Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[__scribbles__]

I talk about methods to make sure that the player sees some story events before others, and why you should rarely do this.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Story gating happens at design stage.
At the beginning of game/story development, try and make sure your game narrative has as few ordered steps as possible. If player has to do A B C, let them do it in any order. Basically how Fallout does it, they didn't realize you could skip the water chip, but even then you could do A and then B/C as you wish.
If there has to be an ordering, like they did in Arcanum and Outer Worlds, it usually has to be the villain encounter. You probably want it to be impossible to encounter the villain without doing at least a few steps. Maybe you do this with a code or an access key, or combine some items together to face the villain.
In Arcanum, you need to get to the Void to beat the game, which entails completing a device that requires discovering and meeting multiple NPCs.
Even in a nonlinear story at certain stages, you need to block access NPCs/items/areas.
Some games are filled with essential NPCs, Cain understands the practicality of that, but personally he hates them. Essential NPCs smack the player in the face on player agency. Immortal NPCs that pop right back up after being killed are fine with Cain provided the lore makes sense but like amnesia, he's rather you only do it once.
If you end up in a situation where you really must make an NPC essential, Cain suggests making them only essential up to the point they are no longer needed (Such as the Overseer in F1, but Cain remembers midway you could fight but not kill him before the ending.) Cain also suggests holograms or magic messages depending on how your setting. You can't kill them, but they are talking to you. Another way is just make them non essential but there is always a backup way to get the information. Cain admits that even though his games do that a lot, something like a pass phrase you would normally have to do a lot of quests for being found in the journal of the NPC after being killed can feel like a shortcut. Maybe the journal just provides a note on where the NPC found the passphrase, and now the player has to go on an adventure to that location.
Please only do the gating if you have to, and you should always look hard at your story and ask if you have to. You may think the story unfolds better in a certain way, but the story is driven by the player, and they decide how it unfolds. If your RPG narrative really needs a lot of forced gated sequences, maybe you should try writing a book or movie. Sure, there are linear games out there, but Cain doesn't make them and he doesn't play a lot of them, so you are asking the wrong guy. Repeats his 3 acts vs. 27 acts discussion regarding Arcanum/Fallout and finding the perfect balance.
Ideally, the only gated sequence in a nonlinear game is perhaps the villain confrontation and all the sequences the player participated in beforehand adjust their reaction to the player.

 

[StrongBelwas]

 

[NecroLord]

Story gating happens at design stage.
At the beginning of game/story development, try and make sure your game narrative has as few ordered steps as possible. If player has to do A B C, let them do it in any order. Basically how Fallout does it, they didn't realize you could skip the water chip, but even then you could do A and then B/C as you wish.
If there has to be an ordering, like they did in Arcanum and Outer Worlds, it usually has to be the villain encounter. You probably want it to be impossible to encounter the villain without doing at least a few steps. Maybe you do this with a code or an access key, or combine some items together to face the villain.
In Arcanum, you need to get to the Void to beat the game, which entails completing a device that requires discovering and meeting multiple NPCs.
Even in a nonlinear story at certain stages, you need to block access NPCs/items/areas.
Some games are filled with essential NPCs, Cain understands the practicality of that, but personally he hates them. Essential NPCs smack the player in the face on player agency. Immortal NPCs that pop right back up after being killed are fine with Cain provided the lore makes sense but like amnesia, he's rather you only do it once.
If you end up in a situation where you really must make an NPC essential, Cain suggests making them only essential up to the point they are no longer needed (Such as the Overseer in F1, but Cain remembers midway you could fight but not kill him before the ending.) Cain also suggests holograms or magic messages depending on how your setting. You can't kill them, but they are talking to you. Another way is just make them non essential but there is always a backup way to get the information. Cain admits that even though his games do that a lot, something like a pass phrase you would normally have to do a lot of quests for being found in the journal of the NPC after being killed can feel like a shortcut. Maybe the journal just provides a note on where the NPC found the passphrase, and now the player has to go on an adventure to that location.
Please only do the gating if you have to, and you should always look hard at your story and ask if you have to. You may think the story unfolds better in a certain way, but the story is driven by the player, and they decide how it unfolds. If your RPG narrative really needs a lot of forced gated sequences, maybe you should try writing a book or movie. Sure, there are linear games out there, but Cain doesn't make them and he doesn't play a lot of them, so you are asking the wrong guy. Repeats his 3 acts vs. 27 acts discussion regarding Arcanum/Fallout and finding the perfect balance.
Ideally, the only gated sequence in a nonlinear game is perhaps the villain confrontation and all the sequences the player participated in beforehand adjust their reaction to the player.

 

[NecroLord]

Happy Black History Month, Tim!

 

[Gandalf]

Man, Tim looks so old in this video. It's the oldest I've seen him.

 

[Modron]

Man, Tim looks so old in this video. It's the oldest I've seen him.

Time, how does it work?

 

[NecroLord]

Time, Time never changes.

 

[__scribbles__]

I talk about the kind of quest markers I prefer to use in my games, something that has changed over the years.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Cain has gone between all the various forms of quest markers in his games. Sums them up as no quest markers, area radius quest markers, and a quest marker that is exactly on the item/creature you are after.
Basically every form of quest marker (no marker, area marker, arrow right on what you're looking for) will get someone upset, whether they want something more specific, or something less specific. Can't please everyone.
Why not make it an option, possibly merging it with the difficulty setting? Cain has worked with game developers who hate when you have any option at all that changes the mechanics, and think you should just make up your mind. Sound, visual, accessibility, fine perhaps. Difficulty settings should just be for making combat harder/easier, and not because the developer was indecisive about their quest interface. Also, Cain has seen players complain about quest markers even when you can turn them off.
If you decide to have no quest markers, people will just look everything up online. Unless the location is randomized , they'll just check the web and go over there.
If he had to pick one today, based on his history, he would go with area markers. With the size of the area being something that can be based on the quest. If someone is designing a quest that involved monsters in a dungeon, they could put the marker on the floor with the monsters, the entrance of the dungeon, or the valley that the dungeon is in.
He's worked on games that let you do fancy quest area shapes, but he thinks just a circle where you decide the radius works fine. If you make the radius tight enough, it functions the same as games with quest markers with exact location, a wide radius can be just what the NPC described to the player.
He would support multiple markers for one quest. If you need to find an item that could be in 1 of 5 dungeons, mark the 5 dungeons, or having to kill 5 bandits and having the markers disappear as they die. He's seen enough good quest designs that needed multiple markers, make sure you support it even if a radius works fine for most quests.
Would suggest any quest defaults to one small circular radius, that can be added to or increased in size by the quest designer, and is flexible enough to be changed throughout development depending on what you decide to do specifically.

 

[Roguey]

Ultimately depends on who the audience for the game is. Mass market RPG meant to sell millions? Quest compass. Hardcore RPGs for 10-100,000 core gamers? No quest compass.

 

[Alienman]

Game for zoomers? No quests, but a cosmetic store.

 

[NecroLord]

I do not approve of quest markers.
Leave it the way Morrowind did.
You have major areas - cities, other landmarks, ruins, etc, there is no need for quest markers, just use your journal for directions.

 

[Roguey]

there is no need for quest markers, just use your journal for directions.

As Tim says, loads of people get really mad when the game doesn't show them where they need to go. It's been an expected feature since Oblivion from 2006.

Of course that didn't stop Elden Ring from saying "fuck you, no quest markers, just a regular compass" and still selling millions, but Tim also asserts that everyone annoyed by this just looks at a map online when this happens.

 

[Butter]

there is no need for quest markers, just use your journal for directions.

As Tim says, loads of people get really mad when the game doesn't show them where they need to go. It's been an expected feature since Oblivion from 2006.

Of course that didn't stop Elden Ring from saying "fuck you, no quest markers, just a regular compass" and still selling millions, but Tim also asserts that everyone annoyed by this just looks at a map online when this happens.

Moral of the story is you don't have to pander to casuals. If it's a good game, they'll still buy it and your review scores won't suffer. Casuals will always look up guides and hints, because they want to consume the game and move on, not get stuck on something mildly challenging or potentially miss a secret.

 

[Modron]

As Tim says, loads of people get really mad when the game doesn't show them where they need to go. It's been an expected feature since Oblivion from 2006.

Yeah just look at all the codexers who cried about no map in Underrail until Styg finally gave into their demands.

 

[Roguey]

Moral of the story is you don't have to pander to casuals. If it's a good game, they'll still buy it and your review scores won't suffer. Casuals will always look up guides and hints, because they want to consume the game and move on, not get stuck on something mildly challenging or potentially miss a secret.

I think From gets a pass from critics because of the bottom-up wave of acclaim creating Fear of Missing Out. There are certainly a loud number of them who are constantly complaining about how their games need an easy difficulty so their jobs can be easier. And then there are the envious western devs:

 

[Butter]

Moral of the story is you don't have to pander to casuals. If it's a good game, they'll still buy it and your review scores won't suffer. Casuals will always look up guides and hints, because they want to consume the game and move on, not get stuck on something mildly challenging or potentially miss a secret.

I think From gets a pass from critics because of the bottom-up wave of acclaim creating Fear of Missing Out. There are certainly a loud number of them who are constantly complaining about how their games need an easy difficulty so their jobs can be easier. And then there are the envious western devs:

I meant user review scores. Critic review scores are of course completely worthless. On the off chance that they aren't being paid to give a 9.5/10, the average critic's scoring system seems to be a byzantine combination of:

1. Does this game feature "accessibility options"? (in other words, is it braindead easy?)
2. Does this game feature lots of gay people and black people?
3. Does this game have good graphics and lots of cinematics?
4. Is the game relatively stable/bug-free?

So yeah, by this metric From games shouldn't be getting 97s. It's likely that fear of the unwashed masses drives a lot of the critical praise.

 

[NecroLord]

Moral of the story is you don't have to pander to casuals. If it's a good game, they'll still buy it and your review scores won't suffer. Casuals will always look up guides and hints, because they want to consume the game and move on, not get stuck on something mildly challenging or potentially miss a secret.

I think From gets a pass from critics because of the bottom-up wave of acclaim creating Fear of Missing Out. There are certainly a loud number of them who are constantly complaining about how their games need an easy difficulty so their jobs can be easier. And then there are the envious western devs:

I meant user review scores. Critic review scores are of course completely worthless. On the off chance that they aren't being paid to give a 9.5/10, the average critic's scoring system seems to be a byzantine combination of:

1. Does this game feature "accessibility options"? (in other words, is it braindead easy?)
2. Does this game feature lots of gay people and black people?
3. Does this game have good graphics and lots of cinematics?
4. Is the game relatively stable/bug-free?

So yeah, by this metric From games shouldn't be getting 97s. It's likely that fear of the unwashed masses drives a lot of the critical praise.

From has legions of faithful players and fans.
I am of the opinion that many of them are obnoxious and insufferably arrogant, thinking that FromSoftware are some kind of artists and philosophers and nothing can compete against them, while many others are quite friendly, open and eager to learn all there is about the lore, tactics, enemy movements, and so on.

 

[__scribbles__]

I talk about the design and development process that goes into a feature as seemingly straightforward as damage numbers in combat.

 

[NecroLord]

"You were critically hit for no damage."

 

[Alienman]

"You were critically hit for no damage."

That's an ego hit. It might not do damage to the flesh, but it hits deep emotionally.

 

[ciox]

Did people really notice that those floating damage numbers moved differently depending on damage type?

I guess it does work as an obscure little trick for colorblind people to use in that situation, but you also have Underrail just putting icons next to the damage numbers so that it's really obvious what happened.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Damage numbers are frequently overlooked, particularly in Cain's older games, it was often left as a small concern.
First time Cain really thought about damage numbers seriously as a mechanic was at WildStar and revisited in the Outer Worlds.
Cain still plays to this game with poorly implemented damage numbers. He'll do 12+4 damage, but the poor rendering of the damage numbers makes it look like 124. You can eliminate a lot of headaches by just sitting back and coming up with a good design
Cain says you need the artist, the system designer, UX designer, sound designer, and a programmer to implement it to all get together and figure out how damage is applied, be it ranged/melee attacks or hazards.
On several of Cain's game they decided to combine motion/font size/color/ direction. Font size is based on damage amount. You could also make it so critical hit is always big font and grazes get small font. Could look weird if critical are always defined as a multiple of the attack and the player rolls a really low damage amount.
Color and motion were based on damage type, Cain likes combining them because it means you don't have to account for colorblindness, also if an attack does two kinds of damage types, the motion will separate the numbers from each other, thus avoiding the 12+4 issue Cain mentioned above.
Fire would whaft up, electricity would zig zag, acid would drip off, physical damage was white and would just go off in a direction. Would be good when the player was hit by a burst attack and looked cool seeing the numbers fly off.
For Outer Worlds and Wildstar put together teams just like he described plus a specific producer to coordinate all of it. Would try and seat the team together, on both teams the UX designer and the artist often sat down to figure it out. Try to reduce need to wait for weekly meeting.
It's a big part of combat giving feedback on what you're doing without the player having to look down at a text console, but most people don't really think about it.

 

[__scribbles__]

I talk about making good factions for RPGs, using examples from Fallout. I specifically talk about DESIGNING good factions, not WRITING them, since I am not qualified to talk about the latter.