Editorial Gamasutra against Ability Cooldowns

[villain of the story]

Oh no my MMOs and RTS marketed as RPGs are shit, all because of cooldown. It's not shit because they are realtime and because the game system is braindead.

Sorry, article is stupid and pointless, just like all these gamasutra articles.

Cooldowns are an inherent part of the game systems in these types of games which are almost always real-time, braindead.

Sorry, you are stupid and pointless, just like all the morons.

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah, OK. To be honest I don't play a lot of mainstream games released the last 10 years, and certainly not "shooters" (I assume you mean first person shooters).

Anyhow, I'm sure you can't do the following in Call of Duty:

1) fire shotgun
2) instantly switch to pistol, fire it
3) instantly switch to rocket launcher, fire it
4) now a second has passed, and shotgun magically reloaded itself in the background, repeat from 1)

So, I can still see a clear distinction between the reloading and WoW cooldown: reloading blocks all other actions using the same resource (right hand), while cooldown abilities in WoW all use separate, imaginary resources. Also, the firing/reloading is an understandable action with a visual representation. I agree they are pretty similar, but not the same thing.

It does not reload itself in the background, you need to reload it when you switch back to it.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Yeah, I don't want to come off as defending single character RPGs, they're shit, outside of competitive PVP games (which I don't have time for anymore).

But cooldowns do make sense, as long as time is a meaningful resource. 5 minute cooldowns wouldn't make sense in a single player game where you could just sit and wait out the 5 minutes. But in a multiplayer online game, time continues ticking no matter what you do and other players can act while your cooldowns are coming back.

So they're more meaningful as limits on your power.

And short cooldowns of a minute or less still make perfect sense in a single player game. It lets the developer say "this ability can be used once or twice a fight","this ability can be used about 5 times a fight", "this ability can be used as much as you want".

It allows for more fine tuning when balancing the game.

Then why even create such overly powerful abilities, if you have to resort to some extremely artificial mechanics to balance them out again?

Because powerful abilities with dramatic effects are more fun. Single character RPGs can get very, very boring if you can only use a few bunch of mundane unspectacular abilities, since the combat is usually not very interesting from an action game perspective or from a tactical perspective.

If you give the player character the ability to do cool stuff like run super fast, vanish into thin air, blind his opponents, go into a berserker rage, break out of crowd control, teleport short distances, shield yourself, guarantee a crit, etc, it makes things more interesting.

But introducing dramatic, powerful abilities can require some sort of additional balancing mechanic. Simply having them take a ton of mana isn't sufficient as a way to balance things; the developer may wish to encourage complex interactions of multiple character abilities. That won't be possible if you run out of mana whenever you use a power ability. Cooldowns allow the developers to say "you can use both of these power abilities together, but you can't spam one power ability over and over".

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.

You're right that Vancian magic seems very weird when you try to think about how "it would really work". But I don't care, I just like it because it adds so much thought and planning to the game.

What computer games are there though, where those spells are meaningfully scarce? Every D&D game I care to remember playing allows you to rest so much, that recharging your arsenal between almost every fight that needs it is trivial.

A few stretches of KoTC, a few stretches of the Gold Box games, but yeah, developers are usually lazy and they decide to allow you to rest and regain spells constantly. It's lazy because it makes it a lot easier for developers to balance the encounters, but a lot of the planning and resource management gameplay is lost. Vancian magic does work really well in the P&P setting for which it was designed though.

EDIT: And before anyone gets witty, I know that Vance originally designed his magic system for a book, I'm talking about the guys who later developed and fleshed out that basic idea into a system for P&P RPG magic.

 

[Kane]

What shooters allow you to reload and throw a grenade or a knife or switch to another gun and shoot with that simultanously ?

There are some shooters that do background reloading, yes. However, you have to acknowledge the different scales of time management. You don't want to fire a gun for 5 minutes straight, you need the damage in a few seconds to take out a player. After you emptied your magazine you switch to nade/knife/secondary to finish him off, because your current objective - killing the player - demands it. After you have killed him it doesn't really matter if you then have to reload both guns in a row, because the enemy is dead and you can take your time. Gun reloading as a cooldown is short enough that it doesn't matter between fights but in a fight.
Of course this explanation is pretty simplified as it leaves out other enemies appearing and forcing you to reload etc, but you already see how similiar it is to cooldowns in WoW and yet much more fun due to it's presentation.

With the reloading commencing on in the background while you are doing these? Plus, a lot of the shooters from 2000+ cancel out other actions when you sprint, jump and sometimes even do an objective. Just to be factual.

A lot of shooters do a lot of things. Some cancle some stuff, some don't and some even have jetpacks while others have a comic graphic. It's not relevant to the issue: That cooldowns in shooters and WoW are fundamentally the same thing but presented in a different way.

 

[villain of the story]

yeah, but that is more of an issue of you being limited to two hand instead of 46 hands like in WoW. if you had a shooter with 46 hands it wouldnt be much different than WoW in that regard.

This is really screaming strawman.

They are the same thing, but the presentation makes the difference. Where to put them? How to represent them to the player? It's all in the details. Good cooldowns/time management are certainly doable, shooters are doing it since day 1. It's games that put your artifically on hold like D3 and that's where I agree with sea.

Is that not the definitive line of distinction? That it is effectively what we identify as a cooldown when it's arbitrary and artificial and not so when it satisfies suspension of disbelief in a reasonable way. Plus, 46 hands argument doesn't work because of the inherent differences between genres. You simply just wouldn't have a shooter with 46 hands. You just wouldn't.

You might have a point yet, though. Is it a cool down when, in space sims, it takes X amount of time to charge your weapons or shields or turbo etc.? It's in a sci-fi context so most people, myself included, will take it without ever needing to question the reasoning behind it. And if one had to, you could invent any number of explanations for it.

I do believe there is an inherent difference but I'm not sure how to nail it down when thinking like that.

 

[Kane]

Is that not the definitive line of distinction? That it is effectively what we identify as a cooldown when it's arbitrary and artificial and not so when it satisfies suspension of disbelief in a reasonable way.

Yes, that's what I have been saying all along. Sea is arguing from exactly this perspective about cooldowns and this is kind of the definition we all have adopted, but technically reloading a gun in a shooter is also a cooldown, i.e. a form of time management. Sea already proposed that we distinguish between artifical time management as cooldown and "organical" time management as animation.

He missed the oppertunity to mention that in his article though and that's why he is getting flak in the comments on gamasutra.

I do believe there is an inherent difference but I'm not sure how to nail it down when thinking like that.

That is usually a sign that you a wrong.

 

[Mad Method]

postcount++

Seriously, is there some reason I need street cred to post my opinion on this article or that it's controversial? If you have nothing to say about its content, you have nothing to say.

Also, joined Tuesday. Good job.

Welcome to the Codex. The first rule is to think for yourself instead of demanding that other people do it for you. Now to answer your question, you're giving a kneejerk, half-assed response and pretending that's a qualified opinion, so naturally our first thoughts are "This guy must be new. What's his join date and post count?"

So, when Infinitron is posting your post count and join date, he's not saying "you need more cred before you can hang out with the cool kids." He's saying you're a codex noob (also referred to as "newfag").

Now next time you want to post in a discussion, remember to actually say something intelligent and worthwhile.

 

[villain of the story]

Yeah, there is a point to that, I guess. I still don't exactly see it as a cooldown, perhaps I have some degree of mental fixedness about the concept but yeah, mechanically speaking, both are ways of adding a tactical limitation.

 

[nihil]

So, I can still see a clear distinction between the reloading and WoW cooldown: reloading blocks all other actions using the same resource (right hand), while cooldown abilities in WoW all use separate, imaginary resources.

yeah, but that is more of an issue of you being limited to two hand instead of 46 hands like in WoW. if you had a shooter with 46 hands it wouldnt be much different than WoW in that regard.

True, but that's a pretty big if. As you give the player 46 hands, and imaginary hands at that, the mechanic becomes very disconnected from what the game is about, and it feels stupid. (And brings boring gameplay, but that wasn't the topic.) So there's still a clear difference, even if it can be modeled as two opposite sides of the same scale.

 

[Kane]

True, but that's a pretty big if. As you give the player 46 hands, and imaginary hands at that, the mechanic becomes very disconnected from what the game is about, and it feels stupid. (And brings boring gameplay, but that wasn't the topic.)

yep. bad presentation.

 

[Infinitron]

Nope, it's a shortcut for MMO game designers so they can easily balance stuff. Just like level scaling is a shortcut for balancing monster difficulty. Can't have an orc warlord be able to beat an elf cleric in PvP after all.

It's a symptom, not the problem itself.

Took me only a decade to teach people what level scaling is for. In another decade I guess people like you will realize why the article is so dumb and pointless.

You do realize "cooldowns" can exist in holy turn-based genre also?
"This ability takes 3 turns to recharge"

Do you also realize that plenty of realtime games did not have cooldowns?

 

[nihil]

yep. bad presentation.

And bad utilization of the concept, I would say.

Cooldown. Animation done wrong.

 

[Infinitron]

Also there's no real turn based cooldown games unless it's in some jrpg. If you have an action take multiple turns that's not the same as a cooldown. The problem with cooldowns is you can just click them all at once with no wait between one thing and the next.

No, I'm not talking about an action that takes multiple turns. I'm talking about an instantaneous activated ability, that takes X number of AP. Once you use it, you can't use it again until Y turns have passed. Now imagine that you have several such abilities, each with its own X and Y values. There's your analogy.

Which is a little obvious to have a fucking article about it. I mean holy shit.

Nothing is obvious.

 

[sea]

Gee, I didn't know it was pointless to discuss something that is "obviously shit" based on the opinion of one random person on a message board somewhere. All that discussing, discourse, critical thinking, analysis, when the answers were so readily availble all along. Well, guess I can stop writing and thinking for myself now that I have Knotanalt to do it for me.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Also there's no real turn based cooldown games unless it's in some jrpg.

http://te4.org/

 

[Infinitron]

It's not the same thing, boss. Sorry.

Explain the difference. In both cases you're waiting for a set number of time units so you can click that special ability again. The only difference is the granularity of the time units.

Real problem with games is everything complicated is cut out, and all the things attached to a cooldown are just gimmicks, especially in MMOs where they have to "balance" for pvp or fans ragequit left and right.

When positioning doesn't matter, and you just spam random abilities, games suck. Who'd have thunk.

And yes, it is obvious. All of it.

"Shitty games are shitty because they're shitty! IT'S SO OBVIOUS"

 

[InspectorRumpole]

Dont believe i've ever played an RPG with cooldowns...aahh ignorance truly is bliss

 

[Grimlorn]

I remember when Warhammer Online changed the Chosen's AoE ability so that it could be spammed with no cooldown. I could run into a group of players and spam it over and over and kill 5-10 people before they focused me down. It was great. Terrible change but I abused the hell out of it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Why shouldn't there be a best attack?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Because the best ability might have a cost associated with it? Like mana or a cooldown or something else? So people have to decide if the situation warrants using the best attack or reserving it for later?

 

[Johannes]

More like, there shouldn't be abilities that are constantly a no-brainer to use.

 

[toro]

My 2 cents.

1) The problem seems to be that cooldowns are the *only* tactical aspect of the combat system in many games. At least lately. This makes them boring and exploitable, but not non-intuitive or retarded. In fact many hybrid combinations can be implemented on top of them. Like for example in TCoS:

(http://tcospellborn.blogspot.de/2008/11/tcos-combat-system.html)

The Skilldeck
Players select several skills from the Skillbook and place these into the character's Skilldeck. The Skilldeck can be compared to a deck of cards as seen in many collectible trading card games. It consists of 6 rows (called tiers) with 5 skill-slots per row. Each skill-slot can be filled with a chosen skill, as long as the skill was learned and is available in the character's Skillbook. The players are completely free to experiment and create their own fighting styles and tactics. Teams can coordinate the composition of their Skilldecks to increase their battle performance.

Combat
The Skilldeck appears as a kind of cylinder with the 5 Skills of one row visible at a time. When the player executes a skill, the cylinder will turn and reveal the next row. Players can compose the skills on the deck as they like and combine them into effective sequences or organize them to unleash powerful combos.
With the mouse wheel or the 1–5 keys, the player chooses which skill he wants to execute. By pressing the mouse key, the selected Skill is executed and the Skilldeck turns to the next position, where another skill (or the same) skill waits. Once used, the skill takes effect in the area where the player is aiming.

Combos
In addition to this combat system, skills can form combo-chains. All skills have a combo type and these combo types initiate certain bonuses if they are used in the correct order. For instance a skill can be labelled as an opener, which means that it starts a possible combo-chain. A skill labelled as a finisher ends the combo-chain and will do increased damage (or provide additional positive effects for the character, or negative effects for their opponent) depending on the skills used in between the opener and the finisher.

Being prepared is just half the work. A focused Skilldeck with flexibility to adjust against various types of opponents will greatly improve a character's battle performance. Players are free to play around with their Skilldeck and adjust it as much as they like to. They can change skills at any time (except during combat) in order to defeat a previously too difficult enemy.

2) Comparing cooldowns with quick-time-events is retarded: cooldowns don't take the decision liberty from the player, where on the other hand, QTEs are usually completely limiting for the player in both aspects of timing and decisions (Heavy Rain ftw).

3) Players will spam the shit of their best spell with cooldowns or not, because it makes sense. Limit the amount of resources (mana, gems, scrolls) or make them expensive/rare/unique and the spamming will end. Basically the player will have to find efficient ways to accomplish his goal and The Codex will live happily ever after.

 

[Castanova]

Also there's no real turn based cooldown games unless it's in some jrpg.

http://te4.org/

I'm glad you brought this game up because I wish sea had covered it in the article. This is an especially egregious example of someone blindly copying WoW except now the decision infects a game in a good genre. TE4 represents everything I hate about cooldowns in a neat package because there's virtually nothing else TO the game, at least early on.

 

[Stelcio]

Magic is always bound to be broken in any game, because it's barely possible to implement proper rules for something not based on elemental laws of our world; and the more complex the system, the harder it gets. That's why realoading weapon cooldown is ok by all and casting spells cooldown is problematic. In conclusion: it's not cooldowns that brake the system, it is broken per se by having majeek.

Still I like how it was done in WFRP - the more powerful the spell, the greater the difficulty and the worse the consequences of failure.

Horrible argument. That we have swords, guns and whatever in games that mirror real-life stuff has zero relevance on design. It's not like anyone (simulational games notwithstanding) is trying to mirror real-life mechanics behind how any of that shit works. FFS, 99% of games out there use a HP system. Where is the RL in that? Nowhere, that's where.

Let's not water down discussions with illiterate reasoning.

They aren't trying to MIRROR real-life mechanics, they try to model it. And they cannot create a proper model of something that they cannot observe and understand. You cannot simplify something that doesn't exist. Magic is good to write about in books, not to implement inside virtual environments.

Also, magic is lame.

 

[PorkaMorka]

I'm glad you brought this game up because I wish sea had covered it in the article. This is an especially egregious example of someone blindly copying WoW except now the decision infects a game in a good genre. TE4 represents everything I hate about cooldowns in a neat package because there's virtually nothing else TO the game, at least early on.

I dunno man.

TOME4 has a lot of problems that prevent it from having a truly last appeal.

Poor balance (especially with the randomly generated uniques), trivial content and repetitive content being the big ones.

But I don't see cooldowns as harmful to the game.

In DC:SS warriors can only bump attack, use consumables and shoot ranged weapons. But in TOME4 they have a full compliment of tactically interesting abilities, just like a mage. Some of these abilities couldn't be included without cooldowns to keep their power in check. I don't see how this is a decline.

And no, you don't just use your abilities every time they're available.