Re: Gamedevlists-design digest, Vol 1 #67 - 6 msgs

> From: "Neil Stewart" <[email protected]>
> Subject: RE: [GD-Design] Speed kills

> helpers. By selecting the right number of helpers, novices can give
> themselves just the right number of things to deal with, so that they can
> drive a good lap, at full game speed, without becoming overloaded and
> confused.
> 
> You might argue at this point that this is no different to changing the
> number of hits it takes to kill a monster or similar game rule changes, but
> I think it is. Rather than changing the physics of the world or giving the
> player more ammo/health, we leave the game world alone and simply help the
> player overcome his limit on the number of things he can deal with at once.
> In this sense, it is more similar to the global speed change than it is to
> arbitrary game rule changes.
> ...
> You also don't have to limit yourself to "input helpers" like the Formula 1
> game. Anything which removes conscious thinking from the player will help
> him deal with more things at once so, for example, Quake could have a "map
> helper" that shows the player where he is and gives him advance warning of
> armour/weapons that are about to spawn, both things that would take up quite
> a lot of his "conscious runtime" if he were to do them himself.
> 

The "Cyborg" approach to game difficulty :)...amake use of the human-player / 
in-game avatar interface to artificially enhance (or degrade) the abilities
of the "player" (as observed by other players in the game - i.e. the
composition of human and avatar).

For followups, people might want to check out MUD / MMOG / RPG discussion
lists, where the issue often comes up; e.g. should player abilities in an
MMORPG be
 a) 100% due to levelling treadmill
 b) somewhere in between
 c) 100% due to human skill

(obviously each aspect of the player is usualluy discussed separately,
e.g. "vision" (should we let this playe see through walls / have infra-vision
/ etc), "speed", "tactical reasoning" (difficult to provide programmatically,
but not impossible), etc.

Most MMOG's hover almost at a on most aspects, so that your enjoyment is tightly bound to
how long you spend playing the MMOG (and hence how much subscription revenue
the owner extracts from you).

Adam M


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