I would say lack of understanding, adding new mechanics is probably harder than fixing broken ones but the understanding required is far greater. Also, accretion can be good.
I was wondering what you guys think about Runescape in this regard? Before it went completely on the revamp bandwagon (EoC). It had a constant supply of new content (maybe not on the scale as the videos disussed) and new items to grind which in a lot of cases made previous content obsolute. But also increased the amount of ways other parts of the game could be played. Do you have any interesting analysis or thoughts about it? Ow and I love your video's, keep them up!
All I can think of when it comes to long-running games changing mechanics all the time is Guild Wars 2. I used to play it a lot, but I keep getting discouraged from coming back into it because it is CONSTANTLY changing how everything is set up.
I think yearly releases shouldn't be a thing. COD has become very uniform, and rarely adds anything warranting a whole new release. Assassin's Creed is even worse. Look at how Skyrim is different from Oblivion, or many other non-yearly franchises. Those franchises are adding and changing so much in every game. The yearly franchises just seem uniform, cliched, and like one big money grab.
The weird response to that is: From whose perspective? And could the specific game series determine that answer? Sure, passionate developers and dedicated, loyal fans want concise, high quality, diverse content that is extremely well thought in reference to the rest of the game or franchise. But publishers and "mass audiences" favor prompt releases and shallow flashiness. For publishers it almost always ensures a low-risk profit, and it entices mass audiences by keeping a series fresh in their mind with constant new iterations. In an ever more expensive industry, money talks, and that which makes money is safer than risky, time consuming ventures. At this point, while it may be artistically "pure" to stop yearly releases, the market will instead (and more or less has) split into the high-budget yearly blockbusters consumed by the "masses" vs Slowly or highly creative development games (looking at Dark Souls, which has managed to keep it pretty fresh despite trying to follow yearly releases) and the Indie scene. There is some wiggle room between the two, but those would be the general extremes. It just makes business sense for companies and investors with a lot of money on the line to go with the safer, faster bet. I'd expect that if the price of production began to decrease, and if it were at least easier to get more sophisticated tools and training in the hands of Indie teams, we'd see that gap begin to close a bit in a market shift, as major developers would have to compete with loosely equivalent powered (i.e. graphics and engine) indie content
Spook Nuke but I think that's why ubisoft skipped 2016 and decided to take the story back to before any of the previous games. to clear things up and ditch some of the old mechanics tgat just were not adding anything anymore.
I think it depends on the game. AC loses some quality for its short release window, but games are way more diverse than that. sports games (like Madden or WWE) and racing games (like Forza or Gran Turismo) need to update yearly in order to refresh their roster of characters and cars. otherwise, they would not keep up with the real world. Just dance has a similar issue with songs, but that would be better solved with explanations if you ask me. the reason why AC suffers from annual release windows is they have no reason to make it an annual release, other than the fact that they can.
zoob m Those could be fixed with DLC. They don't need to completely reset every year. In fact, many people don't immediately listen to new music. Many listen to older music, so it makes sense to put some more polish into Just Dance.
most people listen to the most popular current music, so that makes it make sense to target them. also, new releases are favoured over DLC because new releases are generally easier to market to new players.
So, after watching this video and realizing Civ 6 was out, I went to buy it, only to realize my laptop does not have the minimum system requirements to run it. In response to this, I bought a new laptop and ordered the game. Granted, the fact that my laptop was unable to run this game is a good indication that it is becoming obsolete and needs to be upgraded anyway, but, in terms of the emotional drivers behind the decision, I effectively just payed about $800 in order to have the tech resources available to play the newest game in one of my favorite franchises. This made me think about the peripheral costs of gaming and how, at the end of the day, gaming requires a substantial investment beyond the cost of the game that most gamers intentionally allocate resources to in order to support. It's pretty easy to figure out the psychological drivers that would instigate the purchase of a single $60 game. If it looks like it will be fun or is part of a franchise the gamer enjoys or employs a mechanic or story element that looks interesting, it's not hard to imagine why a person would make that investment. The long term peripheral investments that come as part of gaming, however, seem harder to explain. I think it may make an interesting video to explore the psychological aspects of, not only what makes us buy a game, but what *keeps* us gaming. Just a thought that I figured may be interesting. Great videos! Keep up the good work!
This "scope creep" is also a major source of indie game inspiration - keeping games good, but also keeping them working for existing hardware, rather than recycling a perfectly good computer every 2-5 years.
Fantastic discussion. I like how the answer wasn't a solid "no," but rather, something to think about that might be appropriate in certain circumstances. Still, no mention of MapleStory? That game has more accretion than a Katamari. I don't even know what it's doing with itself any more. It has 42 classes and a lot of disconnected content. Still, multiple options as to where to go to progress may not be a bad thing.
Hurr hurr Maplestory. Periodically releases new classes, and every new class is stronger than the previous one. At one point, the original classes became obsolete, so they just gave them a huge major buff. If they were actually keeping things balanced, I would have loved it. But things are just going out of proportions and going deeper in Easy mode. If you're a nostalgic player and come back to it, you're just completely confused as you stare at a game that no longer has anything in common from the game you wanted to come back to.
Garuu Spike I was really bummed out that Magicians apparently got hugely nerfed (in my opinion) around 2010 where they no longer got extra MP regen. It became un-fun to play then.
Garuu Spike Truth be told I recently tried Maplestory and oh man was I confused. there were so many classes, weapons, and places to go to that I'm very lost. On that note I actually got myself literally lost because I got curious about the cab and now I have no idea where I am x.x
I first played MapleStory in 2009. Back then, I'm sure the only way to improve equipment was with scrolls. Now there are hammers to add more slots. There's also 'potential' which gives your equipment a seemingly random set of buffs, and stamps and cubes to adjust this 'potential'. Then there's "star force" (don't know how it works) for higher-level stuff. Not sure if they still have that weapon socket system, and it appears the "bits" system may have been removed. Pretty sure various items in these systems started out premium, then became non-premium later. Then there are the quests. There are now so many quest chains (although I kinda liked some of the 'theme dungeon' stories, like the White Mage one) that you'll never need to do something other than solo quests in order to progress. I suspect the old party quests only worked because there came a point at which you would run out of solo quests, or the party quest just had better rewards than anything else you could be doing at that level. They were also level-limited, so you couldn't have an overleveled player sucking the fun out of it. Bottom line, a lack of other, more attractive content, and a healthy population, meant that players would be funneled into party quests where they actually had to work together.
Haseo123653 It's the systems that confused me. On the left side of my screen, I start off with over 10 different quests, half of which are just explanations for game systems that have accumulated over years of development, and some of them are premium-only. -and as I level up, I unlock even more systems. >..< Answer: Take the portal NPC present in any town. While the liberal use of portals in the game makes the world faster to traverse, I think it kinda ruins the good feeling you get when you're exploring, and you find something new to you, or when you finally get to where you wanted to go just by interpreting your map yourself.
"if something is ruining the experience..." *shows 6 D.vas* god dammit you guys are never not salty about something in overwatch lmao I love it those jokes are hilarious
Comic books seem to have a similar problem as Civilization and the sports games. Well, at least the big two (Marvel/DC). Most of the favorite characters are over 50 years old. Superman is over 80. The amount of stories accumulated is staggering. So the dilemma of the publishers; do they continue writing for the core audience? or do they focus more on bringing in new people?
Actually, DC reboots its universe once in a while to prevent that accumulation. Marvel has never rebooted its main universe, but recently they made new universes for the new audience.
luis enrique vargas azcona I'm aware. But even then, How do you do a reboot (well, they're more like semi-reboots) without alienating you're core audience. Rebirth happened so soon because the general reception of the new 52 was pretty mixed
I've always thought the "every comic is someone's first" principal was a good way to keep that in check. I feel that most Marvel comics I've read through my life remember this and helped me jump into any story they were telling. I think in the game space Pokémon is one of the best at handling this. Sure there are annoyances but ever since the GBA games system refresh they have given you the ability to move your Pokémon(content) forward with you and make your time count. Meanwhile the current game never forgets to inform new players about its rules. Not a fan of reboots here either. Soft-reboots like the modern Doctor Who is ideal(great to jump in at any time, but your experience is richer for watching it all).
Yes, Marvel has generally kept their same continuity over their history. But not everything that's happened over the years in publication is still relevant, or is held to with the same degree of precision. For example, Spiderman once crossed over with the cast of Saturday Night Live. This happened in a book that was canon. That said, the crossover was with an older version of Saturday Night Live, back when the cast was called the "Not Ready For Prime-Time Players". It would be pretty silly for a modern Spiderman comic to call back to that event, when the modern Spiderman books (like all Marvel comics) are depicted as happening in the nebulous Present Day, if not exactly the year they were published. Or how about the time when Captain America encountered Ronald Reagan when the latter was in office. Continuity in Marvel comics is a very relative thing, with writers being allowed to ignore the sillier or inconsistent elements in past publications. A "Broad Strokes" approach to its history, if you will.
I saw in a video about comic misconceptions that Franklin Richards (the child of the fantastic four) has being altering the continuity in the Marvel universe to bend the characters to modern times without ageing them.
this done really well: terraria. there's something like 4000 different items (many of which are just blocks, or decor, or monster drops, but about 1000 are fully-fledged tools/weapons with unique mechanics)
Actually didn't think of Terraria when I watched this, but yeah! I actually loved the accretion in that game, every new update made it more exciting to play the game, and jumping from the console version to the PC version made so much new stuff available that it feels like I'm experiencing the game fresh instead of just starting over again.
indeed, but i think terraria manages quite well the amount of content the players can handle at the same time. You start with a very basic set of content wich then expands upon playing more and diversifies a lot. For instance: You start with a shitty dagger and you need to chop down some trees to get some wood for a house and some armor. 40 hours later you have a sharkanado minigun and some wings, with 5 more items , some summon pets and so on... Terraria doesn't feel overwhelming to me and i feel like it has a really good entry point for anyone new to the game... And plus the developer's are just amazing pumping out so much content for a game made in 2011.
Terraria does this very well, yes, and it also has some features that make the "old" content keep some relevance - end game weapons that have to be crafted by combining earlier-game weapons. Also, mannequins and weapon plaques. I love collecting and displaying armor sets in a sort of chronologic display of my progress throughout the game - this way old gear becomes a testament to power and a sort of display of how far I've come, thus adding value to the things that would otherwise get trashed.
the reason this accretion method works in terraria so well is the reason it works in a lot of other PvE games so well. new content is more advanced than older content, but cannot be accessed until the early part of the game is completed, and in game, progression is given at the right pace to keep interest but prevent overwhelming amounts of content. nearly EVERY PvE game does this. borderlands did this, starbound did this, binding of isaac, nuclear throne, and a slew of other PvE games do this. this isn't exactly accretion, because it's incredibly easy to do with a PvE game, whereas with an MMO, it's an entirely different system. with singleplayer games, the developer can restrict content, but with an MMO, a new player is immediately thrown into the massive amount of content that exists. basically, It's not accretion in terraria because that's how PvE games work.
Wow, this episode made me really confident on trying to be a guest artist. The drawings are so much simpler but they are just as effective as the permanent ones on manifestating the text on picture.
This entire episode feels like a recap of Warframe's game design choices since its original launch. 1:00 This is basically how WF's developers understand the idea of new content. They make new gameplay 'modules' that are only loosely and indirectly connected to all the other mechanics. 1:10 That's what happened with Kubrows. While they did get a minor tweak to how their incubation and maintenance works, they have never been included in any game mechanic that came after them. 1:15 Dojo obstacle courses. With the addition of new parkour and certain new mods, it became possible to just outright cheat, rendering the competitive aspect of the challenge worthless. AFAIK this hasn't been ever addressed. 1:29 Oxium, argon crystals, cryotic, tellurium, nitain. All of these are resources that were introduced along with a set of new gear, that could only be crafted if you obtained the new resource, usually found in some new mission type. After that, they usually weren't used again.| 1:38 Syndicate variations of weapons. Not the case for all of them, but a significant chunk of them is outright better than their regular counterpart. Also true for prime versions. 1:48 Lol, he said unTENNOble. 2:08 Archwing, anyone? 2:25 Ducats. While they didn't exactly replace credits, they are a currency that was created with the sole purpose of being far more difficult to obtain than regular credits. 2:41 Again, prime versions of gear. Regular variants just become mastery fodder when a superior variant is introduced. 2:55 Practically all mechanics that were present in the initial launch have now been replaced with their respective "version 2.0". 3:27 Void runs, especially with the old tower key system. I still remember how apeshit everyone went when Tower IV keys were introduced. 3:44 Oh boy, does this happen often. The forum/reddit threads about this are relentless. 3:59 The Ceres rework, when the new Draco mission was introduced. I think people are grinding it to this day, despite how many times it got hit with the nerf hammer. 4:36 At several points in Warframe's history a lot of players were so powerful, there was simply no content that would pose any challenge to them. There's been multiple attempts at providing them with difficult end game content, with Sorties probably being the most successful at it. Every time this happens the power gap between new players and veterans widens even more. 4:42 hahahaha as much as I love Warframe, "complexity without a lot of depth" could totally become its unofficial slogan. 4:50 This has been a problem for a very long time now. The new player experienced is much more refined nowadays, but still, Warframe is kinda supposed to be overwhelming on purpose. One of its less obvious themes is mystery. Discovery becomes a gameplay element in of itself. 4:58 I'm pretty sure this exact phrase appeared on some stuff-to-do checklist presented during one of the dev streams. 5:03 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA this panel is just too perfect for Warframe 6:40 This happened very early, back when missions would often have chain objectives. They were ditched for single-objective missions, which felt like a step back. Chain objectives wouldn't return until very recently, with the new Assault mission type. 7:47 C'mon, Prince here is even doing the wallrun thing which he totally stole from WF. ;)
yeah, about 0:58 in i just thought "oh god, this episode is about DE" every now and then they go back and fix something, but thats like a holiday. actually, its more. fuck. warframe is a mess
When it is an MMORPG, it is simple... introduce "Reincarnation" mechanic. When you start the game, you play only with basic mechanics. After reaching certain treshold, you can "reincarnate" to first level but be able to use some new mechanic. Rinse and repeat. Every new feature can be new content for reincarnation and some events, locations, items, are accessible after X reincarnations...
On the Civilization topic, I actually like that they didn't just add stuff with every installment - even if it was worked in instead of tacked on. It takes courage to cut systems out because it may alienate dedicated players but in the end, there is beauty in simplicity. Also, it's not only developers who're guilty of this sort of thing. Every time players suggest new features (strategy games and RPGs), people will clamour for their particular pet feature to be extended into ridiculously intricated and complex systems, with absolutely no sense of proportion.
I feel like CCGs and TCGs use a derivative form of Accretion, especially seeing as, at least for physical games, they more or less CAN'T go back and refine. Honestly I wish it was something games like Hearthstone did a little bit less of, as existing in a purely digital space means they can get away with going back and fixing what's broken, instead of just layering on more, new broken shit.
General Zeta I was thinking the same. And personally I believe one can see in Yugioh both how the use of this philosophy made the game harder and less cohesive to the point the newest mechanic to date (Pendulum was it?) seems to drift more for a "integrate older mechanics with the new ones" rather than shooting more rockets to them
With the way Magic is structured, they constantly create new systems and then in 1.5 years those systems are no longer relevant to the main format of the game (as whole blocks are cycled out of the Standard).
Yes, Magic always had the concept of 'blocks'. Their main rival in the CCG space at the time however, Decipher, avoided making anything obsolete. Ever. The Star trek CCG ran from 1993 to 2001 and had about 15 expansions and in that whole time exactly 1 card was banned in tournaments. And that card was in the initial release and banned right from the start. Then they created a second star trek card game, which had different rules, but still contained a handful of cards in each expansion that were backwards compatible with the first game! How they ever managed to keep this balanced is beyond me, but they did, because cards from the first expansion were still playable and relevant right up to the end.
Yu-Gi-Oh, on the other hand, keeps old cards relevant while accreting new systems. Whenever they roll out a new system, some of the cards that use that system are designed to combo with older cards. X-Sabers got an XYZ during the Zexal era, Ritual Summons were brought back during the Arc-V era, and Blue Eyes White Dragon gets new support cards every few years. YGO forces stuff out through soft power/feature creep, but keeps a controlled number of older cards relevant by having some of the newer, more powerful cards rely on older cards to function or slotting them into existing archetypes.
I feel like this could be used to set the tone for sequels or prequels. By scraping of accretion for a prequel you can make the player feel like they've gone back to a more primitive time, not just in gameplay but in story as well. It could also work well for a more isolated story, it could help make you feel like you are on your own and all the complexities of the norm are gone. Imagine a Metal Gear game where Snake is caught without all his equipment and has to make do with whatever he has at hand. That could definitely be interesting if done right. We all know that won't happen tho because #FucKonami
Good point. A lot of prequel games fall into this problem where the prequel/origin character feels vastly superior to the later version of the character in the previous (and previously-released) games. Mostly notably for me, Batman: Arkham Origins (besides just fixing some other inherent problems) would have benefited from removing a lot of the gadgets and special combat movew since it was a prequel.
"Snake is caught without all his equipment and has to make do with whatever he has at hand." uhm, Snake always goes without equipment, what are you talking about, thats a bad example.
Celio Hogane Sorry, haven't actually played much Metal Gear, was thinking of Venom Snake from MGS5 and what i've seen of that game. Really just insert any character reliant on more mechanics now than at the start of the series, Caesar's example of Batman is a much better example. My point still stands tho, this is a thing that could be used to change the setting and feel of an already established world. It's another tool in the game designer's belt.
Nebbus mgs2 to mgs3 is a similar thing, it's literally back in time and creates a surprising amount of new mechanics, no more omniscient radar and a lot more careful observation, etc
7:08 2 possible start tutorials to select from begining of the campaign: A-option (moving, firing, take cover, all gadgets etc.) designed for new players of franchise. B-option (only new gadgets/ things) if player already knows the controls and/ or have played earlier releases of franchise.
This is why I love Extra Credits. I'm a young game designer who has learned a massive amount from Extra Credits, but more often than not it's not by learning a new concept, it's putting a name to something deep down I already knew. Accretion is a concept I've tip toed around a number of times but never named or formalized the concept. To all the people on the Extra Credits team, thank you. I know the kind of work it takes to turn out a video every week, but you are making a very real difference in the life of a lot of people. In a very real way you are helping me get a job out of college, and teaching me the skills needed to make better games. On the topic of accretion, it's what I'd consider an "advanced tool". Very powerful when used well but very destructive when used poorly. It is a way of addressing a common clash between quality and quantity that often does not have an easy answer. It seems it works better when you make it clear to players that you are going to do it, as seen in League of Legends. LOL patches every 2 weeks and every player knows the game is constantly changing but that is what keeps it interesting. I'm constantly getting to try out new cool builds and look forward to the patch notes every two weeks. Because LOL has the culture of change it gives the freedom to change. They can make wild advances like seen every pre-season and their players stick with them on the bumpy ride. Done poorly and you can end up killing your game because people who work hard grinding for gear just lose it after awhile.
The same thing said about Power Creep in CCGs could be said about this layering -- every time the old content is replaced, the player's collection becomes outdated and some of them worry that the same will happen with their new collections. Plus, it provides an "exit ramp"... why bother starting over with a current game rather than just start a new game? Obviously, this isn't a perfect analogy (as you said, the core mechanics stay the same so players will keep things like levels earned) but it has personally turned me off from more than one game.
Right, with a few exceptions, table top games can't make changes to old content without eliminating that old content entirely, so they have to work this way.
An interesting counter-example (one of the "few exceptions" you mentioned) is the X-Wing Miniatures game. A lot of the time, they specifically design new upgrade cards that are designed with the specific purpose of making an older ship relevant again, and ships which are designed to bring older upgrades back to the forefront. They also use FAQs/errata in .pdf format to tell players about updates/changes to cards they already own, adjusting definitions or rewriting the card in small ways to shift its behaviour.
This episode focus on rpg and mass sequels games. But there is one genre I quickly think of , wich is never brought in this video, despite extra credit having made a whole episode on this genre. THE IDDLE GAME. well if you think of cookie clicker, it's a bad choice for this case, even if it does a little. Actually most iddle games embody the principle of accretion in their core gameplay, crazy hyper inflation or simply new mechanism rendering past's one useless. I can think of candy box 2 , sandcastle builder, kitten game or many others iddle games. In all of theses game you're gonna have a first way to create ressource, and sooner or later the ressource or the first way to harvest it will be simply useless, you'll simply goes on mechanism 2 or ressource 2. -In sandcastle builder, you're gonna reach inflation constantly , then hyper inflation , wich will make the sand ( primal ressource ) useless as you'll have infinite number of it , but your experience will be reniew by thing like batiments becoming ressources or uppgrades that build batiment...until batiment became infinite , then you'll have an other way to make batiment worth something...and in between you're gonna manipulating uppgrades, farming some rare ressources like blueprints, traveling through time ect... -In kitten game you have very little inflation and it doesn't abandon many aspect of the game, it just pile up with some becoming less importants to check than others. First you'll have catnip, then wood, then stone, then having to check your population hapiness, then science, then managing your population activity, then managing each individual, then iron, then, turning stone into slab then....then gold, then ...then managing power sources and so on. And i could give others explainations on others games, but that will be a god damn big comment.
New content is nice, but a lot of times I feel sad when remembering older versions of my favorite games that I won't be able to play anymore. The may had less content, but their simplicity and well polished mechanics where really charming. Now much of them are just a mess.
You know, oddly enough, I had no problem jumping into EU4 _with_ all the expansions. as it is, I couldn't imagine trying to jump in without em after I came to love CK2 and played all of it's expansions
I stopped playing for one busy semester, and I believe 2 updates were released in that time. Didn't even buy the expansions and I was overwhelmed, and I have hundreds of hours in EU3 and EU4. I'll understand the estate system eventually.
I learned from watching other people play it on youtube, i look at what they do take a look how it works and why you wood use it on the wiki and think about how that could be usfull in my own campagne
Rose, with the CK2 thing I completely agree. I actually just bought it along with a good portion of its expansions, and I find it not that difficult to pick up on after a few hours of play. Sure, at first it looks very complicated, but after a while it all just slides into place. I've only had it for a few days, and it's made my top 10 list!
This video really helped me to understand why people still like to play 3.5e DnD or Pathfinder as opposed to 5e DnD. The example with Civ is very similar to what WotC did. That's really cool and helpful, thanks. :)
Well, the other side of 3.5/Pathfinder versus 5e is that's the system that we kinda grew up with. 3e felt like an evolution of 2e ad AD&D and cut out some of the "WTF" stats. 3.5 did similar to 3e, and Pathfinder cleaned things up and got rid of some things that didn't make sense while keeping it familiar. Not just strapping new stuff on. 4e was a complete change to draw new customers in (targeting more of the MMO-playing crowd), but it alienated the older fans. To a lot of us grognards, 4e seemed really "dumbed down". Not just simplified, but cutting out huge parts of the game that made different classes seem dynamic. The fast that they got rid of the SRD didn't help them, either. 5e, from what I've seen so far, is pretty solid and seems more like what they did with the AD&D->3e->3.5e progression. Simplify things that are too math-heavy and get in the way while keeping in some of the 'core' things like team balance and roles and such. I think the only thing keeping players in 3/3.5/Pathfinder is that there's dozens and dozens of books of content for those three and they're all (mostly) compatible, while 5e is still relatively new. ... Why am I saying so much in reply to a comment? Maybe RPGs and tabletop games are just that important to me. ^^; Sorry for being long-winded.
I think certain games benefit more from accretion than others. Tabletop RPG players tend to want more plot lines and campaigns,rather than new mechanics, though mechanics like skills and feat trees are deep enough to keep people intrigued for a long time by themselves. TCG players, on the other hand, want lots of new cards, which often cause lots of accretion.
Or 4e. **actually likes 4e** Yeah, the reason a lot of people like 3.X is that it has a lot of subsystems that make classes "feel" different, even though they don't feel all that different to me. It's all fluff and narrative to play it over a video game in the first place.
Only partly. It is true that jagex ignores most old content and just keeps adding new content, But for the system that is described in the video you have to be able to keep scaling your gear up. And jagex can't do that. At least not in the current engine.
Aidan Ratnage even the rework won't make the armor superior to anything. By design it will be inferior to the armor that already came after. It has to, otherwise pvm for equipment becomes pointless.
Play Oldschool Runescape then. I'd say that it's way better than RS3. The updates are also not 100% focused on high level players. Many updates have changed how low-level players play. Also both the PvP and PvM community is alive.
Terraria is a game that keeps getting new updates. only 2 of the bigger one actually pushed the boundaries of the player's maximum gear level with the bosses and events to go with it, but other updates added alternate paths: new weapons you aquier in other ways, new classes even! There is now tons of optional stuff to do and it makes re-playing the game with your new knowledge and skill very pleasant as you'll feel free to try something new. I'm curently re-playing the game for the 4th time but I already have other playthroughs in mind... and when I'll be done, there will be mods. And some mods add so many items that you can play the game using only the mod content.
The thing is, the problem is not games like terraria. It's mostly games that focuses on leaderboards or PVP. Sandbox games doesn't have the problem, because you just do whatever you want. It's purpose is to explore.
less classes more gameplay styles, basically weapons and gears usually are either universally useful or useful exclusively to someone dealing their damage through melee, ranged, magic, or summoned minions.
I love the amount of content Terraria has been getting ... BUT I feel the game is already so bloated with content that introducing people to play it for the first time can be very tough, and I'm talking through experience here. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the content Terraria has, but so much stuff feels so complicated to present to new players. Darn it, I wanna play Terraria now, gotta go clean the dust off of my 3DS.
KethusNadroev Uhh... No, I'd recommend it to a lot of people. Just because it has some issues doesn't mean I can't recommend it. And it's in a pretty good state for new players after SotR dropped.
Rehtael The game is in a good state in general, yes, but there are a lot of things the game doesn't tell you and if you are a new player someone has to explain everything until you catch up and some people aren't that patient. (as in to listen to the explanations)
4:21 every project, software or otherwise, needs one of that guy. Someone absolutely insane, who keeps track of everything, and makes sure it all works. The fact that accretion game design abandons him, means one day someone will add a system that interacts with some old system in some bizarre and unexpected way, some player will figure it out, and do something really weird.
ok so first off i would really like to say how much i love and enjoy your videos but now i have a question some what related to this episode, I am currently i high school and am interested in becoming a game designer are there any recommendations as of schools to look at or classes to take? if i would love to here your input thanks,
Thanks for watching! If you know you're specifically interested in game DESIGN (rather than programming, art, or another specialty), focus on taking a diversity of classes both in high school and when you get to college! Even classes that seem boring, irrelevant, or downright strange on the surface can teach you about interesting ideas that could be the start of an interesting game. And if you haven't already, you should definitely check out one of our older videos "So You Want to Be a Game Designer" as James can go much more in depth on this subject. But all of the things in that video are applicable to your high school experiences right now! --Belinda ruclips.net/video/zQvWMdWhFCc/видео.html
Ok thank you so much :) i really appreciate your really quick reply thanks so much, i'm pretty confident i would like to do game design it always seem like being a professional DM. i would just like to say thanks one more time for what you guys do and opining my eyes to a whole different way to experience video games
It is an interesting observation. I never really thought about the reason WHY old systems started to feel old, nor did I think about the reason why they never got 'repaired' or 'updated'. Seeing this extra credits vid made me open my eyes to see what the reason could have been!
Apart from MMOs, I think this is really applicable to card games! This seems to be exactly like what Magic: The Gathering has done over the many years - there are now so many secondary-order rules that who cares, let's add more! It's very difficult to jump into it anymore and not really worth following either
Feeling overwhelmed is exactly how I felt when I was first learning yugioh. There were just so many things, but I never gave up and learned the game. And you know what it felt amazing.
Not a video game, but it seems to me that the Yu-Gi-Oh CCG is a great example of this, even aside from the whole "Power Creep" factor. First, they started introducing "Archetypes" - families of cards meant to work only with each other. Some of these were better than others, and very often they'd not bother to "fix" the old, bad archetypes and simply abandon them, moving on to newer and stronger archetypes. Combine this with the inevitable power creep, and the game is littered with themed decks that are laughably bad by modern standards. Sometimes they'd come back later and try to add newer, more powerful cards to old archetypes, but this usually just made the contrast between how cards were designed in the past and how they were designed now even more obvious. Heck, the fact that a Top-Tier dominant deck from 3 years ago can still just barely hold its own in the metagame is considered exceptional and even outrageous by many Yu-Gi-Oh players. Something similar happened with Summoning: first there was Fusion Summoning and Ritual Summoning. Mostly these were bad and not viable on a competitive level. There was a largely-unsuccessful attempt to "push" decks focussed on these types of summons, and then they dropped it and invented a NEW Summoning: Synchro Summoning. That was much more popular and they kept it going for years. Then they introduced XYZ Summoning, and bam, no good Synchro monsters for four years. Then bam, Pendulum Summoning, yet another new method. To be fair to them, at this point they seemed to realise that they had to pay attention and started releasing new Synchro Monsters as well as releasing insanely power-creeped Fusion and Ritual Monsters to try and bring them up to speed, but even that had mixed success.
and then they released Link summoning which essentially changed the core rules of the game itself so that previous special summoning methods are pretty much unviable on their own
I agree on the Civ 4 vs Civ 5 Topic. Whenever I feel like playing some Civ, I go back playing Civ 4, while Civ 5 lies in my Steam library almost untouched.
This is such a rosy view that it's a tiny bit nauseating. I know you know for a fact that it will be used for one thing and one thing alone. To wring more money out of consumers with less investment.
You know this would be very fun from a writing perspective because you can use writing to justify accreation. Y Scenario: knight sword is overpower. Solution: The pope has commissioned a sword to be made that better smites evil and has more advanced technology to allow knights to better smite evil and has dubbed it "so and so".
Ugh I can't take this approach seriously as far as modded Minecraft goes. I'm so sick of abandoning my worlds and starting from scratch with nothing to show for it. If I wanted that, I'd go play an idle game, at least that way I'd have something to show every time I started over.
I would like to mention that due to the change to more frequent and less extensive updates, Minecraft mods are getting to be far more durable to changes in the game. If it keeps up, you won't have to throw everything away nearly as often to receive the new content. It is somewhat inevitable that things will bug out somehow, but there will probably be tools available to keep everything else intact.
Only one problem with this. That's when a group of modders take on a closed source project, or worse when they take on several, and subsequently abandon the modding scene several versions behind, leaving closed source versions of the mod in the dust. Team CoFH for example has left MineFactory Reloaded, Thermal Foundation and all mods that depend on it, all in the dust of 1.7.10.
I like Paradox Interactive's approach to updating a game. When they add new content it usually accompanies new fixes and patches that work with those new mechanics and remove some of the old ones. They also have a new DLC for each time they update a game for there current fans have something new to add to there game, but the DLC isn't mandatory for the gaming experience.
Ah, so this explains why my dad, having recently gotten back into World of Warcraft, got turned away by the sheer complexity and just complained about how difficult it was to figure things out and why couldn't they keep it simple like before and all that. Me, I had a lot of fun with it back when I started, and for a few years -- dozens of characters, all playing along the same low level at the same time, enjoying running through the same areas over and over as I tried to improve my understanding and efficiency. I only got one character up to level 40 after like five years. Heck, when I started you had to be 40 to get a mount, and by the time I was over 30 they'd dropped the mount level to like 20 or something. So glad I never got near the mess of the upper levels. I enjoyed my time playing it my way, and didn't have to bother with all that clutter.
This is why I quit Maplestory--they added so much and changed so many of the core elements which made the game enjoyable that they completely alienated their veteran players. If you log on now after being absent for a year or more, the UI is so cluttered and there are so many new systems and events and icons that you feel like there's no use trying to get into it again. They just added so much, and what they tried to update literally tore away the enjoyable game mechanics. Example: I had a Paladin and a Marksman, my two favorite classes, and eventually an update came that "revamped" the classes to make them contend with the others that were introduced. So what did they do? Completely eliminated the elemental charge system for Paladins--the main draw for 90% of Paladin mains--and removed two of the Marksman's most satisfying moves, strafe and arrow eruption. The game became the endless spamming of one button. I mean, the game was grind-heavy to begin with, but at least you used a variety of moves. Now it's just...empty. They dug themselves into a pay-to-win hole with miracle cubes and their subsequent superior iterations, and they added so many classes that outplayed the originals that when they went back to "balance" there was literally no way to do so without destroying what made classes unique. Not to mention the fact that older quests were useless, there were too many party quests to draw enough participants, and the endless creation of new content and character cards discouraged socializing. If you tried to make friends, you were wasting time and everyone else was gaining ground on you. This method of game development is REALLY touchy. If you mess up, it can be near impossible to remedy.
Mabinogi suffered the same problem. Ability spacing switched from warm-ups to cooldowns, old content is now no longer worth anything and has been pretty solidly torpedo'd, I couldn't even tell you what qualifies at BiS anymore or how to get it (probably cash shop RNG, this is nexon we're talking about). Nexon is one of the old guards of free to play, they were the best at it for the time but it no longer holds up in the slightest when compared to new games with new methods of monentization
I remember back in 2009, if you were lv25-30, the KPQ was the most popular and lucrative place to be, and if you were lv40-50, it was the LPQ or carnival PQ (although if the server was really crowded, players might overflow into the Ludibrium Maze PQ or Ellin Forest PQ). A relative lack of content seemed really effective at funneling players into social-play.
Imagine a MMO wiht a medieval setting and after 3 years of updates the best way to level up for the player where to participate in underground drift races. That sounds like a lot of fun actually. Not really welcoming to newcomers, more of a "If you enter now, this is going to be an intresting ride" kinda thing
Civ 5 indeed felt dumbed down compared to civ 4. Many of the hardcore civ 4 players felt disappointed. So modders focused on civ 4 and went the other way: trying to improve civ 4 to make it even more complex. The result was Caveman2Cosmos, a massive mod for civ 4 that increased the timeline from the prehistoric to the far future, adding countless new content. 150+ modders contributed to Caveman2Cosmos, it is 10 years in development and still gets on average more than 1 update per day. Civ 4: Caveman2Cosmos is probably the biggest game mod in the history of games and the ultimate Civ experience.
When you first started mentioning this system, I thought to myself "This is scorched earth tactics in game design." and when you later mentioned that, I got super happy!
You make me wonder if a game ever decided to try to use design by archeology. Like, they do this accretion for years, but then decide to use one of their dead systems again much later. Like if you suddenly needed that hyper specific resource from the base game for the 6th expansion. Nobody had bothered collecting it in years, but the new players who were getting it as they leveled up would suddenly be either ahead of the curve, or at least on the curve with the old players. You couldn't do it often, but it would be interesting to see.
DomSithe this happens a lot in Magic the gathering, as the game has accretion built into it in the form of rotating out what cards you can use every year. For example, the Madness mechanic, last used 13 years ago, was added to the Shadows over Innistrad expansion that came out last year
The annualized release and 5 year plan sounds like the one-size-fits-all approach CEOs love because their MBAs all told them that's how a good business plan should look like.
Playing WoW right now feels like they just did a big accretion wipe, as referenced to Civ, with Legion. Because of school I got of WoW for most of MoP and all of WoD so coming back to Legion basically from Cataclysm it irks me how all my characters had tons of their spells taken away to make classes simpler. It made sense for most classes to get ability crunched at some level to make room for new spells, say Hunters, where most of my keyboard would be bound to an ability and I was running out of room on my action bars for spells. But then there was my Boomkin, ignoring the balance slider mechanic, ability wise we finally had a strong suit of utility and abilities and were really fun to play. Skipping forwards a few years I log onto Legion to find my main is now a fluffy immobile turret that will go oom healing to full from half hp. I won't deny most classes had it coming, action bars were getting crowded, but to this level my favorite classes feel so flat now.
The best MMO I've encountered that deals with this problem well is Final Fantasy 14, you scale down in level to old content, and running that old content gets you new rewards, a good chunk of dungeons in the game are built into the story mode and aren't optional so you learn everything incrementally as you go instead of being bombarded, and there are always veterans running that old content to help new players. There is still obsolete gear, but you can turn that in for usable currency. On the other hand, WoW just wants you to level boost to the newest expansion and skip everything built to that point. A big reason I'm against level boosting, even if the FF14 community demands it, is I think it would sabotage the entire design philosophy.
Not to mention the fact that FFXIV's levelling scale is designed around their multi-class system, so you level up significantly faster than in most other MMOs.
Oh, I just remembered something else, the primary post-game currency are 'tomestones'. Which you trade in for some of the best gear. A pattern I've noticed in FF14 is that they 'cycle' the currency, there are no more than 3 types of tomestones at a time, and when they need to introduce a new one, they phase out an older currency. The new currency can buy new things as well as everything the previous one could buy, and they allow you to turn in that old currency for the new one at a loss. Each currency caps at 2000.
this is true for pen and paper RPG systems too. The dark eye is one of Germans oldest RPGs existing since the 80s I think and it's in it's fifth iteration. I don't know how the first two iteration looked, I only started with the thirdand it came a LONG way. There were two big jumps, as far as I know 1 2 and three were pretty similar, they giot more complicated but were more luck based even in character creation, it was miore dungeaon crawling and the stereotypical heroes. But with 3 they started to expand this, new character started to appear: Witches, druids, buckeneer, WAY more magic users and better way to differentiate them not to mention the spells! Then came a big cut with 4th edition where I think they rather catered the core audience rather than built for new players. they changed the whole system so that it was more custamizable, the way gamers approached the games has drstically changed since the 80s. Most people now play for character development rather than epic hero quests and the 'underdog' character is on the rise. so characters like simply smithes, baker and farmers were introduced next to the powerfull wizards and knights. They basically took everything from 3 (all magic uses, spells, world building etc) and added new layers of rules to it and added more and more contet. I was basically unaproachable for new players! Now the 5th iteration comes out and they decided to again try to get new customers. Character creation, all the thousands of talents and spells, it was all condensed to a simple overviewable bunch. So on the one hand this grade because even as aveteran I didn't quiet get the 4 system totally but then I look at five and I miss so much, like a favoutrite spell they didn't include ior a character that, due to simplicizing got scatched 8at least for now and you know they MIGHT add this character at some later point) like the sharizad, a magical dancer. Before they had their own kind of dance magic, totally unique, no magician, elf or druid could learn those. But because they scraped so much and it meant too much unique rules it got scratched which really annoyed me as I loved my sharizad and would have loved to convert her to the new system >.> So I guess many older players stick with 4 which they are used to...
I was just thinking that. The various editions of Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun and Exalted have a lot in common in this same manner, and I've tried to find the actual leaps and where it shed the extraneous stuff from previous editions. Dungeons & Dragons meanwhile has changed a ton between editions, at least after Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast took over, with 3.5 being an update of 3rd edition, 4E being radically different (and receiving a similar update), and 5E taking the best of both worlds and receiving a ton of beta testing over years before it got an official full release.
1 is Dirk Right yeah many games it seems take the fifth edition as a way to sort their system out and polish it to also make it more available and understandable for new players. Shadowrun, the dark eye, dungeon and dragons....
Sorain1 Okay that was a strong phrase, they messed up less. Many times. Such as recovering from the Urza block, or Mirroden, or Eldrazi winter... god damn that was recent
Arguably, this kind of design is strongest in games like MTG with a rotating standard. Players get new content quarterly and metagame problems don't last more than a year and a half or so. Sure, other formats get screwed, but I'm guessing a lot of MTG's profits come from drafts and standard tournaments, which are relatively safe from the bad effects of accretion.
Yu Gi Oh is a card game based on a manga. It was destined to die because there were never any solid mechanics in place to guide the development of the game. But yeah now they're just accreting rubbish mechanics to create new content.
XBlueM0ndayX yugioh is not 'dead' in any sense of the word people still play it and love it the amount of cards you have just improves the system it doesn't take away from it
Are you being serious right now? POE constantly introduces harder and harder bosses and endgame mechanics while nerfing evertyhing without any regards to the players. As a new player goign into it seeing someone with a max roll legacy shavs or kaoms heart, then finding out THEY cant have that item becuase ggg decided it was too powerful for no real reason actually causes some players to just quit. the bar is set stupidly high in poe, it might actually be WORSE then a skinnerbox model game becuase you do NOT get rewarded properly for your time, instead you get punished for making even a tiny mistake, and all builds eventually funnel down into the same basic design: Maxing defenses, stun immunity, and one single OP build that gets nerfed rather then buffing other bad builds.
This is the same problem we have in diablo 3 only most our stats come from gear instead of half from the non resettable passive skill tree. Honestly i don't think that GGG has the perspective to fix this problem because of the fact that the passive skill tree is and they want it to remain non resettable. You can't get enough data on non-optimal builds because no one wants to go through the dozens of hours to level a char up to gimp it unless they want to play something ridiculous like cast on death discharge. I think they could balance it, by allowing you to reset your passives. It would create an environment where everyone could fiddle around with their build. Rather than just the people who spend hours crunching the numbers and figuring out where all the defensive nodes are and then maximizing dps while hitting enough of them to hit cap. Then it'd be possible to get feedback from everyone on other workable builds so they can get precision buffs to help it out while not buffing the fotm spec to out of control proportions. Ultimately the absolute highest end will always devolve into this kind of gameplay though. You see it everywhere games are played with other people, a 'meta' is developed around how the game is balanced and those highest end players always play to it. You can never kill min/maxing, but you can massively reduce the impact it has on the rest of your community.
I agree, Path of Exile is a master class in this design. Constantly adding new features and mechanics into the game as 'leagues', which if they work are added into the core experience, and if not they are quietly swept under the carpet (as an optional map mod). Meanwhile they do continue to polish and refine core mechanics, add skills, and create new acts to play through. Their not always perfect, but they do well consistently and the game remains vibrant because of it.
Thinking about this, I feel it applies to game mod development. As I've noticed leaving content as it is over years will result in a loss in users. Adding new content over the old keeps users interesting. However, removing all the old results in almost as much loss. Key example, my update of a mod called ICBM that completely rewrote the base version from scratch.
I don't think this is a good idea for MMO RPGs, people that continually play those games tend to be very obsessive with the game and they notice if the new mechanics are good or not, but for more casual games, like Assassin's Creed, I think it's a good idea as long as they clean up the obsolete mechanics. For MMO RPGs I'm not sure there is a good answer, I like the way The Elder Scrolls Online is being updated: instead of add new mechanics that power creep the old ones, they just fix and rebalance the mechanics and the big updates are more content and not more mechanics. I'm not sure if that will work on the long run, but until now I like the results.
Failbetter Games does this in moderation with Fallen London to great effect, particularly with the Flash-Lay system and often with Exceptional Stories. Of course, they also do _extremely_ delicate and expansive rebalancing when necessary. In fact, *I think their ongoing transition from the Connected system to the Favours/Renown system is fascinating enough to deserve an Extra Credits video examining it.*
fuck the bugs , keep shoving content into a broken system. thats how the devs at DE run things. namely warframe. " just keep making content guys maybe it will distract them from problems we have had for 2 years now"
also power creep runs rampant and at higher levels even though there are tons of weapons everyone uses the same ones. same with the frames, if u dont have or dont want to play as a specific frame someone wants " because meta" they just dont let u play with them. and dont even get me started on buffs and nerfs, DE has no middle ground it either gets nerfed into oblivion and unusable , or its buffed into the stratosphere and makes using something other than that weapon or frame dumb.
Acrete the Core Have a overlayer ontop of it that allows the complexities of the Old This is an example found in Myth2 Soulblighter. Wherein the accretion that existed before was layered properly, but the Core of the physics system was adjusted into a mostly agreeable wrong direction. So they released the ability to use the old physics handler, and ontop of that the user can Choose to use the old accretions. Naturally it is played out without the accretion, but with a few options you can choose to have it there. That is the point and the approach I think is applicable to all non competitive games. A content pack system which already exists in moddable forms, certainly helps this understanding and execution along. It will become acessable to those new, but as they mature with the understanding they can even choose later on to play with the complexities of Old. Now more than ever is this concept accessible. Even Some competitive games could at least relax a bit with the ability to play around for example Lol with Urf, should be enabled in custom games that have no impact on progress.
Extra Credits is one series of videos that helps me learn new things related to game development, which is something I would like to do myself in the future. Keep up the great work! Also, will you make an episode that discusses why developers and publishers release incomplete games and then fix them later? It's a sleazy practice and I can't exactly understand the reasoning for it. If you already did, can you link? I can't seem to find it in your videos.
Star Wars Galaxies was less an example of accretion and more an example of designing around money. The thing that truly killed Galaxies was the NGE which just simplified the HELL out of the game in the hopes it would bring in new people. But what it really did was destroy the love the current players had for the game.
Some games introduce mechanics in certain locations, which is one solution to the problem. Tutorial levels are still relevant, and new content is pumped into the game! Examples are the map machine in PoE, or the flying mounts in WoW (pre cataclysm those where available only past the portal, forgot the name of the map).
First legendary I ever crafted was Dr Boom, 3 days later they announced he would be getting retired. The second legendary I ever crafted was Yogg. Fuck blizzard.
SOOOO THIS! They create new mecanics that will probably last only one cicle and will never be seen again. You will never see a c'thun card again in a new expansion, not because it's bad or anything, but because it's just bound to c'thun and therefore will become obsolete. But we have also seen if a (general enough) concept proves to be good then they are willing to expand on it (discover). If not... then they drop it like the joust mechanic. Oh I realy hope jade golems will be good and be kept, I realy like the concept.
Personally, the solution to accretion with regards to new players, especially where it is accrued over multiple distinct game releases, is backwards compatibility, or updating the old games to be compatible with new hardware/operating systems. Usually there is a story that goes along with each game, and if the game is particularly good, then each new release will advance the story, as well as the game mechanics and game content. So a brand new player, if they're trying to jump into the latest game, might not even know what's going on at that point in the story, and if they like what they see, will probably want to go back to the beginning and experience the story from there. It's kinda like picking up Return of the King, and trying to start from there. It's a good book, with lots of big battles, but if you don't go back and start with The Hobbit, or at LEAST The Fellowship of The Ring, then you're not getting the whole story, or the whole experience. I bring some personal desire to this comment: I've been a fan of the MechWarrior series of video games, but I have to maintain an old Windows XP laptop in order to play any of them, because they're not compatible with Windows 8 or Windows 10.
I like what someone from Fraxis has said about the development of Civilization VI. I'm paraphrasing but he said they aim to keep 1/3rd the game same as before, tweak and improve 1/3rd and redo the last 1/3rd from scratch. I think it worked out great and gave me both the game I loved as well as a fresh design.
Runescape is a prime example of this going wrong. There is an atrocious amount of dead content in the game, plenty of things that are just straight up unfinished, and some parts of the game that are just an utter slog to work through, with almost no point to them. They could go and dedicate some time to fixing these, but nope, instead of going back to actually make those old, fun things popular again, they instead just keep jingling keys in the opposite direction. Jingling keys to distract the masses from the dumpster fire in the corner. But what concerns me more is the possibility that they're doing this method on purpose, because it's profitable in more ways than one. Instead of this happening solely through new updates, they're now also scorching the earth with microtransactions instead. "Oh, is Agility woefully outdated, nearly useless and a pain to train for you? HERE, SPEND LOADS ON THIS MTX LOTTERY TO GET THE EXP YOU NEED INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY TRAINING IT." Needless to say, this tactic has rendered all the community-based training methods a barren wasteland, so it ends up being even more lonely and soul destroying...possibly giving more people more reason to spend. It's...disquieting.
***** Ive played runescape for many years, ive quit just before the implementation of new combat and after that real money shop updates. Its been part of my life for a long time and seeing it get ruined by baseless greed... Afaik, the people responsible are some investor group that is known for doing it for other game companies like Nexon (maple story).
Superdark33 YUP. They've been walked over by two different investors. The ones that caused it to begin with were Insight Venture Partners, I believe, but the ones that are REALLY eviscerating it right now are Hongda Mining Company. Ie, a mining company from China. Needless to say, it's gotten a lot more aggressive recently. How aggressive? They are releasing four - yes, FOUR - tradable rare items through the MTX lottery, available for one day only. God help us all.
Really love how you just nailed why so many veteran players hated Civ IV. I'm a major strategy fan but I'd never got round to Civ IV and I ended up loving Civ V and could never understand the dislike.
so ive been working on a game concept for a while now and about half a year ago a group of me and some of my friends got a demo functioning for a class project we had but the funny thing is what are over arching idea sounds exactly like the solution to accretion the idea is that there is a core mechanic system and everything gets wrapped onto it allowing for limitless expansion without the worry that new players wont be able to jump in. while also allowing for those who might start off right at the bat new and exciting things as more is added on
I definitely see this in World of Warcraft. I was trying to figure out what they'd do with Artifact Weapons in the next expansion, then I realized they'd just do what they did to Garrisons (leave them behind in Draenor) and Draenor Perks (deleted entirely). I'm accustomed to content from previous expansions getting left behind, but I guess mechanics are the new content. (Also, I love Timewalking dungeons for bringing back old content!)
Interesting seeing this now. Especially the civ 4 > civ 5 situation. So one of my favorite game developers Paradox felt they had this issue with Stellaris - they kept on adding new features and the old ones just weren't keeping up and adapting them was becoming expensive. So they did sort of what happened with civ4>civ5, they're reworking the entire game, getting rid of entire mechanics, adding slimmed down versions - making it actually accessible to new players while making new content actually more alongside the old content, rather than on top of it. But it's interesting to see this because Stellaris was released over a year ago and has had a few expansions. It's just interesting to see companies believe it's still viable to make these massive changes mid-development which is a huge risk!
I think a solution to part of the problem with this might be the idea of introducing a more fluid U.I. What I mean by this is that while you don't actually get rid of any elements, you do put in mechanisms to make older feature less prominent in U.I. and make newer features more easily accessible to newer players. An easy example would be currency in the hud, which you don't have to show the player every single kind of currency, just the currency that they currently have. A new player coming into the game would probably be more likely to receive a newer currency early on and that's what would be displayed, if a player has multiple types of currency only show the currency that he or she has the most of with a pop out menu that would show you all of it and let you pick one that you're concerned about. If you bury a feature significantly enough you could in the future concoct a plan to reuse that feature later on.
Just want to say: I started with Civ 5 when it was on huge sale just before 6 came out. I'm really glad I did and have a lot of fun with it. I'm also very glad that the "reset" it because had it been 4 I might have not spent much time on it dealing with all of the extra. Really looking forward to when 6 has more expansions and it's price drops or a big sale hits
I have a _stellar_ example of accretion in a triple-A MMO - and the problems that can ensue from this approach - for your consideration: Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Let's start with the best example: the endgame currency "Allagan Tomestones." These were rewards from level-cap quests and endgame dungeons from the initial release onward, but as of now the game is on its _eighth form_ of these. The first one was released in patch 2.0 (technically FFXIV:ARR's initial release) and was obsoleted in patch 2.2. The second also debuted in patch 2.0 but this time lasted to patch 2.4. When the 3.0 patch - the expansion "Heavensward" - was released it invalidated and obsoleted a third while adding another. A bugfix patch, 3.05, added yet another. By the current patch, three remain and five have come and gone. As a side effect of this, the gear these units purchased is either literally unobtainable (as in the vendors no longer sell it) or literally useless (as vendors sell better gear that takes just as long to get using the latest currency iteration). Each time they obsolete a tomestone, they give players a limited window to trade them in (at a pretty big loss, usually 8-to-1) for the new tomestone and they also either stop carrying the gear the old tomestones used to buy or simply obsolete the gear as well by offering gear that skips over its predecessor in terms of stats. As a side effect of _this_, in turn, when Heavensward was released Square Enix noticed a substantial gulf was opening up between the early-adoption playerbase (players that were there since day one or earlier through closed/open beta) and the new growth playerbase (players joining the game in large part because of Heavensward's strong reviews). Players that went into the expansion already at level cap and with some to substantial endgame-content experience were charging headlong into the additional endgame content and ignoring the early-endgame stuff the newcomers were working toward, and quite quickly it became apparent that more and more people were running into a content wall when they reached early-endgame only to find that the only other people working that content were also at their same level of experience (or, more commonly, worse) and all of the more skilled players had moved on. For example, a dungeon series called "The Binding Coil of Bahamut," once the actual end of the game's endgame progression, was worked aggressively on a near-constant rotation by practically every endgame group playing the game, but after Heavensward, Binding Coil was almost completely abandoned and players just reaching this level of play found themselves searching for hours, days, even weeks for enough of a party to make a single run through, and this content was still tough enough to require repeat efforts to defeat. Finally, this in turn led to people skipping the old content because the grinding they had to resort to ended up pulling them past that stage enough to catch up with the more experienced players, and the play times in some dungeons began to drop dramatically. Square Enix had to start incentivizing the past content to get enough experienced players to backtrack to help the less experienced players get through. They ended up adding mentoring (to coerce endgamers to even give a shit about new players), altered level-reduction capping and even added soloing to make romping back through old content as an endgamer more interesting, began requiring retreads through old content for daily/weekly quests, and so on in order to draw the level sixties to give the level thirties more than a passing glance as they ran between late-endgame dungeons. Most recently, Square Enix had to revamp the game's relic-weapon system in the game to make it worth doing for late-endgamers, but in doing so they effectively obsoleted the previous forms of this, and now early-endgamers practically skip over what used to be a major longterm play goal in the game. FFXIV:ARR is pretty much the epitome of scorched-earth/landfill updating, and it's a major title from a major studio with serious money behind it.
Phantasy Star Online 2 has this problem, but it's still got the same dev team working on it now than it did at launch. So many new features are added that replace old features. The game has a crafting system, and recently they added a new feature that lets you mine for resources when on missions. You'd THINK they'd integrate this with crafting. They didn't. Instead, the items you get are used to make Rings and Food. Food for temp buffs, Rings (a new armour type added in the same expansion) that give you a way to extend and progress your character further, without them needing to increase the level cap. Same goes for the new way of levelling up weapons, which only applies to NT, New Type, weapons. NT weapons are exactly the same as the old weapons, just with "-NT" tacked onto the end. These level up by feeding them weapons instead of using Grinders to level them up. But the old weapons still exist and can still drop. Its layer upon layer upon layer of new mechanics that don't in any way connect with older mechanics.
To provide a counterpoint to James' perspective, there have been some games which turn away long time players with accretion, as mentioned when it is done poorly. An example I can think of is the famous f2p MMO Maplestory which went out of their way to constantly outdate past characters multiple times. At one point of the game (perhaps it's been updated, I do know it was rebooted) there were so many classes, both players new and old didn't really have a good idea of what class to choose or what to explore. The updated classes were updated to the point where you literally only had to tape down one or two buttons to play the game/level up, you could even AFK through a majority of the content and the game became a shell of its former self. Since the optimal way to level was to pretty much do nothing, all of the varied, well designed world/lore building quests and even some of the events were ignored. Even social hubs where players would stop in between grinds/quests to do some awesome socializing were abandoned simply because they outlevelled the social hub's location within an instant, where as before it'd be optimal to stick around the area. It made the game a shell of its former self and removed most of the things that made it interesting.
Kinda funny you mention Civ V, I just picked it up and its my first Civ game. For being a game to try to get new players in they really could do with re-working the tutorial system. Fun game, but you basically have to figure it out for yourself.
What happens when, instead of fixing broken mechanics, you just add new ones? Why would designers do this?
Lazy
BTW I love you guys, Keep up the awesome work.
I would say lack of understanding, adding new mechanics is probably harder than fixing broken ones but the understanding required is far greater. Also, accretion can be good.
I was wondering what you guys think about Runescape in this regard? Before it went completely on the revamp bandwagon (EoC). It had a constant supply of new content (maybe not on the scale as the videos disussed) and new items to grind which in a lot of cases made previous content obsolute. But also increased the amount of ways other parts of the game could be played. Do you have any interesting analysis or thoughts about it?
Ow and I love your video's, keep them up!
All I can think of when it comes to long-running games changing mechanics all the time is Guild Wars 2. I used to play it a lot, but I keep getting discouraged from coming back into it because it is CONSTANTLY changing how everything is set up.
I think yearly releases shouldn't be a thing. COD has become very uniform, and rarely adds anything warranting a whole new release. Assassin's Creed is even worse. Look at how Skyrim is different from Oblivion, or many other non-yearly franchises. Those franchises are adding and changing so much in every game. The yearly franchises just seem uniform, cliched, and like one big money grab.
The weird response to that is: From whose perspective? And could the specific game series determine that answer? Sure, passionate developers and dedicated, loyal fans want concise, high quality, diverse content that is extremely well thought in reference to the rest of the game or franchise. But publishers and "mass audiences" favor prompt releases and shallow flashiness. For publishers it almost always ensures a low-risk profit, and it entices mass audiences by keeping a series fresh in their mind with constant new iterations. In an ever more expensive industry, money talks, and that which makes money is safer than risky, time consuming ventures.
At this point, while it may be artistically "pure" to stop yearly releases, the market will instead (and more or less has) split into the high-budget yearly blockbusters consumed by the "masses" vs Slowly or highly creative development games (looking at Dark Souls, which has managed to keep it pretty fresh despite trying to follow yearly releases) and the Indie scene. There is some wiggle room between the two, but those would be the general extremes. It just makes business sense for companies and investors with a lot of money on the line to go with the safer, faster bet. I'd expect that if the price of production began to decrease, and if it were at least easier to get more sophisticated tools and training in the hands of Indie teams, we'd see that gap begin to close a bit in a market shift, as major developers would have to compete with loosely equivalent powered (i.e. graphics and engine) indie content
Spook Nuke but I think that's why ubisoft skipped 2016 and decided to take the story back to before any of the previous games. to clear things up and ditch some of the old mechanics tgat just were not adding anything anymore.
I think it depends on the game. AC loses some quality for its short release window, but games are way more diverse than that. sports games (like Madden or WWE) and racing games (like Forza or Gran Turismo) need to update yearly in order to refresh their roster of characters and cars. otherwise, they would not keep up with the real world. Just dance has a similar issue with songs, but that would be better solved with explanations if you ask me. the reason why AC suffers from annual release windows is they have no reason to make it an annual release, other than the fact that they can.
zoob m Those could be fixed with DLC. They don't need to completely reset every year. In fact, many people don't immediately listen to new music. Many listen to older music, so it makes sense to put some more polish into Just Dance.
most people listen to the most popular current music, so that makes it make sense to target them. also, new releases are favoured over DLC because new releases are generally easier to market to new players.
So, after watching this video and realizing Civ 6 was out, I went to buy it, only to realize my laptop does not have the minimum system requirements to run it. In response to this, I bought a new laptop and ordered the game. Granted, the fact that my laptop was unable to run this game is a good indication that it is becoming obsolete and needs to be upgraded anyway, but, in terms of the emotional drivers behind the decision, I effectively just payed about $800 in order to have the tech resources available to play the newest game in one of my favorite franchises. This made me think about the peripheral costs of gaming and how, at the end of the day, gaming requires a substantial investment beyond the cost of the game that most gamers intentionally allocate resources to in order to support. It's pretty easy to figure out the psychological drivers that would instigate the purchase of a single $60 game. If it looks like it will be fun or is part of a franchise the gamer enjoys or employs a mechanic or story element that looks interesting, it's not hard to imagine why a person would make that investment. The long term peripheral investments that come as part of gaming, however, seem harder to explain. I think it may make an interesting video to explore the psychological aspects of, not only what makes us buy a game, but what *keeps* us gaming. Just a thought that I figured may be interesting. Great videos! Keep up the good work!
Oooooooo yes, I'd love to see an episode on this! Never even thought about it before...
This is a really interesting point...yeah, I'd really like to see an episode about this. :-)
This "scope creep" is also a major source of indie game inspiration - keeping games good, but also keeping them working for existing hardware, rather than recycling a perfectly good computer every 2-5 years.
Fantastic discussion. I like how the answer wasn't a solid "no," but rather, something to think about that might be appropriate in certain circumstances.
Still, no mention of MapleStory? That game has more accretion than a Katamari. I don't even know what it's doing with itself any more. It has 42 classes and a lot of disconnected content. Still, multiple options as to where to go to progress may not be a bad thing.
Hurr hurr Maplestory. Periodically releases new classes, and every new class is stronger than the previous one. At one point, the original classes became obsolete, so they just gave them a huge major buff.
If they were actually keeping things balanced, I would have loved it. But things are just going out of proportions and going deeper in Easy mode. If you're a nostalgic player and come back to it, you're just completely confused as you stare at a game that no longer has anything in common from the game you wanted to come back to.
Garuu Spike I was really bummed out that Magicians apparently got hugely nerfed (in my opinion) around 2010 where they no longer got extra MP regen. It became un-fun to play then.
Garuu Spike Truth be told I recently tried Maplestory and oh man was I confused. there were so many classes, weapons, and places to go to that I'm very lost. On that note I actually got myself literally lost because I got curious about the cab and now I have no idea where I am x.x
I first played MapleStory in 2009. Back then, I'm sure the only way to improve equipment was with scrolls. Now there are hammers to add more slots. There's also 'potential' which gives your equipment a seemingly random set of buffs, and stamps and cubes to adjust this 'potential'. Then there's "star force" (don't know how it works) for higher-level stuff. Not sure if they still have that weapon socket system, and it appears the "bits" system may have been removed. Pretty sure various items in these systems started out premium, then became non-premium later.
Then there are the quests. There are now so many quest chains (although I kinda liked some of the 'theme dungeon' stories, like the White Mage one) that you'll never need to do something other than solo quests in order to progress. I suspect the old party quests only worked because there came a point at which you would run out of solo quests, or the party quest just had better rewards than anything else you could be doing at that level. They were also level-limited, so you couldn't have an overleveled player sucking the fun out of it. Bottom line, a lack of other, more attractive content, and a healthy population, meant that players would be funneled into party quests where they actually had to work together.
Haseo123653 It's the systems that confused me. On the left side of my screen, I start off with over 10 different quests, half of which are just explanations for game systems that have accumulated over years of development, and some of them are premium-only. -and as I level up, I unlock even more systems. >..< Answer: Take the portal NPC present in any town. While the liberal use of portals in the game makes the world faster to traverse, I think it kinda ruins the good feeling you get when you're exploring, and you find something new to you, or when you finally get to where you wanted to go just by interpreting your map yourself.
"if something is ruining the experience..." *shows 6 D.vas* god dammit you guys are never not salty about something in overwatch lmao I love it those jokes are hilarious
AbyssWalker Genji it could have. been better if there was 6 hanzos or torbjorns
The Honorable Yank Trust me, Dva is much worse than both of them combined
6 mei? or 6 ana to put the other team to sleep? :p
Comic books seem to have a similar problem as Civilization and the sports games. Well, at least the big two (Marvel/DC).
Most of the favorite characters are over 50 years old. Superman is over 80. The amount of stories accumulated is staggering.
So the dilemma of the publishers; do they continue writing for the core audience? or do they focus more on bringing in new people?
Actually, DC reboots its universe once in a while to prevent that accumulation. Marvel has never rebooted its main universe, but recently they made new universes for the new audience.
luis enrique vargas azcona I'm aware. But even then, How do you do a reboot (well, they're more like semi-reboots) without alienating you're core audience. Rebirth happened so soon because the general reception of the new 52 was pretty mixed
I've always thought the "every comic is someone's first" principal was a good way to keep that in check. I feel that most Marvel comics I've read through my life remember this and helped me jump into any story they were telling.
I think in the game space Pokémon is one of the best at handling this. Sure there are annoyances but ever since the GBA games system refresh they have given you the ability to move your Pokémon(content) forward with you and make your time count. Meanwhile the current game never forgets to inform new players about its rules.
Not a fan of reboots here either. Soft-reboots like the modern Doctor Who is ideal(great to jump in at any time, but your experience is richer for watching it all).
Yes, Marvel has generally kept their same continuity over their history. But not everything that's happened over the years in publication is still relevant, or is held to with the same degree of precision.
For example, Spiderman once crossed over with the cast of Saturday Night Live. This happened in a book that was canon. That said, the crossover was with an older version of Saturday Night Live, back when the cast was called the "Not Ready For Prime-Time Players". It would be pretty silly for a modern Spiderman comic to call back to that event, when the modern Spiderman books (like all Marvel comics) are depicted as happening in the nebulous Present Day, if not exactly the year they were published.
Or how about the time when Captain America encountered Ronald Reagan when the latter was in office. Continuity in Marvel comics is a very relative thing, with writers being allowed to ignore the sillier or inconsistent elements in past publications. A "Broad Strokes" approach to its history, if you will.
I saw in a video about comic misconceptions that Franklin Richards (the child of the fantastic four) has being altering the continuity in the Marvel universe to bend the characters to modern times without ageing them.
this done really well: terraria. there's something like 4000 different items (many of which are just blocks, or decor, or monster drops, but about 1000 are fully-fledged tools/weapons with unique mechanics)
Actually didn't think of Terraria when I watched this, but yeah!
I actually loved the accretion in that game, every new update made it more exciting to play the game, and jumping from the console version to the PC version made so much new stuff available that it feels like I'm experiencing the game fresh instead of just starting over again.
Yup, Terraria nailed this approach. The core game was tight enough that adding new features and challenges worked out beautifully for it.
indeed, but i think terraria manages quite well the amount of content the players can handle at the same time. You start with a very basic set of content wich then expands upon playing more and diversifies a lot.
For instance: You start with a shitty dagger and you need to chop down some trees to get some wood for a house and some armor. 40 hours later you have a sharkanado minigun and some wings, with 5 more items , some summon pets and so on...
Terraria doesn't feel overwhelming to me and i feel like it has a really good entry point for anyone new to the game... And plus the developer's are just amazing pumping out so much content for a game made in 2011.
Terraria does this very well, yes, and it also has some features that make the "old" content keep some relevance - end game weapons that have to be crafted by combining earlier-game weapons. Also, mannequins and weapon plaques. I love collecting and displaying armor sets in a sort of chronologic display of my progress throughout the game - this way old gear becomes a testament to power and a sort of display of how far I've come, thus adding value to the things that would otherwise get trashed.
the reason this accretion method works in terraria so well is the reason it works in a lot of other PvE games so well. new content is more advanced than older content, but cannot be accessed until the early part of the game is completed, and in game, progression is given at the right pace to keep interest but prevent overwhelming amounts of content. nearly EVERY PvE game does this. borderlands did this, starbound did this, binding of isaac, nuclear throne, and a slew of other PvE games do this. this isn't exactly accretion, because it's incredibly easy to do with a PvE game, whereas with an MMO, it's an entirely different system. with singleplayer games, the developer can restrict content, but with an MMO, a new player is immediately thrown into the massive amount of content that exists. basically, It's not accretion in terraria because that's how PvE games work.
Wow, this episode made me really confident on trying to be a guest artist. The drawings are so much simpler but they are just as effective as the permanent ones on manifestating the text on picture.
DEFINITION OF ACCRETION: When you want to know the capital of the island of Crete, you should ask accretion.
verdatum
Everybody knows the capital of Crete is Knossos, duh.
Chill Punlord! Before you get swamped by the god of puns.
Let's not start Punic wars.
Wow. Just... I'm not even going to justify that with a response.
This entire episode feels like a recap of Warframe's game design choices since its original launch.
1:00 This is basically how WF's developers understand the idea of new content. They make new gameplay 'modules' that are only loosely and indirectly connected to all the other mechanics.
1:10 That's what happened with Kubrows. While they did get a minor tweak to how their incubation and maintenance works, they have never been included in any game mechanic that came after them.
1:15 Dojo obstacle courses. With the addition of new parkour and certain new mods, it became possible to just outright cheat, rendering the competitive aspect of the challenge worthless. AFAIK this hasn't been ever addressed.
1:29 Oxium, argon crystals, cryotic, tellurium, nitain. All of these are resources that were introduced along with a set of new gear, that could only be crafted if you obtained the new resource, usually found in some new mission type. After that, they usually weren't used again.|
1:38 Syndicate variations of weapons. Not the case for all of them, but a significant chunk of them is outright better than their regular counterpart. Also true for prime versions.
1:48 Lol, he said unTENNOble.
2:08 Archwing, anyone?
2:25 Ducats. While they didn't exactly replace credits, they are a currency that was created with the sole purpose of being far more difficult to obtain than regular credits.
2:41 Again, prime versions of gear. Regular variants just become mastery fodder when a superior variant is introduced.
2:55 Practically all mechanics that were present in the initial launch have now been replaced with their respective "version 2.0".
3:27 Void runs, especially with the old tower key system. I still remember how apeshit everyone went when Tower IV keys were introduced.
3:44 Oh boy, does this happen often. The forum/reddit threads about this are relentless.
3:59 The Ceres rework, when the new Draco mission was introduced. I think people are grinding it to this day, despite how many times it got hit with the nerf hammer.
4:36 At several points in Warframe's history a lot of players were so powerful, there was simply no content that would pose any challenge to them. There's been multiple attempts at providing them with difficult end game content, with Sorties probably being the most successful at it. Every time this happens the power gap between new players and veterans widens even more.
4:42 hahahaha as much as I love Warframe, "complexity without a lot of depth" could totally become its unofficial slogan.
4:50 This has been a problem for a very long time now. The new player experienced is much more refined nowadays, but still, Warframe is kinda supposed to be overwhelming on purpose. One of its less obvious themes is mystery. Discovery becomes a gameplay element in of itself.
4:58 I'm pretty sure this exact phrase appeared on some stuff-to-do checklist presented during one of the dev streams.
5:03 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA this panel is just too perfect for Warframe
6:40 This happened very early, back when missions would often have chain objectives. They were ditched for single-objective missions, which felt like a step back. Chain objectives wouldn't return until very recently, with the new Assault mission type.
7:47 C'mon, Prince here is even doing the wallrun thing which he totally stole from WF. ;)
yeah, about 0:58 in i just thought "oh god, this episode is about DE"
every now and then they go back and fix something, but thats like a holiday. actually, its more.
fuck. warframe is a mess
When it is an MMORPG, it is simple... introduce "Reincarnation" mechanic. When you start the game, you play only with basic mechanics. After reaching certain treshold, you can "reincarnate" to first level but be able to use some new mechanic. Rinse and repeat. Every new feature can be new content for reincarnation and some events, locations, items, are accessible after X reincarnations...
On the Civilization topic, I actually like that they didn't just add stuff with every installment - even if it was worked in instead of tacked on. It takes courage to cut systems out because it may alienate dedicated players but in the end, there is beauty in simplicity.
Also, it's not only developers who're guilty of this sort of thing. Every time players suggest new features (strategy games and RPGs), people will clamour for their particular pet feature to be extended into ridiculously intricated and complex systems, with absolutely no sense of proportion.
"Tropes are not bad." Wise words to live by.
"The best ideas come out of madness." The only problem is to *deliver them*.
We need an international currency called the "Cool Dollar" with faces of leaders with sunglasses witch you can use to buy certain goods.
I feel like CCGs and TCGs use a derivative form of Accretion, especially seeing as, at least for physical games, they more or less CAN'T go back and refine. Honestly I wish it was something games like Hearthstone did a little bit less of, as existing in a purely digital space means they can get away with going back and fixing what's broken, instead of just layering on more, new broken shit.
General Zeta I was thinking the same. And personally I believe one can see in Yugioh both how the use of this philosophy made the game harder and less cohesive to the point the newest mechanic to date (Pendulum was it?) seems to drift more for a "integrate older mechanics with the new ones" rather than shooting more rockets to them
I thought Hearthstone decided to make only the last 2 years of expansions playable in the main mode to rebalance the game?
With the way Magic is structured, they constantly create new systems and then in 1.5 years those systems are no longer relevant to the main format of the game (as whole blocks are cycled out of the Standard).
Yes, Magic always had the concept of 'blocks'. Their main rival in the CCG space at the time however, Decipher, avoided making anything obsolete. Ever.
The Star trek CCG ran from 1993 to 2001 and had about 15 expansions and in that whole time exactly 1 card was banned in tournaments.
And that card was in the initial release and banned right from the start.
Then they created a second star trek card game, which had different rules, but still contained a handful of cards in each expansion that were backwards compatible with the first game!
How they ever managed to keep this balanced is beyond me, but they did, because cards from the first expansion were still playable and relevant right up to the end.
Yu-Gi-Oh, on the other hand, keeps old cards relevant while accreting new systems. Whenever they roll out a new system, some of the cards that use that system are designed to combo with older cards. X-Sabers got an XYZ during the Zexal era, Ritual Summons were brought back during the Arc-V era, and Blue Eyes White Dragon gets new support cards every few years.
YGO forces stuff out through soft power/feature creep, but keeps a controlled number of older cards relevant by having some of the newer, more powerful cards rely on older cards to function or slotting them into existing archetypes.
I feel like this could be used to set the tone for sequels or prequels. By scraping of accretion for a prequel you can make the player feel like they've gone back to a more primitive time, not just in gameplay but in story as well. It could also work well for a more isolated story, it could help make you feel like you are on your own and all the complexities of the norm are gone.
Imagine a Metal Gear game where Snake is caught without all his equipment and has to make do with whatever he has at hand. That could definitely be interesting if done right.
We all know that won't happen tho because #FucKonami
Good point. A lot of prequel games fall into this problem where the prequel/origin character feels vastly superior to the later version of the character in the previous (and previously-released) games.
Mostly notably for me, Batman: Arkham Origins (besides just fixing some other inherent problems) would have benefited from removing a lot of the gadgets and special combat movew since it was a prequel.
"Snake is caught without all his equipment and has to make do with whatever he has at hand."
uhm, Snake always goes without equipment, what are you talking about, thats a bad example.
Celio Hogane Sorry, haven't actually played much Metal Gear, was thinking of Venom Snake from MGS5 and what i've seen of that game. Really just insert any character reliant on more mechanics now than at the start of the series, Caesar's example of Batman is a much better example. My point still stands tho, this is a thing that could be used to change the setting and feel of an already established world. It's another tool in the game designer's belt.
Nebbus mgs2 to mgs3 is a similar thing, it's literally back in time and creates a surprising amount of new mechanics, no more omniscient radar and a lot more careful observation, etc
Nebbus well the guy starts literally nude in MGS5.
7:08 2 possible start tutorials to select from begining of the campaign:
A-option (moving, firing, take cover, all gadgets etc.) designed for new players of franchise.
B-option (only new gadgets/ things) if player already knows the controls and/ or have played earlier releases of franchise.
This is why I love Extra Credits. I'm a young game designer who has learned a massive amount from Extra Credits, but more often than not it's not by learning a new concept, it's putting a name to something deep down I already knew. Accretion is a concept I've tip toed around a number of times but never named or formalized the concept. To all the people on the Extra Credits team, thank you. I know the kind of work it takes to turn out a video every week, but you are making a very real difference in the life of a lot of people. In a very real way you are helping me get a job out of college, and teaching me the skills needed to make better games.
On the topic of accretion, it's what I'd consider an "advanced tool". Very powerful when used well but very destructive when used poorly. It is a way of addressing a common clash between quality and quantity that often does not have an easy answer. It seems it works better when you make it clear to players that you are going to do it, as seen in League of Legends. LOL patches every 2 weeks and every player knows the game is constantly changing but that is what keeps it interesting. I'm constantly getting to try out new cool builds and look forward to the patch notes every two weeks. Because LOL has the culture of change it gives the freedom to change. They can make wild advances like seen every pre-season and their players stick with them on the bumpy ride.
Done poorly and you can end up killing your game because people who work hard grinding for gear just lose it after awhile.
The same thing said about Power Creep in CCGs could be said about this layering -- every time the old content is replaced, the player's collection becomes outdated and some of them worry that the same will happen with their new collections. Plus, it provides an "exit ramp"... why bother starting over with a current game rather than just start a new game? Obviously, this isn't a perfect analogy (as you said, the core mechanics stay the same so players will keep things like levels earned) but it has personally turned me off from more than one game.
Right, with a few exceptions, table top games can't make changes to old content without eliminating that old content entirely, so they have to work this way.
An interesting counter-example (one of the "few exceptions" you mentioned) is the X-Wing Miniatures game. A lot of the time, they specifically design new upgrade cards that are designed with the specific purpose of making an older ship relevant again, and ships which are designed to bring older upgrades back to the forefront. They also use FAQs/errata in .pdf format to tell players about updates/changes to cards they already own, adjusting definitions or rewriting the card in small ways to shift its behaviour.
You should get seasoned TV reviews as a guest animator, his animation style is really cool and he could do with the publicity!
Whoever did the editing is a huge Wrestling fan. It's been a while since I've seen someone refer Shark Boy.
Carlitonsp1 yup, definitely a secret wrestling obsession at extra credits!
Sebastian Obsolete is Brother Nero's thing.
This episode focus on rpg and mass sequels games.
But there is one genre I quickly think of , wich is never brought in this video, despite extra credit having made a whole episode on this genre.
THE IDDLE GAME.
well if you think of cookie clicker, it's a bad choice for this case, even if it does a little.
Actually most iddle games embody the principle of accretion in their core gameplay, crazy hyper inflation or simply new mechanism rendering past's one useless.
I can think of candy box 2 , sandcastle builder, kitten game or many others iddle games.
In all of theses game you're gonna have a first way to create ressource, and sooner or later the ressource or the first way to harvest it will be simply useless, you'll simply goes on mechanism 2 or ressource 2.
-In sandcastle builder, you're gonna reach inflation constantly , then hyper inflation , wich will make the sand ( primal ressource ) useless as you'll have infinite number of it , but your experience will be reniew by thing like batiments becoming ressources or uppgrades that build batiment...until batiment became infinite , then you'll have an other way to make batiment worth something...and in between you're gonna manipulating uppgrades, farming some rare ressources like blueprints, traveling through time ect...
-In kitten game you have very little inflation and it doesn't abandon many aspect of the game, it just pile up with some becoming less importants to check than others.
First you'll have catnip, then wood, then stone, then having to check your population hapiness, then science, then managing your population activity, then managing each individual, then iron, then, turning stone into slab then....then gold, then ...then managing power sources and so on.
And i could give others explainations on others games, but that will be a god damn big comment.
New content is nice, but a lot of times I feel sad when remembering older versions of my favorite games that I won't be able to play anymore. The may had less content, but their simplicity and well polished mechanics where really charming. Now much of them are just a mess.
Goodness. That old Price of Persia screen grab pulled a gleaming nugget of nostalgia from the deepest recesses of my memory. Thanks guys.
Europa Unversalis 4.
Was already hard to learn when it was new. Can't imagine jumping into it now with all expansions.
Hjernespreng For Europa, that's almost the point I think.
You know, oddly enough, I had no problem jumping into EU4 _with_ all the expansions. as it is, I couldn't imagine trying to jump in without em after I came to love CK2 and played all of it's expansions
I stopped playing for one busy semester, and I believe 2 updates were released in that time. Didn't even buy the expansions and I was overwhelmed, and I have hundreds of hours in EU3 and EU4. I'll understand the estate system eventually.
I learned from watching other people play it on youtube, i look at what they do take a look how it works and why you wood use it on the wiki and think about how that could be usfull in my own campagne
Rose, with the CK2 thing I completely agree. I actually just bought it along with a good portion of its expansions, and I find it not that difficult to pick up on after a few hours of play. Sure, at first it looks very complicated, but after a while it all just slides into place. I've only had it for a few days, and it's made my top 10 list!
This video really helped me to understand why people still like to play 3.5e DnD or Pathfinder as opposed to 5e DnD. The example with Civ is very similar to what WotC did. That's really cool and helpful, thanks. :)
Well, the other side of 3.5/Pathfinder versus 5e is that's the system that we kinda grew up with. 3e felt like an evolution of 2e ad AD&D and cut out some of the "WTF" stats. 3.5 did similar to 3e, and Pathfinder cleaned things up and got rid of some things that didn't make sense while keeping it familiar. Not just strapping new stuff on.
4e was a complete change to draw new customers in (targeting more of the MMO-playing crowd), but it alienated the older fans. To a lot of us grognards, 4e seemed really "dumbed down". Not just simplified, but cutting out huge parts of the game that made different classes seem dynamic. The fast that they got rid of the SRD didn't help them, either.
5e, from what I've seen so far, is pretty solid and seems more like what they did with the AD&D->3e->3.5e progression. Simplify things that are too math-heavy and get in the way while keeping in some of the 'core' things like team balance and roles and such.
I think the only thing keeping players in 3/3.5/Pathfinder is that there's dozens and dozens of books of content for those three and they're all (mostly) compatible, while 5e is still relatively new.
...
Why am I saying so much in reply to a comment? Maybe RPGs and tabletop games are just that important to me. ^^; Sorry for being long-winded.
Rotom Sock Exactly what I thought of.
But, honestly, some of those prestige classes in 3.5 got pretty stupid...
I think certain games benefit more from accretion than others. Tabletop RPG players tend to want more plot lines and campaigns,rather than new mechanics, though mechanics like skills and feat trees are deep enough to keep people intrigued for a long time by themselves. TCG players, on the other hand, want lots of new cards, which often cause lots of accretion.
Or 4e. **actually likes 4e**
Yeah, the reason a lot of people like 3.X is that it has a lot of subsystems that make classes "feel" different, even though they don't feel all that different to me. It's all fluff and narrative to play it over a video game in the first place.
this is basically what jagex are doing with Runescape
Only partly. It is true that jagex ignores most old content and just keeps adding new content, But for the system that is described in the video you have to be able to keep scaling your gear up. And jagex can't do that. At least not in the current engine.
Technically with Invention this is true but, at the same time, they also try to make most of the previous stuff useful in some way as well.
Armour and weapons are so far removed from the original skills used to make them now, they are planning a total re-work of mining and smithing.
Aidan Ratnage even the rework won't make the armor superior to anything. By design it will be inferior to the armor that already came after. It has to, otherwise pvm for equipment becomes pointless.
Play Oldschool Runescape then. I'd say that it's way better than RS3. The updates are also not 100% focused on high level players. Many updates have changed how low-level players play. Also both the PvP and PvM community is alive.
Terraria is a game that keeps getting new updates. only 2 of the bigger one actually pushed the boundaries of the player's maximum gear level with the bosses and events to go with it, but other updates added alternate paths: new weapons you aquier in other ways, new classes even! There is now tons of optional stuff to do and it makes re-playing the game with your new knowledge and skill very pleasant as you'll feel free to try something new.
I'm curently re-playing the game for the 4th time but I already have other playthroughs in mind... and when I'll be done, there will be mods. And some mods add so many items that you can play the game using only the mod content.
The thing is, the problem is not games like terraria. It's mostly games that focuses on leaderboards or PVP. Sandbox games doesn't have the problem, because you just do whatever you want. It's purpose is to explore.
There are classes in Terraria? I really should've played more than 4 hours of it.
less classes more gameplay styles, basically weapons and gears usually are either universally useful or useful exclusively to someone dealing their damage through melee, ranged, magic, or summoned minions.
fatima Ibrahim it's a soft class system. It has classes in the sense that there are very defined viable setups for each of the damage types and such.
I love the amount of content Terraria has been getting ...
BUT I feel the game is already so bloated with content that introducing people to play it for the first time can be very tough, and I'm talking through experience here.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the content Terraria has, but so much stuff feels so complicated to present to new players.
Darn it, I wanna play Terraria now, gotta go clean the dust off of my 3DS.
As a Warframe player, this smells awfully familiar.
God forbid developers try something new and exciting in order to keep their game fresh >_>
Mike C Much like the video suggests, it's both a good thing and a bad thing.
Rehtael Yeah, you pretty much can't recommend the game to any friends at this point.
KethusNadroev Uhh... No, I'd recommend it to a lot of people. Just because it has some issues doesn't mean I can't recommend it. And it's in a pretty good state for new players after SotR dropped.
Rehtael The game is in a good state in general, yes, but there are a lot of things the game doesn't tell you and if you are a new player someone has to explain everything until you catch up and some people aren't that patient. (as in to listen to the explanations)
4:21 every project, software or otherwise, needs one of that guy. Someone absolutely insane, who keeps track of everything, and makes sure it all works. The fact that accretion game design abandons him, means one day someone will add a system that interacts with some old system in some bizarre and unexpected way, some player will figure it out, and do something really weird.
ok so first off i would really like to say how much i love and enjoy your videos but now i have a question some what related to this episode, I am currently i high school and am interested in becoming a game designer are there any recommendations as of schools to look at or classes to take? if i would love to here your input thanks,
Thanks for watching!
If you know you're specifically interested in game DESIGN (rather than programming, art, or another specialty), focus on taking a diversity of classes both in high school and when you get to college! Even classes that seem boring, irrelevant, or downright strange on the surface can teach you about interesting ideas that could be the start of an interesting game.
And if you haven't already, you should definitely check out one of our older videos "So You Want to Be a Game Designer" as James can go much more in depth on this subject. But all of the things in that video are applicable to your high school experiences right now! --Belinda
ruclips.net/video/zQvWMdWhFCc/видео.html
Ok thank you so much :) i really appreciate your really quick reply thanks so much, i'm pretty confident i would like to do game design it always seem like being a professional DM. i would just like to say thanks one more time for what you guys do and opining my eyes to a whole different way to experience video games
If you want to be a very strong artist im attending Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, I highly recommend their games track.
ok noted thanks :)
Why it may be a bit broad, a lot of-at least of the know- "Professional DMs " are or work in game design, such as Matthew Colville
It is an interesting observation.
I never really thought about the reason WHY old systems started to feel old, nor did I think about the reason why they never got 'repaired' or 'updated'. Seeing this extra credits vid made me open my eyes to see what the reason could have been!
Sounds like a Ship of Theseus paradox, which may not be a big deal for most
This is my favorite video from you guys. And probably my most heart held video that a lot of people need to see.
This sounds EXACTLY like what Yugioh does.
This is exactly what world of Warcraft does every 2 years
literally all card games do this
that lol mage update reference lmao
But as an example of "Fixing", not "Accretion"
Apart from MMOs, I think this is really applicable to card games! This seems to be exactly like what Magic: The Gathering has done over the many years - there are now so many secondary-order rules that who cares, let's add more! It's very difficult to jump into it anymore and not really worth following either
Feeling overwhelmed is exactly how I felt when I was first learning yugioh. There were just so many things, but I never gave up and learned the game. And you know what it felt amazing.
Oh my god, this describes Ark: Survival Evolved perfectly.
Not a video game, but it seems to me that the Yu-Gi-Oh CCG is a great example of this, even aside from the whole "Power Creep" factor. First, they started introducing "Archetypes" - families of cards meant to work only with each other. Some of these were better than others, and very often they'd not bother to "fix" the old, bad archetypes and simply abandon them, moving on to newer and stronger archetypes. Combine this with the inevitable power creep, and the game is littered with themed decks that are laughably bad by modern standards. Sometimes they'd come back later and try to add newer, more powerful cards to old archetypes, but this usually just made the contrast between how cards were designed in the past and how they were designed now even more obvious. Heck, the fact that a Top-Tier dominant deck from 3 years ago can still just barely hold its own in the metagame is considered exceptional and even outrageous by many Yu-Gi-Oh players.
Something similar happened with Summoning: first there was Fusion Summoning and Ritual Summoning. Mostly these were bad and not viable on a competitive level. There was a largely-unsuccessful attempt to "push" decks focussed on these types of summons, and then they dropped it and invented a NEW Summoning: Synchro Summoning. That was much more popular and they kept it going for years. Then they introduced XYZ Summoning, and bam, no good Synchro monsters for four years. Then bam, Pendulum Summoning, yet another new method. To be fair to them, at this point they seemed to realise that they had to pay attention and started releasing new Synchro Monsters as well as releasing insanely power-creeped Fusion and Ritual Monsters to try and bring them up to speed, but even that had mixed success.
and then they released Link summoning which essentially changed the core rules of the game itself so that previous special summoning methods are pretty much unviable on their own
Wait wait, games with five and ten year plans?
Since when did Stalin get into gaming?
Corporation-think.
I agree on the Civ 4 vs Civ 5 Topic. Whenever I feel like playing some Civ, I go back playing Civ 4, while Civ 5 lies in my Steam library almost untouched.
This is what DE has been doing for the two Years with Warframe. Designing by Landfill, and they're doing it badly.
Fun idea: do this not only with gameplay content, but story. Keep adding layers and layers of story. Fallen London/echo bazaar did that and it’s great
This is such a rosy view that it's a tiny bit nauseating. I know you know for a fact that it will be used for one thing and one thing alone. To wring more money out of consumers with less investment.
You know this would be very fun from a writing perspective because you can use writing to justify accreation.
Y
Scenario: knight sword is overpower.
Solution: The pope has commissioned a sword to be made that better smites evil and has more advanced technology to allow knights to better smite evil and has dubbed it "so and so".
Ugh I can't take this approach seriously as far as modded Minecraft goes. I'm so sick of abandoning my worlds and starting from scratch with nothing to show for it. If I wanted that, I'd go play an idle game, at least that way I'd have something to show every time I started over.
I would like to mention that due to the change to more frequent and less extensive updates, Minecraft mods are getting to be far more durable to changes in the game. If it keeps up, you won't have to throw everything away nearly as often to receive the new content. It is somewhat inevitable that things will bug out somehow, but there will probably be tools available to keep everything else intact.
Only one problem with this. That's when a group of modders take on a closed source project, or worse when they take on several, and subsequently abandon the modding scene several versions behind, leaving closed source versions of the mod in the dust. Team CoFH for example has left MineFactory Reloaded, Thermal Foundation and all mods that depend on it, all in the dust of 1.7.10.
I like Paradox Interactive's approach to updating a game. When they add new content it usually accompanies new fixes and patches that work with those new mechanics and remove some of the old ones. They also have a new DLC for each time they update a game for there current fans have something new to add to there game, but the DLC isn't mandatory for the gaming experience.
Holy shit it's basically path of exile!
Ah, so this explains why my dad, having recently gotten back into World of Warcraft, got turned away by the sheer complexity and just complained about how difficult it was to figure things out and why couldn't they keep it simple like before and all that.
Me, I had a lot of fun with it back when I started, and for a few years -- dozens of characters, all playing along the same low level at the same time, enjoying running through the same areas over and over as I tried to improve my understanding and efficiency. I only got one character up to level 40 after like five years. Heck, when I started you had to be 40 to get a mount, and by the time I was over 30 they'd dropped the mount level to like 20 or something.
So glad I never got near the mess of the upper levels. I enjoyed my time playing it my way, and didn't have to bother with all that clutter.
This is why I quit Maplestory--they added so much and changed so many of the core elements which made the game enjoyable that they completely alienated their veteran players. If you log on now after being absent for a year or more, the UI is so cluttered and there are so many new systems and events and icons that you feel like there's no use trying to get into it again. They just added so much, and what they tried to update literally tore away the enjoyable game mechanics.
Example: I had a Paladin and a Marksman, my two favorite classes, and eventually an update came that "revamped" the classes to make them contend with the others that were introduced. So what did they do? Completely eliminated the elemental charge system for Paladins--the main draw for 90% of Paladin mains--and removed two of the Marksman's most satisfying moves, strafe and arrow eruption. The game became the endless spamming of one button. I mean, the game was grind-heavy to begin with, but at least you used a variety of moves. Now it's just...empty. They dug themselves into a pay-to-win hole with miracle cubes and their subsequent superior iterations, and they added so many classes that outplayed the originals that when they went back to "balance" there was literally no way to do so without destroying what made classes unique. Not to mention the fact that older quests were useless, there were too many party quests to draw enough participants, and the endless creation of new content and character cards discouraged socializing. If you tried to make friends, you were wasting time and everyone else was gaining ground on you.
This method of game development is REALLY touchy. If you mess up, it can be near impossible to remedy.
Mabinogi suffered the same problem. Ability spacing switched from warm-ups to cooldowns, old content is now no longer worth anything and has been pretty solidly torpedo'd, I couldn't even tell you what qualifies at BiS anymore or how to get it (probably cash shop RNG, this is nexon we're talking about). Nexon is one of the old guards of free to play, they were the best at it for the time but it no longer holds up in the slightest when compared to new games with new methods of monentization
I remember back in 2009, if you were lv25-30, the KPQ was the most popular and lucrative place to be, and if you were lv40-50, it was the LPQ or carnival PQ (although if the server was really crowded, players might overflow into the Ludibrium Maze PQ or Ellin Forest PQ). A relative lack of content seemed really effective at funneling players into social-play.
Imagine a MMO wiht a medieval setting and after 3 years of updates the best way to level up for the player where to participate in underground drift races. That sounds like a lot of fun actually. Not really welcoming to newcomers, more of a "If you enter now, this is going to be an intresting ride" kinda thing
2:27
My mom actually has five of those; I remember freaking out and looking up how much they would cost in U.S. dollars. They're $42 each.
Civ 5 indeed felt dumbed down compared to civ 4. Many of the hardcore civ 4 players felt disappointed. So modders focused on civ 4 and went the other way: trying to improve civ 4 to make it even more complex. The result was Caveman2Cosmos, a massive mod for civ 4 that increased the timeline from the prehistoric to the far future, adding countless new content. 150+ modders contributed to Caveman2Cosmos, it is 10 years in development and still gets on average more than 1 update per day. Civ 4: Caveman2Cosmos is probably the biggest game mod in the history of games and the ultimate Civ experience.
Extra Credits: Funny Hiarstyle Edition
I like it.
When you first started mentioning this system, I thought to myself "This is scorched earth tactics in game design." and when you later mentioned that, I got super happy!
You make me wonder if a game ever decided to try to use design by archeology. Like, they do this accretion for years, but then decide to use one of their dead systems again much later. Like if you suddenly needed that hyper specific resource from the base game for the 6th expansion. Nobody had bothered collecting it in years, but the new players who were getting it as they leveled up would suddenly be either ahead of the curve, or at least on the curve with the old players.
You couldn't do it often, but it would be interesting to see.
I definitely like the Idea of it!
DomSithe this happens a lot in Magic the gathering, as the game has accretion built into it in the form of rotating out what cards you can use every year. For example, the Madness mechanic, last used 13 years ago, was added to the Shadows over Innistrad expansion that came out last year
BossaNova Redstone
Oh, thats cool!
Animation had me giggling :) good work Eli!
The annualized release and 5 year plan sounds like the one-size-fits-all approach CEOs love because their MBAs all told them that's how a good business plan should look like.
Playing WoW right now feels like they just did a big accretion wipe, as referenced to Civ, with Legion. Because of school I got of WoW for most of MoP and all of WoD so coming back to Legion basically from Cataclysm it irks me how all my characters had tons of their spells taken away to make classes simpler. It made sense for most classes to get ability crunched at some level to make room for new spells, say Hunters, where most of my keyboard would be bound to an ability and I was running out of room on my action bars for spells. But then there was my Boomkin, ignoring the balance slider mechanic, ability wise we finally had a strong suit of utility and abilities and were really fun to play. Skipping forwards a few years I log onto Legion to find my main is now a fluffy immobile turret that will go oom healing to full from half hp. I won't deny most classes had it coming, action bars were getting crowded, but to this level my favorite classes feel so flat now.
The best MMO I've encountered that deals with this problem well is Final Fantasy 14, you scale down in level to old content, and running that old content gets you new rewards, a good chunk of dungeons in the game are built into the story mode and aren't optional so you learn everything incrementally as you go instead of being bombarded, and there are always veterans running that old content to help new players. There is still obsolete gear, but you can turn that in for usable currency. On the other hand, WoW just wants you to level boost to the newest expansion and skip everything built to that point. A big reason I'm against level boosting, even if the FF14 community demands it, is I think it would sabotage the entire design philosophy.
Not to mention the fact that FFXIV's levelling scale is designed around their multi-class system, so you level up significantly faster than in most other MMOs.
Oh, I just remembered something else, the primary post-game currency are 'tomestones'. Which you trade in for some of the best gear. A pattern I've noticed in FF14 is that they 'cycle' the currency, there are no more than 3 types of tomestones at a time, and when they need to introduce a new one, they phase out an older currency. The new currency can buy new things as well as everything the previous one could buy, and they allow you to turn in that old currency for the new one at a loss. Each currency caps at 2000.
Best written video of this year by far. Congrats, James.
this is true for pen and paper RPG systems too. The dark eye is one of Germans oldest RPGs existing since the 80s I think and it's in it's fifth iteration. I don't know how the first two iteration looked, I only started with the thirdand it came a LONG way. There were two big jumps, as far as I know 1 2 and three were pretty similar, they giot more complicated but were more luck based even in character creation, it was miore dungeaon crawling and the stereotypical heroes. But with 3 they started to expand this, new character started to appear: Witches, druids, buckeneer, WAY more magic users and better way to differentiate them not to mention the spells!
Then came a big cut with 4th edition where I think they rather catered the core audience rather than built for new players. they changed the whole system so that it was more custamizable, the way gamers approached the games has drstically changed since the 80s. Most people now play for character development rather than epic hero quests and the 'underdog' character is on the rise. so characters like simply smithes, baker and farmers were introduced next to the powerfull wizards and knights. They basically took everything from 3 (all magic uses, spells, world building etc) and added new layers of rules to it and added more and more contet. I was basically unaproachable for new players!
Now the 5th iteration comes out and they decided to again try to get new customers. Character creation, all the thousands of talents and spells, it was all condensed to a simple overviewable bunch.
So on the one hand this grade because even as aveteran I didn't quiet get the 4 system totally but then I look at five and I miss so much, like a favoutrite spell they didn't include ior a character that, due to simplicizing got scatched 8at least for now and you know they MIGHT add this character at some later point) like the sharizad, a magical dancer. Before they had their own kind of dance magic, totally unique, no magician, elf or druid could learn those. But because they scraped so much and it meant too much unique rules it got scratched which really annoyed me as I loved my sharizad and would have loved to convert her to the new system >.> So I guess many older players stick with 4 which they are used to...
I was just thinking that. The various editions of Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun and Exalted have a lot in common in this same manner, and I've tried to find the actual leaps and where it shed the extraneous stuff from previous editions. Dungeons & Dragons meanwhile has changed a ton between editions, at least after Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast took over, with 3.5 being an update of 3rd edition, 4E being radically different (and receiving a similar update), and 5E taking the best of both worlds and receiving a ton of beta testing over years before it got an official full release.
1 is Dirk Right
yeah many games it seems take the fifth edition as a way to sort their system out and polish it to also make it more available and understandable for new players. Shadowrun, the dark eye, dungeon and dragons....
Another fantastic episode, very educational and entertaining, thank you!!
This type of design ruined Yu-Gi-Oh and would've ruined Magic: The Gathering if they didn't get their shit together.
Sorain1 Okay that was a strong phrase, they messed up less. Many times. Such as recovering from the Urza block, or Mirroden, or Eldrazi winter... god damn that was recent
Arguably, this kind of design is strongest in games like MTG with a rotating standard. Players get new content quarterly and metagame problems don't last more than a year and a half or so. Sure, other formats get screwed, but I'm guessing a lot of MTG's profits come from drafts and standard tournaments, which are relatively safe from the bad effects of accretion.
Fair enough, I usually just play casually with my friends, which gives ourselves agency over the format and our playstyle.
Yu Gi Oh is a card game based on a manga. It was destined to die because there were never any solid mechanics in place to guide the development of the game. But yeah now they're just accreting rubbish mechanics to create new content.
XBlueM0ndayX yugioh is not 'dead' in any sense of the word people still play it and love it the amount of cards you have just improves the system it doesn't take away from it
I know I've watched a great episode when my mind is racing with ideas and analyses, all powdered with designer's excitement.
Love the trans armour!
wait til you find out the other character wears genderqueer armor!!
Ooooh, it's been a long time since we've had a guest artist. These are always fun.
Path of Exile does this pretty well F2P too and cash is only for cosmetics
Are you being serious right now? POE constantly introduces harder and harder bosses and endgame mechanics while nerfing evertyhing without any regards to the players. As a new player goign into it seeing someone with a max roll legacy shavs or kaoms heart, then finding out THEY cant have that item becuase ggg decided it was too powerful for no real reason actually causes some players to just quit. the bar is set stupidly high in poe, it might actually be WORSE then a skinnerbox model game becuase you do NOT get rewarded properly for your time, instead you get punished for making even a tiny mistake, and all builds eventually funnel down into the same basic design: Maxing defenses, stun immunity, and one single OP build that gets nerfed rather then buffing other bad builds.
This is the same problem we have in diablo 3 only most our stats come from gear instead of half from the non resettable passive skill tree. Honestly i don't think that GGG has the perspective to fix this problem because of the fact that the passive skill tree is and they want it to remain non resettable. You can't get enough data on non-optimal builds because no one wants to go through the dozens of hours to level a char up to gimp it unless they want to play something ridiculous like cast on death discharge.
I think they could balance it, by allowing you to reset your passives. It would create an environment where everyone could fiddle around with their build. Rather than just the people who spend hours crunching the numbers and figuring out where all the defensive nodes are and then maximizing dps while hitting enough of them to hit cap. Then it'd be possible to get feedback from everyone on other workable builds so they can get precision buffs to help it out while not buffing the fotm spec to out of control proportions. Ultimately the absolute highest end will always devolve into this kind of gameplay though. You see it everywhere games are played with other people, a 'meta' is developed around how the game is balanced and those highest end players always play to it. You can never kill min/maxing, but you can massively reduce the impact it has on the rest of your community.
I agree, Path of Exile is a master class in this design.
Constantly adding new features and mechanics into the game as 'leagues', which if they work are added into the core experience, and if not they are quietly swept under the carpet (as an optional map mod).
Meanwhile they do continue to polish and refine core mechanics, add skills, and create new acts to play through.
Their not always perfect, but they do well consistently and the game remains vibrant because of it.
The PoE passive can be reset ...
Morbid Eel Orbs of regret don't count. It just creates a system where the rich are the only ones who can afford to experiment.
Thinking about this, I feel it applies to game mod development. As I've noticed leaving content as it is over years will result in a loss in users. Adding new content over the old keeps users interesting. However, removing all the old results in almost as much loss. Key example, my update of a mod called ICBM that completely rewrote the base version from scratch.
I don't think this is a good idea for MMO RPGs, people that continually play those games tend to be very obsessive with the game and they notice if the new mechanics are good or not, but for more casual games, like Assassin's Creed, I think it's a good idea as long as they clean up the obsolete mechanics.
For MMO RPGs I'm not sure there is a good answer, I like the way The Elder Scrolls Online is being updated: instead of add new mechanics that power creep the old ones, they just fix and rebalance the mechanics and the big updates are more content and not more mechanics. I'm not sure if that will work on the long run, but until now I like the results.
"if you game has 12 currencies"
EVERY MMO EVER
Failbetter Games does this in moderation with Fallen London to great effect, particularly with the Flash-Lay system and often with Exceptional Stories. Of course, they also do _extremely_ delicate and expansive rebalancing when necessary. In fact, *I think their ongoing transition from the Connected system to the Favours/Renown system is fascinating enough to deserve an Extra Credits video examining it.*
fuck the bugs , keep shoving content into a broken system. thats how the devs at DE run things. namely warframe. " just keep making content guys maybe it will distract them from problems we have had for 2 years now"
also power creep runs rampant and at higher levels even though there are tons of weapons everyone uses the same ones. same with the frames, if u dont have or dont want to play as a specific frame someone wants " because meta" they just dont let u play with them. and dont even get me started on buffs and nerfs, DE has no middle ground it either gets nerfed into oblivion and unusable , or its buffed into the stratosphere and makes using something other than that weapon or frame dumb.
Acrete the Core
Have a overlayer ontop of it that allows the complexities of the Old
This is an example found in Myth2 Soulblighter.
Wherein the accretion that existed before was layered properly, but the Core of the physics system was adjusted into a mostly agreeable wrong direction. So they released the ability to use the old physics handler, and ontop of that the user can Choose to use the old accretions.
Naturally it is played out without the accretion, but with a few options you can choose to have it there.
That is the point and the approach I think is applicable to all non competitive games.
A content pack system which already exists in moddable forms, certainly helps this understanding and execution along.
It will become acessable to those new, but as they mature with the understanding they can even choose later on to play with the complexities of Old. Now more than ever is this concept accessible.
Even Some competitive games could at least relax a bit with the ability to play around for example Lol with Urf, should be enabled in custom games that have no impact on progress.
If a serialised game is now a yearly release, then why bother with a 5 year plan?
because you want the 5th entry to be as profitable and attractive as the first. So you need to heve a basic idea of where you are going.
Extra Credits is one series of videos that helps me learn new things related to game development, which is something I would like to do myself in the future. Keep up the great work!
Also, will you make an episode that discusses why developers and publishers release incomplete games and then fix them later? It's a sleazy practice and I can't exactly understand the reasoning for it. If you already did, can you link? I can't seem to find it in your videos.
For a prime example of accretion gone horribly wrong, read up on the history of Star Wars Galaxies.
Star Wars Galaxies was less an example of accretion and more an example of designing around money. The thing that truly killed Galaxies was the NGE which just simplified the HELL out of the game in the hopes it would bring in new people. But what it really did was destroy the love the current players had for the game.
Some games introduce mechanics in certain locations, which is one solution to the problem.
Tutorial levels are still relevant, and new content is pumped into the game!
Examples are the map machine in PoE, or the flying mounts in WoW (pre cataclysm those where available only past the portal, forgot the name of the map).
I feel like I've seen too much MMO content in this channel lately.
This applies to non-MMOs a lot too.
Most of their concrete examples were non-MMO serialized games.
MMo's are probably the hardest games to get right and also draw a lot of attention.
I don't think anyone got this, but the reference to the Scorched-Earth Policy was on point. 10/10
This is exactly what Hearthstone is doing.
First legendary I ever crafted was Dr Boom, 3 days later they announced he would be getting retired.
The second legendary I ever crafted was Yogg.
Fuck blizzard.
SOOOO THIS!
They create new mecanics that will probably last only one cicle and will never be seen again. You will never see a c'thun card again in a new expansion, not because it's bad or anything, but because it's just bound to c'thun and therefore will become obsolete.
But we have also seen if a (general enough) concept proves to be good then they are willing to expand on it (discover). If not... then they drop it like the joust mechanic.
Oh I realy hope jade golems will be good and be kept, I realy like the concept.
This video summarizes all the issues I have with Warframe in 9 minutes. This is awesome, it's in words! Thanks EC.
I love the player wearing the trans pride flag colors!
Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed that! :D
Thanks for tossing us trans gamers a bone, Eli ❤️
+Trav Yay! More people who noticed!
Rudofaux It's a flag that's a symbol of pride for transgender people like myself. If gay people have the rainbow flag, we have the trans flag.
+Trav A timestamp would be useful :P
Personally, the solution to accretion with regards to new players, especially where it is accrued over multiple distinct game releases, is backwards compatibility, or updating the old games to be compatible with new hardware/operating systems. Usually there is a story that goes along with each game, and if the game is particularly good, then each new release will advance the story, as well as the game mechanics and game content. So a brand new player, if they're trying to jump into the latest game, might not even know what's going on at that point in the story, and if they like what they see, will probably want to go back to the beginning and experience the story from there. It's kinda like picking up Return of the King, and trying to start from there. It's a good book, with lots of big battles, but if you don't go back and start with The Hobbit, or at LEAST The Fellowship of The Ring, then you're not getting the whole story, or the whole experience.
I bring some personal desire to this comment: I've been a fan of the MechWarrior series of video games, but I have to maintain an old Windows XP laptop in order to play any of them, because they're not compatible with Windows 8 or Windows 10.
Or how about you do not shit our sequels for a game or uninspired clones every year? How is that for a solution
I like what someone from Fraxis has said about the development of Civilization VI. I'm paraphrasing but he said they aim to keep 1/3rd the game same as before, tweak and improve 1/3rd and redo the last 1/3rd from scratch. I think it worked out great and gave me both the game I loved as well as a fresh design.
Runescape is a prime example of this going wrong. There is an atrocious amount of dead content in the game, plenty of things that are just straight up unfinished, and some parts of the game that are just an utter slog to work through, with almost no point to them. They could go and dedicate some time to fixing these, but nope, instead of going back to actually make those old, fun things popular again, they instead just keep jingling keys in the opposite direction. Jingling keys to distract the masses from the dumpster fire in the corner.
But what concerns me more is the possibility that they're doing this method on purpose, because it's profitable in more ways than one. Instead of this happening solely through new updates, they're now also scorching the earth with microtransactions instead. "Oh, is Agility woefully outdated, nearly useless and a pain to train for you? HERE, SPEND LOADS ON THIS MTX LOTTERY TO GET THE EXP YOU NEED INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY TRAINING IT." Needless to say, this tactic has rendered all the community-based training methods a barren wasteland, so it ends up being even more lonely and soul destroying...possibly giving more people more reason to spend. It's...disquieting.
The worst thing you can do to an MMO is to make playing it feel lonely.
Superdark33 Yep, and it feels extra bitter when you know the lonliness was both caused by, and in service to, the excessive moneygrubbing.
***** Ive played runescape for many years, ive quit just before the implementation of new combat and after that real money shop updates. Its been part of my life for a long time and seeing it get ruined by baseless greed...
Afaik, the people responsible are some investor group that is known for doing it for other game companies like Nexon (maple story).
Superdark33 YUP. They've been walked over by two different investors. The ones that caused it to begin with were Insight Venture Partners, I believe, but the ones that are REALLY eviscerating it right now are Hongda Mining Company. Ie, a mining company from China. Needless to say, it's gotten a lot more aggressive recently. How aggressive? They are releasing four - yes, FOUR - tradable rare items through the MTX lottery, available for one day only.
God help us all.
***** a fucking mining company from china. literal slavedrivers are deciding where a game should go.
Really love how you just nailed why so many veteran players hated Civ IV. I'm a major strategy fan but I'd never got round to Civ IV and I ended up loving Civ V and could never understand the dislike.
so ive been working on a game concept for a while now and about half a year ago a group of me and some of my friends got a demo functioning for a class project we had but the funny thing is what are over arching idea sounds exactly like the solution to accretion the idea is that there is a core mechanic system and everything gets wrapped onto it allowing for limitless expansion without the worry that new players wont be able to jump in. while also allowing for those who might start off right at the bat new and exciting things as more is added on
I definitely see this in World of Warcraft. I was trying to figure out what they'd do with Artifact Weapons in the next expansion, then I realized they'd just do what they did to Garrisons (leave them behind in Draenor) and Draenor Perks (deleted entirely). I'm accustomed to content from previous expansions getting left behind, but I guess mechanics are the new content.
(Also, I love Timewalking dungeons for bringing back old content!)
As players it is thus our job to be patient with/support the creators of what we love, so the content can be crafted better.
Interesting seeing this now. Especially the civ 4 > civ 5 situation.
So one of my favorite game developers Paradox felt they had this issue with Stellaris - they kept on adding new features and the old ones just weren't keeping up and adapting them was becoming expensive.
So they did sort of what happened with civ4>civ5, they're reworking the entire game, getting rid of entire mechanics, adding slimmed down versions - making it actually accessible to new players while making new content actually more alongside the old content, rather than on top of it.
But it's interesting to see this because Stellaris was released over a year ago and has had a few expansions. It's just interesting to see companies believe it's still viable to make these massive changes mid-development which is a huge risk!
I think a solution to part of the problem with this might be the idea of introducing a more fluid U.I. What I mean by this is that while you don't actually get rid of any elements, you do put in mechanisms to make older feature less prominent in U.I. and make newer features more easily accessible to newer players.
An easy example would be currency in the hud, which you don't have to show the player every single kind of currency, just the currency that they currently have. A new player coming into the game would probably be more likely to receive a newer currency early on and that's what would be displayed, if a player has multiple types of currency only show the currency that he or she has the most of with a pop out menu that would show you all of it and let you pick one that you're concerned about.
If you bury a feature significantly enough you could in the future concoct a plan to reuse that feature later on.
Just want to say: I started with Civ 5 when it was on huge sale just before 6 came out. I'm really glad I did and have a lot of fun with it. I'm also very glad that the "reset" it because had it been 4 I might have not spent much time on it dealing with all of the extra. Really looking forward to when 6 has more expansions and it's price drops or a big sale hits
I have a _stellar_ example of accretion in a triple-A MMO - and the problems that can ensue from this approach - for your consideration:
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.
Let's start with the best example: the endgame currency "Allagan Tomestones." These were rewards from level-cap quests and endgame dungeons from the initial release onward, but as of now the game is on its _eighth form_ of these. The first one was released in patch 2.0 (technically FFXIV:ARR's initial release) and was obsoleted in patch 2.2. The second also debuted in patch 2.0 but this time lasted to patch 2.4. When the 3.0 patch - the expansion "Heavensward" - was released it invalidated and obsoleted a third while adding another. A bugfix patch, 3.05, added yet another. By the current patch, three remain and five have come and gone.
As a side effect of this, the gear these units purchased is either literally unobtainable (as in the vendors no longer sell it) or literally useless (as vendors sell better gear that takes just as long to get using the latest currency iteration). Each time they obsolete a tomestone, they give players a limited window to trade them in (at a pretty big loss, usually 8-to-1) for the new tomestone and they also either stop carrying the gear the old tomestones used to buy or simply obsolete the gear as well by offering gear that skips over its predecessor in terms of stats.
As a side effect of _this_, in turn, when Heavensward was released Square Enix noticed a substantial gulf was opening up between the early-adoption playerbase (players that were there since day one or earlier through closed/open beta) and the new growth playerbase (players joining the game in large part because of Heavensward's strong reviews). Players that went into the expansion already at level cap and with some to substantial endgame-content experience were charging headlong into the additional endgame content and ignoring the early-endgame stuff the newcomers were working toward, and quite quickly it became apparent that more and more people were running into a content wall when they reached early-endgame only to find that the only other people working that content were also at their same level of experience (or, more commonly, worse) and all of the more skilled players had moved on. For example, a dungeon series called "The Binding Coil of Bahamut," once the actual end of the game's endgame progression, was worked aggressively on a near-constant rotation by practically every endgame group playing the game, but after Heavensward, Binding Coil was almost completely abandoned and players just reaching this level of play found themselves searching for hours, days, even weeks for enough of a party to make a single run through, and this content was still tough enough to require repeat efforts to defeat. Finally, this in turn led to people skipping the old content because the grinding they had to resort to ended up pulling them past that stage enough to catch up with the more experienced players, and the play times in some dungeons began to drop dramatically.
Square Enix had to start incentivizing the past content to get enough experienced players to backtrack to help the less experienced players get through. They ended up adding mentoring (to coerce endgamers to even give a shit about new players), altered level-reduction capping and even added soloing to make romping back through old content as an endgamer more interesting, began requiring retreads through old content for daily/weekly quests, and so on in order to draw the level sixties to give the level thirties more than a passing glance as they ran between late-endgame dungeons. Most recently, Square Enix had to revamp the game's relic-weapon system in the game to make it worth doing for late-endgamers, but in doing so they effectively obsoleted the previous forms of this, and now early-endgamers practically skip over what used to be a major longterm play goal in the game.
FFXIV:ARR is pretty much the epitome of scorched-earth/landfill updating, and it's a major title from a major studio with serious money behind it.
Phantasy Star Online 2 has this problem, but it's still got the same dev team working on it now than it did at launch.
So many new features are added that replace old features. The game has a crafting system, and recently they added a new feature that lets you mine for resources when on missions. You'd THINK they'd integrate this with crafting. They didn't.
Instead, the items you get are used to make Rings and Food. Food for temp buffs, Rings (a new armour type added in the same expansion) that give you a way to extend and progress your character further, without them needing to increase the level cap.
Same goes for the new way of levelling up weapons, which only applies to NT, New Type, weapons.
NT weapons are exactly the same as the old weapons, just with "-NT" tacked onto the end. These level up by feeding them weapons instead of using Grinders to level them up.
But the old weapons still exist and can still drop.
Its layer upon layer upon layer of new mechanics that don't in any way connect with older mechanics.
The fact that legacy servers existed for WOW and attracted such a big player base is a good illustration of the limits of accretion game design.
To provide a counterpoint to James' perspective, there have been some games which turn away long time players with accretion, as mentioned when it is done poorly. An example I can think of is the famous f2p MMO Maplestory which went out of their way to constantly outdate past characters multiple times. At one point of the game (perhaps it's been updated, I do know it was rebooted) there were so many classes, both players new and old didn't really have a good idea of what class to choose or what to explore. The updated classes were updated to the point where you literally only had to tape down one or two buttons to play the game/level up, you could even AFK through a majority of the content and the game became a shell of its former self. Since the optimal way to level was to pretty much do nothing, all of the varied, well designed world/lore building quests and even some of the events were ignored. Even social hubs where players would stop in between grinds/quests to do some awesome socializing were abandoned simply because they outlevelled the social hub's location within an instant, where as before it'd be optimal to stick around the area. It made the game a shell of its former self and removed most of the things that made it interesting.
Kinda funny you mention Civ V, I just picked it up and its my first Civ game. For being a game to try to get new players in they really could do with re-working the tutorial system. Fun game, but you basically have to figure it out for yourself.