Here’s the first mechanic! Please feel free to discuss my findings. I’m allowing for a day or two for discussion in all of these cases.
Mechanic #001: Beating a Timer
Pokemon Name - Ticktockster (Lightning/Steel)
About The Mechanic:
The Timer mechanic is all about completing some task or tasks, at or before a certain amount of time has passed. This mechanic is useful for providing players with a chance to take a skill they feel confident with, and express mastery of it by doing it quickly and with precision. This mechanic creates stress for the player; historically this mechanic is often used when tension is required in a work.
The “Referee” of a game is responsible for measuring this mechanic; the game’s interface is responsible for letting the player know how much time they have to complete their task, however.
Referee Information / Data Structure:
Target Time
Start Time
Elapsed Time = Current Time - Start Time
Player Information / Feedback:
Remaining Time = Target Time - Elapsed Time
Designer Information:
Margin = Target Time - Expected Execution Time
Conditions:
Victory: Elapsed Time <= Target Time
Failure: Elapsed Time > Target Time
When Is This Mechanic Engaging?
The player has been well-trained in a particular skill, or that skill is so intuitive it doesn’t require much training.
There’s a well-balanced margin between how long it takes a player to do something, and the target time.
When a feeling of stress is needed.
The challenge can be retried, so that the player can improve their mastery of the skills, if appropriate to the context the mechanic is used in.
When other players are involved - beating another player’s time is a long-standing social tradition dating back quite a long ways!
When Is This Mechanic Distracting?
The player has not had adequate practice with skill(s) - the player feels like they can’t succeed, and gives up.
The margin of failure is too long - the player has so much time that there is no tension, thus there is no emotional effect on the player or audience.
The margin of failure is too short - the margin is so small the player feels like they can’t succeed, and gives up.
The payoff is not appropriate to the margin of failure - the challenge of beating the timer needs to be worth it.
The consequence isn’t proportional to the margin of failure - short challenges should be less consequential if failed; long challenges should be more consequential, up to and including non-standard game overs.
Game References:
Speed Chess during each player’s turn. Each player has to quickly reason what their best move it, and make it before the timer sounds.
Super Metroid’s intro where the player has to escape a self-destructing space station - as an early ‘quest’, the player has a comfortable, but short time to escape. Also, the escape from Zebes, after Samus defeats the final boss with a super-weapon gained during that boss fight - just like the intro, the player has a balanced time to escape.
Final Fantasy VII’s intro uses this after the Scorpion Robot fight to add tension to the escape sequence; the time limit is extremely lax, however, as it’s the first quest in the game. In Wall Market, a part of the quest to get into Don Corneo’s mansion involves challenging a body-builder to squats to gain a required item. Failure is only minimally punished; you get an inferior item that still counts towards advancing the quest. A bonus boss, Emerald Weapon, is fought under the ocean, while the party has a limited oxygen supply. Also, the boss itself is really freaking hard.
Any video game speedrun (many people give up speedruns due to not being able to beat a high-profile runner’s times at a particular game.)
World of Warcraft, the Dwarf starting area has a quest where you’re supposed to take a mug of hot hot something to an inn. The quest gives you five minutes; the quest is achievable within one. There is no tension, and the mechanic feel superfluous in this case.
Nice, & I agree with the cons. I quit assassins creed as I was stuck in a cavern where I had to negotiate between ledges etc in a certain time & I just couldn’t complete it yet the game gave me no way to exit it & continue playing (either a chicken button like in 'splosion man or if it wasn’t a stage necessary to the story then just a quit back to the street outside would work). I’ve never wasted my money on any more of their franchise.
Not sure if it is on your list but Timing might be an interesting extension of Timer. Sometimes it is a separate mechanic e.g. Geometry dash, timing your jumps, or is an implicit part of Timer in that you have to time your actions correctly in order to complete the task within the timeframe e.g. Get onto moving platforms & time your movement so you get to those platforms when they are in the correct position for you to get onto them so you don’t have to sit there & wait while the timer ticks down.
I think the role timing plays into Beating a Timer or any related mechanic, is that that’s the skill we’re trying to teach the player. When beating a timer, we’re specifically asking for the player to do something as quickly as possible.
QTEs are what I’d normally expect people to think about when they hear the word ‘timing’. That’s actually a mechanic that entire games have been built around, and it seems like a good candidate for the Mechanics Pokedex.
I’m working on drawing a “Mechanics Pokemon” for Beating a Timer too. It’ll be…special?
I’ve never considered a qte as timing since the player has no control while they are running. I’m was trying to differentiate between games where you need to complete tasks within a timeframe (your timer mechanic) & there is usually a bit of leeway in the timing of your actions (so you can just finish in time or finish with a fair bit of time left depending how good you are) & games where there is no time limit but the skill involved is just about timing your action e.g. Those endless runner tap/jump games where you die as soon as your timing is wrong.
Edit: I can foresee lots of discussion on each of these mechanics. Maybe you should start a thread for each one & just post the link in this main thread so it becomes the index?
Really, platforming is the same thing as a “modern” QTE, only with vastly better presentation. Instead of a big thing that says, “Press X To Not Die!”, you have a platform heading toward you, and an obvious place you can’t cross without losing. You have to do something to cross that place, but you have to do it at just the right time, or you’ll fail.
…Crap, you’ve already got me writing it as if it’s the second Pokedex entry…maybe when #01 is done, I should just skip straight to QTEs.
It’s good you bring that up. I was going to try to link to individual posts, but I’m not sure if the Unity Forums support that. Perhaps it might be more effective if I create some short YouTube videos with each Mechanical Pokedex entry after the discussion concludes, or create a Blogger blog or something.
I think if you create the other thread then copy the link you can paste it back in here.
Or create a 1 page Pokemon comic per mechanic with your new creations & put it on your blog
To do that, I think I may need the blessing of @Gigiwoo since he’s sort of the overlord of this subforum. Getting the benediction of @hippocoder might not be a bad idea, either, just to be sure that such an approach is agreed upon, and that talk of individual mechanics aren’t cluttering the forums.
I’ve kinda been lurking and reading along, as I have the opportunity to… Instead of doing separate posts, might be easier for people like me who are trying to follow to keep it in one post. Maybe blog the different ideas and continue the list under the Pokedex Entries with links to the blog posts. If it were only going to be four or five posts, individual posts might be ok. But I can imagine the list could probably get pretty big.
Just my two cents… Enjoying the discussion so far. I’ll try to throw some input in once I can read a little more thoroughly and wrap my head around it!
What if you already found it? Some time ago, I was thinking about what mechanics I should use in my next game. So I wondered, what if it was all of them?
Like, in each stage, you had to choose among several heroes,each with a different power, and that’d make the camera move to a different position and the game would start with a new mechanic: like, speedster hero → auto-runner; bird-man → fluppy bird dodger; super-strong → angry birds destroyer. Since you’re in a similar situation I was, I thought it would be appropriate to share it. Regardless of the path you choose, good luck!
Small update - I’ve spun off a blog. I’ll be sure to link to the appropriate blog entry when a mechanic is out of its discussion phase. If you have any advice on the aesthetics of the blog, please pass me a PM - I’m working on that.
Overlord? I was overlord of the bathroom once. Though, the minions rarely follow orders.
Within reason, you can make any thread, blog, or youtube you want. If you want to link a specific post within a thread, simply find the time link for that post. It’s the ‘55 minutes ago’ part, like in this image here:
@Gigiwoo & @RockoDyne - Thanks for the heads up on where to find the post link, that really helps!
I’ve committed Beating a Timer to the blog - since there wasn’t much discussion, I’m assuming it’s found to be accurate. It’s a reproduction of what was put here, and I’m calling it 1/12 mechanics done.
Next on the list: Gaining Experience. It’s ubiquitous, so research shouldn’t take long.
Experience and Leveling Up are what’s on the agenda. It’s a very, very, very common mechanic. I went with “Gaining Experience” because it was the first phrase that came to mind. Do you have any suggestions on a better alternative?
Nope, was just curious how you meant it. I did assume that it was the more common ‘character experience levels’ but you know that old saying about assuming
Could be a big topic because it is so common & has some nuance to how it is used, with its effectiveness being largely defined by how it integrates with the game e.g. A good system in one game may suck in another as the rest of the mechanics around abilities don’t integrate well with it. Can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Make sure to dive into the skillcap/gating aspect as well as into the effects on user engagement and pacing. In some genres I can happily accept this mechanic as part of the experience, but in Multiplayer Shooters like COD I have come to loathe it and I think the concepts of Counterstrike and Insurgency are far better for the game. Imho if you feel you NEED unlocking mechanics to keep engagement up in your game there is something wrong with it.
