Editorial Gamasutra against Ability Cooldowns

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Diablo III; Dragon Age 2; Eric Schwarz; The Witcher 2; World of Warcraft

Eric Schwarz (known as @sea here on the Codex) has written an anti-cooldown article for Gamasutra entitled "Why I Hate Cooldowns". Have a snippet:

Cooldowns Reduce Depth

In practice, my biggest complaint against cooldown-oriented design is that it tends to take a way a lot of the tactical depth in a situation. As a brute-force stopgap to "solve" poor game balance and make up for problems in other mechanics, many such games feature abilities that are extremely powerful unless mediated, and often in very large quantities. This usually raises the question: "if my abilities are all so powerful, why am I not just using them all the time?"

A game like Dragon Age II, for example, can see the player activating upwards of ten different abilities throughout the course of a single battle, and even the same ones multiple times over if the fight goes on long enough. Actually using them thoughtfully isn't just completely unnecessary, it can actually be a liability. As most of the abilities in Dragon Age II are instant-use and either have some sort of stun or damaging effect, they quickly become near-indistinguishable from each other; what's more, the tougher enemies can be heavily resistant or immune to the effects of these abilities, meaning that using them in a way that the situation might call for them simply isn't very effective.

Dragon Age II does have mana and stamina as additional limiting resources, but they are far less important than the cooldowns themselves. Quaffing potions is usually more than enough to get through, and potions are both plentiful and fairly cheap, so most players will never run out of them. Of course, even the potions have cooldowns on them, to prevent them from being used over and over. Once again, the question comes up: "if potions are so powerful as to require cooldowns, why aren't they made more expensive, or why can't there be another game mechanic governing their use?"

The Witcher's toxicity mechanic prevented the player from drinking potion after potion, for instance; not only did it work well to balance them, it also fit the game's lore like a glove. Dragon Age II has none of this tact or finesse - rather than turning weaknesses into strengths through smart game mechanics, it slaps more timers on the player until the exploits disappear.

Cooldowns also reduce the value of long-term planning. As discussed above, many games are built around the question of using abilities at the right times, and as contingencies for failures. While cooldowns can retain some of the value in planning (for instance, some high-level MMO play relies on calculating perfect ratios of damage input/output/healing), these dynamics are not intrinsic to cooldowns - you can do the exact same thing with a mana bar, or with limited uses of abilities, or providing harsher risks for misusing abilities.

The end result of all this hard limiting is a system that isn't just rigid and limiting, reducing the sense of control and interactivity the player has, it also ends up largely reducing combat from making smart and tactically valuable choices to a series of quick time events: press the hotkeys as they light up to win. At absolute worst, this can create a feeling of "false interactivity", where the player isn't so much making smart decisions within the rules as he/she is playing a pattern-matching game. Instead of "what abilities should I use, and when?" the questions posed to the player are "press all your buttons as soon as you can." The resemblance to quick time events, and their pattern-matching mechanics quickly becomes apparent.​

In the full article[url], Eric also explains why cooldowns simply aren't fun and many other things, so be sure to check it out.

 

[Zed]

I guess I don't agree with this article. I can't think of a single game where cooldown as a mechanic has bothered me, besides guns (dirty tricks) in Risen 2 where it's your only cooldown, and it's long as hell (and your normal attack is shit in comparison).

In games like WoW, Diablo, DotA etc. cooldowns serve a tactical purpose, and I think it's fun.

 

[Surf Solar]

I think cooldowns feel more silly in realtime based games than in turnbased ones. Atleast it's just me, I guess. "Ability XY can only be activatated each d20 turns" sounds better than "this ability has a cooldown of up to 20 seconds (or so).
Do people really enjoy watching an inner symbol bevel&emboss layer over a graphic to fill itself till they can attack again, programming retarded macros to spam this shit to the milisecond right?

 

[Infinitron]

Who's this "Iain Miller" faggot in the comments

 

[Jack]

Cooldowns also reduce the value of long-term planning. As discussed above, many games are built around the question of using abilities at the right times, and as contingencies for failures. While cooldowns can retain some of the value in planning (for instance, some high-level MMO play relies on calculating perfect ratios of damage input/output/healing), these dynamics are not intrinsic to cooldowns - you can do the exact same thing with a mana bar, or with limited uses of abilities, or providing harsher risks for misusing abilities.

So it's better to not have long term planning, just spam the best attack over and over?

I guess it would be better if just one attack worked on each monster, or only worked in some special circumstances? How is that supposed to be tactical either?

You got problems with reading comprehension or what? He addressed those issues in the quote that you posted.

 

[PorkaMorka]

I'm not very impressed with this article. It seems to focus overmuch on Dragon Age 2, which is by all accounts a terrible game.

Cooldowns worked very well in World of Warcraft PVP. They allowed the developers to give out abilities that simply wouldn't be balanced if you could use them over and over. Long duration mesmerizes, medium duration stuns and mesmerizes, speed boosts, instant re-stealths, etc. Cooldowns varied between a few seconds and a several minutes. Some of the longer cooldowns were annoying to wait for, but they were usually on abilities that were so powerful you couldn't give them out otherwise.

Mana bars without cooldowns are terrible, they encourage you to simply spam the most efficient skill available in a given situation. And they greatly restrict the types of abilities that the developers can give you; they can only give you the kind of abilities that can be used repeatedly without unbalancing the game. I think at least short cooldowns of a few turns or seconds are essential for an interesting mana based system, otherwise you simply can't give the player many cool abilities.

But of course, Vancian magic is far superior to both of these, as it dramatically increases the number of decisions the player has to make. First he must decide what spells to of each level to learn, then what spells of each level to memorize each day. He'll want to take into account not just the power of the spell, but how broadly applicable it is. Then when it comes time to cast a spell, he'll have to choose a spell that he selected earlier from one of several different levels. He may not have the ideal spell for the situation if he didn't plan ahead correctly and he is certainly limited in his ability to spam the same thing over and over. Careful consideration is needed before casting any spell, as you may need your strong spell later, so you may want to try and squeak by with a weaker spell in this situation. The resource management in Vancian magic allows for and requires more thought than just watching a mana bar.

 

[Surf Solar]

I dont know, "wait x seconds to press button again!11" doesnt sound like fun to me. :/ Hell, even D&Ds magic system (with a fixed system so you cant just rest everywhere) sounds much better to me. It seperates magic, for example where you actually have to plan ahead vs. retarded "learning" to the second when you have to click button XY again. I dont think the latter is really fun - atleast I have more fun planning ahead with the little ressources given to me.

 

[Infinitron]

Mana bars without cooldowns are terrible, they encourage you to simply spam the most efficient skill available in a given situation. And they greatly restrict the types of abilities that the developers can give you; they can only give you the kind of abilities that can be used repeatedly without unbalancing the game.

Wrong. Mana is your limitation. Limit mana potions, or make them less effective (gradual rise instead of instant restoration).

 

[PorkaMorka]

Wrong. Mana is your limitation. Limit mana potions, or make them less effective (gradual rise instead of instant restoration).

Let's say that you want to put an ability in your game that lets the player run at 200% speed for 20 seconds.

Trust me when I say that this a fun ability to put into a game.

If you let the player spam this ability the game will be unbalanced, because the player will be able to kite too effectively.

But if you make this ability cost a huge amount of mana the player's offensive abilities will be weakened too much after using it and he won't be able to use this ability creatively with his other skills.

The simple solution is to put a short cooldown on this ability, so that it can't be spammed. Then you can keep the mana cost reasonable, so that it doesn't prevent the player from using his other abilities.

Many fun utility abilities work like this... Fun in moderation but broken when spammed. High mana cost alone is not a sufficient way to balance them as you don't necessarily want to take away the player's ability to deal damage just because he made use of a utility ability. Mana cost + cooldown allows for more balance fine tuning and is simply superior in the hands of a competent game designer. Some abilities can still have a mana cost of zero or a cooldown of zero in such a system.

 

[Infinitron]

But if you make this ability cost a huge amount of mana the player's offensive abilities will be weakened too much after using it and he won't be able to use this ability creatively with his other skills.

In the days when party-based games were the norm, this was far less of a problem. If one of your guys was out of mana or spells or whatever, no problem, you usually had another spellcaster. That was your way of creating interesting combinations. You didn't have this one super-character who was supposed to be able to do everything.

Maybe that's the crux of this matter. There's a kind of inevitable dissonance in giving a single character a plethora of tactical options. You tend to get something that's overpowered and has to be nerfed in cheesy ways.

 

[SuicideBunny]

So it's better to not have long term planning, just spam the best attack over and over?

there shouldn't be a best attack to spam to begin with. you don't fix a broken system just by adding cooldowns to it (especially when enemies do not regenerate health and spamming best attack is just a matter of waiting for cooldown while strafing/running away).
cooldowns do not add anything you could not have better with a proper regenerating mana system. the reason you see them everywhere is not because they are a good and tried solution, it's because they are the laziest solution that everybody knows how to implement easily, and they are to mechanics what genre cliches are to setting.

Also, joined Tuesday. Good job.

time zones, how do they work?

 

[villain of the story]

I guess I don't agree with this article. I can't think of a single game where cooldown as a mechanic has bothered me, besides guns (dirty tricks) in Risen 2 where it's your only cooldown, and it's long as hell (and your normal attack is shit in comparison).

In games like WoW, Diablo, DotA etc. cooldowns serve a tactical purpose, and I think it's fun.

WUT. Diablo didn't have cooldowns. Only mana & stamina.

If you like cooldowns, you are a faggot. Go play WoW.

 

[villain of the story]

The magic system Broken Hourglass was shooting for was looking out to be decent. Concentration and stamina based magic where any spell takes up a certain amount of concentration as long as it's active so you can only have so many active spells at once while continuing to cast other instantaneous spells, or not be able to cast them at all and all spells had also a stamina cost so it wasn't happy spam hour either.

A system like the following would have been nice:

+ All spells have a concentration cost, as in Broken Hourglass' system I described above.
+ You can allocate more concentration on any given spell to get more potent effects, which naturally means less concentration pool for other spells.
+ All spells have also a stamina cost where stamina regenerates for instantaneous spells but stays lowered by the amount the active spells cost.
+ You can memorise/whateverise certain spells or spell schools ahead of time for decreased costs for those spells and schools and increased costs in other spells or schools. Or maybe a choice like this: You memorise individual spells where other spells cost more and you memorise spell schools where you can't cast spells from other schools at all. Or maybe the other spells/schools become unreliable, with unpredictable effects. Or various shades of gray between all these.
+ If there are magic items that boost stats, they must ALWAYS come with a setback that can not be rendered irrelevant or negligible to the wearer (eg. a ring that's STR+1 and INT-1 where that setback would be meaningless to a fighter in IE games). For instance, there was a sword of the berserker or something like that in one of the IE games. It was a damn good sword but the wearer always faced the risk of going berserk, attacking friend or foe the same. That was one of the best magic items in games, with a fine balance between benefits and setbacks.

 

[Zed]

I guess I don't agree with this article. I can't think of a single game where cooldown as a mechanic has bothered me, besides guns (dirty tricks) in Risen 2 where it's your only cooldown, and it's long as hell (and your normal attack is shit in comparison).

In games like WoW, Diablo, DotA etc. cooldowns serve a tactical purpose, and I think it's fun.

WUT. Diablo didn't have cooldowns. Only mana & stamina.

If you like cooldowns, you are a faggot. Go play WoW.

Diablo 3 has cooldown. Did you read the fucking article? He wrote about Diablo 3. I guess I should have clarified I meant D3 and not the original.

Here's the argument from Blizzard about using CDs in D3:

…Diablo II had a single resource mechanic (mana), and the biggest end game skills in Diablo II are low-to-mid tier skills in Diablo III. The big “end-tier” skills we have are more complex and usually wouldn’t make sense as spammable skills, or would likely outright have to be pulled from the game if it turned out they ever could be spammable. And we have varied resource systems that we can’t just throw a problem-solver at, like Diablo II could with mana potions.​

For instance Call of the Ancients literally calls down the four barbarian ancients to fight alongside you. How would that work if it was spammable? Should we make it cost 100% resource to keep you from being able to spam it, and then leave you drained to Cleave back enough Fury to follow it up with anything? That doesn’t sound like something *I* would take. Maybe someone could find a build for it, I don’t know.​

Bottom line is that cooldowns allow for skill complexity or power by limiting them in a meaningful way because it can mean long-term balance even as stats inflate. We do want to make sure we’re only using them where appropriate, though.​

And I agree with them.

 

[Infinitron]

For instance Call of the Ancients literally calls down the four barbarian ancients to fight alongside you

This sounds like something that you can forbid the player from casting again until the original spell's duration has run out.

That's another option - "toggleable" spells which can only be cast once, until you turn them off or they run out.

 

[villain of the story]

The same basic premise could easily be extended to martial combat even for a RT game.
+ Have all actions cost stamina.
+ Have concentration pool for offense vs. defense.
+ Have varied actions that make fucking sense. Gay shit like jumping in the air and hitting down with a sword, or making retarded whirlwind attacks is for faggots.
+ What a tactical context requires is to have varying actions where all actions have advantages and disadvantages to them. Doing a move to try and disarm and opponent, for instance, must come with a risk, like giving an opening for an increased chance of getting hit. Not gay cooldown faggotry to discourage spamming but actual consequences so you won't even want to spam shit in the first place.
+ Getting hit and hurt could have a negative impact on your concentration and stamina.
+ I don't know. It's not rocket science. Any team of developers who actually care about providing quality tactical depth instead of button mashing shit for morons could come with pretty sophisticated and elegant stuff after a few weeks of branstorming and trials.

 

[villain of the story]

I guess I don't agree with this article. I can't think of a single game where cooldown as a mechanic has bothered me, besides guns (dirty tricks) in Risen 2 where it's your only cooldown, and it's long as hell (and your normal attack is shit in comparison).

In games like WoW, Diablo, DotA etc. cooldowns serve a tactical purpose, and I think it's fun.

WUT. Diablo didn't have cooldowns. Only mana & stamina.

If you like cooldowns, you are a faggot. Go play WoW.

Diablo 3 has cooldown. Did you read the fucking article? He wrote about Diablo 3. I guess I should have clarified I meant D3 and not the original.

Here's the argument from Blizzard about using CDs in D3:

…Diablo II had a single resource mechanic (mana), and the biggest end game skills in Diablo II are low-to-mid tier skills in Diablo III. The big “end-tier” skills we have are more complex and usually wouldn’t make sense as spammable skills, or would likely outright have to be pulled from the game if it turned out they ever could be spammable. And we have varied resource systems that we can’t just throw a problem-solver at, like Diablo II could with mana potions.​

For instance Call of the Ancients literally calls down the four barbarian ancients to fight alongside you. How would that work if it was spammable? Should we make it cost 100% resource to keep you from being able to spam it, and then leave you drained to Cleave back enough Fury to follow it up with anything? That doesn’t sound like something *I* would take. Maybe someone could find a build for it, I don’t know.​

Bottom line is that cooldowns allow for skill complexity or power by limiting them in a meaningful way because it can mean long-term balance even as stats inflate. We do want to make sure we’re only using them where appropriate, though.​

And I agree with them.

What Blizzard is doing is selling retarded strawman and you're gulping it down. Exceptions are exceptions. Justifying a fundamental game design with exceptional situations is nothing short of a strawman. And FTR, a cool down doesn't render the idea of calling ancient barbarians from beyond or wherethefuckever any better. What's the rationale behind the cool down here? Ancient barbarians need a break? It reduces a potentially AWSUM factor down to "wait x seconds/minutes" triviality. It's the ultimate BSB. Nobody needs to base their entire combat design around exceptional AWSUM factors.

 

[Niektory]

I loathe relying on per-skill cooldowns for a number of reasons:
1. They encourage hit and run gameplay. Run in, blow all your skills, run out, wait for cooldowns, repeat.
2. Since you usually want to use your skills as often as possible the game devolves into "press a button whenever it lights up" instead of actually choosing which skill to use in a given moment.
3. They force you to spend a lot of the time looking at all the little timers on your skillbar instead of focusing on what's actually going on in the game.

 

[thesheeep]

Cooldowns worked very well in World of Warcraft PVP. They allowed the developers to give out abilities that simply wouldn't be balanced if you could use them over and over. Long duration mesmerizes, medium duration stuns and mesmerizes, speed boosts, instant re-stealths, etc. Cooldowns varied between a few seconds and a several minutes. Some of the longer cooldowns were annoying to wait for, but they were usually on abilities that were so powerful you couldn't give them out otherwise.

Then why even create such overly powerful abilities, if you have to resort to some extremely artificial mechanics to balance them out again? Because it is more fun if you have such an ability, that's why. Cooldowns are the result of lazy game design. There have been enough games that show a) that cooldowns are not necessary b) that it takes more thought to design in a working system without them.
That said, I still don't really mind them, if they are not too silly. Yeah, they are lazy, yeah, they don't make any sense (in most cases), but games with them can still be very fun to play.

Mana bars without cooldowns are terrible, they encourage you to simply spam the most efficient skill available in a given situation.

That is called "strategy". Not using your best ability if you can is called a "bad strategy".

But of course, Vancian magic is far superior to both of these, as it dramatically increases the number of decisions the player has to make.

Me thinking (btw. I hate Vancian system): "Oh my, what bullshit is going to come next? Looks like I'll have to bash some heretics again."

First he must decide what spells to of each level to learn,

Agreed, that one is cool, but not really limited to any kind of magic system. Many non-Vancian systems have that.

then what spells of each level to memorize each day. He'll want to take into account not just the power of the spell, but how broadly applicable it is.

Which doesn't make any sense at all. What happens with the spells that you suddenly cannot cast? Do you forget them? And if so, why can you suddenly remember them at the next night?
Or are the rituals so complicated that you need the whole night to "prepare" them, so that you can "release" them on demand later? That would mean mages never sleep, or much less than any other person, and that one is pretty hard to believe. This is the most logical approach to the system, and still completely weird and flawed.
If you have learned how to cast a spell (the words, the rituals, whatever), then you can cast it. At any given time, if you have the physical and mental capabilities to do so. Simply logic, common sense. Yeah, mana bars are not too great, but they represent logic better than that Vancian crap. Now, please don't tell me not to apply "real world logic" to fantasy games. A magic system (or any given system) must still make sense in its own universe. And the Vancian one doesn't.

Then when it comes time to cast a spell, he'll have to choose a spell that he selected earlier from one of several different levels. He may not have the ideal spell for the situation if he didn't plan ahead correctly and he is certainly limited in his ability to spam the same thing over and over. Careful consideration is needed before casting any spell, as you may need your strong spell later, so you may want to try and squeak by with a weaker spell in this situation. The resource management in Vancian magic allows for and requires more thought than just watching a mana bar.

That is true. Still doesn't help that the system makes even less sense than cooldowns...

 

[Kane]

There is a major flaw with sea's article he doesn't discuss: What are cooldowns? If I can't fire my weapon, because it's reloading, that's also a cooldown. All kind of time restriction is a cooldown. Cooldowns have always been part of games, since 10.000 BC. And there is nothing wrong with that, because managing ressources is a good thing^tm. What you are talking about sea, are artificial cooldowns that don't exist, because the simulation tries to be realistic (i.e. reloading a gun) but because the developers simply state: You're not going to use this ability in the next 30 seconds. When I read the part about D3 I realized that the initial thought for this article was born while playing D3, amirite?

 

[villain of the story]

No need to get anal with semantics. Cooldown, in the context of gaming, means the latter. Stuff like reloading a gun aren't even considered to be the same. Besides, reloading a gun is usually an active choice. You can choose to forgo reloading in favour of another action.

 

[thesheeep]

Agreed. I also assume that sea is not talking about completely logic stuff like reloading.

 

[Secretninja]

Cooldowns were retarded in wow pvp. As my rogue, I just pressed my 3 buttons in a specific order, and the guy ended up dead. As my paladin, I just pressed my button that was a macro to randomly cast one of my cooldowns and the guy ended up dead.

 

[hello friend]

Diablo 2 had cooldowns too btw.

 

[felipepepe]

Cooldowns are in most cases bullshit. The logic is wrong from the start, designed to please AWESHUM players.

A high level mage should have vast mana/magic resources at his hands, so the player can create magic combos and chains with time stop, fireballs, contingencys and such. The "aweshum" factor used to come from players spending their resources to create powefull tactics, but nowadays is just handed to you, like "summons aweshum barbarians".

The weird thing is that apart from the visual impact, they are less aweshum than the old model. What's cooler, summoning 3 barbarian dudes every 2 minutes, or facing one or two fights in the whole game where you are so desperate that you cast protection from evil and summon a Pit Fiend? WoW players know that after some time even their most epic ability is just "use cooldowns", it's your most powerfull ability and there is no trade of, you'll use it everywhere and get bored because 60 seconds later you'll use it again, there is little strategy or even emotion anymore.

Even worse, there is little customization or choice. We all can tell magic "combos" we enjoyed in Baldur's Gate, each unique to each fight and player, while cooldown fights use banal shit boring rotations: "use A, B and C, spam D until E is up and then return to A". I quitted WoW mainly due this, every fight felt the same, just with one or two gimmicks like void zones or save cooldown for momment X. It's not a RPG battle, is fucking this: