It is pretty rare for this to happen, but I really disagreed with certain elements of my brother's last post concerning transformation abilities in various videogames. For various reasons, I like many of the transformations systems that he didn't like and don't like a lot of the systems that he did.
For example, I love Shadow Hearts' demon transformation system. It is a system that lets the main hero, Yuri, be both the most flexible character in the game and still prevents him from being able to do everything at once. If you transform into a powerful Light form like Sandalphon, then you gain access to strong light-elemental attack and get vastly improved magical defense, and if you transform into a Fire form like Forron you can use fire spells and get greatly improved physical strength. In his base form, Yuri can only either use a basic attack or transform, so these specialized demon forms and their unique powers make up the entirety of his ability set. They cost Sanity Points, which are fully restored at the end of each battle, but because it is actually much harder to restore Sanity Points during a battle than something like HP or Magic Points, and powerful transformation cost very large amounts of Sanity, it means that you can't freely switch forms in the midst of a fight. Once you have transformed, your SP will be too low to risk another transformation. Thus, the real cost of each form is the opportunity cost of the abilities granted by every other form, which works very well since each individual form has an incredibly limited array of moves. Rather than being an ability too costly to use often, Yuri's demon transformation is the core of his power.
As for the entire "dramatic tension for boss battles" argument, I will pretty much completely disagree. Just because Yuri can use his strongest transformations in every battle doesn't mean that his transformations can't add a lot of dramatic tension to a boss battle. For one thing, my brother forgot to mention the one use for Sanity other than transforming: warding off the "Berserk" state. Every turn each character's Sanity decreases slightly, and when it runs out that character loses it and goes "Berserk". This really doesn't come into play for any character during normal battles, but it is a major factor in every boss battle. Depending on various factors, Yuri's demon transformation ability can make him extremely susceptible to this (using the penultimate Amon form frequently reduced Yuri to merely 3 Sanity when it was new, even with a cost-reducing accessory equipped). The boss fights are difficult enough that Yuri needs to use his strongest (and most costly) forms in order to win, so even though he has far more Sanity than almost anyone else, his transformations level the playing field so he is in the same tense situation as everyone else. Also, the fact that Yuri needs to use his strongest forms and powers magnifies a slightly hidden cost to using powerful transformations: the cost of the powers granted to each form.
Yuri's third-tier Dark form, Czernoborg, is much stronger than his first-tier Dark form, Death Emperor. Also, Czernoborg's main attack spell, Revelation, is much stronger than Death Emperor's Dark Messenger spell. However, just as the Czernoborg transformation costs nearly four times as much Sanity as the Death Emperor transformation, the Revelation spell costs nearly four times as much MP as the Dark Messenger spell. In addition, Revelation is a much more difficult spell to successfully cast, thanks to the game's Judgement Ring system. Revelation is the kind of spell you need to use in many of the game's later battles, but because Mp doesn't get restored between battles, it is just too costly and tricky to use often against normal enemies. If you want to actually use attack spells in normal battles, a weaker form with cheaper spells is a better strategy. Also, the powerful stat-boosting spells that define the different elements are only really useful in boss battles. As such, there was a pretty clear difference in both the forms I used and the way I used transformations between normal battles and boss battles.
Finally, I will say that the fact that you can use Yuri's demon transformation in every battle is a valuable benefit in of itself. If a character has a particularly defining ability, especially one that requires a lot of effort to manage and develop, then that ability should be useable as often as possible. If you work hard to unlock an ability, then you should be able to use that ability more than once. Since unlocking new demon forms for Yuri can be time consuming and tricky, that effort should be rewarded. If you could only justify using such forms in boss battles, then you get the situation where you have only four chances to use one of six different forms, which means a lot of effort can go to waste.
For many reasons related to why I like the Shadow Hearts demon transformation system, I don't really like the Breath of Fire 3 and 4 dragon transformation system. Where Shadow Hearts elegantly separates the cost of transforming and the cost of using a form's abilities so they use different resources, in the Breath of Fire games they both share the same resource, often leading to the transformation ending too quickly and many abilities being too costly (both transformation cost and ability cost increasing with more powerful forms is practically double-penalizing the player in such a situation). Also, particularly with Breath of Fire 3, the Dragon Gene system is a fairly large sub-system of the game that can result in countless forms, but you never really have a chance to use that many across the course of the game (the poor balance between the forms adds to this issue, since only a limited few forms are any good). As a whole, it results in a game where you simply can't use your main character's most distinctive abilities (or hardly any abilities at all), except for just a few rounds out of the occasional boss fight, and even then you will usually only be launching cheap, ordinary attacks.
As for some of the other things my brother mentioned, I agree that Knight Blazer is a good transformation (it is not central to the character's combat ability, so the fact that you can only really use it rarely works well, and the music change is a nice touch), and that Devil May Cry's Devil Trigger is nearly perfect. I just don't agree that Metis's Neo Orgia Mode is bad, though. I think my brother underestimates the real opportunity cost of the way Metis's AI routines change while in that mode, but I do agree that the fact you can't use it until the end of a boss battle is a bit problematic (it might be better if there was a finite limit to how often it could be used in a given battle, rather than the "Metis becomes helpless afterwards" limitation). I think that about covers it...
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
The Cost of Transformations
Special transformations are pretty common in many videogames, particularly in RPGs, these days. By "special transformation", I mean the ability of a character to enter into a special state where they possess increased stats and/or more powerful abilities compared to normal. Including this kind of effect in a game can add a lot of variety to gameplay, and help make major battles more dramatic and exciting. However, if the price that the player pays in order to use the transformation is wrong, it can have a negative effect on gameplay. If the cost is too cheap, the player will use the transformation in every battle; too expensive, and the player will never use it all.
The reason that I thought of this topic is that I noticed that my brother occasionally kicked himself for not using Metis' Neo Orgia Mode during regular battles in Persona 3 FES. Neo Orgia Mode is a pretty potent transformation: it significantly increases Metis' stats, renders her immune to most status effects, and makes all of her spells and special attacks free, and it only has two limiting factors: it can only be used for four or so turns, and Metis operates under a more limited AI routine during Orgia mode. The turn limit doesn't really do much to limit Neo Orgia mode's use, since most regular battles in Persona 3 can easily be cleared in one to three turns. The turn limit only really applies in boss battles; since Metis becomes unable to act and vulnerable to attack after the timer runs out, the player is limited to using Orgia mode only at the end of a boss battle, often when the battle is in wrap-up mode. The main reason not to use Orgia mode in regular battles is that Metis doesn't fight very effectively while powered up. In my opinion, the added power and free use of spells more than makes up for that most of the time.
A game with a transformation system that works similarly is Shadow Hearts. In that game, the main character, Yuri, can transform into a demon to gain increased stats, elemental affinity and access to powerful magical spells. Whenever Yuri transforms, he has to pay a price in Sanity points based on the power of his demon form, as well as an upkeep cost at the end of every turn. However, since Sanity points fully recover at the end of every fight, and there are no other abilities which cost Sanity points, Yuri's demon transformations function in more or less the same way as Metis' Orgia Mode: a turn limit the player doesn't want to go over. Because of that, there is literally no reason for the player to not transform during every battle.
Is being able to transform during every battle a bad thing? In my opinion, it takes away from a very important effect transformations can have on a game: dramatic tension. Beyond just serving as challenging tests, boss fights are exciting because they are the dramatic climax to a stage or story sequence in a videogame. The player going all out with the abilities and powers at his disposal is a big part of the excitement and drama that occurs during a boss fight, and special transformations are a way to give the player a very tangible way of feeling like he is holding nothing back. So there would be nothing wrong with transformation systems that can be used all of the time like Persona 3's or Shadow Hearts' if they gave the player access to bigger and stronger transformations than usual during boss fights. Unfortunately, they do the opposite: the player has to hold back more than usual during a boss fight.
One system that gets it more of less right is the Dragon transformation systems from Breath of Fire 3 and 4. In both of these games, Ryu can transform into a powerful dragon form by paying a flat Ability Point cost during initial transformation, followed by a smaller upkeep cost every turn. Unlike Sanity Points in Shadow Hearts, a Breath of Fire character's Ability Point total is kept between fights, so the player can't go around freely using transformations if he wants to still be able to do so during the next boss battle. However, since the player has access to several levels of transformation with various costs, it is possible to afford using a weaker transformation during a tough regular fight. The biggest flaw of this system is that Ability Points are also what Ryu uses to cast spells, both in and out of his transformed state. So if the player wants to use Ryu's regular magic spells, he can't afford to transform (this was particularly problematic in BoF 3, where Ryu was the best healer in the game).
A very different system that also works well is one where the player has to spend turns accumulating power in order to transform. A good example of this is in Wild ARMS 2, where the player can spend 100 Force Points in order to transform Ashley into the powerful KnightBlazer. A similar example is Xenogears, where a mech has a certain chance to enter Hyper Mode after making a non-deathblow attack once it has achieved Attack Level 3. Both of these cases share two things in common: activating the transformation requires several turns of effort, and attempting to transform involves holding back with some other power. What this means is that, while the player can use the transformation in any battle, it is usually quicker to beat regular enemies with more mundane means. However, these transformations are a major factor in any long-lasting boss fight.
One factor that I like about transformations that are not designed to be used in every fight is that they can be used as a safety net of sorts if the player runs into a really tough random battle. For example, my brother used KnightBlazer to bail himself out of trouble when a random battle went against him quite a few times. It is somewhat comforting to have a powerful trump card to fall back on when an enemy turns out to be surprisingly difficult.
Perhaps the single best transformation system I have ever seen is Devil May Cry's Devil Trigger system though. In DMC, the player has a Devil Trigger gauge that is used for transformation. As long as Dante has at least 3 gauges filled, he can transform at any time, and once he transforms, the gauge begins to empty. The genius of it is that the gauge recovers quickly enough that the player can afford to use it during battles against tough groups of regular enemies, and even use it multiple times during a boss fight. However, the gauge recovers slowly enough, coupled with the minimum energy requirement, that the payer is strongly encouraged to be conservative with the Devil Trigger gauge. The system works beautifully.
There are a few ways to make transformation systems way too expensive to use. In particular, the price of giving up actions is not to be underestimated. Even if the price of transforming is simply giving up a turn for the player to actually transform, that may be enough for the player to choose against using the transformation, particularly if the player is in a crisis situation. Even more problematic is forcing the player to use only one character out of an entire party during a transformation as is the case with Breath of Fire 3's Behemoth transformation or with Final Fantasy X's Aeon summons. Going from three characters to just one results in significantly reduced combat power and adaptability. Unless the resulting transformation is extremely powerful, it generally isn't worth it.
A kind of transformation that is particularly bad is the kind that the player has no control over. Final Fantasy IX's Trance system is particularly bad, since it is an ability that takes a long time to build up, only to activate when the player least needs it. Another game with a similar system is Tales of Symphonia with its Break system.
There is a lot more material I could talk about, but I think I will cut it short here. My brother and I will probably be talking about this topic some more over the course of this week.
The reason that I thought of this topic is that I noticed that my brother occasionally kicked himself for not using Metis' Neo Orgia Mode during regular battles in Persona 3 FES. Neo Orgia Mode is a pretty potent transformation: it significantly increases Metis' stats, renders her immune to most status effects, and makes all of her spells and special attacks free, and it only has two limiting factors: it can only be used for four or so turns, and Metis operates under a more limited AI routine during Orgia mode. The turn limit doesn't really do much to limit Neo Orgia mode's use, since most regular battles in Persona 3 can easily be cleared in one to three turns. The turn limit only really applies in boss battles; since Metis becomes unable to act and vulnerable to attack after the timer runs out, the player is limited to using Orgia mode only at the end of a boss battle, often when the battle is in wrap-up mode. The main reason not to use Orgia mode in regular battles is that Metis doesn't fight very effectively while powered up. In my opinion, the added power and free use of spells more than makes up for that most of the time.
A game with a transformation system that works similarly is Shadow Hearts. In that game, the main character, Yuri, can transform into a demon to gain increased stats, elemental affinity and access to powerful magical spells. Whenever Yuri transforms, he has to pay a price in Sanity points based on the power of his demon form, as well as an upkeep cost at the end of every turn. However, since Sanity points fully recover at the end of every fight, and there are no other abilities which cost Sanity points, Yuri's demon transformations function in more or less the same way as Metis' Orgia Mode: a turn limit the player doesn't want to go over. Because of that, there is literally no reason for the player to not transform during every battle.
Is being able to transform during every battle a bad thing? In my opinion, it takes away from a very important effect transformations can have on a game: dramatic tension. Beyond just serving as challenging tests, boss fights are exciting because they are the dramatic climax to a stage or story sequence in a videogame. The player going all out with the abilities and powers at his disposal is a big part of the excitement and drama that occurs during a boss fight, and special transformations are a way to give the player a very tangible way of feeling like he is holding nothing back. So there would be nothing wrong with transformation systems that can be used all of the time like Persona 3's or Shadow Hearts' if they gave the player access to bigger and stronger transformations than usual during boss fights. Unfortunately, they do the opposite: the player has to hold back more than usual during a boss fight.
One system that gets it more of less right is the Dragon transformation systems from Breath of Fire 3 and 4. In both of these games, Ryu can transform into a powerful dragon form by paying a flat Ability Point cost during initial transformation, followed by a smaller upkeep cost every turn. Unlike Sanity Points in Shadow Hearts, a Breath of Fire character's Ability Point total is kept between fights, so the player can't go around freely using transformations if he wants to still be able to do so during the next boss battle. However, since the player has access to several levels of transformation with various costs, it is possible to afford using a weaker transformation during a tough regular fight. The biggest flaw of this system is that Ability Points are also what Ryu uses to cast spells, both in and out of his transformed state. So if the player wants to use Ryu's regular magic spells, he can't afford to transform (this was particularly problematic in BoF 3, where Ryu was the best healer in the game).
A very different system that also works well is one where the player has to spend turns accumulating power in order to transform. A good example of this is in Wild ARMS 2, where the player can spend 100 Force Points in order to transform Ashley into the powerful KnightBlazer. A similar example is Xenogears, where a mech has a certain chance to enter Hyper Mode after making a non-deathblow attack once it has achieved Attack Level 3. Both of these cases share two things in common: activating the transformation requires several turns of effort, and attempting to transform involves holding back with some other power. What this means is that, while the player can use the transformation in any battle, it is usually quicker to beat regular enemies with more mundane means. However, these transformations are a major factor in any long-lasting boss fight.
One factor that I like about transformations that are not designed to be used in every fight is that they can be used as a safety net of sorts if the player runs into a really tough random battle. For example, my brother used KnightBlazer to bail himself out of trouble when a random battle went against him quite a few times. It is somewhat comforting to have a powerful trump card to fall back on when an enemy turns out to be surprisingly difficult.
Perhaps the single best transformation system I have ever seen is Devil May Cry's Devil Trigger system though. In DMC, the player has a Devil Trigger gauge that is used for transformation. As long as Dante has at least 3 gauges filled, he can transform at any time, and once he transforms, the gauge begins to empty. The genius of it is that the gauge recovers quickly enough that the player can afford to use it during battles against tough groups of regular enemies, and even use it multiple times during a boss fight. However, the gauge recovers slowly enough, coupled with the minimum energy requirement, that the payer is strongly encouraged to be conservative with the Devil Trigger gauge. The system works beautifully.
There are a few ways to make transformation systems way too expensive to use. In particular, the price of giving up actions is not to be underestimated. Even if the price of transforming is simply giving up a turn for the player to actually transform, that may be enough for the player to choose against using the transformation, particularly if the player is in a crisis situation. Even more problematic is forcing the player to use only one character out of an entire party during a transformation as is the case with Breath of Fire 3's Behemoth transformation or with Final Fantasy X's Aeon summons. Going from three characters to just one results in significantly reduced combat power and adaptability. Unless the resulting transformation is extremely powerful, it generally isn't worth it.
A kind of transformation that is particularly bad is the kind that the player has no control over. Final Fantasy IX's Trance system is particularly bad, since it is an ability that takes a long time to build up, only to activate when the player least needs it. Another game with a similar system is Tales of Symphonia with its Break system.
There is a lot more material I could talk about, but I think I will cut it short here. My brother and I will probably be talking about this topic some more over the course of this week.
Persona 3 FES: The Story of The Answer
I completed The Answer yesterday, and thus I have finally seen the entire story of Persona 3 FES. It has taken me a surprising amount of time to reach this point, especially considering that Persona 4 is slated to be released in just over a month from now, but it has been well worth it. Persona 3's story has been fun the entire way.
Other than the opening section that introduces Metis and the threat of the Abyss of Time and the final section, the plot of The Answer is built around looking into the various characters' pasts using the doors found at the end of every section of the dungeon. Because of this, even though The Answer is an epilogue to the main game it ends up putting a lot of focus on stories that occurred before those characters became important to the events of the game. As a result, these windows let you see previously hidden parts of the story and unknown character motivations. Many of these, such as the revelation that Junpei's father was an alcoholic and the effect it had upon Junpei, cast a new light on events from the main game, and they all add to the incredible depth and complexity of the Persona 3 cast. However, as much as they add depth to the characters, these scenes don't really do a lot to progress the story of The Answer itself.
One of the most important ideas of The Answer is that the characters are unable to move forward with their lives because they have lingering doubts and regrets concerning the death of the main hero at the end of the main game. In essence, the Answer is a story about grief, the loss of loved ones, and how to deal with that kind of pain. This theme is very powerful in the most important moments of The Answer, and it is brilliantly merged into the game with the constant pursuit of the main hero's shadow throughout the Abyss of Time, but it simply does not play into any of the "scenes of the past" other than Aigis's. As a result, the main theme doesn't show up in the only real plot sequences you see for the majority of the 30 hours or so of gameplay you need to progress through in The Answer. This is really the only significant complain I have about the game's story, and I think the rest is pretty impressive. Well, it gets a bit preachy towards the end, I would have liked to see more elaboration on and reaction to the revelation that Personas are just tamed Shadows (which was similarly understated in the Old Documents of the main game), and the ending is a bit weak compared to the ending of the main game (which was a hard act to follow indeed), but those are minor complaints at best.
One thing that deserves particular praise is the way the complete disintegration of the party and subsequent battle between former allies was handled. This kind of sequence can very easily feel forced or illogical, but here it is surprisingly believable and realistic, given all the complexities of the various characters. The schism in the team is portrayed equally as both a tragic mistake that the characters recognize as such, and a necessity born from the different perspectives the characters cannot reconcile, and is certainly the high point in The Answer's story. Also, the battles against your teammates are a lot of fun and fairly challenging, which helps.
Another thing I really liked was Metis. Beyond being a valuable new ally in the game, she was simply a likable character who played an essential role in the story.
Since this is probably going to be my last post concerning Persona 3 itself, I might as well say that I really liked exploring the Abyss of Time more than Tartarus, mostly because it was less monotonous than Tartarus was. Unlike the blocks of Tartarus that remained uniform throughout, the different sections of the Abyss of Time changed from time to time as you passed through them. Perhaps more importantly, the actual music playing in the background changed from time to time, so you aren't stuck with a single background track for the entire game, like in Tartarus. This helps make the game feel less repetitive, which is a much needed improvement. It probably doesn't go far enough (both dungeons are far too thoroughly built upon a limited number of possible corridors and rooms), but it does help.
Other than the opening section that introduces Metis and the threat of the Abyss of Time and the final section, the plot of The Answer is built around looking into the various characters' pasts using the doors found at the end of every section of the dungeon. Because of this, even though The Answer is an epilogue to the main game it ends up putting a lot of focus on stories that occurred before those characters became important to the events of the game. As a result, these windows let you see previously hidden parts of the story and unknown character motivations. Many of these, such as the revelation that Junpei's father was an alcoholic and the effect it had upon Junpei, cast a new light on events from the main game, and they all add to the incredible depth and complexity of the Persona 3 cast. However, as much as they add depth to the characters, these scenes don't really do a lot to progress the story of The Answer itself.
One of the most important ideas of The Answer is that the characters are unable to move forward with their lives because they have lingering doubts and regrets concerning the death of the main hero at the end of the main game. In essence, the Answer is a story about grief, the loss of loved ones, and how to deal with that kind of pain. This theme is very powerful in the most important moments of The Answer, and it is brilliantly merged into the game with the constant pursuit of the main hero's shadow throughout the Abyss of Time, but it simply does not play into any of the "scenes of the past" other than Aigis's. As a result, the main theme doesn't show up in the only real plot sequences you see for the majority of the 30 hours or so of gameplay you need to progress through in The Answer. This is really the only significant complain I have about the game's story, and I think the rest is pretty impressive. Well, it gets a bit preachy towards the end, I would have liked to see more elaboration on and reaction to the revelation that Personas are just tamed Shadows (which was similarly understated in the Old Documents of the main game), and the ending is a bit weak compared to the ending of the main game (which was a hard act to follow indeed), but those are minor complaints at best.
One thing that deserves particular praise is the way the complete disintegration of the party and subsequent battle between former allies was handled. This kind of sequence can very easily feel forced or illogical, but here it is surprisingly believable and realistic, given all the complexities of the various characters. The schism in the team is portrayed equally as both a tragic mistake that the characters recognize as such, and a necessity born from the different perspectives the characters cannot reconcile, and is certainly the high point in The Answer's story. Also, the battles against your teammates are a lot of fun and fairly challenging, which helps.
Another thing I really liked was Metis. Beyond being a valuable new ally in the game, she was simply a likable character who played an essential role in the story.
Since this is probably going to be my last post concerning Persona 3 itself, I might as well say that I really liked exploring the Abyss of Time more than Tartarus, mostly because it was less monotonous than Tartarus was. Unlike the blocks of Tartarus that remained uniform throughout, the different sections of the Abyss of Time changed from time to time as you passed through them. Perhaps more importantly, the actual music playing in the background changed from time to time, so you aren't stuck with a single background track for the entire game, like in Tartarus. This helps make the game feel less repetitive, which is a much needed improvement. It probably doesn't go far enough (both dungeons are far too thoroughly built upon a limited number of possible corridors and rooms), but it does help.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Melee Stages
Several of the stages in Super Smash Bros. Brawl are exact copies of stages from Super Smash Bros. Melee, carrying on a tradition started when Melee included three stages from the very first Super Smash Bros. game. However, I can't help but feel disappointed in how they went about bringing back past stages. Instead of simply re-using a handful of stages from Melee in their original form, I would have preferred it if the developers had completely remade stages using the improved graphical resources of the Wii and had kept more true to some of the stage traditions of the first two games. As it is, it feels like Brawl has abandoned too many of the classic stages of the previous games.
One big reason that I don't like the treatment of the Melee stages is that they feel far too cut off from most of the game. To start with, they are placed on a second stage-selection screen, which makes them harder to get to and remember than the new Brawl stages. Furthermore, none of the Melee stages appear in the games Classic or All-Star game modes. The older age of the appearance of the stages also contributes to their segregation from the rest of the game. The game designer's probably left the stages as they were because they wanted to retain a nostalgic quality from Melee for these stages. That unfortunately didn't work, because there are significant differences between the Melee stages in Brawl and their original incarnations in Melee itself, particularly in the real of stage boundaries and camera behavior. So instead of feeling nostalgic about these stages, I am constantly reminded about how they are only flawed emulations.
I think that it would have been much better if the developers had followed the other examples of how Melee converted stages from the original Super Smash Bros. game. Several stages in Melee were re-imagined or updated versions of stages from the first game, including Corneria, Brinstar, and Green Greens (three of the Melee stages in Brawl). Corneria in particular is a complete duplicate of the Sector Z stage from the first game; the only differences between the two is that Corneria has a different background and slightly updated graphics. Similarly, Brinstar is directly based on Planet Zebes, albeit with a modified platform layout and new interactive element (although the central gimmick, rising levels of lava, remains the same). Green Greens is directly based on the original Dream Land stage in that it features the classic Kirby boss Wispy Woods using wind to sow chaos on the battlefield. Furthermore, the Mushroom Kingdom stage in Melee uses a lot of the same design elements that defined a stage with the same name from the first game. So Super Smash Bros. Melee reimagined and updated stages more often than it simply re-issued them.
I think Brawl would have been better off if it had given the Melee stages this same treatment. Instead of emulating the Melee Corneria stage, inferior graphics and all, it could have updated the look of the stage based on the appearance of the Great Fox from Star Fox Assault, the most recent game it has been in. Brawl did do this for a few classic stages; Battlefield, Final Destination, Yoshi's Island, Pokemon Stadium 2, and Port Town Aero Dive are all re-imaginings or faithful recreations of previous stages using Brawls full graphical capabilities. Since the developers had the resources to create a massive single player adventure mode, there was no reason they couldn't have rebuilt the returning Melee stages completely.
One big reason that I don't like the treatment of the Melee stages is that they feel far too cut off from most of the game. To start with, they are placed on a second stage-selection screen, which makes them harder to get to and remember than the new Brawl stages. Furthermore, none of the Melee stages appear in the games Classic or All-Star game modes. The older age of the appearance of the stages also contributes to their segregation from the rest of the game. The game designer's probably left the stages as they were because they wanted to retain a nostalgic quality from Melee for these stages. That unfortunately didn't work, because there are significant differences between the Melee stages in Brawl and their original incarnations in Melee itself, particularly in the real of stage boundaries and camera behavior. So instead of feeling nostalgic about these stages, I am constantly reminded about how they are only flawed emulations.
I think that it would have been much better if the developers had followed the other examples of how Melee converted stages from the original Super Smash Bros. game. Several stages in Melee were re-imagined or updated versions of stages from the first game, including Corneria, Brinstar, and Green Greens (three of the Melee stages in Brawl). Corneria in particular is a complete duplicate of the Sector Z stage from the first game; the only differences between the two is that Corneria has a different background and slightly updated graphics. Similarly, Brinstar is directly based on Planet Zebes, albeit with a modified platform layout and new interactive element (although the central gimmick, rising levels of lava, remains the same). Green Greens is directly based on the original Dream Land stage in that it features the classic Kirby boss Wispy Woods using wind to sow chaos on the battlefield. Furthermore, the Mushroom Kingdom stage in Melee uses a lot of the same design elements that defined a stage with the same name from the first game. So Super Smash Bros. Melee reimagined and updated stages more often than it simply re-issued them.
I think Brawl would have been better off if it had given the Melee stages this same treatment. Instead of emulating the Melee Corneria stage, inferior graphics and all, it could have updated the look of the stage based on the appearance of the Great Fox from Star Fox Assault, the most recent game it has been in. Brawl did do this for a few classic stages; Battlefield, Final Destination, Yoshi's Island, Pokemon Stadium 2, and Port Town Aero Dive are all re-imaginings or faithful recreations of previous stages using Brawls full graphical capabilities. Since the developers had the resources to create a massive single player adventure mode, there was no reason they couldn't have rebuilt the returning Melee stages completely.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Scores
My brother and I have been playing a lot of Super Smash Bros. Brawl lately. We finally got around to seriously pursuing the task of collecting all of the character trophies. This has been giving me a lot of opportunities to try and play through Classic mode and All-Star mode to see if I can get high scores. However, in doing so, I have noticed one big problem in Brawl: the scores that the game hands out have no direct correlation to a player's performance. If anything, the game rewards a poor performance better than a really good one.
In Brawl, the player is given a score in Classic mode based on two factors: how much time is remaining on the clock, and how much damage the player did to his opponents during the match. If the player does a lot of damage to his opponents, he will get a higher score, and if the player wins the match quickly he will get a higher score. Unfortunately, these two factors work somewhat in opposition to each other. If the player wants to rack up a high damage score, he needs to deal a lot of damage to his opponents before knocking them out of the ring, but doing so requires time. So it is generally impossible to get both really high time and damage scores. In order to get a good score, the player needs to aim for some sort of equilibrium between the two, which involves fighting using an artificial style instead of a normal winning strategy.
In other words, Super Smash Bros. Brawl's scoring system doesn't reward the player for fighting a near-perfect match. The problem is even worse in All-Star mode, where time isn't a factor and thus the only way to score points is by doing damage to an opponent. Recently, I managed to K.O. an opponent in All-Star mode in one shot only a few seconds into the match, a near picture-perfect victory. However, I only got a tenth of the score I would otherwise get, since I didn't do any damage to my opponent at all before walloping him off the screen. And this has been a general trend: in my attempts on Classic mode where I felt like I was struggling or doing poorly, I often got higher scores than the attempts where I defeated my opponents easily.
The entire point of a score in a videogame is to serve as quantifiable evidence of how well a player did. If the scores a game hands out have no correlation to a player's performance, than those scores are completely meaningless. Under this light, the scoring system in Super Smash Bros. Brawl fails completely. The only place way it gives any direct indication of a player's skill is by halving the player's score if the player uses a continue, but since the original score is faulty, this only allows for a very crude estimate. Simply listing how many continues the player required would have been more accurate.
Brawl's scoring system could probably have been improved radically if it had continued the system of handing out bonus points that was used in Melee. While the bonuses were often arbitrary in Melee, they often did give a good sense of how well a player fought. Furthermore, since special bonuses can be custom-designed for specific situations, they can be designed to better fit a wide range of match types than a simple scoring scheme based on only one or two factors. The special bonus titles handed out in Melee were a lot more entertaining in of themselves too.
In Brawl, the player is given a score in Classic mode based on two factors: how much time is remaining on the clock, and how much damage the player did to his opponents during the match. If the player does a lot of damage to his opponents, he will get a higher score, and if the player wins the match quickly he will get a higher score. Unfortunately, these two factors work somewhat in opposition to each other. If the player wants to rack up a high damage score, he needs to deal a lot of damage to his opponents before knocking them out of the ring, but doing so requires time. So it is generally impossible to get both really high time and damage scores. In order to get a good score, the player needs to aim for some sort of equilibrium between the two, which involves fighting using an artificial style instead of a normal winning strategy.
In other words, Super Smash Bros. Brawl's scoring system doesn't reward the player for fighting a near-perfect match. The problem is even worse in All-Star mode, where time isn't a factor and thus the only way to score points is by doing damage to an opponent. Recently, I managed to K.O. an opponent in All-Star mode in one shot only a few seconds into the match, a near picture-perfect victory. However, I only got a tenth of the score I would otherwise get, since I didn't do any damage to my opponent at all before walloping him off the screen. And this has been a general trend: in my attempts on Classic mode where I felt like I was struggling or doing poorly, I often got higher scores than the attempts where I defeated my opponents easily.
The entire point of a score in a videogame is to serve as quantifiable evidence of how well a player did. If the scores a game hands out have no correlation to a player's performance, than those scores are completely meaningless. Under this light, the scoring system in Super Smash Bros. Brawl fails completely. The only place way it gives any direct indication of a player's skill is by halving the player's score if the player uses a continue, but since the original score is faulty, this only allows for a very crude estimate. Simply listing how many continues the player required would have been more accurate.
Brawl's scoring system could probably have been improved radically if it had continued the system of handing out bonus points that was used in Melee. While the bonuses were often arbitrary in Melee, they often did give a good sense of how well a player fought. Furthermore, since special bonuses can be custom-designed for specific situations, they can be designed to better fit a wide range of match types than a simple scoring scheme based on only one or two factors. The special bonus titles handed out in Melee were a lot more entertaining in of themselves too.
Persona 3 FES: Boss Battles
One thing I have always liked about Persona 3 is its boss battles. Because there is a boss guarding each major checkpoint in both Tartarus and the Abyss of Time, as well as a number of story battles, there are quite a few of these in the game. The quality of these battles can vary greatly (some are fun, others boring), as does the difficulty (some boss battles are a cakewalk, but others are unfairly punishing), so there are some issues with consistency, but as a whole these battles add a lot of challenge and excitement to the game. They take an incredibly solid core combat system and push it to its limit, making them far more tactically engaging and fun than typical fare.
However, any praise I may give the boss battles of Persona 3 doesn't apply to the various Full Moon bosses and other story battles. For the most part, these battles are far too easy, since if you have reached the target floor in Tartarus that month, then the Full Moon boss is too weak for your current ability level (as a rule, the bosses you need to clear in order to make that target are stronger than that month's plot boss). Also, these bosses tend to overly rely on unusual gimmicks that eat up their turns, so they are usually only challenging if you accidentally stumble into the "bad" way to fight them, and are otherwise poorly designed. For example, one boss is split into two parts, one of which can revive the other, but while they are combined any damage is split between then evenly. As a result, by the time one of them is weak enough for the revival ability to matter, the one with the revival power is just as doomed as the other. In addition, there is no particular advantage for them when they are combined, so their entire gimmick of combining and separating is just a liability that adds little to the fight. Some other boss battles, such as those against enemy Persona-users, simply lack either complication or challenge, even though they are some of the most important to the plot. As a whole, many of these battles are disappointing.
If the story battles are disappointing because of an over-reliance on gimmicks and low difficulty, the battles in Tartarus may swing too far in the other direction. These battles are just straightforward battles against normal-looking enemies who don't make use of anything but normal attacks and ordinary elemental immunities, but they make use of these attacks and immunities in amazingly creative ways in order to provide difficult challenges. Unlike normal enemies and story bosses, you can't analyze a Tartarus boss's strengths and weaknesses, so they need to be determined through experimentation, adding a sometimes frustrating but often fun part of the battle (something resembling the Megaman "which weapon works?" game). In addition, these enemies play with the idea of what it means for something to be a "weakness". Rarely, they just have a normal weakness, which lets you abuse the "One More" and "All-Out Attack" abilities to defeat them quickly. Other times, they don't have a weakness at all, and you need to rely on critical hits in order to get All-Out Attacks. At other times, an enemy has so many resistances that the one thing they are not resistant to can be exploited as a "weakness". In some battles, the enemy has a weakness, but their attack power is so unfairly high that your only choice is to knock them all down and forego an All-Out Attack in order to leave them on the ground, slowly eating away at their health while keeping healed. A few bosses protect weaknesses behind active defensive spells like Tetrakarn and Makarakarn, which reflect physical or magical damage. At least one boss bends the idea of "weakness" so far that it actually takes almost no damage at all from the element it is weak to, so you are forced to make a decision between dealing damage and knocking it down. Many more rely on eating up player actions through status effects. Most of these tricks are used by normal enemies, so these boss battles are really nothing more than scaled up normal fights, but the raw offensive power of these bosses, which can destroy even a good team in only a few turns, combined with their large hitpoint totals, forces the player to carefully balance offense and defense in an efficient strategy in order to even survive, let alone win. Unlike far too many other games I have played, these battles really reward (or even require) good tactics and strategy, and their high difficulty adds a lot of excitement.
Of course, one issue about these boss battles is that they can sometimes be a little too brutal. Bosses that have no weaknesses and constantly attack with "Megido" spells (powerful attacks that hit all characters and have no element, meaning there is no defense against them) are unbelievably frustrating and far less fun than others. I suppose this is because there is literally no other way to beat such enemies other than to have raw power or get lucky. An important aspect of other bosses is that it is possible to prepare for them. Against enemies that use Fire attacks, you can bring Junpei and Koromaru (who resist Fire attacks), equip Fire-resistance items, and equip a Persona on the hero that resists Fire, which helps even out the battle against these foes. Against an enemy that uses Charm attacks, you can bring Personas that are immune to Charm and items to resist Charm. If an enemy has a Lightning weakness, you can bring Akihiko and equip a Persona with Lightning attacls. Unlike other games, doing this kind of preparation doesn't make the battle easy; it just makes the battle possible. This is because a lot of these abilities are restricted to the point where you can't just give them to every character, giving the team an incomplete defense that helps, but is still vulnerable. One of the strnegths of this game is that most boss battles are won or lost in preparation, and because of this the few bosses that you can't prepare for are simply overwhelming and unfun.
Anyways, the reason I delayed in making this post for so long is because I wanted to see the bosses in The Answer before making final conclusions, and I am glad I did so, because the boss battles of the Abyss of Time are even better than the Tartarus bosses. A major limitation of Tartarus bosses is that they come in homogenous groups. If you are attacked by a group of bosses all at once in Tartarus, you are guaranteed to fight a group of three identical enemies (all bosses other than the last one in each section are like this). This is more interesting than fighting single enemies all the time, but it is nowhere near as interesting as the non-homogenous boss groups in The Answer. In addition to making the "what is it weak to?" game more important, this adds prioritizing targets to the realm of strategies the player needs to consider (I never used the "Assign Target" command once in the main game, but it is important in The Answer). You have to choose between attacking weak enemies (who might get replaced by a bigger enemy's summon skill), killing a larger enemy, trying to kill them all evenly, killing the healer first, killing the status-effect monster first, etc. Often, even figuring out which enemies are the easiest to kill can be tricky. All of this makes good tactics even more important, and makes these battles very fun. What is more, The Answer doesn't seem to contain any unfair bosses that can't be fought with good preparation and strategy (with maybe one exception, but it doesn't use Megido), making the whole thing a lot more fun. I have not enjoyed battles like these in a console RPG for far too long.
Before I finish up, I want to make a special mention of The Reaper. That was one of the best optional super-boss battles I have ever seen. It was both incredibly difficult, but because tactics play such an important part of the game I managed to defeat it about 20 levels before I probably should have thanks to a good strategy and a little luck. That kind of thing is what I consider to be the best possible sign that a game is giving the right type of challenge.
However, any praise I may give the boss battles of Persona 3 doesn't apply to the various Full Moon bosses and other story battles. For the most part, these battles are far too easy, since if you have reached the target floor in Tartarus that month, then the Full Moon boss is too weak for your current ability level (as a rule, the bosses you need to clear in order to make that target are stronger than that month's plot boss). Also, these bosses tend to overly rely on unusual gimmicks that eat up their turns, so they are usually only challenging if you accidentally stumble into the "bad" way to fight them, and are otherwise poorly designed. For example, one boss is split into two parts, one of which can revive the other, but while they are combined any damage is split between then evenly. As a result, by the time one of them is weak enough for the revival ability to matter, the one with the revival power is just as doomed as the other. In addition, there is no particular advantage for them when they are combined, so their entire gimmick of combining and separating is just a liability that adds little to the fight. Some other boss battles, such as those against enemy Persona-users, simply lack either complication or challenge, even though they are some of the most important to the plot. As a whole, many of these battles are disappointing.
If the story battles are disappointing because of an over-reliance on gimmicks and low difficulty, the battles in Tartarus may swing too far in the other direction. These battles are just straightforward battles against normal-looking enemies who don't make use of anything but normal attacks and ordinary elemental immunities, but they make use of these attacks and immunities in amazingly creative ways in order to provide difficult challenges. Unlike normal enemies and story bosses, you can't analyze a Tartarus boss's strengths and weaknesses, so they need to be determined through experimentation, adding a sometimes frustrating but often fun part of the battle (something resembling the Megaman "which weapon works?" game). In addition, these enemies play with the idea of what it means for something to be a "weakness". Rarely, they just have a normal weakness, which lets you abuse the "One More" and "All-Out Attack" abilities to defeat them quickly. Other times, they don't have a weakness at all, and you need to rely on critical hits in order to get All-Out Attacks. At other times, an enemy has so many resistances that the one thing they are not resistant to can be exploited as a "weakness". In some battles, the enemy has a weakness, but their attack power is so unfairly high that your only choice is to knock them all down and forego an All-Out Attack in order to leave them on the ground, slowly eating away at their health while keeping healed. A few bosses protect weaknesses behind active defensive spells like Tetrakarn and Makarakarn, which reflect physical or magical damage. At least one boss bends the idea of "weakness" so far that it actually takes almost no damage at all from the element it is weak to, so you are forced to make a decision between dealing damage and knocking it down. Many more rely on eating up player actions through status effects. Most of these tricks are used by normal enemies, so these boss battles are really nothing more than scaled up normal fights, but the raw offensive power of these bosses, which can destroy even a good team in only a few turns, combined with their large hitpoint totals, forces the player to carefully balance offense and defense in an efficient strategy in order to even survive, let alone win. Unlike far too many other games I have played, these battles really reward (or even require) good tactics and strategy, and their high difficulty adds a lot of excitement.
Of course, one issue about these boss battles is that they can sometimes be a little too brutal. Bosses that have no weaknesses and constantly attack with "Megido" spells (powerful attacks that hit all characters and have no element, meaning there is no defense against them) are unbelievably frustrating and far less fun than others. I suppose this is because there is literally no other way to beat such enemies other than to have raw power or get lucky. An important aspect of other bosses is that it is possible to prepare for them. Against enemies that use Fire attacks, you can bring Junpei and Koromaru (who resist Fire attacks), equip Fire-resistance items, and equip a Persona on the hero that resists Fire, which helps even out the battle against these foes. Against an enemy that uses Charm attacks, you can bring Personas that are immune to Charm and items to resist Charm. If an enemy has a Lightning weakness, you can bring Akihiko and equip a Persona with Lightning attacls. Unlike other games, doing this kind of preparation doesn't make the battle easy; it just makes the battle possible. This is because a lot of these abilities are restricted to the point where you can't just give them to every character, giving the team an incomplete defense that helps, but is still vulnerable. One of the strnegths of this game is that most boss battles are won or lost in preparation, and because of this the few bosses that you can't prepare for are simply overwhelming and unfun.
Anyways, the reason I delayed in making this post for so long is because I wanted to see the bosses in The Answer before making final conclusions, and I am glad I did so, because the boss battles of the Abyss of Time are even better than the Tartarus bosses. A major limitation of Tartarus bosses is that they come in homogenous groups. If you are attacked by a group of bosses all at once in Tartarus, you are guaranteed to fight a group of three identical enemies (all bosses other than the last one in each section are like this). This is more interesting than fighting single enemies all the time, but it is nowhere near as interesting as the non-homogenous boss groups in The Answer. In addition to making the "what is it weak to?" game more important, this adds prioritizing targets to the realm of strategies the player needs to consider (I never used the "Assign Target" command once in the main game, but it is important in The Answer). You have to choose between attacking weak enemies (who might get replaced by a bigger enemy's summon skill), killing a larger enemy, trying to kill them all evenly, killing the healer first, killing the status-effect monster first, etc. Often, even figuring out which enemies are the easiest to kill can be tricky. All of this makes good tactics even more important, and makes these battles very fun. What is more, The Answer doesn't seem to contain any unfair bosses that can't be fought with good preparation and strategy (with maybe one exception, but it doesn't use Megido), making the whole thing a lot more fun. I have not enjoyed battles like these in a console RPG for far too long.
Before I finish up, I want to make a special mention of The Reaper. That was one of the best optional super-boss battles I have ever seen. It was both incredibly difficult, but because tactics play such an important part of the game I managed to defeat it about 20 levels before I probably should have thanks to a good strategy and a little luck. That kind of thing is what I consider to be the best possible sign that a game is giving the right type of challenge.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Are Casual and Hardcore Good Distinctions?
For the last couple of years, the biggest buzzwords in the videogame industry have been "casual" and "hardcore", which have been used to both describe general kinds of gamer, and the games that those gamers play. Supposedly, hardcore gamers are the people who spend most of their leisure time and disposable income on videogames, while casual gamers are those gamers who only play games occasionally. However, are these terms really accurate or useful? Despite how commonplace these terms are today, I can't help but feel that they serve more to obscure than to illuminate.
A big problem I have with these terms is that "casual" is really just another way of saying "not hardcore". Hardcore gamers are quite visible and well known in the videogame industry. Hardcore gamers supposedly make up the majority of console videogame players who have been playing for the last several generations, and their main genres include the major standbys of the last decade or so: FPSs, RPGs, and other games with complex plots and mechanics. The word casual sprung up in the last couple of years to describe the large influx of new gamers from the last several years who seem to ignore the big name games that the hardcore audience enjoys and prefer simpler games. The implication is that casual gamers and hardcore gamers are two completely separate markets.
However, I can't help but feel that there is a lot that is very misleading about the use of the casual like this. For example, the RPG genre is usually considered to be a hardcore genre. Yet, I have heard a lot of different stories about how a lot of people who generally don't play a lot of videogames are big fans of the Dragon Quest series of RPGs. Furthermore, I recently noticed on the Wii's Nintendo channel that Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is considered to be a hardcore game. Yet, back in the 90s, Street Fighter II introduced a lot of people who never played fighting games before into the genre. We also see examples like the Super Mario Bros games, which are typically rated as being Casual games despite their huge popularity among hardcore gamers. So it is nearly impossible to make a meaningful or clear distinction about the two groups.
The only common baseline about the difference between casual and hardcore games is that casual games are simpler to play than hardcore ones. Yet, this difference is really just a difference in how accessible a game is. Something that the industry seems to commonly overlook is that some games in a genre are more accessible than others. For example, most Dragon Quest games have much simpler gameplay and character customization than other RPGs. Someone new to RPGs could probably pick up and learn how to play Dragon Quest IV much faster than a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, which is so complicated that it has one of the most extensive tutorials in videogame history. SImilarly, it is much easier to learn how to play Street Fighter II than it is to learn how to play Guilty Gear X2. The talk about Casual and Hardcore games as different things obscures this fact.
Furthermore, much of the talk about casual and hardcore ignores that there are many different kinds of hardcore gamer. Nowadays, features like leaderboards, achievements, and the like are commonly added to games in an attempt to appeal to hardcore gamers. However, I am the kind of gamer who has never had any interest in those features, despite being a hardcore gamer by any other metric. The term "hardcore gamer" really describes a wide range of types of gamer, and many of these gamers have very opposing interests and play-styles. So it is impossible to design a game or game feature for hardcore gamers, which in turn means that the term "hardcore gamer" is not really useful from a game designer's standpoint.
The entire reason I started writing this article is that I stumbled across an article about the CCG, Magic the Gathering, written by one of its senior designers, Mark Rosewater. The article talked about how the Wizards of the Coast R&D team divides up their player base. From a quick glance, it is easy to assume that all Magic the Gathering players can be roughly divided into casual players who play the game occasionally and don't spend much money on it, and the hardcore players who show up to tournaments and purchase cards by the box. Yet, the designers of the game don't split up their players along these lines. Instead, the designers categorize their players as having one or more of three profiles: Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. Roughly speaking, Timmy players enjoy winning with big creatures, Johnny players enjoy creating and fine-tuning distinctive decks with special tricks, and Spike players just enjoy winning, by any means necessary. Some people also believe that there is a fourth kind of player, who play the game because they like the art and stories of the game. Now then, none of these categories really correspond to the concepts of casual and hardcore, since it is understood that there are both new, low-skill, low-dedication and experience, high-skill, high-dedication versions of all of these archetypes. However, these profiles are much more useful to the R&D team since they can actually design cards particularly for one of these groups.
I think that the videogame industry is missing something by just focusing on the terms casual and hardcore. They are simply not as useful of terms for designing games as some of the terms used by Wizards of the Coast for the players of Magic the Gathering. I think the game industry is going to need to develop a much more nuanced image of gamers as a whole.
A big problem I have with these terms is that "casual" is really just another way of saying "not hardcore". Hardcore gamers are quite visible and well known in the videogame industry. Hardcore gamers supposedly make up the majority of console videogame players who have been playing for the last several generations, and their main genres include the major standbys of the last decade or so: FPSs, RPGs, and other games with complex plots and mechanics. The word casual sprung up in the last couple of years to describe the large influx of new gamers from the last several years who seem to ignore the big name games that the hardcore audience enjoys and prefer simpler games. The implication is that casual gamers and hardcore gamers are two completely separate markets.
However, I can't help but feel that there is a lot that is very misleading about the use of the casual like this. For example, the RPG genre is usually considered to be a hardcore genre. Yet, I have heard a lot of different stories about how a lot of people who generally don't play a lot of videogames are big fans of the Dragon Quest series of RPGs. Furthermore, I recently noticed on the Wii's Nintendo channel that Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is considered to be a hardcore game. Yet, back in the 90s, Street Fighter II introduced a lot of people who never played fighting games before into the genre. We also see examples like the Super Mario Bros games, which are typically rated as being Casual games despite their huge popularity among hardcore gamers. So it is nearly impossible to make a meaningful or clear distinction about the two groups.
The only common baseline about the difference between casual and hardcore games is that casual games are simpler to play than hardcore ones. Yet, this difference is really just a difference in how accessible a game is. Something that the industry seems to commonly overlook is that some games in a genre are more accessible than others. For example, most Dragon Quest games have much simpler gameplay and character customization than other RPGs. Someone new to RPGs could probably pick up and learn how to play Dragon Quest IV much faster than a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, which is so complicated that it has one of the most extensive tutorials in videogame history. SImilarly, it is much easier to learn how to play Street Fighter II than it is to learn how to play Guilty Gear X2. The talk about Casual and Hardcore games as different things obscures this fact.
Furthermore, much of the talk about casual and hardcore ignores that there are many different kinds of hardcore gamer. Nowadays, features like leaderboards, achievements, and the like are commonly added to games in an attempt to appeal to hardcore gamers. However, I am the kind of gamer who has never had any interest in those features, despite being a hardcore gamer by any other metric. The term "hardcore gamer" really describes a wide range of types of gamer, and many of these gamers have very opposing interests and play-styles. So it is impossible to design a game or game feature for hardcore gamers, which in turn means that the term "hardcore gamer" is not really useful from a game designer's standpoint.
The entire reason I started writing this article is that I stumbled across an article about the CCG, Magic the Gathering, written by one of its senior designers, Mark Rosewater. The article talked about how the Wizards of the Coast R&D team divides up their player base. From a quick glance, it is easy to assume that all Magic the Gathering players can be roughly divided into casual players who play the game occasionally and don't spend much money on it, and the hardcore players who show up to tournaments and purchase cards by the box. Yet, the designers of the game don't split up their players along these lines. Instead, the designers categorize their players as having one or more of three profiles: Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. Roughly speaking, Timmy players enjoy winning with big creatures, Johnny players enjoy creating and fine-tuning distinctive decks with special tricks, and Spike players just enjoy winning, by any means necessary. Some people also believe that there is a fourth kind of player, who play the game because they like the art and stories of the game. Now then, none of these categories really correspond to the concepts of casual and hardcore, since it is understood that there are both new, low-skill, low-dedication and experience, high-skill, high-dedication versions of all of these archetypes. However, these profiles are much more useful to the R&D team since they can actually design cards particularly for one of these groups.
I think that the videogame industry is missing something by just focusing on the terms casual and hardcore. They are simply not as useful of terms for designing games as some of the terms used by Wizards of the Coast for the players of Magic the Gathering. I think the game industry is going to need to develop a much more nuanced image of gamers as a whole.
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