EPTForeword
The objective of any game is to have fun. Achieving mastery over different aspects of a game, and more generally over different aspects of life, is fun for many people. Being able to learn new things that are hard that can’t be mastered in just a few minutes and do something that not everyone can do, is enjoyable.
Good game design allows players to develop skills to control a game, and master it over a long period of time, giving players a sense of achievement. But game design goes beyond simply creating a series of increasingly difficult challenges, it also about maximizing the reward of completing challenges by minimizing frustrations. Modern game design rewards player actions that move a player closer to mastery, and therefore not only should a player feel a sense of achievement when they master a game, but the process of mastering a game is also fun and rewarding.
Let’s face it: making mistakes is frustrating, but when you feel like you can’t get anything wrong, you feel like you’re on top of the world and you want to keep going.
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The field of psychology has made inroads into modern game design due to the focus on reducing frustration and maximizing reward in order to entice players to play. There is a good reason League of Legends had a game designer with a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience. With a degree in both psychology and IT, I’ve had great success creating games and activities that motivate troubled youths and developmentally disabled kids to learn life skills. One technique that is particularly motivating is errorless learning.
Errorless learning is a technique used in many educational settings that prevents the learner from giving an incorrect response in a variety of ways. In some cases, the idea is make the correct response very obvious to the learner and slowly work step by step (the speed depending on the ability of the learner) until mastery has been achieved.
As renowned psychologist B.F Skinner explains: “errors are not necessary for learning to occur. Errors are not a function of learning or vice versa nor are they blamed on the learner. Errors are a function of poor analysis of behavior, a poorly designed shaping program, moving too fast from step to step in the program, and the lack of the prerequisite behavior necessary for success in the program."
Research has shown that errorless learning helps build self-esteem, is enjoyable and rewarding for learners and shortens the time it takes for to master something compared to more traditional techniques. Many language learning software programs use errorless learning techniques because they are highly effective, and make learning fun.
So how can any of this apply to StarCraft II? Well, good game design is about maximizing the reward of completing increasingly difficult challenges while minimizing frustrations. So whether you are trying to master a difficult game or a language, you’ll be more likely to stick with it and have more fun doing it if errors and frustrations are minimized and you feel like you’re making progress.
However, if your experience is error-riddled and frustrating, especially if you’re doing it for fun, then you’ll be more likely to quit, though, importantly, it does not mean you will quit. And these are not just my ideas; they are the ideas of decades of research.
It is important to note that applying some errorless learning technique to game design does not mean errors will not occur in the game, that player errors will be prevented, or that the game will become easier or watered down. It simply means the process of actually playing a game will be more enjoyable because it will give players a sense of mastery and achievement without unnecessary frustration. Unfortunately, there are many mechanics in StarCraft II that are unnecessarily frustrating.
The objective of this series is to clearly explain the game design decisions Blizzard has made that violate the basic premises of good game design, namely that mastery of difficult things is fun and frustrating elements should be minimized. I will also suggest alternative game design ideas that would help to make StarCraft fun again by enhancing the experience of mastering StarCraft II.
Power without Gameplay: Photon Overcharge
At Blizzcon 2011, Dustin Browder explained that Photon Overcharge (originally called Purify) was designed to “allow you to defend against a lot of, who are we kidding, a lot of Terran cheese.” During that time, there was one cheese in particular, the 1-1-1, that was ravaging Protoss players with a combination of Tanks, Marines and Banshees. Thus, Photon Overcharge was given extreme range (13), in order to allow a Nexus to be able to counter sieged up Tanks (the design still sounds as preposterous to me today as it did back then).
Additionally, Photon Overcharge was intended to give Protoss a defensive tool for early aggression in PvP. While Terran and Zerg could easily afford to add Bunkers or Spine Crawlers in their mirrors to give the defender an advantage, Photon Cannons were prohibitively expensive early and thus not used defensively in early game PvP. In order for Photon Overcharge to have a meaningful effect in PvP, it required high DPS due to the durability of Protoss units, which had the side effect of being devastating to units of Zerg and Terran.
The result of Photon Overcharge was that it gave Protoss a powerful defensive tool that required almost no micro to use. Simply press F, click on a Nexus or Pylon and voilà!
But not all was good, Riot explicitly warned us about this kind of game design years ago:
On October 15 2010 Zileas wrote:
Power Without Gameplay
This is when we give a big benefit in a way that players don't find satisfying or don't notice. The classic example of this is team benefit Auras. In general, other players don't value the aura you give them very much, and you don't value it much either -- even though auras can win games. As a REALLY general example, I would say that players value a +50 armor aura only about twice as much as a +10 armor aura... Even though +50 is 5x better. Another example would be comparing a +10 damage aura to a skill that every 10 seconds gives flaming weapons that make +30 damage to all teammates next attack (with fire and explosions!). I am pretty sure that most players are WAY more excited about the fiery weapons buff, even though the strength is lower overall.
The problem with using a "power without gameplay" mechanic is that you tend to have to 'over-buff' the mechanic and create a game balance problem before people appreciate it. As a result, we tend to keep Auras weak, and/or avoid them altogether, and/or pair them on an active/passive where the active is very strong and satisfying, so that the passive is more strategic around character choice. For example, Sona's auras are all quite weak -- because at weak values they ARE appreciated properly.
Power Without Gameplay
This is when we give a big benefit in a way that players don't find satisfying or don't notice. The classic example of this is team benefit Auras. In general, other players don't value the aura you give them very much, and you don't value it much either -- even though auras can win games. As a REALLY general example, I would say that players value a +50 armor aura only about twice as much as a +10 armor aura... Even though +50 is 5x better. Another example would be comparing a +10 damage aura to a skill that every 10 seconds gives flaming weapons that make +30 damage to all teammates next attack (with fire and explosions!). I am pretty sure that most players are WAY more excited about the fiery weapons buff, even though the strength is lower overall.
The problem with using a "power without gameplay" mechanic is that you tend to have to 'over-buff' the mechanic and create a game balance problem before people appreciate it. As a result, we tend to keep Auras weak, and/or avoid them altogether, and/or pair them on an active/passive where the active is very strong and satisfying, so that the passive is more strategic around character choice. For example, Sona's auras are all quite weak -- because at weak values they ARE appreciated properly.
Zileas’s point is that if a player doesn’t have control over something, they won’t notice it much unless it is so powerful they can’t help but notice it. If Photon Overcharge did 2 damage a shot, it would often be ignored. But it doesn’t, because power without gameplay mechanics need to be over buffed as Zileas said, so it does huge damage* and forces players to respect it. And again, without control there can be no mastery, so it provides nothing for players to master.
* Photon Overcharge does 42 DPS, for comparison a Photon Cannon does 22 DPS and a Carrier does 37.5 DPS.
It could be argued that using Photon Overcharge does require some skill. You have to build a MSC, you have to position pylons and cast the ability. But the same can be said about auras: you need to pick a champion with an aura, you need to level it, and you need to position the champion so the aura benefits other champions in team fights. Ultimately, Photon Overcharge provides immense power with very little player input (it provides so little control so it isn’t hard to master), giving players on both sides less to master in the game.
Prior to defending with Photon Overcharge, defending as Protoss player required keen scouting, tight build order timings, quick decisions in what types of units to build, and impeccable micro. While defending today still requires these same skills, they don’t nearly need to be as sharp and the level of skill necessary to hold off certain attacks is dramatically less.
Photon Overcharge rendered so many early attacks pointless; players simply didn’t attack as much in the early game.
A one base three barracks push in WOL was a powerful push; it took proper scouting to detect and proper unit control to hold as a Protoss player. And as a Terran, the success of that push was dependent on good unit control as well.
Photon Overcharge was so powerful at halting early aggression that it became part of the equation that led the early game at a high level to become dull and stale. It pigeon holed defensive strategy for Protoss, removing the flexibility of being able to use the same units for defense as offense, and gave free expansions which increased the pace of the game. Blizzard then tried to add excitement to the early game with new “harass” units, made specifically for killing workers. Again, the problem with this approach is that it pigeon holed strategy: nothing outside of a small number of specific harass plays were effective early at a high level. And once defending those early harass strategies was figured out, the game got stale again. Precisely carving out a role for units and abilities is lazy game design that does not encourage strategy, innovation, or mastery.
A stale early game led Blizzard to rush us through the early game in LOTV with a 12 worker economy because there was nothing to master anymore in the early game. Protoss had power without gameplay, and it was boring for Protoss players and their opponents.
We play games and watch sports for moments of uncertainty, where control and mastery decide the game. When a pass carves thru the defense and lands at the feet of Lionel Messi with one defender and the goal keeper to beat, no one knows what will happen and that is why we watch. Power without gameplay in soccer would be like the coach being able to put up a concrete wall in front of his goal for 30 seconds once a game. That is what Photon Overcharge does to StarCraft, it ruins moments where unit control can shine, where a human can demonstrate their mastery of the game.
We watch and play StarCraft for moments like this:
The sickest nerd chills that Artosis had (you can hear the genuine excitement in his voice) the amazing micro from both players, the uncertainty of who would win such a close match, all of that wouldn’t have happened if Photon Overcharge was in the game, because power without gameplay creates predictable results. White-Ra would have held easily. When there is no control, there is nothing learn, nothing to try, and nothing to do extremely well. So there is nothing to master. And the game isn’t as fun.
The result is that that Photon Overcharge created a game balance problem in StarCraft II, just as Zileas foretold: “The problem with using a "power without gameplay" mechanic is that you tend to have to 'over-buff' the mechanic and create a game balance problem before people appreciate it.”
The Return of the Shield Battery
Replacing Photon Overcharge with the Shield Battery returns control the players, and provides power with gameplay.
In some ways, the Shield Battery is like the Bunker, which essentially gives 4 Terran units a repairable 400 HP shield that must be broken before any of them can take damage, at the cost of their movement. The Bunker is a good design because it forces players to actually build units in order to defend, and those units can then be used to attack or harass if their opponent is being greedy. In that way, it discourages turtling with fixed defense.
The Shield Battery is actually a better design than the bunker because it doesn’t immobilize units, so they can still be microed. Thus, defending still requires micro, unit positioning, splitting, kiting, and casting abilities. To prevent it from being used offensively, it could start with 0 energy if not built within X range of a Nexus. Alternatively, it could be an ability on the Nexus, turning a Pylon within X range into a Shield Battery.
Just like the Bunker, the Shield Battery forces unit production, which means less gets poured into economic expansion, which slows down the game. It also gives more opportunities for control, since you have mobile units. If you find out your opponent is being greedy, you can attack or harass, which leads to your opponent building more units pre-emptively, further smoothing out the pace of the game. Finally, though Photon Overcharge encourages greedy expanding for both the player using it and his opponent which rapidly increases the pace of the game, the Shield Battery does not.
Isn’t it ironic that adding more things for players to control in the game, would in the end, slow down the game and make it more manageable?
Imagine the game between White-Ra and MC without Force Fields, but with Photon Overcharge. White-Ra’s defense would have mainly relied upon the power of Photon Overcharge. Sure, he might have had some units to micro, but the main power of his defense would have come from Photon Overcharge. Photon Overcharge decides who wins, predictably so.
Now imagine that fight without Force Fields but with Shield Batteries. MC would have come up the ramp without the possibility of being blocked by a Force Field, and micro battle would have been intense. Shield Batteries would provide a defenders advantage, but one that MC could mitigate by focusing down units quickly. Focus fire of course can be mitigated by micro too, pulling back units that are being focused. Control decides who wins. Mastery decides who wins. Isn’t that superior to what we have now, or even what we had in WOL?
On January 15 2017 14:30 Shellshock wrote:
I mean people have been telling them for years that the game moved too fast and took a lot of skirmishes and micro situations out of the game. they responded by giving half the units a speed buff and adding more terrible terrible damage ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean people have been telling them for years that the game moved too fast and took a lot of skirmishes and micro situations out of the game. they responded by giving half the units a speed buff and adding more terrible terrible damage ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Of course simply removing the MSC or Photon Overcharge and replacing it with the Shield Battery would not help balance game because the game has been balanced around it. However, we can’t fix all of the problems that stem Photon Overcharge without removing it, so it is a great place to start, especially since the Adept provides Protoss with a powerful Gateway unit.
The Poorly Designed Gateway
Let’s return for a second to the reason why Photon Overcharge exists, though this may be controversial: the Terran cheeses that Browder referenced were effective against the Protoss in the first place because of the weakness Gateway units had against certain Terran units or upgrades, such as Banshees and Tanks, or Stim and Combat Shields. Buffing Gateway units seemed out of the question because of the power of early Warp Gate pushes and Force Field.
But that was the right solution. The solution was parity: give Gateway units early upgrades, just like Marines, Marauders and Zerglings have. When Warp Gate finished Protoss has everything they needed to attack early game and was very strong at that point. But Protoss became weaker once the other races had their early upgrades, and remained vulnerable until Colossus or Storm was out. The window was huge, and timings like the 1-1-1 exploited it.
Upgrades at the Cybercore could have allowed Protoss units to be weaker when Warp Gate finished, but then stronger later, so Gateway units would scale better and the 1-1-1 wouldn’t have crushed Protoss so easily. For instance, if the Stalker started with 5 range and had a range/damage upgrade at the Cybercore, and the Zealot had some kind of upgrade there too, then early Warp Gate pushes would have been a non-issue PvT and PvZ. And the Shield Battery would have solved it in PvP.
The weakness of Gateway units was a game design flaw, and Blizzard didn’t know what to do. Their end solution was taking control from the players and introducing Photon Overcharge, giving the Nexus an attack with the same range as the Siege Tank, so we could experience that epic battle. Really? Why didn’t we just fix Force Fields and make Gateway units scale like the Tier 1 units of other races?
But the longer a poor game design decision is left in a game, the more it tears at the game. And so Photon Overcharge has been tearing at the game as it was destined to do, requiring harass techniques to be particularly powerful and fast, speeding up the game as players try to manage increasingly fast units and burst damage, partially in light of Photon Overcharge.
So yeah, it is ironic that adding more things for players to control in the game, in the end, slows down the game and makes it more manageable.
But it is what has to happen, because it makes the game more fun.
Resources:
- http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Mothership_Core_(Heart_of_the_Swarm)
- http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Mothership_Core_(Legacy_of_the_Void)
- Command Theory: Power Without Gameplay: http://brainstormbrewery.com/command-theory-power-without-gameplay/
- Zileas' List of Game Design Anti-Patterns:
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=293417
- Errorless Learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errorless_learning
lots of great game designers or great players in other companies and other competitive scenes come from a competitive starcraft background!
