> As a result, the game offers no easy satisfaction of hacking and slashing through weaker opponents.

Besides the questionable morality of kill=experience=progress in typical hack'n'slash or roguelike, what started to irritate me in there as I grew older as well, was the stupid mechanics where crowds of enemies described as intelligent humanoids (i.e. not animals or robots) facing clearly overpowered high-level PC (famous, even) never surrendered, almost never tried to flee, attacked one-by-one, and shoved no sign of tactical thinking or self-preservation instinct. Despite being armed and (by description) organised, PC could enter a narrow corridor, defeat dozen of them without taking any damage, yet there will be a waiting line eager for demise by a single hit -- even actively advancing towards it. No attempt to regroup, to take advantage of the number superiority, wait in open space, ambush from all directions, or anything like that. Same applies to most FPS: there is a Doomguy running around at unprecedented pace, slaughtering everything that moves, but we will all keep our scattered positions. (This led me to a thought, whether it would be possible to rearrange enemies in canonical Doom map so that all would attack at once at some appropriate spot and whether it would guarantee their victory or not.)

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rootlocus 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

While I agree it's incredibly jarring in some games, I'm always thinking back at a presentation by David Rosen on procedural animation: "First, do no harm to the gameplay". He's talking about animations in particular, but I feel that should be a core pillar for any game designer.

Many things are unnatural in games: you don't instantly recover from a beating by eating one apple in real life, but we're ok with it in games because it makes the gameplay fun.

https://youtu.be/LNidsMesxSE?si=fGFCTCHm77OJiYu3&t=260

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SubiculumCode 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is, IMO something that has infected modern mainstream TTRPG: Monsters hardly run away, even if a fireball just killed half of you. One thing B/X AD&D got right were the heavy use of Moral Checks, e.g. Check their morale on first death in enemy party, when half have died, etc. In fact, fighting is deadly and scary. And these morale checks differentiated undead as that enemy that knows no fear and had no morale checks, unless forced upon them by a Cleric's Turn Undead.

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bob1029 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It sounds like you might be interested in the idea of a PvP multiplayer game. I've never found myself concerned with the morality of camping/flanking/wiping an entire squad in BF6 without mercy because I know they urgently wish to do the exact same thing to me.

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Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago | parent [-]

But one where death is permanent / seriously bad; in Battlefield you just respawn so dying is not a major issue.

	▲	bob1029 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		World of warcraft and battle royale variants exist. One life across a 90 minute game is pretty high stakes, relatively speaking. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3028330/Battlefield_REDSE...

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pprotas 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Game developers (mostly... hopefully?) try to optimize for the "fun" aspect of a game, not the "realism of the flight/flight instinct" aspect

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myfonj 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, but I don't think they must be mutually exclusive; on the contrary: in the late stages when your character is a tank, swarms of minions that posed a challenge in early stages become just a nuisance, mostly. You are walking legend slaying dragons for breakfast, everybody and their dog knows about your invincibility … but instead of giving you some respect, they try to bite your heels on the first sight. I guess the "fun aspect" of seeing them flee and not restraining your movement at all could be slightly more satisfying than taking them down in a single hit one-by-one for the thousand time.

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lukan 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Some games did that(in part).

The original Gothic for example. When you were high level, other low level NPC would rather run.

I also thought hard about the concept, how to make FPS games still fun, but a bit more realistic. The thing is, in most settings this means reducing lots of enemies - as realistic would be, once you start shooting, they all come for you. Not 3. And then maybe another 2. And so on.. and then you would not have a chance, unless you get special powers (or quick save and quick load part of the mechanics)

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card_zero 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Similarly, a mindless swarm doesn't present much opportunity for tactics, compared to a group with individual self-preservation instincts, and a manipulatable group morale level, or individual fear level mechanisms. On the other hand it's true that realism is not the goal. Reality is no fun, that's why we're playing a game. But it's a sort of distorted echo of reality, I suppose.

I see somebody in another comment complaining that enemies who get frightened rob the player of the fun of battles. So it depends what it's all about.

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Jensson 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I guess the "fun aspect" of seeing them flee and not restraining your movement at all could be slightly more satisfying than taking them down in a single hit one-by-one for the thousand time.

Chasing enemies is much more annoying than them coming to you, so that would be a punishment to the player.

Players don't like when you punish them in that way, they want to kill the monsters they don't want an upgrade that makes you more powerful make it harder to kill monsters since now they start running.

	▲	myfonj an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Chasing enemies is much more annoying than them coming to you, so that would be a punishment to the player. It seems I've failed to express myself clearly. The idea was that at some point, "low-level" adversaries simply stand no chance against a "high-level" PC, which should be obvious to both sides -- so acting accordingly on both sides would make sense without taking the fun out of the game, because -- and hear me out -- at that point in the game, chasing the low-level minions should be the last mechanic the player is forced to endure. When you are going for a dragon, you should not be forced to stomp your way past overly self-confident "newts" or mow down swarms of goblin youngsters… Naturally, if the PC chooses to chase minions fleeing in terror after they took out the most courageous (or silly) third of their clan, that should be an option… and arguably it could even bring some satisfaction after the PC's low-level struggles, perhaps. But should this be the main mechanic? Definitely not -- at least not in the kind of game my thought experiment addressed.

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Modified3019 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>CalebCity: “How fearless minions are in ANY video game”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC375rujZhs

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arc-in-space 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The monsters running away when wounded is a basic element in the Monster Hunter games, which are still very unique in how they present the relationship between the player character and the world.

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yomismoaqui 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The solution for your problem is playing a Souls game

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arjie 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There's a mod for Battletech (the video game) where people act realistically and it is catastrophically boring. The second you get sufficient advantage over an enemy they panic and promptly eject to save themselves at the cost of their company's mech. Yes, yes, it's what you would do, but it means I only fight 50% of the enemy.