@wilbymagicbear said in Questionable Game Design at Rare:
I am stuck with a bewildering question: How can a professional game studio, with hundreds of very experienced employees with degrees, be so bad at basic game design? How do they make such novice mistakes? The only 2 possible explanations is that either Rare has no idea what they're doing, or I have no idea what I'm doing. It only makes sense that I'm the incorrect one here, but the evidence says otherwise. Heres 3 basic game design guidlines:
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At no point should I feel compelled to pull out my phone and play another game while playing your game. Don't make the player wait with nothing to do.
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Every time I lose (in this case, dying or sinking), I should be able to think back and see where I went wrong. Everything needs counterplay.
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As a designer, one of your jobs, and in my opinion the most important job, is to maximise the depth your game provides, and minimize the complexity it has. As an example, if your character can carry only 2 weapons, don't make a selection wheel. Just have them press Y.
Keep these 3 guidelines in mind as I show you some examples:
The dancing and sleeping cursed cannonballs: Taking control away from the player is generally bad. In this instance, there's not any counterplay to avoid it, and there's no way to lessen its effect. You can just straight up sink because you were hit with a largely unavoidable attack.
Additional fruits: There was nothing wrong with bananas. As a rule of thumb for game design, you want to get as much depth out of as little complexity as possible. Before, it was just grab a banana, select it from the wheel, and go. Not much complexity, a fair bit of depth considering the implications of healing. Now, you grab one of 5 assorted fruits of varying quality, press start, scroll over to the resources tab, assess the proper fruit given how damaged you are, select the fruit you want, and go. This change didn't add much depth that didn't already exist, but it certainly cranked up the complexity.
Earthquakes and Volcanoes: Earthquakes drastically reduce player speed and have no counterplay. This would be poor design on its own, but couple it with an area that often needs you to get to your ship fast, and gunpowder skeletons that require you to run, and things can get pretty unfair. Volcanoes are a cool idea, and would have been great if they were executed well. They weren't. One could have easily made an extremely deadly eruption lasting 30 seconds, which mantains all the design benifits of volcanoes, as opposed to a slow sinking 5 minute eruption that requires players to just wait until it's over. Making the player wait around is poor design.
Crossplay: Why did Rare possibly think putting console and PC players together would be fair? How did this get past the drawing board? (If you want to argue this point, please do it somewhere else. I've made posts about this, do it there or on the megathread)
The patience meta: Why would Rare make running away the best combat strategy? It's the most boring tactic. Design rule of thumb here, the most rewarding way to play should also be the most fun.
I'm sure you see the point. This is all game design 101 here. What vexes me is that this is not one dev team making their first game on Scratch. This is Rare!
This entire quote is ignorant, biased, relies on shock value rather than actual facts, and feeds into its own narrative.
While it's true that SoT has its own flaws, much of what you describe aren't flaws at all. Besides, every game has flaws if you know where to look or look deep enough. Personally, I try not to do that, as it tends to ruin one's experience.
#1. The game doesn't make you wait with nothing to do - there's always something to do. This largely appears to be a YOU problem, and is likely due to your lack of knowledge, experience, or sheer boredom that's created by YOU because you think there's nothing to do. When exploring islands, you can complete voyage objectives, look for loot, fight skellies, go hunting for meat, gather supplies, search the nearby seabed, cook food, or guard the ship. While on your ship, you can steer, angle sails, raise or lower the sails, ready the anchor, cook, go fishing, play music, watch for other dangers or opportunities upon the sea, practice your combat skills, organize your supplies, change up your pirate, talk to your crew, bucket water, repair holes, fire the cannons, play with pets, grab a grog, hide your loot, and on and on and on... There's ALWAYS something to do. Boredom is only an issue that's created in your own head. You are your own worst enemy.
#2. SoT has a lot of counter play - saying otherwise is just plain ignorant. He's got a blunder? Stay back. An EoR? Get in close. He likes to jump and dodge? Get him into a tight spot or limit his options (the bowsprit is great for this). Catch on fire? Douse yourself. Ship gets damaged? Repair it. Get hurt? Take cover, run, eat something, or any combination of the above. Enemies trying to board? Watch your ladders. And on, and on, and on...
Try recording a combat scenario (or a few), and see where mistakes were made for both yourself and your crew (and the enemy as well). See what worked so well too. When something went wrong, ask yourself what you or others could have done differently. You can do this in EVERY. SINGLE. VIDEO. GAME. EVER.
#3. There is no weapon selection wheel. And you do press Y to switch between your 2 weapons. It's easy and your point in this regard is completely unfounded. I think you were confused about the ammo selection wheels if anything - but that's an entirely different thing and is meant to take time, as switching ammo is supposed to be a calculated risk.
CCBs. The operative word here is IF. IF you get hit by a wearyball or jigball. The counter play here is to not get hit at all. They have a limited radius, and are slow in-flight so you should be able to easily avoid them when on deck. Besides, it's common sense to MOVE AWAY FROM INCOMING FIRE. Even if you do get hit, it's only for 5 seconds - you can rely on your crew to manage things for that long without you. Good sailing and maneuvering to stay out of an opposing ship's cannons while maintaining your own is a big part of ship battles. The best ships are always the ones who can not only manuever, but also maintain accurate fire onto specific locations quickly and consistently at range. Besides, they're eventually going to run out of CCBS - make them waste them. Always be ready to counter the purple ones. For example, if you get hit by a ballastball, bucket immediately. This of course, is another great example of ship combat. For example, I can force your actions into predictable scenarios. I can shoot a firebomb at your cannons to prevent their use, hurt my enemy, and ready my next shot at the mid deck where the water barrel is located to finish you off or otherwise delay or distract you, or I could use that time to focus on other areas of the ship, like taking out your mast, driver, or using an anchorball while you're too busy down below. There are thousands of scenarios, and CCBs allow for more intense and intelligent play. It only seems dumb if you don't have the experience to know the counter plays, which is what is obviously the case with you.
Fruit. Players themselves asked for a larger variety of food, and they got it. The variety really helps in specific circumstances - for example, if I take a small bit of damage from a fall, I can eat a coconut instead of wasting my precious pineapple or megalodon meat. This is a good thing. Variety is the spice of life! Simplicity can be good of course, you're right about that, but you're wrong about it in this particular case. Especially since you showed your own ignorance regarding how to access it. Simply hotkey food to the right joystick button in the settings menu to access it quickly like I, and most others, do. You can press it repeatedly to quickly cycle through up to 5 different pieces of food (usually less if you carry much of the same type). You can even preselect it, by cycling to the food you want, so it's the 1st food that pops up when you press the button - very handy if you know a fight's coming. The only mistake here by Rare was not having food be preset to 1 of the 3 unused buttons as part of the default layout.
Earthquakes and volcanoes. Both can be easily avoided. Earthquakes don't really do anything but move your ship. How do you keep your ship from moving? You anchor it. Earthquakes are always short anyways, and don't do any damage by themselves. As for player speed - no duh. The entire ground is moving! Ever try to move on something while it's going in the opposite direction? Ever been on a treadmill or an escalator before? Yeah, it's like that - be grateful that you don't fall down. As for volcanoes, they last a long time for only 1 specific reason: to delay you. That's right, it's by design. Why? So other pirates can catch up to you! In fact, a lot of the game is designed specifically with this in mind. Doing things takes time, and the longer you take, the more vulnerable you are. The DR just takes this to a whole other level.
Crossplay. You shouldn't even be complaining about this any more as opt-out is now a thing. Besides, the player to player advantages with M&K that PC users had was balanced out by the ship to ship advantages controller users had. Many, sadly, fail to notice that because they specifically choose not to stay on their ships. Again, this is the fault of player ignorance, and not of bad development design.
The patience meta. Running away isn't necessarily the best tactic - it just affords you the most options. It also buys you time to breathe and think. This is not a bad thing. It's a smart move, even if only temporary. Running away, of course, has it's own disadvantages. Running away? You must have something valuable on board. The converse is true of course - stay to fight, because you have nothing to lose. The funny thing is, you can still fight while running away, both AT THE SAME TIME.
You're not a game designer, and if you are, then I'm sorry to tell you that it is you who is bad at game design, if this thread is any indication. The very fact that you don't seem to recognize that employees at a company may rotate out from project to project as many leave and others are hired over time, just outright baffles me and leads me to believe that you are not an actual functioning, cognitive adult, but instead are that of a petulant, immature child. In fact, your entire post leads credence to this notion. Grow up, or get over it.
It's never wise to criticize that which you do not understand.
