Smash games could learn a thing or two from the incredible design of Doom Eternal. Twitch: / thebestadam Discord: / discord Patreon: / adamcarra Twitter: / adam_carra
@@AdamCarra theres a lot here that I went over in my "Doom Eternal is better than 2016" video, I'm guessing it was a little inspiration here. I'm actually working on a follow up that talks about gameplay creativity and I'd love to reference this video. Everyone should see this. Great work.
IMO the fun zone should NOT have a ball pit. Timmy peed in the ball pit at my birthday party last year and now mom says we can't go to the fun zone because of Corona virus.
@@XxChrisxXBedofRazors Yeah, I highly doubt we'll ever get anything from doom as a full character. At best it'll be a mii costume. It was hard enough to get sakurai to give us a single western game character (Banjo) let alone two. He very clearly has a biased for the japanese market and it's characters... which... makes sense, considering he's japanese.
Literally Them's fightin herds story mode. Basic enemies rewards countering their movers (anti air the wolf, lasso the panther, pressure the cobra). It has platforming segments in a 2D fighter to teach short hops and superjumps. Even bossfights makes you use specific tools to win (blocking in time while moving forward in Velvet's boss and lasso Oleander down in her final phase). It's so well made it's insane, and yet lot's of people are probably gonna be put off by it's artstyle looking like MLP.
WAIT WAIT WAIT What if it was his gimmick? Like as he fights he can use the milestone system to unlock new moves or upgrade existing ones, kinda like shovel knight’s shop
I think most genres in general can learn from Doom, it's just that fighting games don't care enough to put nuance into their single player modes. Honestly, World of Light didn't even learn from its predecessor Subspace-it's entire campaign was painstakingly crafted IN ORDER TO receive premature accolades before it was revealed to be a lazy copout. An indie Subspace-like that actually puts attention to detail first and integrates anti-cheese funzones a la Doom would be freaking epic
have either of ya guys herd of A B Y S S O D D E S S E Y? that is a co operative campaign game that plays like the smash bros does, in stamina mode, while being.... really freakin' creepy. t'also has randomly generating dungeons, and a DIVERSE cast of monsters, and a multi duel mode. that ones gonna be yer best bet in gettin good lessons of what to and not to do.
I love the *idea* of World of Light, and spirits too for that matter. But there's *so fucking many spirits* (literally 1000+ *and counting*) and yet fights don't usually get more complicated than "use the anti-wind spirit when there's wind." Or enemies just have ridiculously high health. If there were no straight up "remove wind" spirits and ONLY spirits such as "increase weight" or "turn metal" or "turn giant," then it would be much more engaging. Less easy solutions and more...favorable options. That's something I love about Doom. Certain guns are better against certain demons, but there's never a clear cut solution, it's again multiple options for multiple playstyles. You wanna use the chaingun to stunlock a heavy, or to mow down that group of fodder? You wanna use your rockets to kill heavies with direct hits, or use the splash damage to clear groups of fodder? There's never enemies that can only be killed with one specific gun. Except for, ironically, the Summoner's Spirit from The Ancient Gods that possesses enemies LOL.
I think a somewhat good example of a good single player experience in Smash that rewards good and fun gameplay is Melee's break the targets. Each level is catered specifically to each character, and utilizes each move each character has. First example is Young Link. Back when it came out and I was a kid, I didn't know that wall jumping could even be a thing, but YL's stage start off by saying "learn how to play the game or you can't play the rest". Almost every character has a level that teaches you/requires you to use some sort of technique that is extremely important in the playstyle of that character. Ganondorf teaches careful placement and use of his moves, as well as pattern recognition with the Targets, and taking advantage of when they show their weakspot. Kirby's utilizes making every jump count. Jigglypuffs does much the same, but ensures you understand her side B, since she has no real recovery move. Ness' uses his PK Thunder to make sure you have good control over it. I could go on with each character, but I think I made my point. Target Test in Melee is the best Single Player experience in the whole series, imo. Brawl's was not catered to a specific character and were just generic stages, which really dropped the ball. I hope they can capture the fun and the feeling that Target Test had.
Wow, now that I think about it, the only real engaging experience I remember feeling in Smash single player was target smash in 64 and Melee. Trying to beat your previous time could really demand a lot of your time and focus.😁 If only there were challenges like that that could also encourage or even force players to utilize their more advanced movements, such as shorthops, wavelands, dash dances, etc.
They made brawl the way they did on purpose melee was rushed so it suffered but that is what you would think it held strong but I think think argument ties to which game you played first.
The "make me do it" comment is something I've also been yelling at people. People do not want to learn, the resist learning, they want to play the game their way. Problem is, if you play a game your way, it gets repetitive and boring because you'll only ever do one thing that "works." This is why it drives me fucking insane when people complain about being forced to use the chainsaw to get more ammo or needing to light enemies on fire for armor. I'M SORRY THAT YOU CAN'T CHEESE THE ENTIRE GAME WITH THE DOUBLE BARREL ANY MORE. FUCKING LEARN AND ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME DAMNIT.
JarekTheGamingDragon what about forced stealth segments in non stealth games cause the only good ones I’ve seen are the ones from Astral Chain (where you can say screw and kill everything) and that Yiga base in BOTW as they don’t force a failure if you mess up, they instead let you approach it how you want to. What I’m saying is that just cause you force a player to do it does not mean that it’s a good thing as some gamers like myself think freedom in games is the most fun thing, but then again I prefer sandbox games the most so.
@@dinoshotgun It depends on how you want your game. Freedom isn't better or worst than more restricted gameplay. - less freedom != less creativity from player. It is possible to create an environement in which players play the way you want them to play without it being scripted. Otherwise there would be no interaction. - less freedom == the game designer's view is more important, which allows for better tailored gameplay, thus some unique game experiences that couldn't be done otherwise. tbf most game tend to restrict the player's ability, and that's a good thing because designing a good sandbox game is extremely hard and very easy to mess up. Botw and Minecraft are some good example. Plenty of games are examples of why freedom isn't inherently a good thing. Doom 2016 (and I love that game !) being one of them.
I remember one day trying to explain a friend how to play it, and he didn't learn how to do simple things and I got really pissed off, but now I'm just trying to make them understand "Well, the game is designed this way, you choose do it if you want to win, it could be boring if you was able to only use one method"
@@juanrodriguez9971 Perhaps if the game wasn't killing him off every second and allowed your friends to choose from one of multiple stages at a time, it would be a better experience.
I think they should make a 3D Smash Bros. game similar to Power Stone with a greater single player focus. It would make worlds more interesting to explore.
Hugo Martin's point about the difference between how he wanted Eternal to play in the early stages vs. how it asked the player to (just walk up to an enemy and blast with the super shotgun) makes me think of the more recent Kingdom Hearts entries and their tendency to have 1 dominant strategy. There would always be a specific spell or category of attacks that far exceed the rest in terms of damage output, how punishable they are, etc. and often times fans will defend this by stating that you should just avoid that play-style. Its now gotten to the point where they've made an update to Kingdom Hearts 3 where you can specifically select which limitations to play the game under. I suppose the point I'm getting at is that it warms my heart seeing devs take the time to implement this sort of intentional design and get the player interacting with the mechanics, despite it most likely resulting in the project taking longer. Doom Eternal rocks.
I worry that it maybe to hard for some players. Perhaps make some challenging levels optional but those levels allow you to unlock specific content in the game?
Pokemon's main story has had a similar problem for years. Pokemon have so many moves, stats and abilities, but they hardly matter in the main story when you can just one shot everything with your over leveled starter
I know it's not a platform, but a traditional fighter, but I want to point to Them's Fightin' Herds' Story mode. It's split between a pixel art top-down adventure that gives you the story and allows for exploration, it also shows you how the lobby system works. The normal game segments (side view and fighting), that is itself can be platforming, fighting mooks or boss fights with other characters. The platforming teaches you your movement options from short hops and super jumps to dashes. The mooks all have a pattern that boils down to fighting game tropes (wolfs jump in, snakes zone you out, panthers use command grabs, you get the picture) which teach you about dealing with them. And the boss fights aren't just a simple fight, but actual multi stage bosses which double down on the identity of the characters. (Velvet the resident zoners final form needs you to reach her at the edge of the stage with wind slowing you and giant attacks showering you which you need to block low or high or jump over.)
It's still incomplete, it only has Arizona's chapter, but it still took me a few hours to get through, has 3 big areas (and a smaller tutorial one) with 3 proper bosses and a some minibosses. Eventually all the 6 main characters will get their own chapter. I also forgot to mention that to regain your health you either have to find consumable clouds that refill it in the overworld, or you have to use a super to finish off an enemy (I think they could have made it rarer to find it in the overworld,although I didn't try the harder difficulties).
"Make the player play like how they would in Multiplayer", I think Custom Robo (Battle Revolution) for the GameCube does this well, apart from certain bossfights (Rahu 2/3). The focus in combat is dodging enemy attacks, restricting enemy movement and punishing whiffs. Building a Robo(loadout) is what the game is based around. When playing the game I'm always thinking: What tools am I using (Short-range rushdown, long range zoner, etc.) Should I approach, and how? I could basic dash in, but that leaves me open. Weave between cover via weapon sliding, but is the stage built around that? Zone them out with bombs and pods, how does the opponent deal with that - would they rush me, dodge or facetank? How do I dodge the enemy attacks? By jumping, going under, dashing, using cover? Am I in a good position? Do I take highground, am I in the open, can my opponent attack through the cover? These are thoughts that go through my head in multiplayer and singleplayer modes. Additional gamemodes, accessible after beating the story mode, also force thought. Parts used are banned for the next few battles so you need to be comfortable with many parts. All enemies have a certain weapon or build, how do you deal with that. Parts are also rewarded overtime, and anyone would go 'ooh, piece of candy' and use them, or at least find out whether the new part would work or not- encouraging build exploration. If only Noise/Nintendo would make another Custom Robo game. I have ideas on a game like this, but am currently lacking skills, and am putting my focus on other things atm.
Great video! Unfortunately the ending statement is why we’ll never see something like this in an actual smash game. The target audience isn’t people who wanna play a technical game.
Well it doesn't help Smash is trying to cater to 2 sides which I think is fine. But I think casual players can get into technical stuff if they're forced to. I have a friend that likes to play Smash casually, yet loves Doom Eternal. We're talking Ultra Nightmare difficulty here. I think he would learn technical stuff in Smash if it forced him to play that way.
well in the case of the diversity of moveset. I think a decent way around this is to emphasize on the "type of move". You can emphasize it as a spaced out move, or a projectile move or whatever. But I think it works best to consider it in terms of the possible moves each character has. Jab, Tilts, Smashes, Specials, Throws. If you separate it this way between the five possible sets it makes certain things more palatable to a dev team and emphasizes learning how to control when to use each type of move. Hell, maybe the specific weakness move is what causes a stagger which then emphasizes comboing into other stuff. Maybe it tries to teach you with jab->tilt->finisher setups so people can learn a few basic combo strings based on that, no matter the character.
@@phillipanselmo8540 It's not about meaning, it's about incentive. It's sad too, because when I was a kid I had no problem doing things without any incentive. I'm not sure why that's changed, and I hate it.
There's a lot that needs to be said about the level design of subspace emissary beyond just auto scroll levels and moments where the player has to just wait being annoying. The levels for the most part didn't have much platforming going on. a lot of the time it was just straightaways with enemies littered from point A to point B. Translating this over to project M, playing subspace still doesn't even feel much different from playing it in default brawl, because why bother using mechanics like Wave landing ledge dashing dash dancing dacusing etc etc When (on top of having dumb enemies w/ no variation) there's no platforms, no ledges, space to even execute a combo if you wanted to, or platforming challenges that push the player to get better movement, or otherwise die. Honestly, autoscrollers could work if they were faster and you had to make your way quickly through a difficult obstacle course.
There's fun to be had outside of technical skill earning your victory, things like story, getting to interact with your favorite characters, flashy effects, and exploration.
You mentioned it briefly, but I think the problem here is character variety. In a platform fighter, the fun zone looks different for every character. The tools they have are different, and trying to fit them all in one design will make the game directly worse. This limits the options greatly- focus on one or a few characters and disappoint people, only have one or two levels for each character, which limits depth and doesn't let you "get good" at any one. You said in the video that quality is not judged by how hard it is to make, and I agree, but pointing to huge amounts of effort and investment as the way to improve what developers already see as side content probably will not end well. As a last note, I think it's important to give difficulty options too- we can't expect little timmy to learn to wavedash and l-cancel before even letting him into the fun zone.
I just wanted to outline some ideas for enemy types because I'm already thinking about them. * Each stage should be designed for a particular character or set of characters, and limited to those on your first playthrough * Each stage and its enemies should be built around highlighting a character's strengths and (some of its) weakness. You want to show players why this character is awesome, not damper their excitement too much. * If people want to go back and play with their main, don't worry if it's nearly impossible because the process of figuring that out will teach players about their own character's weaknesses * Basic enemies require basic skills and act as fodder for pacing. One enemy is just a ground mook, another flies, and another always parries or dodges when you attack within a certain distance of it (regardless of the move) to teach baiting and punishing * other skills to mix in with higher level enemies: grounded, but can anti-air; perfectly parries, but can't dodge; always dodges twice; can wavedash; evades and spams projectiles; rushes the player with a dangerous, but easily punishable move * Different colors and visual traits indicate which behaviors an enemy will follow. More complex look, more complex behavior * Special "camo" enemies with unknown behaviors and traits that must be identified and adapted to on the fly * Sneaky enemies which follow their indicated behavior initially, but secretly have another trait/behavior to catch players off guard * Some enemies take increasing damage the longer they are comboed, measured by either air-time or time between hits without getting hit yourself * Some enemies should be fighter reskins whose sole goal is to kill you with a specific set of kill moves with different DI requirements * Elite enemies are reskins of normal fighters with different colors/identifiers to indicate their behavior which is always more complex, but predictable. * eg. a pink and blue Absa who always rushes to place her cloud and try to hit with a specific special * eg. a shining-blue-eyed Zetterbum who fights more traditionally, but only uses normals, a yellow-eyed that only uses specials, and a red-eyed that's unlocked and can use both * eg. a muddy Krag who plays around his rock * enemies should always have individual percents and require being k-o'd off screen like in normal fights Bonus: * post-game cheats/powerups that do things like add more air jumps, remove end lag, remove startup lag, remove hitstun, extend hitstun, etc. * these are unlockable and can be used in special versus modes where you can mix and match powerups (equipment?) against other players * fun/silly enemies like large, but super lightweight versions of fighters; weak, but tiny, speedy, and light fighters; super slow and heavy but with armor and extra damage * special scenario/game-reference fights like Smash's Spirits, but more limited and curated with the freedom of only adding as many as makes sense or there is development time for * special mode where you fight as and against an opponent with varying modifiers including fighters from the workshop (on supported platforms). No limits, pure chance. Make it a leaderboard where you gain standing by winning faster or surviving the longest so even Ronald-types can be competitive. (though do limit how frequently fighters can be picked per creator so any would-be-spammers are neutered unless they buy more copies of the game) * Cut off Wrastor's wings.
I am really surprised that you did not talk about, "Hit the targets" in this video. I think a whole course of hit the target maps for your characters would be a good supplement to a platform fighter's story mode. It's help teach player's about their character's kit and improves player execution, additionally would help break up the pacing between singular bot matches. Here are a couple of my ideas to help improve a story mode: - a mode where a sandbag is used to help teach you your bread and butter combos - enemies that can only be defeated by parrying an attack, wave dashing through them, or getting a unique 3 hit combo Additionally your video reminds me of the Sid Meier quote about how (paraphrased), "Developers need to protect players from themselves". Here is a quote from a Kutaku article discussing it in more detail, "Meier has observed that players are very cautious with their saves, pausing to save their progress before every battle, reloading if they fail. That, Meier said, doesn't help a player build a better strategy, a handicap of sorts." You can read more here if you are interested kotaku.com/civilization-creator-explains-why-everything-game-devs-5492078 . Overall, great video keep up the good work, love your content.
Yeah break the targets is a really good single player mode, but it's more of like an extra challenge thingy as opposed to a campaign which is what this video was focused on. This video was already really long and I couldn't really find a good place to fit it in while staying focused to the main comparison of subspace and doom, probably in the movement section I guess, but I feel like the same ideas get covered anyway.
_Crypt of the NecroDancer_ is another good example of the "fun zone": It's a randomly-generated dungeon crawler but you play it in the style of a rhythm game. All enemies have fixed, predictable movement patterns and you defeat them using specific counter-movements of your own _with the correct timing:_ Nail it an you can defeat the enemy unharmed, but if your movements are off by just 1 turn they will kill you just as unchallenged.
Two words: Smash Run In Smash Run, you have five minutes to prepare for a final battle (could be an actual battle, or it could be climbing an infinite tower). You do this by defeating enemies to raise your stats, navigating a giant labyrinth of chests, doors, and special encounters with rewards for finding/fighting them. While it still has some of the problems Subspace Emissary had (i.e. bosses with no hitstun) there are a lot of improvements, especially to areas concerning enemies. Performing combos on an enemy is fun, and certain ones like Ghastly and the Polar Bear require specific strategies to effectively defeat. And while not every fighter has projectiles or firey attacks to defeat them with, respectively, you can sometimes find items in chests or by defeating other foes. You could just run away from encounters like that, but if you run away from everything, you may not be able to defeat the final battle and win the rewards you've found over the run. I feel like it's more about the journey than the destination on this one, though the final battle often is still just a free-for-all against CPUs. Then again, you never know; You may end up having to fight a bunch of the enemies from the run instead.
Good vid, Adam. I love this kind of asymmetrical theorycrafting shit. Agreed on all points and was fun to think about. Also your editing is getting really good
What Hugo said about giving the players too much freedom is so on point. In FarCry 5 there is an overwhelming amount of weapons with various upgrades etc but once you have enough cash to fully upgrade the LMG you have a full auto, silenced DMR. Unlimited freedom usually ends in players streamlining their approach down to one strategy and severely limits their engagement. Games need to stop focusing on limitless choice and instead make every system in the game play off each other. That's why Counter Strike has out lived its contemporaries, each weapon is situational and every position on the map matters, unlike in Cod where there are 60+ different types of assault rifles and there are no points on the map that aren't accessible from at least 2 or 3 angles.
By the way, arena shooters like quake are basically the platform fighters of shooters (in some ways they are kinda parallel to melee.) they are really interesting you should check this one called Diabotical out because I really don't want the genre to die.
The thing is DOOM is extremely violent, and Doom Guy/Doom Slayer would most likely have VERY violent attack patterns. I'd love to see them, but in their proper form, not some watered down version for the kiddes/karens of the world. So in all honesty a PROPER Doom rep is less likely to happen then say someone like Conker or Rayman, hell even Master Chief has a better chance at getting in because he could just be the same style as Snake. But the Doom guy and Slayer wouldn't have access to much of their arsenal, y'know cause dismemberment.
Mach There’s still a difference. Even guns have existed in cartoons like Looney Tunes and Bayo’s outfit was modified so it would reveal less skin., or at least less in a way that would be considered sexual (whereas ZSS outfit looks like sportswear). It’s not just a manner of “turning the blood off” with Slayer. You couldn’t do glory kills in Smash because there’s a difference between shooting a gun and tearing off someone’s head or ripping off a limb and crushing/jamming it into somewhere else. That being said, you could probably still pull him off well if you remove glory kills and obviously blood. His arm knife thing *might* be a problem, but Ridley skewers opponents with his tail so it might be fine. It could be his grab attack. I think the bigger problem would be global appeal. All of their choices have, if not a global appeal, then at least Japanese appeal. Even with Banjo, a Western character, the Japanese audience loves him too (there were a bunch of videos of them going crazy for his reveal). FPS games aren’t very popular in Japan, and while it’s not impossible, I think the lack of Japanese appeal significantly reduces a character’s chances.
@@mrshmuga9 Show us evidence where FPS is not popular in Japan. (Because Splatoon as a sub-genre IS popular). This is being thrown around without basis all the time. Got a report? A chart? A comparison? Anything to back up your claims.
Smash Run on 3Ds Smash is probably Smash's best fighting single player mode. To have the best chances of winning the final minigame, your incentivized to collect as much stat boosters as possible which encourages you to optimize your movement across the map *and* to quickly defeat enemies. The enemies alone _somewhat_ pushed for a varied playstyle, most were easy enough to stun/combo while more resilient enemies, like the mimicutie, emphasizes better neutral play. And with the mode being as free as it is, every character feels fun to play. Also, Smash Run is not just fight after fight _unlike_ Ultimate's Spirit Board or tests your willpower like WoL.
Would be cool if there were a range of enemies doing grabs attacks and shielding so you could use the typical triangle of shield grab attack with more enemies Turing up as the games go one, enemies that shield break, enemies that shoot and enemies that reflect projectiles. That would make them more into smash bros style chess peices that you fight in different ways. Give the enemies different rewards, buffs, regen health maybe certain enemies that actively run away drop final smashes, maybe smaller enemies drop damage buffs to help with bigger ones maybe harder enemies drop health as a reward for the end of a fight, maybe certain enemies drop certain set items and that creates a natural chain of events in a consistent sandbox. But because they all attack and move in different ways the player has to make decisions all the time! Great video definitely how I'd like to go about a campaign.
I have watched this video because under the mayo talked about it in his own. This is your first video that I have watched, and man, it's GREAT. I don't believe I didn't find your channel before. You talk straight to the point, your arguments are great and I just LOVE your editing. It's breathtaking - so smart and interesting so I couldn't get my eyes off the screen!
Dude I have to say great video man, and fantastic editing loved the transitions! Really interesting points, I do really think doom eternal has done so much right, there are design lessons that can apply to many different genres. I liked and subbed looking forward to seeing more of your content, keep it up!
Quick and sloppy ideas off the top of my head: - Reward healing to the player's percent for staying in combat and mixing up their moves hooking into the move staling system - Enemies that are weak to aerial attacks and resilient to grounded attacks and vice versa, but this optional. Can't really do this for special moves because a character might not have a damage dealing special (I don't remember perfectly if there are any in the current roster, but if every character can do damage with a special move then sure use that one too) - Enemies that use extremely predictable, easily react-able (but quicker on higher difficulties!), and sometimes even singular attacks that prompt the player to move in certain ways to engage them (Ala big arm Blade Dude mentioned in video) maybe even have most be stationary so the player has to move to them and make decisions on how to get there) - Combinations of the above two attributes - All of these mechanics are clearly explained much like Doom Eternal does in quick dialogue boxes that can be skipped by experienced players So basically combat arenas typically focus on wave based combat where a wave spawns that has an enemy layout that causes the player to approach enemies in creative ways to avoid damage, prioritize them in certain order based upon danger and proximity, and chain hits together with mixed up but specific attacks in order to build damage for and eventually kill. Reward the player with dropped food based upon how mixed up their moves were. Platforming sections can stay similar to how they are in subspace, and if there are autoscrollers have them be quicker and lethal like a challenge. Let the players move at their own chosen pace! Also encourage players by placing specific trophies and other collectables, but I'm pretty sure Subspace Emissary already does this quite well. Make optional platforming challenges that require the player to use advanced movement techniques in order to complete them to get the collectable. Stuff like that. Absolutely excellent video. Really got the brain juices flowing!!!!
Tekken player here. The problem with the few examples we have like the arcade beatem up style like in Tekken 6 is they make enemies so homogenous. The enemies need be unique in both moveset and visual design. The should use moves from the main roster so when you see it in vs, you have an idea how to deal with it. Make enemy gameplans simplistic, but defensively very strong so it'll force you to find out the best way to deal with them. It needs to reward good gameplay and let the player know when they've done something correctly. I'd absolutely love a great story mode in any fighting game. And not just the story by itself like in Mortal Kombat, but gameplay as well.
World of Light does this a few times. Not with the number tweaks, but with the behavior tweaks. I remember one spirit battle was against three Bayonettas that just spammed grounded side special (pretty sure it was also stamina mode, so the move's low kill power didn't matter). I kept getting my ass kicked until I remembered "oh right, shields exist".
Thanks. I am making a platformer hack and slash and i was thinking a lot about how I could build it with the same design philosophies as doom. Thanks man. You helped me really think about my games design
5:20 So hear me out: it may be an idea for traditional fighters, but a "style meter" like in Devil May Cry. It rewards the player making combos with meter for supers. It encourages them to play stylishly. The more you make, the more "style points" you get which leads to more meter. With such, there should be gameplay mechanics that work around such as well, like a special counter that works like a Combo Breaker or a Burst (called a Stylish Counter) that lets you begin one rank higher than when it normally begins for being able to effectively punish a player into a combo, therefore letting you get more meter which you can use to finish stylish combos.
This is why i think the gauntlet of bosses in smash ultimate are really fun to me. Its not just cause they are popular Nintendo characters. You gotta do SOMETHING different (at least to most of them) to get somewhere. If there were more of those, maybe we'd get somewhere.
@@charl2182 well yes and no the building mechanic is pretty cool BUT THE PROBLEM RELIES ON THE SHOOTING is just so basic the only weapons that have a scope as gameplay are snipers but there are weapons who should have a scope in gameplay The gloom of some weapons got fixed 5 days ago with s3 so yeah but it's no hype having all this mechanics that require skill and Then the encounters end in 5 seconds because shotgun change to rifle or subrifle and that's it Fortnite fucked JUST IN THAT and the fact that the building system makes every other skill useless if u know how to build u will have more chances at winning because building gives u position protection a better angle everything building as rewarding as it is and fights so basic makes fortnite boring and simple
I've been thinking about making a Beat em up game (ala Streets of Rage) that teaches the player the basics of fighting games. Each enemy would have unique movesets that would teach some fundamentals. Some would sweep, some would have plus block strings/minus block strings, some would grab, etc. Each enemy would have a different character design, so a player will learn how to react based on the character design. I think there would be multiple playable characters based on fighting game franchises.
Really loved the video but kinda surprised hollow knight didn't get brought up at all, I feel like it's a shining example of how to make a technical single player platformer, with the colosseum being the biggest example of how to really put the player through a challenging gauntlet that forces you to actually play something resembling neutral even vs basic AI, and I think something like that could easily translate really well to smash. I think it's similar to how they ran some of the in place multiman fights in melee or brawl but due to the intentional disparity between enemy types and ways they combo'd the different enemies to make the player really try it makes for something both incredibly hard, incredibly rewarding, and demanding of technical ability and thought.
One way to make singleplayer Smash more enjoyable would be to change the way endlag works. After shooting the railgun (in q3 style games) you have to wait until it unwinds to switch to another weapon. However in doom ET you can switch the weapons after you're halfway through the unwinding animation. In smash you have to wait until the full endlag animation plays out before you can attack again. The only problem is that you couldn't rework smash, so that it would work as a singleplayer game without making it a completely different game(you should probably just do that instead of reworking a game that already works). You actually talked a bit about quake 3 and it's relation to modern doom and i loved it (because I've been thinking about the similarities of AFPS and fighting games for a long time now). q3 would technically have the same issue that smash has if it had a singleplayer. Q3/Qls mechanics are designed with multiplayer in mind just like smashs mechanics and that means that you just can't make a good singleplayer with those mechanics.
I just wanna say I was really excited to see that you were using footage of Project+ instead of Brawl for Subspace Emissary. P+ is one of my favorite games/mods, so I was happy to see it being played. Interesting video topic! Single player mode is definitely something most fighting games don't go super ham on.
Honestly the closest to this you can achieve for fighting games is, not even through fighting games but through action games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta where you’re constantly encouraged to experiment and mix up your attacks as much as possible because that’s how you improve your rank and from there you get more in-game currency to get more moves and unlockables at a faster rate, situational awareness is important for that in those games too. Certain boss fights will test you too and make sure you aren’t just mindlessly mashing buttons. Granted these games do this at their best when you’re playing on higher difficulty settings which not everyone is going to do, and I don’t even mean the highest settings like Dante Must Die or Infinite Climax, just the difficulty before that should and/or whatever highest difficulty is available at the start of the game should be enough to give you this kind of experience in most cases. This goes for other action games like these too, Metal Gear Rising, God Hand, Viewtiful Joe, Astral Chain, Wonderful 101, Odin Sphere, Transformers Devastation, the 3D Ninja Gaiden games, ect. Some do these things better than others of course and some games like God of War 2018, the Batman Arkham games and Spider-Man PS4 need the difficulty boost to make this effective because they’re too easy otherwise, but yeah. Also someone else in the comments here pointed this out, if we’re talking about the known fighting game franchises specifically and not action games like the ones I already mentioned that borrow a ton of inspiration from fighting games to make them what they are, having spin-offs of fighting games that are dedicated single player experiences is probably what we should be getting to ensure we get an experience as close to this as possible, there aren’t many that have done it and did it well, the only one I can think of that really did it well was Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks, that game does a great job at getting the player to make use of all their characters’ tool, if we could get more fighting games to have spin-offs like that, that would be awesome. Other attempts of this have been made by Soul Caliber and Guilty Gear but they haven’t been great, even Mortal Kombat before Shaolin Monks had Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero which is really bad.
I think it would be cool if you can change your character at checkpoints. You can also make characters stronger if they are in a stage which is based of their franchise.
I don't know if you know about this game, but a shocking number of the points that you made are in the Them's Fight'n Herds story mode despite the fact that it's a standard fighting game. All of the boxes are ticked except resource management(which sucks but that's what they did)
That point about the use of a full moveset making it more fun reminded me why 2 was my favourite Dark Souls. There is no scenario where you would use a jumping attack or half the heavy attacks in Dark Souls 1 or 3 pvp, but in 2 they're useful, still niche but infinitely more useful than the zero in the other games.
I can’t agree more with the boss part. The offense is so mindless, only the defense requires a bit of thought, but it just makes me even more impatient and I play defense even worse. Like I don’t want to just wack a hand with down air and up smash a whole bunch, I wanna put it in hitstun and give it knockback so I can perform *some* combo of *some* kind. This way both the offense and defense requires thinking and makes use of the basic game skills.
Ever play Guacamelee? It's more or less the sort of thing you're looking for, I believe. It's a Metroidvania platform fighter in its purest essence. Many of the moves you unlock are movement moves, and you've got a diversity of attacks, including punches, grabs, throws, and so forth. The combat arenas you get locked into have enemies that are designed to be fought in one specific way or another, and that prioritization does become important, as some enemies can be difficult to deal with despite their predictability, particularly when other enemies get in the way. It's probably not a perfect game, but it might be the sort of thing you're looking for.
yeah a lot of people have been saying this, and it's pretty on point. I just played guacamelee so long ago it wasn't even in my mind lol. The combat is kinda shallow, but it does do a really good job of having everything require all the different elements like the doom chess pieces
I've always thought that fighting game story modes should involve the same skills as multiplayer. Anything less and it rewards things that don't work competitively and doesn't reward things that do. The way CPUs are often made also fails this test, because there's a strong willingness to use bad shortcuts (e.g allowing frame 1 reactions, rather than limiting reaction time to the minimum number of frames that humans require).
An idea for implementing different moves required for certain enemies in Smash: make use of move properties. Things like "this enemy is temporarily stunned when hit with energy projectiles, but this other enemy absorbs them." Then throw in some kind of tag-in system to give wider move variety to deal with different enemies; I'm thinking designated "swap" areas (would promote evasive movement and a kind of neutral as you go to swap), or just binding it to d-pad (much faster paced).
Are you familiar with the "Them's Fightin' Herds" story mode? Because I think it does a lot of the stuff that you talked about right. It's definitely not perfect but what they have so far is a HUGE step in terms of playability and actual engagement in a fighting game story mode. Essentially what they do is they have chess pieces. There are a few pretty simple Single Player only enemies that each force you to behave in a different way by attacking you differently. Wolves jump at you and make you block high or anti-air them, snakes zone you with big hitboxes and a kinda Ranno dart esque projectile attack, birds pressure your wakeup and have a lot of moves that knock down, bears have armored moves to make you respect them and block before you punish, etc. Each of them forces you to use a different fighting game behavior, and then they dont just die in one hit, you actually are inscentivized to combo them like you would any other character. In it's more inspired moments it has platforming sections with enemies patroling different platforms and who will engage you when you get to their level. The big thing I'd want to see it do more is force you to deal with multiple things at once, but at the same time I understand why in a traditional fighting game that might get messy (ie if you side switch one thing, which way are you supposed to hold to block exactly). Platform fighters could def learn a LOT from TFH in terms of single player design.
Adam, as a dedicated Doom Eternal player, you are so right I could kiss you.
There you are !
If anybody's reading this, go check out this man's channel.
Yooooo I love your channel
@@AdamCarra theres a lot here that I went over in my "Doom Eternal is better than 2016" video, I'm guessing it was a little inspiration here. I'm actually working on a follow up that talks about gameplay creativity and I'd love to reference this video. Everyone should see this. Great work.
I ship it
Hi
IMO the fun zone should NOT have a ball pit. Timmy peed in the ball pit at my birthday party last year and now mom says we can't go to the fun zone because of Corona virus.
Finally a good joke in a RUclips comments section!
@@charl2182 i agree
*Pee & Balls pit*
Hey wait I remember playing you a lot in 2017 lol
In rivals I mean
So yeah... Bethesda now has some rep in Smash...
Samuel Hayden: You Can't Just Shoot Your Way Into The World of Smash
Doom Slayer: *Loads Shotgun*
Vega: *The Portal Is Ready*
Not really. Doom Slayer nor Doom Guy has NOT been confirmed as a DLC character.
megaman37456 they put vault boy as a mii costume
@@megaman37456 lol It's just to say, imagine so. As for Vault Boy, that's some rep. Not full, but something little as a costume.
@@XxChrisxXBedofRazors Yeah, I highly doubt we'll ever get anything from doom as a full character. At best it'll be a mii costume. It was hard enough to get sakurai to give us a single western game character (Banjo) let alone two. He very clearly has a biased for the japanese market and it's characters... which... makes sense, considering he's japanese.
I don't normally like or comment, but I did both here, because I really want the algorithm to pick up on this channel.
It already did for me ! Thats how I found it :D
i clicked on this video just to downvote without watching it, because i like to keep the algorithm on its toes
@@yeethoven8300 this is youtube and not reddit
@@yeethoven8300 madlad
Literally Them's fightin herds story mode. Basic enemies rewards countering their movers (anti air the wolf, lasso the panther, pressure the cobra). It has platforming segments in a 2D fighter to teach short hops and superjumps. Even bossfights makes you use specific tools to win (blocking in time while moving forward in Velvet's boss and lasso Oleander down in her final phase). It's so well made it's insane, and yet lot's of people are probably gonna be put off by it's artstyle looking like MLP.
YASSS people need to talk about Herds Story Mode more
Agreed.
But also fuck the vultures.
Remember back when Adam was doing Steam Queue and he just shited on TFH game for 1 episode, I believe that was a mistake.
Who thinks that Arizona should be a guest character in Rivals?
Litterly what I was about to say when watching this
Adam should for sure make himself as a rivals workshop character
Why hasn't anyone done that yet?
Yeah! So we can finally beat the living crap out of him!! Great idea, Delta :D
Give him the milestone system as a FS meter
@@funnyusername4774 that would be perfect
WAIT WAIT WAIT What if it was his gimmick? Like as he fights he can use the milestone system to unlock new moves or upgrade existing ones, kinda like shovel knight’s shop
I like how the Developers of Doom legit called the Super Shotgun the "Upper cut." Doom Eternal is like a FPS with somewhat Fighting Game traits.
I think most genres in general can learn from Doom, it's just that fighting games don't care enough to put nuance into their single player modes. Honestly, World of Light didn't even learn from its predecessor Subspace-it's entire campaign was painstakingly crafted IN ORDER TO receive premature accolades before it was revealed to be a lazy copout. An indie Subspace-like that actually puts attention to detail first and integrates anti-cheese funzones a la Doom would be freaking epic
What about shoot em ups?
If I get the opportuny, I'll create a solo game that plays like smash
@@placeadrien5566 Marketing that would be difficult though...
have either of ya guys herd of A B Y S S O D D E S S E Y?
that is a co operative campaign game that plays like the smash bros does, in stamina mode, while being.... really freakin' creepy. t'also has randomly generating dungeons, and a DIVERSE cast of monsters, and a multi duel mode. that ones gonna be yer best bet in gettin good lessons of what to and not to do.
I love the *idea* of World of Light, and spirits too for that matter. But there's *so fucking many spirits* (literally 1000+ *and counting*) and yet fights don't usually get more complicated than "use the anti-wind spirit when there's wind." Or enemies just have ridiculously high health.
If there were no straight up "remove wind" spirits and ONLY spirits such as "increase weight" or "turn metal" or "turn giant," then it would be much more engaging. Less easy solutions and more...favorable options.
That's something I love about Doom. Certain guns are better against certain demons, but there's never a clear cut solution, it's again multiple options for multiple playstyles. You wanna use the chaingun to stunlock a heavy, or to mow down that group of fodder? You wanna use your rockets to kill heavies with direct hits, or use the splash damage to clear groups of fodder? There's never enemies that can only be killed with one specific gun.
Except for, ironically, the Summoner's Spirit from The Ancient Gods that possesses enemies LOL.
I think a somewhat good example of a good single player experience in Smash that rewards good and fun gameplay is Melee's break the targets. Each level is catered specifically to each character, and utilizes each move each character has. First example is Young Link. Back when it came out and I was a kid, I didn't know that wall jumping could even be a thing, but YL's stage start off by saying "learn how to play the game or you can't play the rest". Almost every character has a level that teaches you/requires you to use some sort of technique that is extremely important in the playstyle of that character. Ganondorf teaches careful placement and use of his moves, as well as pattern recognition with the Targets, and taking advantage of when they show their weakspot. Kirby's utilizes making every jump count. Jigglypuffs does much the same, but ensures you understand her side B, since she has no real recovery move. Ness' uses his PK Thunder to make sure you have good control over it. I could go on with each character, but I think I made my point. Target Test in Melee is the best Single Player experience in the whole series, imo. Brawl's was not catered to a specific character and were just generic stages, which really dropped the ball. I hope they can capture the fun and the feeling that Target Test had.
That was introduced in 64
You are absolutely right.
Wow, now that I think about it, the only real engaging experience I remember feeling in Smash single player was target smash in 64 and Melee. Trying to beat your previous time could really demand a lot of your time and focus.😁 If only there were challenges like that that could also encourage or even force players to utilize their more advanced movements, such as shorthops, wavelands, dash dances, etc.
@@Goldenleyend Fair enough, I never had 64 sadly.
They made brawl the way they did on purpose melee was rushed so it suffered but that is what you would think it held strong but I think think argument ties to which game you played first.
The "make me do it" comment is something I've also been yelling at people. People do not want to learn, the resist learning, they want to play the game their way. Problem is, if you play a game your way, it gets repetitive and boring because you'll only ever do one thing that "works." This is why it drives me fucking insane when people complain about being forced to use the chainsaw to get more ammo or needing to light enemies on fire for armor. I'M SORRY THAT YOU CAN'T CHEESE THE ENTIRE GAME WITH THE DOUBLE BARREL ANY MORE. FUCKING LEARN AND ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME DAMNIT.
Git gud?
JarekTheGamingDragon what about forced stealth segments in non stealth games cause the only good ones I’ve seen are the ones from Astral Chain (where you can say screw and kill everything) and that Yiga base in BOTW as they don’t force a failure if you mess up, they instead let you approach it how you want to. What I’m saying is that just cause you force a player to do it does not mean that it’s a good thing as some gamers like myself think freedom in games is the most fun thing, but then again I prefer sandbox games the most so.
@@dinoshotgun It depends on how you want your game. Freedom isn't better or worst than more restricted gameplay.
- less freedom != less creativity from player. It is possible to create an environement in which players play the way you want them to play without it being scripted. Otherwise there would be no interaction.
- less freedom == the game designer's view is more important, which allows for better tailored gameplay, thus some unique game experiences that couldn't be done otherwise.
tbf most game tend to restrict the player's ability, and that's a good thing because designing a good sandbox game is extremely hard and very easy to mess up. Botw and Minecraft are some good example. Plenty of games are examples of why freedom isn't inherently a good thing. Doom 2016 (and I love that game !) being one of them.
I remember one day trying to explain a friend how to play it, and he didn't learn how to do simple things and I got really pissed off, but now I'm just trying to make them understand "Well, the game is designed this way, you choose do it if you want to win, it could be boring if you was able to only use one method"
@@juanrodriguez9971 Perhaps if the game wasn't killing him off every second and allowed your friends to choose from one of multiple stages at a time, it would be a better experience.
For real, how is this channel so underrated? It’s not just good rivals stuff, it’s good content period
ikr
What we need for a good story mode isn’t a side mode, it’s a spin-off.
I think they should make a 3D Smash Bros. game similar to Power Stone with a greater single player focus. It would make worlds more interesting to explore.
THAT...is a great idea for Smash to try after Ultimate. It's a different formula that won't just retread Ultimate and feel lesser for it.
Hugo Martin's point about the difference between how he wanted Eternal to play in the early stages vs. how it asked the player to (just walk up to an enemy and blast with the super shotgun) makes me think of the more recent Kingdom Hearts entries and their tendency to have 1 dominant strategy. There would always be a specific spell or category of attacks that far exceed the rest in terms of damage output, how punishable they are, etc. and often times fans will defend this by stating that you should just avoid that play-style. Its now gotten to the point where they've made an update to Kingdom Hearts 3 where you can specifically select which limitations to play the game under. I suppose the point I'm getting at is that it warms my heart seeing devs take the time to implement this sort of intentional design and get the player interacting with the mechanics, despite it most likely resulting in the project taking longer. Doom Eternal rocks.
So like Soulsborne games. If it's hard, deal with it and learn how to play the game.
I worry that it maybe to hard for some players. Perhaps make some challenging levels optional but those levels allow you to unlock specific content in the game?
So basically Kingdom Hearts Nuzlock
11:04 such good writing and smooth editing damn
Pokemon's main story has had a similar problem for years. Pokemon have so many moves, stats and abilities, but they hardly matter in the main story when you can just one shot everything with your over leveled starter
I know it's not a platform, but a traditional fighter, but I want to point to Them's Fightin' Herds' Story mode.
It's split between a pixel art top-down adventure that gives you the story and allows for exploration, it also shows you how the lobby system works.
The normal game segments (side view and fighting), that is itself can be platforming, fighting mooks or boss fights with other characters.
The platforming teaches you your movement options from short hops and super jumps to dashes.
The mooks all have a pattern that boils down to fighting game tropes (wolfs jump in, snakes zone you out, panthers use command grabs, you get the picture) which teach you about dealing with them.
And the boss fights aren't just a simple fight, but actual multi stage bosses which double down on the identity of the characters. (Velvet the resident zoners final form needs you to reach her at the edge of the stage with wind slowing you and giant attacks showering you which you need to block low or high or jump over.)
Dang Ima have to check that out it sounds sick
It's still incomplete, it only has Arizona's chapter, but it still took me a few hours to get through, has 3 big areas (and a smaller tutorial one) with 3 proper bosses and a some minibosses. Eventually all the 6 main characters will get their own chapter. I also forgot to mention that to regain your health you either have to find consumable clouds that refill it in the overworld, or you have to use a super to finish off an enemy (I think they could have made it rarer to find it in the overworld,although I didn't try the harder difficulties).
@@AdamCarra PLEASE do holy shit
@@AdamCarra im gonna need you to do a playthrough of that with Stephan and see how kinky the video will get.
"Make the player play like how they would in Multiplayer", I think Custom Robo (Battle Revolution) for the GameCube does this well, apart from certain bossfights (Rahu 2/3).
The focus in combat is dodging enemy attacks, restricting enemy movement and punishing whiffs. Building a Robo(loadout) is what the game is based around.
When playing the game I'm always thinking:
What tools am I using (Short-range rushdown, long range zoner, etc.)
Should I approach, and how? I could basic dash in, but that leaves me open. Weave between cover via weapon sliding, but is the stage built around that? Zone them out with bombs and pods, how does the opponent deal with that - would they rush me, dodge or facetank? How do I dodge the enemy attacks? By jumping, going under, dashing, using cover?
Am I in a good position? Do I take highground, am I in the open, can my opponent attack through the cover?
These are thoughts that go through my head in multiplayer and singleplayer modes. Additional gamemodes, accessible after beating the story mode, also force thought. Parts used are banned for the next few battles so you need to be comfortable with many parts. All enemies have a certain weapon or build, how do you deal with that.
Parts are also rewarded overtime, and anyone would go 'ooh, piece of candy' and use them, or at least find out whether the new part would work or not- encouraging build exploration.
If only Noise/Nintendo would make another Custom Robo game. I have ideas on a game like this, but am currently lacking skills, and am putting my focus on other things atm.
I played that game not too long ago, I beat like 75% with the same load out because the game hadn't given me anything better.
Hell yes, Custom Robo
Great video! Unfortunately the ending statement is why we’ll never see something like this in an actual smash game. The target audience isn’t people who wanna play a technical game.
Well it doesn't help Smash is trying to cater to 2 sides which I think is fine. But I think casual players can get into technical stuff if they're forced to. I have a friend that likes to play Smash casually, yet loves Doom Eternal. We're talking Ultra Nightmare difficulty here. I think he would learn technical stuff in Smash if it forced him to play that way.
well in the case of the diversity of moveset. I think a decent way around this is to emphasize on the "type of move". You can emphasize it as a spaced out move, or a projectile move or whatever. But I think it works best to consider it in terms of the possible moves each character has.
Jab, Tilts, Smashes, Specials, Throws. If you separate it this way between the five possible sets it makes certain things more palatable to a dev team and emphasizes learning how to control when to use each type of move. Hell, maybe the specific weakness move is what causes a stagger which then emphasizes comboing into other stuff. Maybe it tries to teach you with jab->tilt->finisher setups so people can learn a few basic combo strings based on that, no matter the character.
This is why I can't play Minecraft.
*Laughs in hypiiixeeel*
?
this is the reason i couldn't play minecraft for years. then i realized minecraft is just like life where you put your own meaning into it
@@phillipanselmo8540 It's not about meaning, it's about incentive.
It's sad too, because when I was a kid I had no problem doing things without any incentive. I'm not sure why that's changed, and I hate it.
multiplayer and modded are the only reasons i still play mc.
“Sucks Pee Pee poo poo sorry for my language”
I pee pee poo poo for the good of humanity
cringe
There's a lot that needs to be said about the level design of subspace emissary beyond just auto scroll levels and moments where the player has to just wait being annoying. The levels for the most part didn't have much platforming going on. a lot of the time it was just straightaways with enemies littered from point A to point B. Translating this over to project M, playing subspace still doesn't even feel much different from playing it in default brawl, because why bother using mechanics like Wave landing ledge dashing dash dancing dacusing etc etc When (on top of having dumb enemies w/ no variation) there's no platforms, no ledges, space to even execute a combo if you wanted to, or platforming challenges that push the player to get better movement, or otherwise die.
Honestly, autoscrollers could work if they were faster and you had to make your way quickly through a difficult obstacle course.
I mean it's subjective
@@prestononuselogu9973 no it's not.
@@placeadrien5566 it is
Everyone: If smash characters should be fit for a sidescrolling platformer game, their movement must be faster.
Sakurai: Made their movement slower
The idea of the fun zone and rewarding the player for engaging with it is a trick I should carry with me when I get into game design
Don’t forget to punish the player for getting out of it. It stops them from doing so.
There's fun to be had outside of technical skill earning your victory, things like story, getting to interact with your favorite characters, flashy effects, and exploration.
I'm really loving the longer-form essayish content, keep it up!
You mentioned it briefly, but I think the problem here is character variety. In a platform fighter, the fun zone looks different for every character. The tools they have are different, and trying to fit them all in one design will make the game directly worse. This limits the options greatly- focus on one or a few characters and disappoint people, only have one or two levels for each character, which limits depth and doesn't let you "get good" at any one. You said in the video that quality is not judged by how hard it is to make, and I agree, but pointing to huge amounts of effort and investment as the way to improve what developers already see as side content probably will not end well. As a last note, I think it's important to give difficulty options too- we can't expect little timmy to learn to wavedash and l-cancel before even letting him into the fun zone.
I just wanted to outline some ideas for enemy types because I'm already thinking about them.
* Each stage should be designed for a particular character or set of characters, and limited to those on your first playthrough
* Each stage and its enemies should be built around highlighting a character's strengths and (some of its) weakness. You want to show players why this character is awesome, not damper their excitement too much.
* If people want to go back and play with their main, don't worry if it's nearly impossible because the process of figuring that out will teach players about their own character's weaknesses
* Basic enemies require basic skills and act as fodder for pacing. One enemy is just a ground mook, another flies, and another always parries or dodges when you attack within a certain distance of it (regardless of the move) to teach baiting and punishing
* other skills to mix in with higher level enemies: grounded, but can anti-air; perfectly parries, but can't dodge; always dodges twice; can wavedash; evades and spams projectiles; rushes the player with a dangerous, but easily punishable move
* Different colors and visual traits indicate which behaviors an enemy will follow. More complex look, more complex behavior
* Special "camo" enemies with unknown behaviors and traits that must be identified and adapted to on the fly
* Sneaky enemies which follow their indicated behavior initially, but secretly have another trait/behavior to catch players off guard
* Some enemies take increasing damage the longer they are comboed, measured by either air-time or time between hits without getting hit yourself
* Some enemies should be fighter reskins whose sole goal is to kill you with a specific set of kill moves with different DI requirements
* Elite enemies are reskins of normal fighters with different colors/identifiers to indicate their behavior which is always more complex, but predictable.
* eg. a pink and blue Absa who always rushes to place her cloud and try to hit with a specific special
* eg. a shining-blue-eyed Zetterbum who fights more traditionally, but only uses normals, a yellow-eyed that only uses specials, and a red-eyed that's unlocked and can use both
* eg. a muddy Krag who plays around his rock
* enemies should always have individual percents and require being k-o'd off screen like in normal fights
Bonus:
* post-game cheats/powerups that do things like add more air jumps, remove end lag, remove startup lag, remove hitstun, extend hitstun, etc.
* these are unlockable and can be used in special versus modes where you can mix and match powerups (equipment?) against other players
* fun/silly enemies like large, but super lightweight versions of fighters; weak, but tiny, speedy, and light fighters; super slow and heavy but with armor and extra damage
* special scenario/game-reference fights like Smash's Spirits, but more limited and curated with the freedom of only adding as many as makes sense or there is development time for
* special mode where you fight as and against an opponent with varying modifiers including fighters from the workshop (on supported platforms). No limits, pure chance. Make it a leaderboard where you gain standing by winning faster or surviving the longest so even Ronald-types can be competitive. (though do limit how frequently fighters can be picked per creator so any would-be-spammers are neutered unless they buy more copies of the game)
* Cut off Wrastor's wings.
The transitions on this video are so good I skipped back 10 seconds to watch them again great video subbed👍
I am really surprised that you did not talk about, "Hit the targets" in this video. I think a whole course of hit the target maps for your characters would be a good supplement to a platform fighter's story mode. It's help teach player's about their character's kit and improves player execution, additionally would help break up the pacing between singular bot matches.
Here are a couple of my ideas to help improve a story mode:
- a mode where a sandbag is used to help teach you your bread and butter combos
- enemies that can only be defeated by parrying an attack, wave dashing through them, or getting a unique 3 hit combo
Additionally your video reminds me of the Sid Meier quote about how (paraphrased), "Developers need to protect players from themselves". Here is a quote from a Kutaku article discussing it in more detail, "Meier has observed that players are very cautious with their saves, pausing to save their progress before every battle, reloading if they fail. That, Meier said, doesn't help a player build a better strategy, a handicap of sorts."
You can read more here if you are interested kotaku.com/civilization-creator-explains-why-everything-game-devs-5492078 .
Overall, great video keep up the good work, love your content.
Yeah break the targets is a really good single player mode, but it's more of like an extra challenge thingy as opposed to a campaign which is what this video was focused on. This video was already really long and I couldn't really find a good place to fit it in while staying focused to the main comparison of subspace and doom, probably in the movement section I guess, but I feel like the same ideas get covered anyway.
_Crypt of the NecroDancer_ is another good example of the "fun zone": It's a randomly-generated dungeon crawler but you play it in the style of a rhythm game. All enemies have fixed, predictable movement patterns and you defeat them using specific counter-movements of your own _with the correct timing:_ Nail it an you can defeat the enemy unharmed, but if your movements are off by just 1 turn they will kill you just as unchallenged.
Two words: Smash Run
In Smash Run, you have five minutes to prepare for a final battle (could be an actual battle, or it could be climbing an infinite tower). You do this by defeating enemies to raise your stats, navigating a giant labyrinth of chests, doors, and special encounters with rewards for finding/fighting them. While it still has some of the problems Subspace Emissary had (i.e. bosses with no hitstun) there are a lot of improvements, especially to areas concerning enemies. Performing combos on an enemy is fun, and certain ones like Ghastly and the Polar Bear require specific strategies to effectively defeat. And while not every fighter has projectiles or firey attacks to defeat them with, respectively, you can sometimes find items in chests or by defeating other foes. You could just run away from encounters like that, but if you run away from everything, you may not be able to defeat the final battle and win the rewards you've found over the run. I feel like it's more about the journey than the destination on this one, though the final battle often is still just a free-for-all against CPUs. Then again, you never know; You may end up having to fight a bunch of the enemies from the run instead.
Good vid, Adam. I love this kind of asymmetrical theorycrafting shit.
Agreed on all points and was fun to think about. Also your editing is getting really good
Came here cause I was confused by the title, left surprised and thoroughly entertained, awesome vid man
What Hugo said about giving the players too much freedom is so on point. In FarCry 5 there is an overwhelming amount of weapons with various upgrades etc but once you have enough cash to fully upgrade the LMG you have a full auto, silenced DMR. Unlimited freedom usually ends in players streamlining their approach down to one strategy and severely limits their engagement. Games need to stop focusing on limitless choice and instead make every system in the game play off each other. That's why Counter Strike has out lived its contemporaries, each weapon is situational and every position on the map matters, unlike in Cod where there are 60+ different types of assault rifles and there are no points on the map that aren't accessible from at least 2 or 3 angles.
Your presentation is slick as hell. Editing too. Great work!
By the way, arena shooters like quake are basically the platform fighters of shooters (in some ways they are kinda parallel to melee.) they are really interesting you should check this one called Diabotical out because I really don't want the genre to die.
adam is such a good editor
God damn this fucking editing is insane
Sakurai should learn that doom guy could be a potentially amazing character in smash
The thing is DOOM is extremely violent, and Doom Guy/Doom Slayer would most likely have VERY violent attack patterns. I'd love to see them, but in their proper form, not some watered down version for the kiddes/karens of the world. So in all honesty a PROPER Doom rep is less likely to happen then say someone like Conker or Rayman, hell even Master Chief has a better chance at getting in because he could just be the same style as Snake. But the Doom guy and Slayer wouldn't have access to much of their arsenal, y'know cause dismemberment.
Mach There’s still a difference. Even guns have existed in cartoons like Looney Tunes and Bayo’s outfit was modified so it would reveal less skin., or at least less in a way that would be considered sexual (whereas ZSS outfit looks like sportswear). It’s not just a manner of “turning the blood off” with Slayer. You couldn’t do glory kills in Smash because there’s a difference between shooting a gun and tearing off someone’s head or ripping off a limb and crushing/jamming it into somewhere else.
That being said, you could probably still pull him off well if you remove glory kills and obviously blood. His arm knife thing *might* be a problem, but Ridley skewers opponents with his tail so it might be fine. It could be his grab attack.
I think the bigger problem would be global appeal. All of their choices have, if not a global appeal, then at least Japanese appeal. Even with Banjo, a Western character, the Japanese audience loves him too (there were a bunch of videos of them going crazy for his reveal). FPS games aren’t very popular in Japan, and while it’s not impossible, I think the lack of Japanese appeal significantly reduces a character’s chances.
@@mrshmuga9 Snake is in Smash
@@marioluigimario6413 You should read my post first if you're going to reply.
@@mrshmuga9 Show us evidence where FPS is not popular in Japan. (Because Splatoon as a sub-genre IS popular).
This is being thrown around without basis all the time.
Got a report? A chart? A comparison?
Anything to back up your claims.
Smash Run on 3Ds Smash is probably Smash's best fighting single player mode. To have the best chances of winning the final minigame, your incentivized to collect as much stat boosters as possible which encourages you to optimize your movement across the map *and* to quickly defeat enemies. The enemies alone _somewhat_ pushed for a varied playstyle, most were easy enough to stun/combo while more resilient enemies, like the mimicutie, emphasizes better neutral play. And with the mode being as free as it is, every character feels fun to play.
Also, Smash Run is not just fight after fight _unlike_ Ultimate's Spirit Board or tests your willpower like WoL.
Would be cool if there were a range of enemies doing grabs attacks and shielding so you could use the typical triangle of shield grab attack with more enemies Turing up as the games go one, enemies that shield break, enemies that shoot and enemies that reflect projectiles. That would make them more into smash bros style chess peices that you fight in different ways. Give the enemies different rewards, buffs, regen health maybe certain enemies that actively run away drop final smashes, maybe smaller enemies drop damage buffs to help with bigger ones maybe harder enemies drop health as a reward for the end of a fight, maybe certain enemies drop certain set items and that creates a natural chain of events in a consistent sandbox. But because they all attack and move in different ways the player has to make decisions all the time! Great video definitely how I'd like to go about a campaign.
this was an amazing amount of quality for such a small channel.
Awesome video! i'm so glad i subbed. You put so much work into everything. It really sucks how small your channel is. It deserves better.
this video is quite funny because it's also unintentionally an analysis of why The DOOM Slayer would be a great fit for Super Smash Bros
Incredible video. The best in your channel, and certainly one of the best I've seen. Very inspiring.
I have watched this video because under the mayo talked about it in his own. This is your first video that I have watched, and man, it's GREAT. I don't believe I didn't find your channel before. You talk straight to the point, your arguments are great and I just LOVE your editing. It's breathtaking - so smart and interesting so I couldn't get my eyes off the screen!
Dude I have to say great video man, and fantastic editing loved the transitions!
Really interesting points, I do really think doom eternal has done so much right, there are design lessons that can apply to many different genres.
I liked and subbed looking forward to seeing more of your content, keep it up!
this has better production quality than other youtube videos holy shit
Dang!
This is one of my favorite videos from this channel, amazing job!
Quick and sloppy ideas off the top of my head:
- Reward healing to the player's percent for staying in combat and mixing up their moves hooking into the move staling system
- Enemies that are weak to aerial attacks and resilient to grounded attacks and vice versa, but this optional. Can't really do this for special moves because a character might not have a damage dealing special (I don't remember perfectly if there are any in the current roster, but if every character can do damage with a special move then sure use that one too)
- Enemies that use extremely predictable, easily react-able (but quicker on higher difficulties!), and sometimes even singular attacks that prompt the player to move in certain ways to engage them (Ala big arm Blade Dude mentioned in video) maybe even have most be stationary so the player has to move to them and make decisions on how to get there)
- Combinations of the above two attributes
- All of these mechanics are clearly explained much like Doom Eternal does in quick dialogue boxes that can be skipped by experienced players
So basically combat arenas typically focus on wave based combat where a wave spawns that has an enemy layout that causes the player to approach enemies in creative ways to avoid damage, prioritize them in certain order based upon danger and proximity, and chain hits together with mixed up but specific attacks in order to build damage for and eventually kill. Reward the player with dropped food based upon how mixed up their moves were.
Platforming sections can stay similar to how they are in subspace, and if there are autoscrollers have them be quicker and lethal like a challenge. Let the players move at their own chosen pace! Also encourage players by placing specific trophies and other collectables, but I'm pretty sure Subspace Emissary already does this quite well. Make optional platforming challenges that require the player to use advanced movement techniques in order to complete them to get the collectable.
Stuff like that. Absolutely excellent video. Really got the brain juices flowing!!!!
Honestly your videos are so good it just amazes me that you don't have more subscribers.
Tekken player here. The problem with the few examples we have like the arcade beatem up style like in Tekken 6 is they make enemies so homogenous. The enemies need be unique in both moveset and visual design. The should use moves from the main roster so when you see it in vs, you have an idea how to deal with it. Make enemy gameplans simplistic, but defensively very strong so it'll force you to find out the best way to deal with them. It needs to reward good gameplay and let the player know when they've done something correctly. I'd absolutely love a great story mode in any fighting game. And not just the story by itself like in Mortal Kombat, but gameplay as well.
Nice editing there as well as the video as a whole.
World of Light does this a few times. Not with the number tweaks, but with the behavior tweaks. I remember one spirit battle was against three Bayonettas that just spammed grounded side special (pretty sure it was also stamina mode, so the move's low kill power didn't matter). I kept getting my ass kicked until I remembered "oh right, shields exist".
"It will kill you in REAL LIFE"
*GUNSHOT SOUND*
Dam
Thanks. I am making a platformer hack and slash and i was thinking a lot about how I could build it with the same design philosophies as doom. Thanks man. You helped me really think about my games design
Love the part where he showed an actual bear
BEAR.
I didn't
this was a fantastic video essay. excellent job man, would love to see more content like this
Man, I really wanted to forget that Subspace halves your movement speed. Major props for using Project+ though.
I really like your channel, I hope you get really big, your videos are epic
5:20
So hear me out: it may be an idea for traditional fighters, but a "style meter" like in Devil May Cry. It rewards the player making combos with meter for supers. It encourages them to play stylishly. The more you make, the more "style points" you get which leads to more meter. With such, there should be gameplay mechanics that work around such as well, like a special counter that works like a Combo Breaker or a Burst (called a Stylish Counter) that lets you begin one rank higher than when it normally begins for being able to effectively punish a player into a combo, therefore letting you get more meter which you can use to finish stylish combos.
I like the mix of Funnyman Adam and Brain Boi Adam content on this channel.
This is why i think the gauntlet of bosses in smash ultimate are really fun to me. Its not just cause they are popular Nintendo characters. You gotta do SOMETHING different (at least to most of them) to get somewhere. If there were more of those, maybe we'd get somewhere.
I cannot imagine how much time went into this. Great work, Adam.
Can't wait for "what smash can learn from fornite"
It should prob be what fortnite can learn from smash
fourth night sucks and is a bab game
@@charl2182 well yes and no the building mechanic is pretty cool
BUT THE PROBLEM RELIES ON THE SHOOTING is just so basic the only weapons that have a scope as gameplay are snipers but there are weapons who should have a scope in gameplay
The gloom of some weapons got fixed 5 days ago with s3 so yeah but it's no hype having all this mechanics that require skill and Then the encounters end in 5 seconds because shotgun change to rifle or subrifle and that's it
Fortnite fucked JUST IN THAT and the fact that the building system makes every other skill useless if u know how to build u will have more chances at winning because building gives u position protection a better angle everything building as rewarding as it is and fights so basic makes fortnite boring and simple
FUUUCK
yo legit im writing a video called "fortnite is a balanced mess" rn
I've been thinking about making a Beat em up game (ala Streets of Rage) that teaches the player the basics of fighting games. Each enemy would have unique movesets that would teach some fundamentals. Some would sweep, some would have plus block strings/minus block strings, some would grab, etc. Each enemy would have a different character design, so a player will learn how to react based on the character design. I think there would be multiple playable characters based on fighting game franchises.
what a beautifully crafted video, well done
Loving the video essays Adam! Hope you enjoy making them too
Really loved the video but kinda surprised hollow knight didn't get brought up at all, I feel like it's a shining example of how to make a technical single player platformer, with the colosseum being the biggest example of how to really put the player through a challenging gauntlet that forces you to actually play something resembling neutral even vs basic AI, and I think something like that could easily translate really well to smash.
I think it's similar to how they ran some of the in place multiman fights in melee or brawl but due to the intentional disparity between enemy types and ways they combo'd the different enemies to make the player really try it makes for something both incredibly hard, incredibly rewarding, and demanding of technical ability and thought.
One way to make singleplayer Smash more enjoyable would be to change the way endlag works. After shooting the railgun (in q3 style games) you have to wait until it unwinds to switch to another weapon. However in doom ET you can switch the weapons after you're halfway through the unwinding animation. In smash you have to wait until the full endlag animation plays out before you can attack again.
The only problem is that you couldn't rework smash, so that it would work as a singleplayer game without making it a completely different game(you should probably just do that instead of reworking a game that already works). You actually talked a bit about quake 3 and it's relation to modern doom and i loved it (because I've been thinking about the similarities of AFPS and fighting games for a long time now). q3 would technically have the same issue that smash has if it had a singleplayer. Q3/Qls mechanics are designed with multiplayer in mind just like smashs mechanics and that means that you just can't make a good singleplayer with those mechanics.
Really interesting analysis and video, great stuff!
I just wanna say I was really excited to see that you were using footage of Project+ instead of Brawl for Subspace Emissary. P+ is one of my favorite games/mods, so I was happy to see it being played. Interesting video topic! Single player mode is definitely something most fighting games don't go super ham on.
Honestly the closest to this you can achieve for fighting games is, not even through fighting games but through action games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta where you’re constantly encouraged to experiment and mix up your attacks as much as possible because that’s how you improve your rank and from there you get more in-game currency to get more moves and unlockables at a faster rate, situational awareness is important for that in those games too. Certain boss fights will test you too and make sure you aren’t just mindlessly mashing buttons. Granted these games do this at their best when you’re playing on higher difficulty settings which not everyone is going to do, and I don’t even mean the highest settings like Dante Must Die or Infinite Climax, just the difficulty before that should and/or whatever highest difficulty is available at the start of the game should be enough to give you this kind of experience in most cases.
This goes for other action games like these too, Metal Gear Rising, God Hand, Viewtiful Joe, Astral Chain, Wonderful 101, Odin Sphere, Transformers Devastation, the 3D Ninja Gaiden games, ect. Some do these things better than others of course and some games like God of War 2018, the Batman Arkham games and Spider-Man PS4 need the difficulty boost to make this effective because they’re too easy otherwise, but yeah.
Also someone else in the comments here pointed this out, if we’re talking about the known fighting game franchises specifically and not action games like the ones I already mentioned that borrow a ton of inspiration from fighting games to make them what they are, having spin-offs of fighting games that are dedicated single player experiences is probably what we should be getting to ensure we get an experience as close to this as possible, there aren’t many that have done it and did it well, the only one I can think of that really did it well was Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks, that game does a great job at getting the player to make use of all their characters’ tool, if we could get more fighting games to have spin-offs like that, that would be awesome.
Other attempts of this have been made by Soul Caliber and Guilty Gear but they haven’t been great, even Mortal Kombat before Shaolin Monks had Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero which is really bad.
Gonna say, I really hope the algorithm picks up on this channel. This video is is high quality!
Wow, this is a top tier game design video. Keep it up!
This has been a mind opening concept to me on development of my own game. Thank you.
4:58 that lil effect tho😳
when the the first track of background music was playing all i could think was “OFF TO THE HUB”
this video was straight up amazing and eye opening
This is a really fucking good video. Thanks Adam
I'm loving the Adam Carra cinematic experience on this one.
You deserve so much recognition. Your videos are top tier. I'm amazed everytime. Thank you for making melee related content, we don't deserve you.
I think it would be cool if you can change your character at checkpoints.
You can also make characters stronger if they are in a stage which is based of their franchise.
as someone who didn't get a Wii U, when I got smash ultimate I was so disappointed that there was no single player like that in brawl
I've never really heard a lot about Doom, but how the enemies work together sounds like Spelunky and Spelunky 2. This video was amazing.
I don't know if you know about this game, but a shocking number of the points that you made are in the Them's Fight'n Herds story mode despite the fact that it's a standard fighting game. All of the boxes are ticked except resource management(which sucks but that's what they did)
That point about the use of a full moveset making it more fun reminded me why 2 was my favourite Dark Souls. There is no scenario where you would use a jumping attack or half the heavy attacks in Dark Souls 1 or 3 pvp, but in 2 they're useful, still niche but infinitely more useful than the zero in the other games.
I can’t agree more with the boss part. The offense is so mindless, only the defense requires a bit of thought, but it just makes me even more impatient and I play defense even worse. Like I don’t want to just wack a hand with down air and up smash a whole bunch, I wanna put it in hitstun and give it knockback so I can perform *some* combo of *some* kind. This way both the offense and defense requires thinking and makes use of the basic game skills.
Ever play Guacamelee? It's more or less the sort of thing you're looking for, I believe. It's a Metroidvania platform fighter in its purest essence. Many of the moves you unlock are movement moves, and you've got a diversity of attacks, including punches, grabs, throws, and so forth. The combat arenas you get locked into have enemies that are designed to be fought in one specific way or another, and that prioritization does become important, as some enemies can be difficult to deal with despite their predictability, particularly when other enemies get in the way. It's probably not a perfect game, but it might be the sort of thing you're looking for.
yeah a lot of people have been saying this, and it's pretty on point. I just played guacamelee so long ago it wasn't even in my mind lol. The combat is kinda shallow, but it does do a really good job of having everything require all the different elements like the doom chess pieces
Reaaaaally good video! I had my doubts about the premise but you totally sold me on it
I've always thought that fighting game story modes should involve the same skills as multiplayer. Anything less and it rewards things that don't work competitively and doesn't reward things that do. The way CPUs are often made also fails this test, because there's a strong willingness to use bad shortcuts (e.g allowing frame 1 reactions, rather than limiting reaction time to the minimum number of frames that humans require).
An idea for implementing different moves required for certain enemies in Smash: make use of move properties. Things like "this enemy is temporarily stunned when hit with energy projectiles, but this other enemy absorbs them." Then throw in some kind of tag-in system to give wider move variety to deal with different enemies; I'm thinking designated "swap" areas (would promote evasive movement and a kind of neutral as you go to swap), or just binding it to d-pad (much faster paced).
I used one of the music tracks at the end for an English project in high school. adam you have good taste sir
Are you familiar with the "Them's Fightin' Herds" story mode? Because I think it does a lot of the stuff that you talked about right. It's definitely not perfect but what they have so far is a HUGE step in terms of playability and actual engagement in a fighting game story mode.
Essentially what they do is they have chess pieces. There are a few pretty simple Single Player only enemies that each force you to behave in a different way by attacking you differently. Wolves jump at you and make you block high or anti-air them, snakes zone you with big hitboxes and a kinda Ranno dart esque projectile attack, birds pressure your wakeup and have a lot of moves that knock down, bears have armored moves to make you respect them and block before you punish, etc.
Each of them forces you to use a different fighting game behavior, and then they dont just die in one hit, you actually are inscentivized to combo them like you would any other character.
In it's more inspired moments it has platforming sections with enemies patroling different platforms and who will engage you when you get to their level.
The big thing I'd want to see it do more is force you to deal with multiple things at once, but at the same time I understand why in a traditional fighting game that might get messy (ie if you side switch one thing, which way are you supposed to hold to block exactly).
Platform fighters could def learn a LOT from TFH in terms of single player design.
Super engaging video! Informed me about the whole design of things from a neat perspective.
100% accurate Ronin Titan for Rivals
Okay, your videos have like ten times more quality and I love it
You have nailed it. Great video.
Just doing my duties helping with the algorithm. Keep putting out the great content Adam, we all appreciate it!!
great video, highly underrated channel