Jeff Vogel Soapbox Thread

[Infinitron]

https://bottomfeeder.substack.com/p/the-fast-life-and-fiery-death-of

The Fast Life and Fiery Death of Vampire Survivors Games.​

Indie developers can strip a genre to the bones faster than piranhas can finish off a cow.​

The one, the only, the original. If it looks good, you should write a copy of it. Everyone else has.

Way back in February, I wrote a big article about indie phenomenon Vampire Survivors. It was a fun cheap game that is still fun and cheap.

It's also a charming, scruffy take on the classic Twin-Stick Shooter genre, great for mindless gaming, with a price that is effectively zero. A great idea. So great that a million indie developers coincidentally had the EXACT same idea a few days later.

Time moves quick these days. There's a lot to learn from checking back in with this story. Both about game design, and about the indie games biz as a whole.


Brotato has a great design. There is a huge variety of character and builds, and they all play really differently. I recommend it.

Nobody Stripmines An Idea As Well As Indie Devs Do

The history… Vampire Survivors entered early access in December, 2021. It became a word-of-mouth (and streaming) hit in mere months. It was released for real in October, 2022.

Indie developers started copying it almost immediately after it went public. With such frequency and enthusiasm that, in April, 2023, Humble Bundle did a "Best of Survivors-Like Bundle" This, of course, was only a small selection of "Survivors-Like" titles, with the more successful ones (like Brotato and 20 Minutes Till Dawn) absent.

Giving this sort of design (simple, low-budget, easy to copy) to hungry indie developers was like throwing a sheep into a piranha tank. We stripped it to the bone in a year.

I was inspired to write this post because I saw a popular streamer playing Yet Another Zombie Survivors.

And. Um. I don't like criticizing indie developers. I wish success to them all. And the game looks competently made. But. Well. If the name of your game starts with "Yet Another”, we may have a problem.

I recently got a lot of people shouting at me when I said there are too many indie games. But ... It's still true, and truer every day.


20 Minutes Till Dawn plays well and has a decent number of interesting builds. It also got repetitive for me pretty quickly and I wish it was prettier.

This Genre Is a Deathtrap

One of the most important qualities of a "Survivors-Like" game is not quality. It's price. Vampire Survivors sells for five bucks, so its clones are pressured to charge that much at most.

Let's be clear. This price point is a deathtrap.

Indie games are a niche, bespoke project, so we almost always sell smaller numbers of copies. That means we have to charge a decent price (usually $20-25) to have a chance to break even. To make money with a $5 game, you have to sell big numbers, and, in a market this crowded, almost none of these games will.

Recommended Clones

I played a few of these clones because I love Twin-Stick Shooters. As mentioned above, Brotato and 20 Minutes Till Dawn are popular and worth the tiny price.

Soulstone Survivors is OK. Pretty, with nice boss variety. Yet, it's been in Early Access for a long time, so buyer beware.


Yet Another Zombie Survivors seems competent, but its shrug of a title keeps me from wanting to play it. I’m sure they care about their game, but this title makes it seem like they don’t.

Meanwhile, In Vampire Survivors

The game made a ton of money. Its creator hired a bunch of staff, and they've been releasing bunches of new content. Some of it very cheap DLC. A lot of it free. I think they're doing a great job of keeping the title alive and fresh. (Steam Workshop could do INSANE things with this game.)

However, now that I can compare it to a lot of new takes on the same basic design, I'm finding something very interesting. Vampire Survivors has a design that is flawed in some ways, and the copycat games fix the problems.

Vampire Survivors has a ton of weapons, and they're adding more all the time. However, the weapons aren't balanced well. One weapon (the time freeze gun) is absolutely necessary to do the toughest challenges, while many of the other weapons are just traps for the player, way too weak compared to other options.

The newer games try much harder to balance the weapons against each other, providing a better variety of builds.

Similarly, there isn't much difference between most Vampire Survivor characters, while the newer games provide a choice of characters which lend themselves to a bigger variety of strategies. (Brotato is VERY interesting for this. It has dozens of characters that play very differently, though some balance tweaks would be to the good.)

Don't get me wrong. Vampire Survivors is still fun, and I occasionally give it a play or two when new content comes out.

I just think that, when looking at the improved designs, diminishing returns has set in. If you have an idea for a new twist on this design, it better be REALLY new.


The original. If you ever find an old arcade-style version of it, play it. Very difficult, but holds up. The main problem with the machines is maintenance. They are 40+ years old, and the joysticks have to work really well.

Actually, Vampire Survivors Earns Its Money

I think Vampire Survivors is a flawed game and this could make a really interesting design discussion. Yet, its developers do have one feature coming that explains why they are Very Smart People who earn their money.

Soon, Vampire Survivors will have couch co-op.

I have always said the secret power of indies is being able to pick up neglected genres, dust them off, and revive them. Alas, with the indie market so massively flooded, there are few of these genres left. Couch co-op and party games are one of them. There is a lot of room for someone to eat Jackbox's lunch.

Survivors-like games are PERFECT for couch co-op and party play. Yet, how many games in the genre have it? It was a perfect way for a new title to stand out. Instead, Vampire Survivors is picking up that $20 bill lying in the street.

When its couch co-op patch comes out, I'm buying a second copy on console. Something I basically never do.


One of the best twin-stick shooters ever and FREE ON STEAM RIGHT NOW GO GET IT GO GO GO.

One Final Design Note

The thing that is really bugging me about these games is how bland the levels and the enemies are. Twenty minutes of the same foes, in the same order, acting in exactly the same brain-dead way. I can't understand why the designer-instincts of the developers aren't being tickled more.

Consider the very, VERY first game of the genre, the classic Robotron: 2084, which came out OVER FORTY YEARS ago. It had more variety in its basic enemies than most survivors-likes now, including Vampire Survivors.

Every 5th level of that game was a Brain Wave. You were swarmed by the fearsome Brains. They would fire wiggly, heat-seaking missiles. They would also seek out your resources and convert them into missiles to launch at you.

The Brains had so much more thought and care in them than what I'm seeing today. With so much competition and with it being so hard to stand out, why not put some thoughts into your enemies, folks? (The bosses in the excellent Beat Hazard are also really neat.)

There. Another $20 bill lying in the street. Good luck out there!

 

[Aemar]

The thing that is really bugging me about these games is how bland the levels and the enemies are. Twenty minutes of the same foes, in the same order, acting in exactly the same brain-dead way. I can't understand why the designer-instincts of the developers aren't being tickled more.

Said the guy who has been rehashing his own games for 30 years.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

These games catered to the lowest common denominator of cheap price + low reqs with the added "value" of them being the game your favorite streamer would play all day.

 

[Spike]

The thing that is really bugging me about these games is how bland the levels and the enemies are. Twenty minutes of the same foes, in the same order, acting in exactly the same brain-dead way. I can't understand why the designer-instincts of the developers aren't being tickled more.

Said the guy who has been rehashing his own games for 30 years.

We like when he does it though

 

[Aemar]

Speak for yourself.

 

[OSK]

I like his remakes now that he learned to simply build upon the original game rather than trying to overhaul it (and only ending up making it worse).

 

[Joseph King]

My personal guess is that as the classic RPG's began to die off, Vogel lost a lot of his inspiration.

So all we have to do is get somebody to buy Jeff copies of Underrail and Age of Decadence, right?
Lord knows the cheap bastard won't buy them for himself.

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

Vampire Survivors is literally just a dopamine farm, it's like gambling but without needing to spend any money beyond the initial buying price, that's all there's to it. Suppose Jeff didn't get that point.

 

[thesecret1]

The thing that is really bugging me about these games is how bland the levels and the enemies are. Twenty minutes of the same foes, in the same order, acting in exactly the same brain-dead way. I can't understand why the designer-instincts of the developers aren't being tickled more.

Consider the very, VERY first game of the genre, the classic Robotron: 2084, which came out OVER FORTY YEARS ago. It had more variety in its basic enemies than most survivors-likes now, including Vampire Survivors.

Every 5th level of that game was a Brain Wave. You were swarmed by the fearsome Brains. They would fire wiggly, heat-seaking missiles. They would also seek out your resources and convert them into missiles to launch at you.

The Brains had so much more thought and care in them than what I'm seeing today. With so much competition and with it being so hard to stand out, why not put some thoughts into your enemies, folks? (The bosses in the excellent Beat Hazard are also really neat.)

There. Another $20 bill lying in the street. Good luck out there!

Only a matter of time before Jeff realizes HE can be the one picking up that $20 bill, and that these games require very little custom artwork. The only thing stopping from from making a VS clone is that he's OLD, SO OLD, SO INCREDIBLY OLD to branch out into a new genre, but with each successful clone, his FOMO goes into overdrive.

 

[Serus]

Vampire Survivors is literally just a dopamine farm, it's like gambling but without needing to spend any money beyond the initial buying price, that's all there's to it. Suppose Jeff didn't get that point.

So just like Diablo(2)-clones except the entry cost is lower?

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

Vampire Survivors is literally just a dopamine farm, it's like gambling but without needing to spend any money beyond the initial buying price, that's all there's to it. Suppose Jeff didn't get that point.

So just like Diablo(2)-clones except the entry cost is lower?

Yea basically, only the game also has a "lootbox" mechanic integrated into the game where you have this dopamine blast of this box opening and giving you rewards. They're super blatant about being a dopamine farm.

 

[kuniqs]

It might be common knowledge by now but I'd like to share Vogel's (possible, I guess?) inspirations for Exile and Nethergate:

Saga of Pliocene Exile
The Saga of Pliocene Exile (known as the Saga of the Exiles in some markets) is a narrative of the adventures of a group of late 21st and early 22nd century Empire outcasts who travel through a one-way time-gate to Earth's Pliocene epoch the Underworld in the hope of finding a simple utopia where they can escape the complexity and politics of the modern post-intervention intergalactic society rule of Emperor Hawthorne.

However, the reality the travelers find in Pliocene Europe Exile is far from their expectations. The time travelers of Group Green Exiles arrive to discover that the Pliocene Underworld is already inhabited by a dimorphic race of aliens ('exotics'), Tanu Slith and Firvulag Nephilim. The exotics, who have fled their home galaxy caves because of religious persecution...


Shadow Valley
Major dan Fayes was sent Four Roman soldiers were sent on a mission to Fort Costain in Arizona Shadow Valley Fort in Britain to end the apache Celtic reign of terror. It was then that the Apaches Celts struck swiftly, armed with new henry rifles faerie rods.

 

[Elthosian]

Any news of a Geneforge 2 remaster? Been itching to replay that game.

 

[Infinitron]

Any news of a Geneforge 2 remaster? Been itching to replay that game.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/geneforge-2-infestation-remake-from-spiderweb-software.145735/

 

[Infinitron]

https://bottomfeeder.substack.com/p/months-late-game-review-zelda-tears

Months Late Game Review ... Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The Good Things.​

A state-of-the-art machine for Fun generation.​

To end any confusion: The guy you play is called Zelda. That’s why it’s called The Legend of ZELDA. The chatty girl who destroys the world at the top of the game is called Link.

I think one of the big problems with game criticism now is that it's so rushed.

(Another big problem with game criticism is that, "Who cares? Don't you have real problems?" But let's set that one aside for now.)

When a hawt new game comes out, there is a 2-3 week window where everyone rushes to get out their Hot Takes. Then, barring a DLC release or sex scandal, it is forgotten forever in order to rush out the new takes about the New Sexy.

The problem is simple. A lot of the reason to pick games apart is to figure out what works and what doesn't, to make future games better. However, video games are big and complicated. To play them carefully and thoughtfully and then properly consider them takes time. Good theft is difficult.

If it was possible to make a successful, profitable web site for interesting, thoughtful video game criticism (It is not), I think such a site would return to the big titles 3-6 months later to ask, "What have we learned?" You'd say some bad things about beloved titles, to get readers to come in and argue. (Engagement!) I honestly think there'd be a market for that.

But this doesn't happen much. So you're stuck with reading me.

So let's talk, months late, about Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. (Z:TotK for short.)


Nintendo is the family-friendly company, of course, but that just means when they do go really dark it lands well. You can’t save the koroks without them suffering greatly.

The Whole Zelda Thing

One of the most surprising things about the Zelda games is that they've never actually been that popular. There sales are far less than their stature in gaming culture would indicate.

If you look at the list of best-selling video games, you'll see Mario all over the place.

Zelda, on the other hand, only cracked the list with its last game, Breath of the Wild, out in 2017. If that had slightly fewer sales, the most popular Zelda game ever would be Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

And this makes sense. Because, at their hearts, Zelda games are puzzle games with a bit of combat bolted on. Puzzle games are a niche genre.

Yet, this is an amazing time for niche games to break out and become big hits. Persona 5. Elden Ring. Baldur's Gate 3. Lots of games from weird genres suddenly making serious bank out there.

(Which makes sense, because the AAA game scene right now is soooo tedious. If you want me to buy another Assassin's Creed game, set it in Newark. Or Barbieland. Otherwise, pound sand.)

So Z:TotK, a game about laboriously welding wheels to bridges, should not be making a giant fortune. But it is, which is good, because it's awesome.

Breath of the Wild broke out into the big time by getting rid of the ancient formula (boomerang -> bombs -> hookshot, plus puzzle bosses) and replacing it with highly satisfying physics puzzles mixed with Dark Souls-lite bosses. Since the two new Zeldas are making infinite money, all decisions made in them are, by definition, good. Let's take a closer look!


There are some spoilers for this game, which I won’t spoil. That said, the bad guy is Ganondorf. The bad guy is ALWAYS Ganondorf.

I Almost Didn't Play This

I played a ton of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. When I found out a new game was coming out, but the only big change was that you could stick items together to build stuff, I just felt very tired. But my kids got it, so I tried it.

Then I had to get over a chasm by yeeting myself across in a box I stuck rockets to. I was kind of hooked.

This is a huge, sprawling game. They put years into writing it, finished it, and spent another year polishing it! It is BIG. It is full of creativity, crazy design decisions, and lots of simple, dumb fun.

You may have heard many complaints about flaws in the game. Just so you know, all those complaints are valid. There are a lot of problems here alongside the genius. It contains multitudes.

Yet, it's an eccentric classic, and it contains so much to learn. This post is about some good things. The next post will be about problems.

In no particular order ...

Your Weapons Break!

I think the most fascinating design decision in nu-Zelda, easily, is weapon durability. Basically, you can only use any weapon to kill a handful of enemies before it breaks.

Weapons are plentiful, so you won't ever run out. However, that awesome mega-sword you found isn't going to carry you to the end of the game. Sorry. At least it does double damage with its final hit!

Humans are extremely loss-averse. They like to keep stuff and they hate losing it. Thus, this choice infuriates roughly 110% of people who consider playing this game.

It's also the right decision for the game.

I truly admire the designers for sticking to their guns on this. While this is a controversial decision, it has a lot of plusses.

In other RPGs, gear is a simple, linear progression, a one-way road. Pick the weapon that seems most optimal. Get the level 2 version of that weapon. Then level 3. Then level 4. And so on until you win. Snore!

Nu-Zelda has a huge variety of weapons. One-handed, pole, two-hander. Magic, with a variety of effects. Missiles. In Z:TotK, you can also weld many items to your gear with a huge variety of effects. It's a really cool system, which, if weapons lasted forever, most players would never interact with.

In a system like this, linear gear progression is just a waste ... As long as the weapons you're trying are fun to use. Which in Zelda, luckily, they are. Try sticking a bomb or spring to your shield. I know. Cool, right?

In my playthrough, I used everything at least once. I found which weapons and magical upgrades worked best in each situation. In the endgame, I used many different pieces of gear, depending on the situation. I can’t remember ever wanting to do this before in a game. Much respect.

If you hate this, I can't convince you otherwise. It's a weird system. But it works. However, if you are going to try the weapon-break trick in your game, you MUST make sure the player has fun, workable, VARIED weapons to switch to. Experimenting has to be enjoyable. Otherwise, don't bother.

And if you are in a college studying Game Design? (God help you.) If your classes haven't yet brought up this system and had a vigorous debate about its good and bad points, that is educational malpractice.


OK, you can bet one weapon that only breaks temporarily. It’s pretty good.

There's Something To Be Said For Quantity

This is a very big game. There's an surface world. A sky world. An underworld. You can explore on foot. You can make cars, boats, or planes. It's almost entirely open-ended. A lot of the fun is just heading off in a direction and walking toward whatever looks neat.

I always love unguided exploration in games. I think one of the underrated good things about Minecraft is just having a pretty random world to explore.

Yes, there is a lot of repeating content, and not all of it is interesting. You can just walk past the challenges that bore you. (If you are capable of this. I'll get into this more in the next post.)

However, even after many hours in the game, I kept finding encounters that surprised me.

For example, I found this big cave system. It was in a remote area, far from anything, hidden behind a waterfall. I can guarantee most players will never find this place.

Inside, you find the parts to make a tank with big wheels and rockets and a laser gun. However, the floor of the cave contains huge expanses of thorns, and you need a vehicle to cross them. The safe parts of floor are covered with monsters. The only practical way through the cave was to make a tank and drive it through the tunnels, shooting hapless bad guys with rockets and lasers as you go.

This was really fun. How could it not be? Killing pests with a tank is ALWAYS AWESOME. Did Halo teach us NOTHING?

At the end of the cave, there was a reward. I have no idea what it was. Doesn't matter. The real reward was blasting and running over hordes of hapless monsters with my laser tank.

It is getting sadly rare and precious to find games where the things you do are their own reward. Not filling up a bar or farming loot. Just doing things that are fun.

There is a real, irreplaceable joy to this game, a relentless playfulness. I've been playing a lot of Diablo 4, and it's a useful comparison. Diablo 4 has monsters. It has dungeons. But it's just a long, unvaried grind. Shredding basically the same group of monsters, again and again, forever, to get the same weapon but with a slightly higher number. Depressing.

Of course, the secret sauce in all of this is being able to build stuff ...

The Physics Engine

A game's physics engine is one of those invisible things most players will never think about. If it's perfect, you take it for granted. If it is bad, you're annoyed, but you don't know why.

I'm not the first person to observe this, but one of the most amazing things about Zelda is how they use a 7 year old console that was underpowered when it was released and filled it with one of the best physics engines ever.

What is a physics engine? Well, suppose you throw an apple at another apple and they both roll away and then the wind catches one of them and rolls it off a cliff and it lands on a goblin's head and the goblin takes an appropriate amount of damage. That's the physics engine.

I won't go into the details of these engines much, except to say they're harder to make than you think. The basics are pretty simple, yes, but as more objects start to interact with each other in a confined space the math gets exponentially more difficult. Then, if you add, as in Zelda, wind and sliding and friction and buoyancy and springs and carts and wheels and all sorts of other reality-things, it gets HARD to do right.

I found all the things this game made you do relentlessly surprising and delightful. Remember, this is a puzzle game at heart. It kept coming up with weird new ways to make me fling items around. (My personal favorite was when you had to use slippery steel plates and fans to make a roller coaster car.)

Z:TotK achieves the most elusive, difficult, satisfying goal for any physics engine: It feels right. As in, we all live in physical reality. We all have a bone-deep instinctive feel for how objects interact with each other. In Zelda, if you predict how something will happen, it generally happens that way. And, if something fails to work, you understand why.

These two videos, inexperienced and experienced, are a pretty good demo. Honestly, this is some impressive stuff.




Games Are Still Allowed To Be Easy

Z:TotK has what I've come to call a two-tiered difficulty system. Basically, the core storyline has a base, not-too-tough difficulty level, and then there is a lot of optional content that's much harder. The recent God of War games do this too, for example. It lets the kids and casuals see all the good stuff, but it lets the Dark Souls maniacs stretch themselves a little.

Honestly, the optional fights in Z:TotK never get that tough. But whatever. The interesting thing is that the boss fights in the game are EASY.

There are two fights where you're basically in the sky fighting a flying dragon thing. In each case, I honestly think you'd have to go out of your way to lose.

It was a new experience for me: A chill boss fight. For the first minute, I was really tense. Then I realized I couldn't lose. Then I just enjoyed the graphics and sound and flying around and watching the enemy fall apart.

I'm not sure if I recommend this for other games. In a big, epic story like this, I think you want a bit of pushback from the major foes. I mean, there are casual gamers out there, but they're not THAT casual. Elden Ring was a hit, after all.

But this is another example of how the game stresses fun and variety. The chill boss fights were still fun to play, even without suspense. (There is a similar sort of low-risk fight in Elden Ring where you fight a giant lava monster with a giant anime sword, though you might die once or twice.)

However, I think more than one boss fight like that in a single title is a mistake.

Last Few Thoughts

It's a huge, sprawling game, full of amazingly good things and the occasional rough spot. Between that complexity and its massive popularity, it's really worth picking apart for choices to argue about and ideas to steal.

Soon, I'll write a bit about the bad choices, which are all pretty interesting. As I said, if you've read online any list of criticisms of the game, they are all correct.

 

[Infinitron]

https://bottomfeeder.substack.com/p/months-late-game-review-part-2-zelda

Months Late Game Review, Part 2. ... Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Some Bad Things.​

Because even mild criticism makes people angry and drives viral engagement!​

​

When you are desperate for attention, any attention feels like good attention.

In my last post about Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Z:TotK for short), a very popular game, I suggested that people would be interested in thoughtful criticism of slightly older games, once the dust has settled and people had the chance to calmly reflect about them.

It was my least-read post in a while, so yeah, I was wrong about that.

The reason is obvious. Most people don't actually care about deep dives into game design. And, if you're like that? GOOD! Wise choice. Stick with it. Stay the course.

But I DO Write Games For a Living

I try out lots and lots of video games. I rarely play any one title for very long, but each year I try MANY titles for at least an hour or two. It keeps my knowledge of the industry current and is generally a worthwhile exercise.

I've been doing this for a long time, and to keep my design skills fresh I love to find problems in games and figure out how I would try to fix them.

I'm almost always wrong, I'm sure. After all the people who wrote the game understand their game way better than I do. Figuring out what I would try is still a useful design exercise.

Z:TotK Has Plenty of Flaws

Last week, I wrote a whole bunch about what I loved about this game. However, this is such a big, sprawling, shaggy title, that it has plenty of flaws. Any sufficiently large and open-ended game is going to aggravate people. Often, these aggravations are justified.

So here are a few problems players have had. If you agree with me that something is a problem, then, for fun, figure out what you would do to mitigate it. Then I'll give my answer.

Z:TotK is a really good game, so these flaws are on the minor, nitpicky side. Still, I've seen people online get super-mad about each of these issues, so someone cares.

(This post is pretty spoiler-free, for what it's worth.)


This moblin tree fort layout is pretty cool. Which is good, because you’re gonna see it a lot.
Problem #1: Excessive Encounter Reuse

The world of Z:TotK is immense, which is good. Being able to build a plane and cruise over the enormous landscape is a hoot. The problem is that, in any game of this sort, you're going to reuse a lot of OPTIONAL bosses and encounter layouts. (Elden Ring had a lot of this. I hear that Starfield does as well.) It's inevitable. Developers run out of time and budget eventually.

The main solution to this is on the player end: If you don't want to do something, don't do it. Just walk on by and only do the things you enjoy doing. As long as the main storyline is all fresh material, repeats shouldn't be a problem.

However, this always ends up a problem. Some people are compulsive gamers. They feel unhappy if they let stuff by. Other people need to farm to do what they want, and the farming duplicate areas are boring.

Plus, seeing the same enemy fort fifty times in a row is distracting and breaks immersion. So yeah, copy-pasted enemy forts and bosses is not something people like.

What I Would Do To Fix It

You can't fix it. If you want to have an enormous open world, some copy-pasting will be necessary, even for games with huge budgets. Sometimes, everyone has to come together and accept that the medium has limits. In Elden Ring, I fought one particular boss in four different places. Wasn't optimal. Still loved the game.

Also, making all-new versions of everything in a huge game, is simply a waste. It means a huge chunk of bespoke content won't be played much.

But. In the case of Zelda, there is a way to mitigate copy-pasted enemy forts. You need to look for ways to stretch the content inexpensively.

For example, you can make the same goblin (well, moblin) fort play entirely differently by placing it in ways that interact with the terrain around it. Place a goblin fort on top of a tiny plateau so you can only hit it with air assault. Place the identical fort on a lava island. Place two forts right next to each other (one rotated slightly so it's not super obvious). Place one that is empty and another that has twice as many monsters. Place one in a pit so you have to jump down on it and another in a narrow valley so you can only assault it along one road. Tweak the AI for one so the moment the goblins see you they all leap out of it and rush you. Fill another with only archers and force the player to attack it under a rain of arrows.

Is there a way to add variety with minimal developer and test time? Find it.

To be fair. Z:TotK does do a lot of this. I would stretch it even farther. Playing with terrain is a relatively inexpensive way to stretch content, since you have to make terrain anyway. The goal is to get enough weird variety that players poke at the copy-pasted forts just to see what the heck the designers came up with.


You have to use a dozen of these towers to map the world. Each has a puzzle you have to solve, and the puzzles all use different abilities and parts of the engine. Good work. No notes.
Problem #2: Learning Key Plot Elements Too Early

This problem fascinates me, because it's obvious, incredibly distracting, and easy to encounter.

Z:TotK gives the player lots of freedom. Total freedom combined with a linear storyline can lead to weird results.

So the story of the game is that your BFF Princess Zelda vanishes and you need to find the story of what happened to her. You do this by locating a whole bunch of "Geoglyphs" which are scattered around the world. You can easily find them all right away. Thus, it is very easy to finish this quest early on, like before you do pretty much any of the rest of the storyline.

Each time you find a “Geoglyph," you watch a cutscene which shows a sliver of what happened to Zelda. You find these in sort of a random order, so you get Zelda's story all mixed up. I think that part is really cool. You get to feel like a detective as you piece the story together.

The problem is that, when you get all of the "Geoglyphs," you find out what actually happened to Zelda, and it's REALLY IMPORTANT. The problem is that, when you do the regular storyline, nobody knows this thing, and their ignorance causes all sorts of problems. BUT I KNOW IT. So I have to shout at the screen, "I know what the problem is! Why am I not telling you?"

This is a game that put enormous effort into predicting the player's actions and came up with cool responses to them. That's why I find this problem such a surprise. It seems like a common issue, too. I encountered it. So did both of my kids. Saw several complaints about it online. I'm not saying it's a giant thing, but it's definitely there.

What I Would Do To Fix It

The makers of the game decided it wasn't a big issue. That's their right. And, I mean, I had a ton of fun, and people don't care about stories in video games that much. I care about story a lot, so I would tweak this, but honestly? You're allowed to just let this one go.

If it was me, I'd fix it, and it doesn't take a huge tweak. At a certain point in the story, everyone finds out the BIG SECRET. You could lock the final "Geoglyph" where it couldn't be reached until after you learn the SECRET. Then you could find it and watch the SECRET happen.

(Slightly spoilery suggestion: Put the Geoglyph right next to the Master Sword. Or in the quest for the 5th companion.)

Yes, this breaks the total open-endedness, but only slightly, and it ends all confusion. It's a trade-off, and game design is about nothing but infinite trade-offs.


The hoverbike design is so good I wish it was one of the default designs provided. Attacking an enemy fort by going full Leeroy Jenkins and crashing your plane in the middle of it is sweeeeet.
Problem #3: Key Character Cutscenes Are Too Similar

The story of Z:TotK is a mixed bag for me. I really liked Zelda's part of the story. I think Link's part is kind of blah and his companions are kind of cartoonish and annoying. The Zelda part was touching. But that's just like my opinion, man.

There is one part of the story, however, that people seem pretty universally bugged by.

So you get four companions, each of which is the avatar of a warrior in this ancient war. When the companion joins you, there is a long cutscene where your companion kind of links with their ancient counterpart.

The problem is that each of these four cutscenes is pretty much identical, in a way that's really distracting and easy to make fun of.

I know exactly why they did it this way. The game is open-ended. You can get these companions in any order, so they wanted to make sure you get the key bits of the story as quickly as possible.

You just shouldn't be repeating yourself like this.

What I Would Do To Fix It

Happily, the game already solved this problem itself. The Geoglyphs tell a story, but each one gives you a chunk of it. You get them in a random order and then, over time, the whole story becomes clear.

Why not do this with the stories of the four companions? All you need is a story to tell, where each of the four ancient avatars play a part.

When my games have problems (which is always), I always try to solve a problem in a way that solves another problem. For example, if spells are too weak and I need to put more treasures in the game, these two problems can solve each other. I can add altars (or whatever ) to buff spells.

Happily, there is already a gap in the story of Z:TotK that needs to be filled. There is a huge war way in the past, but you see almost none of it. Just the beginning and the very end. I would make four cutscenes showing key points in this war. Each prominently figures a different ancient hero. After the battle or whatever, the ancient hero senses your companion, and the connection takes place.

You get these in random order, but that already happens with Zelda's story, so it's fine.

If there are a handful of key plot points that need to be made, just make them in one cutscene. Two if it's REALLY important. You can assume most people will get all four companions. If they can finish the game without getting the companions, the story point they miss wasn't so important, was it?

I'm really surprised they made four almost identical cutscenes. It's a weird decision, especially considering how detailed the rest of the game is. Then again, it's a story thing, and nobody cares about video game stories, so whatever.


Oh GOD. The frogs and crickets and dragonflies. I forgot about those. The inside of my backpack must be so GROSS.
Problem #4: TOO. MUCH. STUFF.

This game is a LOT. So many items. So many recipes. So many locations. This is really cool, and people love it. However, when you're stepping on the gas like this, it's easy to get into a mindset where EVERYTHING is necessary and NOTHING can be removed. This can become a problem.

Z:TotK has so, so many items, and so many of them are redundant. There's a set of plants that can be made into potions that upgrade your stats. Yay! There's a set of mushrooms that upgrade the same stats. And a set of fish that upgrade the same stats. And a set of lizards (!) that upgrade the same stats. Bat eyes and wings are really useful, but there's five types of bat, each of which drops its own sort of eye or wing. Plus dozens of monster body parts, and gems, and pinecones, and on and on, until your pack has hundreds of items.

There is no way to store crafting items. Your inventory gets completely loaded up and awkward and messy. Sorting through it slows the game down in an unfun way.

And the UI issues make it worse. One really fun thing is how you can stick any item to your arrows and give the arrows cool and often really useful effects. However, when you try to do this, you have to find the item you want from a huge list while holding controller buttons down in an awkward way.

It's confusing, slows the game down, and provides too much freedom. There is no reason to stick a lizard to your arrow, so stop offering me the option!

Worse yet, you don’t feel free to just sell the excess junk, because some of it might be needed to upgrade your items and the game gives no hint of what.

To be clear, not everyone thinks this is a problem. Some people like being overwhelmed with stuff. Me, I'm sick of sorting through hoarder piles in games. I don't want to play Starfield until there is a mod that hides all junk.

But I think it's undeniable that piling up too much junk slows the game down. There is always a point of too much. The question is: have we reached it?

What I Would Do To Fix It

This game would be SO much more playable if you got, like, an "Ingredients Box" that could store non-breakable items (gems, lizards, etc.). Maybe in DLC?

Anyhoo, I think if several sets of items have the same functionality you should strongly consider dropping one of them. The most annoying one. In this case, lizards and fish are redundant with two other items sets, and they are annoying to catch. People like going after fish, and the fish help make the water interesting. So lose lizards.

(Personally, I'd lose fish too. But I won't be greedy.)

When inspecting inventory, if an item is necessary for crafting, the game should let you know very clearly. If I can freely sell an item for cash, tell me that too. This is just a kindness.

Finally, this is a case where it's worth trading off freedom for playability. If sticking an item to a weapon or arrow is useless, it shouldn't be an option. Players might do the useless thing once or twice to be lolrandom, but it's not worth slowing down the game for everyone.


I find most of the companions kind of annoying. Then again, Zelda is not primarily an adult series, so I’ll just shut up about that.
Yes, I Know All These Complaints Are Minor

I think Z:TotK is a terrific game. I loved playing it. I think it's a legit classic. So, yes, all my complaints are a bit nitpicky.

I'm not bringing them up because Z:TotK wants my advice. I bring them up because they touch on game design principles in general. These problems (if they are problems) don't sink Z:TotK. However, they are the sort of thing that can really harm a game that doesn't have as great strengths as Z:TotK does. It's good to understand them.

Figuring out how to solve problems is fun. As long as you're humble about it. Never forget:

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” - Neil Gaiman

 

[Infinitron]

https://bottomfeeder.substack.com/p/are-we-still-doing-the-diablo-4-pile

Are We Still Doing the Diablo 4 Pile-On?​

When you attempt the impossible, you're going to run into a bit of trouble.​

Diablo 4 is about killing this lady because she’s bad. I kept thinking the story was about how she was a complex character with nuance, but then she’d kill like 80 first graders and I stopped caring about her motivation.
My wife and I finished the main story of Diablo IV and started the endgame just as the number of people who played went right into the dumper.

Diablo IV has been piled on a lot lately. It's been your standard-issue Internet rage swarm, which is always going to be at least as much fun as the game itself. If you want a summary of why people are mad, this video is a good summary. The complaints are generally valid.

(At this rate, YouTube videos whinging about Diablo 4 are going to earn more than the game does. Heck, I’m just here shilling for my next game.)

I don't care about joining in a pile-on. I always have more fun trying to be positive.

So I want to focus on the instructive part. It's kind of fun to pick apart Action Role-Playing games (ARPGs for short), games where players are meant to spend 1000 hours and up killing bad guys to get the best loot. (If you are killing foes with pew-pew guns instead of stabby-stabs, you can also call them "looter shooters.")

These games are big, BIG business, and there are a lot of things you have to get right to make them work. I want to break down some of the key things that seem off about Diablo 4 and dig into your game is gonna need if you want people to give it the SERIOUS hours.

When You Are Talking About Diablo 4, You Are Talking About Two Games

Diablo 4 has two parts.

The first is the main storyline, the part almost every purchaser will play. You go through the standard-issue Diablo fantasy grimdark "All the nice people get murderated." somewhat incomprehensible storyline. You go out and get the five magic maguffins and then slay a demon while everyone whines at you.

It gets pretty gruesome Saw-movie in there, but it's functional. (I've seen a lot of people online call this story "great", which is incomprehensible to me, but whatevs.)

Meanwhile, you play a very simple, fast-moving action game. You upgrade your loot and train your skills a lot. It's brisk and varied. You get lots of sweet gear upgrades. This part of the game is not great, but it's fine. If you want to play an RPG with your wife/partner/dog you trained to tap the 'X' button, you've done worse.


Endgame training of Diablo 4 is about spending points in this gigantic, labyrinthine “Paragon Board,” and there’s something beautifully pure about how confusing and convoluted it is.
But That's Not What Diablo 4 Is REALLY About, Now, Is It?

But Diablo 4, like all ARPGs these days, wants to be more. It wants to be a PLATFORM. It wants you to play it for a decade.

It wants to be a thousand-hour game.

It's fascinating to think about aiming for this sort of goal, to take over a human's life to such an extent.

I've gotten this addicted to RPGs. (Everquest and World of Warcraft in particular). I spent SO MUCH time in these games. And I did have fun. But, looking back, I'm not 100% sure I couldn't have found a better use of my time. I certainly can't do that anymore.

It's kind of an unnatural thing to do.

You Can’t Go Home Again

I’ve seen so many people complaining that Diablo 4 doesn’t give them the same thrill Diablo 2 did.

Of course it doesn’t. If you played Diablo 2, you can never get that thrill again. You are no longer the same person you were when you played Diablo 2.

ARPGs are addiction traps, designed to appeal to certain receptors in the brain. Those receptors get overloaded and burn out eventually. (This is a good thing.)

I suppose most gamers will get caught in an addiction trap at some point in their lives. It's OK, within reason. And if people are walking into money traps, why shouldn't Blizzard make their own money traps?

But it's such a hard goal! Getting someone ensnared for a 1000 hours is really, really difficult. Creating a game that enthralling is a miracle, lightning in a bottle. Your game has to be compelling, seamless, and completely free of the aggravations that would drive a player away at a mere 200 hours.

But this is the goal. When a company sinks hundreds of millions into an ARPG, the income from long term addicts and whales are the goal. They're what make the business model not explode.

So, right now, how is Diablo 4 set up to hold people in?


This character is called “Lightning Boi.” He is a good guy. Or a bad guy. He same some sort of highly emotional relationship with bone-horn-head lady, and they like or hate each other very much. I REALLY had a hard time following the story.
The Long and Long Of It

This was a really expensive game worked on for a long time, and there are things they got right. Like, the environments are incredibly pretty. Insane amounts of work went into crafting this world. If you're going to look at something for 1000 hours, you want to like looking at it.

But the gameplay is really a grind. It's very bland and samey. There are few surprises. (This is based on my experience and a bunch of Twitch watching. When I watched high-end Diablo 4 players on Twitch, what really struck me was how dead the players' eyes were.)

If you're trying to play for 1000 hours, you need to change up what your character does sometimes, or it's too boring. However, retraining your character is really expensive, which limits player variety and experimentation.

The screen becomes an illegible mess of particle effects during battles. Often I'm playing Where's Waldo to figure out where my stupid character is. These sorts of aggravations are tolerable in a 50 hour game, but any friction will wear and wear over 1000 hours.

Getting loot upgrades is mostly searching through tons of trash in the hope of finding a mild side-upgrade. Proper, dopamine-increasing upgrades are worryingly rare. Remember, if you are selling the chance to get candy, at some point you do have to hand out the candy!

But to be fair: They do have to make it hard to get upgrades. Remember, this game is meant to be a thing for a decade at least. They can't hand out power too quickly, because otherwise what will they offer in five years?

However, while you can get away with making upgrades rare, you have to hand them out in a satisfying, enjoyable way. You want the speed, satisfaction, and addictiveness of a slot machine, and that just isn't there right now. The tempo is wrong.

But here's the thing. This is all FIXABLE. They just came out with a new patch that already makes a lot of things better.

Diablo 4 is a marathon, not a sprint. A lot of money and time is going into improving it. It's possible that everyone will suddenly love it in three years, if it figures out what to fix and how.


But is there a Cow Level?
What Does a Game Like This Need To Work?

This was an expensive game. If it wants to make the sort of money Activision expects, it needs a core of hardcore players. Willing suckers who buy all those sweet season passes and asinine armor skins.

That's why the complaints about the game, trivial as they seem to normies, matter. Sure, you can piss off a lot of people. But you can't piss off the whales who pay the bills. You have to figure out what product they want to buy and, one way or another, deliver it.

But again, the race is long. If Cyberpuck 2077 and No Man's Sky can turn things around, anything can. I wish them all the luck putting some spice in the Diablo 4 experience.

I'm about to take a LONG break from it, but I'm not going anywhere, I hope. Diablo is an institution. If they figure out how to bring the goods, people will come back. I will too.

But what does it actually need? For fun, I came up with a list of four key things an RPG needs to hold interest. A shorter game should have most of them. A 1000 hour game needs all of them.

Since this post is already super-long, I'll break out my list for next week.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Nobody is piling on Diabloe 4 anymore because nobody's playing it anymore lol

 

[fantadomat]

There was a diablo 4?! I remember that there was a diablo 3 always online with betting and shit,that was a flop. But never knew that there is a glorious diablo 4....oy wey.

 

[Tyranicon]

He could've just wrote " Blizzard is dead."

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Hmmmm….. so this part is about fisting eh? A lot of FISTS there be. I’m sure many purchasers feel fatally fuck fisted in the wallet lately by Blizzard.

 

[Infinitron]

Don't forget to work on your game, Jeff: https://bottomfeeder.substack.com/p/four-tips-to-make-your-murder-and

Four Tips to Make Your Murder & Loot Game Painfully Addicting!​

Making a truly addictive brain-trap needs a little Art with your Science.​

Progress Quest taught us all how simple our brains where and how easily games could use our mental reward systems against us. It came so close to making all the money in the world.

At some point in the last several decades of video games, everything became a role-playing game.

Turns out, if your game design is a little lacking, all you need to do is spackle on a bit of "Make bars fill up to make numbers get bigger to make bars fill up." It's the magic sauce that covers up so many sins.

Nobody could write Asteroids now. Players would say, "I shot 500 asteroids. Should that give me 500 asteroid bucks I can use to buy asteroid-seeking missiles?" And the designer would say, "Yeah, it should. Now it does." And honestly, I'd probably spend a lot of time playing that game.

Alas, the "Bar fills up, Number goes up" loop is so satisfying and addictive that it tends to make designers forget that there's more than that to making a good game.



Path of Exile is the current state of the art for RPG addition engines. Dawg, does that bow have FOUR upgrade slots? SIGN ME UP!

The Deceptively Tricky Art of RPGs

I've noticed something over the decades. Designers think making an RPG is easier than it is.

I've played so many games where the designer just made this gameplay loop:

1. Player does some rote, repetitive action.

2. Numbers go up!

3. Repeat forever.

And they expect this to work as a game. And it doesn't. It's bland oatmeal. It needs some spice, but the people making the game didn't provide it.

There is an art to this genre, something I can say since I have achieved mild success working in it. I think, when making an RPG, there are four qualities it should strive to have.

If one of these qualities is missing, you are limiting the game's addictiveness. You can still get by if you're writing a shorter single-player game.

However, if you're writing an ARPG or looter shooter like Diablo 4 and your business model depends on a dedicated core of 1000 hour addict players? You'd better have all four, or you're in the Danger Zone.



In Everquest and World of Warcraft raiding, you could play with a guild and spend several weeks getting each upgrade. You don’t need to get candy often. It all depends on how you hand it out.

1. Variety of Encounters

The player is hopefully spending a lot of time out in the field, trashing bozos and collecting loot. That's the loop. Move. Kill. Loot. Repeat.

The move part is always boring, and looting should always be fun. The trick is making sure the fighting part is engaging. Which means it has to have variety. If too many of the battles feel the same, there is no excitement. No suspense. No way to feel powerful. Just a flat line of endless beige.

To generate suspense and engagement, there needs to be some granuarity to the experience. Highs and lows. Easy suddenly turning to hard. You can't let the player run on autopilot for too long, or they'll start thinking of better things to do. A player should always be alert and know that something unexpected can happen.

There are a MILLION ways to do this. Unexpected hordes. Minibosses. Multiple minibosses. A few creatures with unique and deadly attacks. Restrictive terrain. This is a chance for designers to have fun.

Note that, if your encounters are meant to have interesting variety, it has to be clear to the player that the variety happened. If your special encounter happens and the player just burns through it without noticing, something has gone wrong.

Diablo 4 has a really nasty miniboss called the Butcher who can rarely show up at any time, terrifies everyone, and drops good loot. I humbly suggest adding to that game about 10000 more encounters like this. Something wild should happen at least once an hour. (Unless actually fighting a boss fight. Or, heck with it, maybe even then!)

Your game doesn't have to be constantly exciting to be good. But if it is never exciting? Nobody is going to put in the long hours.

2. Variety of Choices

You will always get tired of playing your character eventually. When your awesome attacks are dull and rote, there's no more power or unpredictability. That's why it has to be easy for the player to switch to a new experience.

The player's character should have a wide variety of abilities, all of them fun and impactful. Retraining your character should be affordable, so that you can easily experiment with different builds. If a player cares enough to do this experimenting, reward their interest! Never forget, making difficult, impactful choices is always compelling.

Suppose a character has five abilities to choose from, and one of them is really good. A standard-issue, tight-assed, buzzkill modern game designer will nerf the strong one. No! Buff the weak ones! Remember, you want people to feel powerful! If people like using one ability, make the others that fun.

And if an ability is a bit too strong and the players like it lot? Keep it in! It doesn't matter! It's just a video game!



Diablo 4 is a gorgeous game. No question. But this boss was a little dull the FIRST time I fought it.

3. Good Dopamine Rewards

There are two reasons to play these games: The surge of triumph and fake power that comes from beating a tough boss or encounter. And the dopamine hits from improving your character.

Time is the currency you spent to get power, and you are aiming for customers who have nothing but time to burn.

However, if you are making a game you want players to play for a long time, there is a limit to how many upgrades you can give. You need to save some power for the future. That's why you have to achieve the trick of making the small, incremental upgrades exciting.

When you get rewards, it should feel like a slot machine. Think about using a slot machine. You press the button. The wheels spin and the ding-ding-ding happens. And you know you're probably going to lose. But you're still gripped, because you know there's a small chance of something great happening.

That's how to structure giving loot. Don't give a Diablo 4-style constant drip of trash and tedious sorting through junk. Only have a few moments where the player can get an improvement. But have those moments be clear and suspenseful. Then have that improvement, when it finally appears, be substantial. The player has to FEEL it.

4. The Power Fantasy

This is a fantasy. Why does a player expend hundreds of precious hours of life to get lost in your fantasy? Because it, in some way, feels rewarding.

My games are short and story-heavy. I can give the player rewards in the role-playing and the story. A thousand hours of looter shooter game can't rely on story, so the player must be made to feel good with the game mechanics. Which means the action and the loot. These have to be, at some point, exciting. You know. Fun.

Think about the player at the end of a session. What about your game made the player feel good? What makes the player walk away from the computer feeling like he or she has had a satisfying experience? How often did those high points happen, and what unnecessary elements blunted or diluted their effect?

You need to be able to answer these questions.



Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms is a great example of a really successful game where you never actually do much. I played it until the self-loathing overcame me.

This Is Where the Art Is

Video games are machines for manipulating human brains. When I write a game, I am trying to use my limited skills and set of tools to make an engine that will create emotional responses in the brain of some human I will never meet.

The main reason designers put RPG elements in games is that it's easy. "Bar goes up. Number goes up. Dopamine flows." Anyone can do that. Never forget you can use that loop to make popular games where the player doesn't even do anything.

(Progress Quest is one of the most revelatory and influential "games" ever made.)

But filling bars is an empty activity. Most players will get tired of it quick. That is where the Art comes in. That is when I tap into my sense of mischief, playfulness, and barely restrained sadism. When I start putting some game in the game.

So think about games. Forget about filling bars. What makes you smile? What makes you scared or gets your heart racing? Think back to games you played a long time ago. What incidents from way back when do you still remember?

When you come up with a design idea that makes you smile or giggle a little, you're on the right track.

 

[OSK]

At some point in the last several decades of video games, everything became a role-playing game.

This is especially true on "RPG" Codex.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

This is especially true on "RPG" Codex.

It's well established that Codex policy in Current Year is to consider any game an RPG if it identifies as one.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Hmmmm….. so this part is about fisting eh? A lot of FISTS there be. I’m sure many purchasers feel fatally fuck fisted in the wallet lately by Blizzard.

Even more fists than my average post.