to make anything new. So the designers found a creative solution: the poltergeist. This enemy is invisible
and attacks by throwing nearby physics objects. It needed dramatically fewer
resources than the other foes in the game. Prey's designer Ricardo Bare says "good designers
understand how to solve problems within the constraints that they have", and adds
that the poltergeist actually ended up being one of his favourite enemies in the
game. A lot of game design issues crop up late in development - or even after the
game has gone live. So sometimes the best solution is just the one that you can actually
achieve with the time and resources available. And finally, you need to test if the
solution actually has the desired effect, by going back to those playtesters,
or getting fresh eyes. Halo's Jaime Griesemer recommends that you don't tell
your playtesters how you fixed the issue as that can bias their experience. Just
see if the problem has been resolved. If not - well, hopefully, like in the case
of Diablo 3's rapid iteration, this helped you figure out what the actual problem is, and
you can reframe the question and start again. As I've been discovering myself, game design
is all about solving problems. Very few ideas survive first contact with players. And so
the best game designers aren't those who can come up with good ideas - they're the ones who
can also figure out good solutions to problems. This video was absolutely packed with stories of
clever developers solving game design problems. It's like, my favourite genre. There were loads
more that I couldn't fit in, so if you're a GMTK Patron on the Bonus Video tier, you can now check
out a special tie-in video with even more stories. Oh, and what about if your game has already been
released and then you start getting criticism? Well, then you should check out this video to
find out how to handle negative player feedback. See you soon.
One thing Mark briefly touched on with R6: Siege and a few a few other comments but I would have liked more light shone on is indirectly addressing issues.
A great source for these fixes are genres like MOBAs or class based games.
Take a hero in Dota 2 for example - due to changes in the meta from patches, they may end up in a spot where they aren't viable competitively. Say that hero has a high mana usage, so in the early game players need to be overly-cautious of using abilities, which leads to them getting less gold or participating less in fights.
One way this could be solved is to add more sources of mana regen in the early game (e.g. buffs to the consumable items or by adding map resources).
This way you may be able to bring the character back to a point of balance without having to play with their stats too much. It may also create issues where you need to then nerf heroes that would be over-empowered by this, but that's the joy/frustration of those types of games.
WoW did something similar to the 'Flip it on it's Head' solution when it comes to rested experience.
Originally players were going to earn less experience the more they played. They ended up swapping it so you earned more experience the longer you logged out. So if you didn't play for a while you could log back on and get extra experience to help you catch up.
Wasn't a big fan of the Diablo 3 solution though. Haven't played the game so just going off what's in the video. While I get potion spam is a problem, I would have tried giving potions a cooldown. So they're more of a get out of jail free card and not something you rely on 24/7.
The video ends with the solution epic implemented for active reloads disadvantaging low level players: more powerful rounds at the end of the clip for those who will let the game reload automatically. What I don’t get is how that is a solution to a side effect caused by something intended to reward skilled play? It just evens the playing field. Why active reload if the difference is evened out by the magic bullets? Why be skilled?
I haven’t played gears of war so I’m probably missing something. Maybe the active reload bonus is still slightly better than the magic bullets. But that also makes the rewards for this signature GoW system lackluster.
Roque Planet Games should watch this. Especially their youtuber-became-lead-designer.
They fix or balance one thing, and break 3-4 other things. And they implement stuff that buffs one player and annoys the shit out of 200 others.
Active Reload got the attention in this video, but wall-bouncing is my favorite mechanic from the Gears games (at least the ones I've played). Aside from Vanquish I don't know any other games that have tried to build on the mechanic, but I'd love to see some multiplayer shooters with giant magnet belts to pull players even faster towards cover (or some other silly excuse for snapping to cover from even further distances).
I guess you could argue that it's a similar mechanic to a grapple hook or "zipline-shot", but the ability to bounce and snap between any walls without having to aim or worry about cooldowns is just such a fun setup.
That Gears example. It really seems like the the prevailing philosophy among designers for making their game more fun for bad players is to covertly cheat in their favor in order to trick them into thinking they are playing better than they actually are.