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Challenge: Reactive vs. Predictive


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Poll: Challenge: Reactive vs. Predictive

Which do you feel is more important when making video game challenges?

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#1 TheLegend_njf

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Posted 12 October 2018 - 02:50 PM

Since this topic is discussing specifically reactive vs predictive challenges, I'm only leaving two options in the poll. If you don't quite agree with those options, you can just null.

 

So here's a question that popped in my mind last night, and I've been wondering what people's thoughts are about this. I'm sure most of us played fairly difficult games. Now what's actually considered difficult is very subjective, but this isn't the point or matter of discussion I'm trying to have here. I just want to know your thoughts about two specific things I've been noticing in difficult games.

 

Let's start with reactive. For the past few years, I've been trying to focus challenges in my quests entirely around reactive design. As in you see some form of telegraph, or the attack does have enough frames so that a person can reasonably avoid most attacks, even on their first try. Now how many frames is fair can be subjective for every person, but I've always favored attacks and traps that you can see coming, and you must rely on quick reflexes to avoid. Because of this, I've often criticized predictive gameplay as "bad design".

 

However, let's now discuss predictive gameplay. I originally counted this form of design out as bad design because it expects some form of magical thinking from people, as if we're supposed to know the trap is coming before we even see it. However, the more I think about it, a lot of challenge games do rely on predictive gameplay. Most of the time you're not going to beat a level or a boss in these games on your first try. There's just not enough tell in the traps or attacks. However, the game has already thought you to seek out clues from earlier points in the game to predict where the traps will come. Sure, you may not be fast enough to avoid it, but you'll certainly avoid it if there is a common pattern from earlier moments in the game. 

 

What got me thinking about this is a recent interest I had in fighting games. I sometimes debated the fairness of fighting games because a lot of punches are difficult to simply react to, specifically those quick jab like punches that move faster than a human can just react to. This leads to a more often than not, situations where the bulk of the gameplay requires you to "know your opponent" and punish their predictable behavior. You don't need to react to somebody if you know what they are going to do before they even do it. If on the alternative, a fighting game's attacks were so slow that you could just react to and dodge every attack, that could potentially make the entire genre too easy and dumb. 

 

Hell, one could argue that you cannot even have a truly hard game if the entire bulk of the challenge relies on our reactions, because generally people have similar average speed, and as such what we have is a game that technically doesn't challenge anybody who's really willing to push forward. So forcing situations that must keep players guessing probably is the only way to make these real challenging games. 

So I figured I'd open this topic with a poll and get your opinions on it. Especially from those of you who play challenge games like old NES titles, Dark Souls, hack n slashes, or fighting games. 



#2 Architect Abdiel

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Posted 12 October 2018 - 03:17 PM

I nulled, because I don't really have a preference or see one as better than the other. I think it comes down to the philosophy of the game. Like the fighting game example you brought up. Predictive gameplay may be more suitable.

I like reactive gameplay, cause I think it adds a layer of fairness to the player. However, I also like predictive, cause in my mind it may be more realistic. Like, in reality, there may not be clues to where an attack or trap is coming from. Although, even then, in many predictive games, you may still be able to figure out where suspicious areas are by observation.

Like, Dark Souls, I would consider a bit of a mix. Things like mimic chests do special things with their chains, which is more akin to giving you a hint. There's also Sen's Fortress which moreso judges your ability of timing things. However, the game may be riddled with more obscure traps and attacks. But, by playing the games, it teaches me to be aware of my surroundings and never be unprepared when rounding any corner.



#3 kurt91

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Posted 14 October 2018 - 02:33 AM

Predictive is probably fine, if it's done very carefully. I can only think of two good ways as examples.

 

One, if the punishment is minor and we're given enough times to learn before we get punished. Like, if there's a boss fight that has an attack that's more predictive, it better not do very much damage for failing to realize what's going on. Look at the extra bosses in Kingdom Hearts 2. Each one has a gimmick, and to be completely honest, you could probably figure out what you need to do after a bit of trial and error. Marluxia puts up a counter above your character equivalent to your EXP level. You get hit, that number goes down as well as your HP. You can heal your HP, but you can't increase that counter at all. Nothing is telling you what's going to happen when it hits zero, you just know damn well that it's not going to be good.

 

As a bad example from the same game, there's Zexion. He has a particular attack where the arena goes black and three spotlights appear, cycling between red and blue. Once they finish cycling, the blue one becomes the sole safe spot from a massive meteor-strike attack. However, you have nowhere near enough time once they stop cycling to know to get to the correct one before it gets blocked off and you take a huge amount of damage. The only person I've seen beat that boss (Not including superhuman-type play that's like "I hacked in twelve copies of the final boss and fought them all at once while taking no damage") had to pause the game to give himself enough time to register what he needed to do. As far as I know, there's no definitive tell which one to pick, and you just have to go with a one-in-three gamble each time. That would be a bad example of predictive gameplay. (Unless somebody knows of a second tell that I don't know about and haven't noticed in the fight.)

 

Two, if there's a TON of build-up time. I mean, let's use a boss battle as an example again. The boss jumps up and begins charging. After about five or six solid seconds of waiting for the attack, the player's going to have an "Oh SHIT! This is going to be bad!" realization, and will start trying to think and predict everything that's possibly going to happen, and look for ways to counter and survive it. There may not be a tell that we need to find something to hide behind, or something to activate/destroy to negate the attack, but we're going to start looking for possibilities.



#4 Koh

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Posted 14 October 2018 - 06:11 PM

As a bad example from the same game, there's Zexion. He has a particular attack where the arena goes black and three spotlights appear, cycling between red and blue. Once they finish cycling, the blue one becomes the sole safe spot from a massive meteor-strike attack. However, you have nowhere near enough time once they stop cycling to know to get to the correct one before it gets blocked off and you take a huge amount of damage. The only person I've seen beat that boss (Not including superhuman-type play that's like "I hacked in twelve copies of the final boss and fought them all at once while taking no damage") had to pause the game to give himself enough time to register what he needed to do. As far as I know, there's no definitive tell which one to pick, and you just have to go with a one-in-three gamble each time. That would be a bad example of predictive gameplay. (Unless somebody knows of a second tell that I don't know about and haven't noticed in the fight.)

 

The blue light moves 13 times, the 13th being the final time.  So you just count to 13 and know that when you reach 13, you make a mad dash for the light.  This fight actually isn't that hard once you get the telegraphs, I've done it myself on Critical Mode.

 

 

All of KH2's bosses and superbosses fall into the reactive category.  The difference is the timing.  All the main story bosses are easy and give you plenty of time to react, whereas the superbosses have smaller windows of reaction, and lower revenge values.



#5 kurt91

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Posted 23 October 2018 - 04:16 AM

Huh... I somehow never thought to count the number to light changes. Figures that it would be 13 every time. I didn't realize it was the same every time, and spent all of my time looking for a visual tell. Even watched videos of the fight to see if there was something that I was missing, and nothing said that it was counting the number of color-swaps.

 

In my defense, I had only played the original US version on the PS2 up until I had gotten the HD version, and I'm still partway through a first playthrough. KH2 never had much for me as far as replayability, mainly because they took away all of the platforming design and made the levels mostly arena-to-arena, and watered down the Disney plots even more than KH1 did. I mean, at least the first game tried to do something unique with the characters from each movie instead of rehashing the film plot. (Even Donald complains about this on the second visit to the Mulan world, and the game actually recycling a set-piece for a second time.)




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