Asymmetry in games, or why a lot of content is bad

In the heading "Direct text" The author expresses exclusively his own opinion, which may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial office. He is free to do this as you like and in any format convenient for himself. Everything is possible here.

This is an adaptationtext made with the permission of the author.

Hi, my name is Kit Burgun, I'm the author of the games Auro And 100 Rogues And I'll tell you about such a concept as asymmetry in video games. It means unequal abilities in one or more players from the very beginning of the party. Characters Street Fighter , races in Starcraft , decks in Magic: The Gathering – All of them are suitable for the definition of video game asymmetry (and for brevity different objects will further be called just characters).

I will make clarity: asymmetry that occurs during the game (for example, I ate all your pawns, and you did not get a single one mine), this is a completely different matter and is not considered in the text. Some types of “innate” asymmetry – as, say, in games where one of the parties initiates initially and the other defends ( Counter-STRIKE ), – I will also bypass, mainly because I do not see problems in them.

The analysis deserves what I call "video game asymmetry". It gives players to choose asymmetric forces to taste even before the game itself begins. Therefore, here I will explain what the problems of such asymmetry are, and I will offer several ideas on its proper use.

As they usually think about asymmetry

► In order to play Street Fighter at least at least at least anyway, you need to understand the meta-game.

► some characters are better against others, and vice versa.

First, let's talk about what is happening now and why. Where did the idea of ​​choosing a character come from before the start of the game? In chess, go and other abstract games there is nothing of the kind. A member of a football or baseball team does not choose a “set of abilities” before the start of the match. He cannot become fast in one match, and in another hardy. The coach or manager of the team chooses in such a situation, while this sports manager is looking for the best players to his team, and does not choose from the group of strategically equal elements in accordance with his preferences, experience and other personal factors.

Asymmetric model now prevails in the design of games of all shapes and sizes. Why? I studied this issue, talked about this topic with many people, and here are the main arguments that bring me again and again.

"Adds diversity". The first answer to the question is why the characters are in the game – "for a variety". The main idea is that in the absence of asymmetric forces, the game is exhausted too quickly. There are those who believe that the more diversity, the better, and supports more and more new content additives to the game system.

"So easier to master the game". Everything is simple and clear here: if you divide the game between the characters and allow you to play only for someone alone, it will be enough for the player to master only the party of this character.

► In chess uniform rules for both players, so that the party begins on equal terms.

► a similar story and with go – the system works perfectly without any bells and whistles.

"Supports different game manner". Each player has his own style – a tendency to certain solutions, the level of aggression and other. Here they want to tell us that you can choose a character that is most suitable for your manner of the game, and claim that this is good.

"Supports players' preferences". Suppose you adore Starcraft, but you can’t stand terrane-for some reason you are boring to play for their death. That's great, now you can play for grains or protosss, and you can’t touch the terrans at all.

Countrops

► There are characters of different classes in Team Fortress, and if it arises, then when laying the command.

I have objections to almost all of the above points – or at least for the assumptions on which they are built.

"Adds diversity". We already have non -aminal games, the interest in which persists for years – designer tables like Puerto Rico or Through The Desert and even the oldest chess and go. In many of these games, interest and diversity are supported simply due to a good, strong set of rules.

The arguments about the "diversity" proceed from the assumption that the system itself – without content content – cannot be interesting at all. Supporters of this point of view simply cannot imagine a fairly deep game system, which contains great opportunities for a variety. They can be understood: we still only discover the “interactive system design”, and, frankly, so far we are mostly not very exciting systems. In order to take possession of the attention of an adult for a long time, they need something additional-asymmetry, technical bells flashes, an important social message … But it’s not at all difficult to imagine that we will be much better over time, much better.

► Mortal Kombat X proposes to choose not only the character, but also its variation between the fight.

"So easier to master the game". I agree, there is something in it. But in the modern performance, the aggregate influence of video game asymmetry on ease of learning is rather negative – mainly because this approach encourages designers to introduce too many content into the system. To begin with, it is enough to master one character – excellent, but in order to play properly, you will have to learn all the rules, and not just with regard to one character. There are usually a lot of characters in such games. That is, in practice we have an easy start and a very long distance for mastering the game.

"Supports different game manner". Symmetric games can also. Any relatively deep game with sufficient expanse for the strategy supports a variety of manners.

And in general, is it really good – to encourage and support the player manner? In my opinion, games are in many ways training, often learning non -standard, paradoxical strategies that help play better. Suppose you are by nature Magic Reels Casino an aggressive player who prefers to break forward. And in a strategic game you may need to control yourself: learn how not to give in to impulses. Adapt to someone's manner of game, for me, is like adapt to weak players. Players, regardless of their character, should be interested in the optimal strategy.

"Supports players' preferences". This argument is also easily disputed. For example, I prefer not to play against Ryu – does this mean that I need to protect me from a fight with him? And if I prefer that Ryu throws me exclusively with a hudox? And if I prefer to play only against players, which is much weaker than me? I believe that there is a place for settings in the game, but it should be something like “turn on or off music” or “change the size of the window”.

► Starcraft just beat different races perfectly – behind each there was a separate logic.

► Someone hated protosss and their peculiar combat units, but we are jerking off the graves and their crazy microcontrol.

It seems to me that partly the attachment of “Video games – broken toys” is partly here; We are used to playing with our strategies. The idea of ​​a delicate and optimized strategic game, which does not tolerate interference in its own rules, is still somewhat alien to the world of video games.

Finally, the principle “yes players can simply not play in those parts of the game that they don’t like” allows designers to relax and rivet mediocre and simply poor -quality content. In the end, don't like it – don't play! This approach has several problems, and it is easiest to explain one thing here: a trap of “bad characters”. Someone will undertake to play for such a character, not knowing in advance that he is bad, and will lose a lot of time on this.

These are my objections to popular arguments in support of video game asymmetry. But I see other problems with this design model.

How to choose?

► Over the years, Dota has already developed a system in which it is interesting to play.

► To master all Moba, you will have to spend more than one hundred hours.

Over time, the following argument against asymmetry is gaining more and more power: how to choose which character to play? Suppose we have fighting in a couple of dozen characters. Let them, in principle, are balanced (serious assumption, but still allowed). And suppose you have a “clean” choice-without looking at the meta-game and the choice of an opponent.

Such a choice makes the player make a decision in conflicting interests: play for someone else to win, or for someone with whom the most interesting game can turn out? In fact, the choice between the game for winning and high -quality game experience.

Here, many people make a big mistake, believing this with an “interesting choice”. But in strategic games, an interesting choice is a choice of several strategies or tactics, and not between the strategy and something else from the outside, otherwise it suddenly is better there.

I believe that the work of the designer’s honor is to never put players in such a position. “Strong” choice should always be “interesting”. In game interactions, many players are already adhering to this layout.

► In addition to the right choice of characters, we must not forget about the global layout of the team.

► For each race in Starcraft there are several tired strategies, and it is important to find out in time at what stage of the game the enemy will get to attack.

The problem is aggravated by the fact that in reality the characters are far from always balanced relative to each other, and the player is left again, well, a couple of characters to choose from, and he again faces the choice “either profitable or fun”. For example, Kilik from Soulcalibur is brutally effective, but playing for it is not as fun as, for example, for Voldo.

Even if you say: “Forget about entertainment, play winning! Choose strategically!" – a strategic aspect here, in fact, is insignificant. You have no idea how the match will turn out – you choose everything at once and blindly, so your choice is based on the simplest “who is the best characters or who is played best to me”.

Apologies of video game asymmetry argue that the game needs all ten, twenty, fifty characters or how many of them are there. But if this is really so, why friends and I can play normally only in the conditional "Ryu against Ryu"?

Because we ourselves choose what is more posar? But if so, why the system allows us to choose a boredom at all? There are no guarantees that the players realize that this is precisely this is “more brutal”; They can decide that this is a very common thing – and why not? In this case, your game will be much poorer for them, but not through their fault!

► From year to year in Magic, the main skeleton of cards wanders, but new mechanics are still making the game.

► The problem of MTG is that new mechanics appear with each set of cards, and for the balance you need to introduce restrictions on old cards.

Maybe my example is completely out of the ordinary, but look: most players play in two or four characters or so. So, two rival players (and then provided that their characters do not coincide) at best cover a quarter of the game. I believe that most players (we are not talking about professionals, of course) just passes by 80-90% of the characters. Something is not like an effective design. Briefly: if the “diversity” granted by asymmetry is extremely important why it is so easy to spit on it?

All and not at once

Few of the designers can resist the temptation to add to the game more, and more and even more content. In today's games dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of asymmetric characters, and as a result, everyone has to master, and the difficulty of balancing such a game increases exponally.

Partly the problem is that the features of this design model force designers to perceive characters in isolation from a set of game rules. Therefore, some efforts go to the development of the system, and a sea of ​​strength and means-to work on characters, on content, if you like.

Such a desire to perceive content in isolation from the system is harmful, incorrect and, in my opinion, is actively fueled by video game asymmetry. There is no content in strategies, they have a system: the main mechanism, the goal, as necessary – auxiliary mechanisms … and that's it.

An annoying irony here, of course, lies in the fact that many games of this kind (Magic: The Gathering, probably can serve as a standard), can boast of little in concerning the system itself, gameplay. To remain afloat, they need constant infusion of new content, and as a result you get a “1000 in 1” package in high degree of superficial games instead of one, but strong (development, not deeper).

Solutions

► The only thing that is more or less stable in Magic is the separation of ideology by color. Reds go to Bern, the blue are inclined to control.

► In Guilty Gear, characters differ extremely strongly – God forbid to release Ninuff Ninja Ninja against the huge Potemkin.

Before I move on to the decisions, I note: my ideas often criticize because readers try on my decisions and advice on existing design. I am clarified: what I will say now, will not work at Starcraft, Street Fighter, Dota and MTG. It should be in the project from the very beginning and serve as the basis for design. Then, as a result, we will get systems, inevitably and in many respects sharply excellent from all today's games.

Make a player choose a character in arbitrary order . It works like this: you press the "Play" button, you randomly give out a character, and the game begins. In a single game, a way out of the session due to the fact that you did not like the character received, counts for defeat (and here, of course, you will need something like an ELO rating). This approach has a lot of advantages – we avoid a situation in which players are forced to choose between strategically profitable and potentially interesting.

Players have to deal with the whole game completely, and not with it. The need for sophisticated tournament rules on meta-game and the correct choice of a character that would neutralize the opponent is no longer. In addition, this approach is faster. Even if you have a few seconds to choose a character, for 1000 matches time accumulates!

Forcedly random characters are fast, simply and not just new. In board games like Agricola at the beginning of the game you get a random set of cards that make up a kind of “character”. And League of Legends has a popular Aram modification that gives you a random character for the game. There remains a small space for maneuver (sometimes you can replay a character or change with other players), but even without it everything works fine, and Aram was not even conceived when creating a game!

► In mugen it is better to forget about the balance and just press the buttons.

► The orcs and people in Warcraft were almost no different from each other.

Make fewer characters . You should not do very few characters – the main thing is that they should be enough for the mechanic to reveal to the proper extent. My advice: start with three or four and add as necessary. If you exceed twenty-something probably went wrong. Less than ten is a very reasonable amount, and this is why: if there are less than ten characters, the chances of balancing the game go from the category of the impossible to the category “There are no guarantees, but if you sweat properly, then everything is possible”.

Why do not be afraid of accidents

► The difference in the second part was in heavy fighters – the paladins were treated, the Ogra fell into a rage.

► SSBB on the Internet walks a million pictures with an explanation which character is best.

There is such an argument – forced accidents complicate the development of the game, because so players have to learn to handle all the characters before they can play correctly. I can offer at least four methods for solving this problem.

A small number of characters – The smaller has to study. If the game has four characters, it is not so difficult to master them all.

General simplicity of design. People are used to the fact that a character is a set of twenty to five unique movements, hung with clusters of unique hitboxes, and as a result, five to ten pages of conditional rules are assigned to each character, binding on study. I would advise you to make characters who are easy to master, but at the same time it would not be easy to achieve skill with them.

► Before returning to Hearthstone, you should carefully study the last trends – suddenly your deck has long gone out of fashion?

► In Hearthstone, certain archetypes of the decks have already developed, and now it is important to observe the meta-game.

Low threshold of execution. It is quite clear why the prospects of forced accident in, for example, Street Fighter make the players tremble: you have to learn all the abstruse key combinations and fill your hand in order to be able to introduce them at all. The very concept of such excessive complexity of movements must be thrown out as soon as possible in a historical trash.

Open the rules gradually. You can start a game with access to only one character or to two, then open the third, fourth, and so on.

If game designers become guided by these principles (as I plan and already do – starting with Auro), we will get games that are easy to master and balance.

► In Overwatch, the problem of asymmetry was solved simply – the character can be changed right during the match.

Even if I didn’t convince you, dear readers, still try to put a mental experiment. Imagine that you need to develop a game with four characters and a forced accident. What else would you choose or use in support of such a concept? I think that the proposed principles will help designers do what they have to do for a long time: create simple and strong gaming systems that are easy to master, but which are difficult to master perfectly.