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S2 Ep67: VGBD - The Loop
79 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake for the latest installment of Video Game Break Down. This time, they dive straight into the core of what makes games continually fun and engaging...The Loop.
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
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Transcript
Introduction and Icebreaker
00:00:05
Speaker
Wanna learn how to tie your shoe It's a very easy thing to do You sit on down and it'll give you the scoop What's that? It's called the loop-de-loop You gotta take a lace in each hand
Podcast Overview and Listener Engagement
00:00:39
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Social Zone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-hosts. It's always Dave. How's it going, Dave? It is going exquisite. Oh, nice. Which is the most I'll probably enunciate this whole podcast. Yeah.
00:00:57
Speaker
So is exquisite like, exquisite from the outside? Like the opposite? Versus, exquisite? Inquisite, yeah. That sounds like a record scratch. Inquisite! Inquisite, exquisite. Oh, man. Inquisitor? No, no, no, inquisitor. Inquisitor, yeah. Don't know him. The Spanish, in-squisition? The Spanish, exquisite-tion. Or- Exquibition. Exquibition.
00:01:26
Speaker
Excavation. Yeah. Oh, there's that sound again. Well, that sound means it's time to start the podcast. Uh, today we would like to, uh, take a moment, come into your place of work or car or home or gym or gym. Some people do that,
Audio Preferences and Music Discussion
00:01:44
Speaker
I guess.
00:01:44
Speaker
are we bored into your ear holes yeah i'll be the right ear and i'll be the left i don't think we have positional audio that's fine i always uh mix this down to a mono track anyways because otherwise it literally sounds like schizophrenia you're just like oh this person's voice always comes from my right ear
00:02:06
Speaker
i think it can be done well in music i've like i've shown you the run the jewel song where um lp is saying he's like we won't remain and then it goes the other side of uh
00:02:17
Speaker
Speaker and says in our places. Yeah. And you're like, Oh, I appreciate what they did there. What I found though, it sounds fucking weird. Like it's entirely doable. Like, and it can have a cool effect. Also like sound that travels between the left and right channel and like bouncing back and forth, almost like a ping pong ball. A lot of people are familiar with that. But in order to make it work, um, you have to have a consistent backing sound that's in both track, like a beat or some part of the track that, um, hall on one side.
00:02:46
Speaker
Exactly. So you don't, you don't go to zero on one of the tracks. Um, because that is actually really disorienting. It's weird, but like they say, uh, dead air is not, not good air. No, it's true.
Game Design Focus: Video Game Loops
00:02:58
Speaker
True fact. Um, speaking of dead air, uh, on this episode of the podcast, we would like to talk about, uh, I guess I was left for dead mission. Third one, uh, third or fourth from left for dead one.
00:03:14
Speaker
Hmm. That air was pretty, I remember that one being hard in multiplayer, that like final conflict. You could be like him from any angle, basically. Yes. It was like pretty ridiculous. They gave you the, like the gun, but the gun is almost a trap, the, um, stationary emplacement. Cause like you're so susceptible to special infected on so many angles. All right. But if you're just against like AI, they're probably not going to give you this suck. Yeah. That's true.
00:03:44
Speaker
But I mean, if it were me, if it was doing, cause I look, Left 4 Dead 2 supported Left 4 Dead 1 maps at once. Yeah. They moved them all over. Yeah. I could easily see this as better being like.
00:03:55
Speaker
Stay and die or leave and live. Well, I guess I'll leave. I stay, you go. Dies. But yeah, also looping or a loop as a game design kind of characteristic.
Deep Dive into Game Loops with Examples
00:04:20
Speaker
In particular, we should probably define
00:04:23
Speaker
Yeah, we probably should, a little bit. So at a certain level of zoom into what you're doing in the game, the mechanical loop is what the player is actually doing in the middle of the game. So it's like if they log into the game right now, if they launch it up, what set of activities are they going to be doing?
00:04:43
Speaker
Like how does that drive their progression forward? What like time kinds of rewards would we like to give them to reinforce this loop? Like what keeps people playing your game makes up the loop.
00:04:57
Speaker
main quest side quest side quest side quest side quest main quest yeah yeah side quest until no side quest main quest right all right if i have to that's the way i used to play games i don't find myself doing that nearly as much anymore because i'm like oh yeah i have to sleep for work or something like that yeah see a side quest or sometimes i'm like i'll do a side quest and be like here have this shoe i'm like is this a quest item for like four hours from now i don't even want this
00:05:25
Speaker
You show up later like get to the end of the game and it's just like I made a terrible mistake Yeah, but I would say I'm getting progression in games. Hmm
00:05:43
Speaker
Well, obviously if you're going through and getting quest content or main game storyline character progression but namely as you are getting there as the lowly hero to the Big dickus at the end you're fully geared up. Yeah, I would say the big bad evil guy, but that works too the latin term dickus dickus
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's like it's what it's what gets you there and importantly it's what keeps you playing the game So like an example I've got here is like starting out on the more simple side The loop could very well just be the mechanics for the game like a game like Tetris your gameplay loop in Tetris is don't lose and also win in particular by lining things up and
00:06:36
Speaker
I think in the initial notes of Tetris, that's actually just what they jotted down. Don't lose and also win. If there's a programmer that looks at the notes and is like, what the crap? But I mean, it's like the exact same for every level. But the difficulty comes in. It gets fast every time you have to react because if you make a mistake,
00:06:57
Speaker
It lasts a good bit. Yeah, exactly as anybody who's played. Dr. Mario will tell you test yours just teaches you that actions have consequences And yeah like other other games kind of in that vein Mobile game candy crush like any kind of connect three game. It's like that. It's just the mechanic
00:07:20
Speaker
sometimes with additional mechanical layers kind of, uh, floated on top, uh, defines what you're doing. You're just playing the game arcade games were much like that. Um, but then once you get to more complicated games as, um, it's, I was going to say it's a recent, it's not a recent development honey pop, the more advanced Candy Crush.
00:07:40
Speaker
They've been around forever. But you may have multiple loops for what you're actually doing in the game. And you may have in the case of open world games choice. So you have a choice about what your next activity would be.
00:07:58
Speaker
And I think so we've talked about like open world games in the past and um, you've expressed some trepidation About poorly implemented open world games where they kind of just drop you in there, but there's nothing Uh, I would say like focused or fun enough to really do Yeah, um
00:08:20
Speaker
It's easy. That was a lead off, right? I think that was, yeah, just take, take this. I was going to walk out, use the restroom. Yeah. But one of the reasons we're always giving MGS five so much praise is because it's a unique world. It's not super giant or randomly generated.
00:08:38
Speaker
But it has a set number of encampments, but all of them are very unique and there's unique ways to approach them. Maybe you run in there, you knock a guy out and you fold them up to take him back to mother base. Right, exactly. Or maybe you run in there with your dog and you're like, go slit his throat with that knife that you have in your teeth.
00:08:59
Speaker
What have you got in your mouth? Or a knife? Spin it out, boy. Oh, God. It's covered in blood. Yeah. But the whole thing is it feels cohesive, whereas a lot of open world games just feel very open. They kind of copy and paste things like encampments or, oh, look, these three bandits are walking in a figure eight. Yeah. Being like, man, I sure hate the government. Who are you? And they come after you.
00:09:28
Speaker
I would I would actually like compare um, how the outposts because outposts are very common in open world games Like a lot of them have their landmarks basically. Yeah, it's just a point of gameplay And for the purpose of looping, you know, maybe you're going across the map uh defeating unlocking Capturing outposts, uh, whatever um, that's this that could describe like mgs5 that could describe uh far cry a lot of the far cry games have the exact same structure
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, blood dragon we other far card games. Yeah, like I think plus or minus two far cry games the same exact mechanic But it's that map exploration getting the checkpoint getting better gear and stuff to be more efficient at doing that loop itself. Oh
00:10:10
Speaker
I think like something MGS 5 that like Far Cry I don't believe has ever accomplished. Admittedly, I have not played the most recent 2. Would... 3. Most recent is probably 5. 3 actually, yeah. Yeah, last 3. It would have been 4, Primal and 5 are the ones I haven't played.
00:10:31
Speaker
But when you go into that encampment, you're getting it just to either get like another kind of Assassin's Creed-esque map discovery point, or you're just doing it for completion or experience or something. In MGS 5, you could be like upgrading your squad. You could be getting soldiers that like continually through the rest of the game, that mechanic drives your interest in the loop. You're like, oh my gosh, I was just gonna go like Blund's gazing.
00:11:00
Speaker
one guns blazing into this outpost and just like drop a mortar on it or something or an airstrike but that guy that guy is an S rank like logistics officer like I Convert him exactly but then you can send them out on missions to then get money or resources like maybe that's called I'll come back with a tank you're like I
00:11:24
Speaker
I could use a tank or I could sell a tank back for money. You spend money on other things to upgrade units or buy resources and then it feeds itself. Exactly. And that tangible, I think one of the big differences for some of these games is meaningful progression that the player cares about in some way.
00:11:44
Speaker
It doesn't have to be like gear. It doesn't have to be, uh, personal character upgrades. If it's story progression that the player is invested in, like that's, that's separate kind of from this loop mentality. Um, but it's also, you know, essential in so many games that the story actually matters. That can be the motivation to keep the player in the loop. Um, but for me personally, like tangible progressions always really nice. And, um.
00:12:11
Speaker
If I'm invested in the progression, then you can get me to just waste my time in video games. Like seriously, like MGS five. I remember just replaying missions, um, using like quick saves essentially, or save points to farm resources over and over and over again. Um, yeah, you're a resource point whore.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah, I would just, yes, like Fulton, all those crates out, all the resource crates and things like that, just farm them up as much as I could farm personnel. Like it's not even the way the game's intended to be played. It doesn't matter though, but I got it into a loop where I was just like, this is my payoff.
00:12:51
Speaker
That's your investment and the route you take when you go into play or something like Monster Hunter being another obvious resource example or resource tie in. As you go in, you're like, Hey, I'm going to go kill this monster to get some pieces to try and build or upgrade some gear. Yeah. But along the way, I'm going to collect some other things so I can make potions or other gear components that might need.
00:13:12
Speaker
Right, like upgrades, things like that. Monster Hunter is probably one of the best examples of a game that is very heavily reliant on the loop, more than pretty much anything else. They only really care about the gameplay of preparing for a fight, preparing for a hunt,
00:13:32
Speaker
The act of the hunt and then preparing for the next time you could actually the carving of them Yeah, the carving happens to body mutilation But like if you think about it how many people cared about the story of like monster hunter
00:13:48
Speaker
I actually have negative interest in the story. Oh, dude. We can go back to that episode, the unskippable cutscenes and everything else.
Nostalgia and Educational Games
00:13:56
Speaker
I don't care. Stop trying to make me care, please. Yeah, exactly. If I could just remove the story from the game, I would actually have a better time with it because I'm just in there for the hunts.
00:14:05
Speaker
If all the NPCs just kind of saw me and gave me a silent nod, that'd be more meaningful to me. I'd be like, oh, mysterious. If you could replace the NPCs with just menus, that would be great. Just buy cell menus. Just boil it down to a spreadsheet and then a monster hunt. I'm good. Good enough. Kind of like Oregon Trail, pick your supplies back in Independence. You're just like, all right, I have 50 bucks. I'm going to buy all of these.
00:14:33
Speaker
Know I've said this at least to you in person much around I guess probably every time I play Oregon Trail I would Hunt buffalo and get me trade for bullets and bacon. Yeah eat the bacon shoot the bullets of the
00:14:50
Speaker
It was the correct way to play, I think, right? I mean, that was the only, quote, intense gameplay of the game. It's like, events happen. I'm like, but let me shoot again. Campfire? Sure. Here's the booze. Let me shoot again.
00:15:05
Speaker
I remember the game actually like scored you based off of how quickly you made it out to Oregon. And I always just wrote that off entirely. It's like, it's going to be 10 winters. We're going to be running this wagon overloaded the entire way there. Don't worry if the wheels break due to having 3000 pounds of meat on the wagon. I've bought spares with meat.
00:15:31
Speaker
You're just stuck in your clothes and belongings out of meat. Super meat wagging. How is he floating? He's actually just very thin skinned. It's kind of ballooned up. Anyway. Oh man.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's that was an Oregon trail was a hunt trade hunt trade hunt trade hunt until he made it to Oregon Yeah, and then dying of a dysentery, which is where everyone's like I'm not keen on this day Yeah Then they kill Dave and that's the end of the game. Oh man That's been a long time Oregon trail. That was like I remember playing those in the library. Mm-hmm
00:16:17
Speaker
There's probably a couple other games that were really dumb. Probably more like CD-ROM, like, hey, here's a couple of learning games. Math Blaster.
00:16:26
Speaker
I want to say Math Blaster is amazing and not dumb, but a lot of other things in that space were just like, add these numbers. I'm like, where's the incentive of Math Blaster? I think they were both made by, actually that could not, that might not be true. I'm pretty sure Oregon Trail, at least a decade ago, was owned by the learning company. I think Math Blaster was owned by, um,
00:16:49
Speaker
It wasn't Scholastics. It was... I can't remember. Nevermind. Scholastics sounds familiar. Those are the Magic School Bus and other books like that. They make those series.
00:17:02
Speaker
Probably not, then. Yeah. But that would be the example of a loop. And in Oregon Trail, you can choose your activities. You choose how quick you go by having the wagon be lighter. We both went for the non-pass of his playthrough, where we just killed as many species as we can on our way to Oregon. And then just pray that one of the species is not a human being, right? Like the wagon makes it in the end. Donner party.
00:17:39
Speaker
But yeah, that's that's really what it comes down to and Like there have been some examples of games. I've played I think it's basically known at this point that I play trash games like sometimes
Exploring Kenshi and Creative Strategies
00:17:57
Speaker
Sometimes you play good games, but there are times you're like i'm gonna jump into a single player thing that looks interesting to me Yes, everyone else is like we would not touch that with a stick Mainly because i'm looking at kenchi up here. Yes. Yeah kenchi's on the list which um, I actually sunk a bunch of time into kind of like a base building game in a dystopian future survival setting but
00:18:20
Speaker
Is it since I'm less familiar with mechanics, I'm sure people are not as super familiar as well. I don't think anyone else is. Is it like a rust, like survival, explorer, craft? It's more like a kind of isometric view sort of by default where you like control individual colonists and like tell them what to do. Um, and even the whole colony part is optional. You could go from town to town, kind of be a raider or, um, like scavenge trade for what you want. So it's a runescape.
00:18:50
Speaker
It is actually a single player macro RuneScape. That's actually pretty accurate. You can create goods, you can manufacture, you can do all this. And all these mechanics feed into the loop while I'm playing it. I'm always trying to skill up, research new tech, find more profitable things I can create so I can sell it off to a store. But there's a lot of freedom in how you go about playing the game.
00:19:19
Speaker
And like, all of that sounds amazing, right? Like if you're someone who's into survival, crafty, colony sim, base building type games, like this sounds great. Then I can tell you like the graphics are pretty much garbage. It doesn't run that well.
00:19:36
Speaker
Um, it had issues with like some crashing. It's got like bugs where enemies would sometimes just glitch inside of my base after I spent all this time building a wall. They just face, they just face through literally. Um, like the game lets you choose the, um, how fast it goes, the speed of the simulation basically.
00:19:56
Speaker
And if you go too fast, sometimes collision seems to bug out. So enemies are just like the war party that was like marching to your base. And you relied on like gunners on the wall in front of the gate to like take them out. Uh, they just like phase through your wall. And I'm just like, this somewhat complicated things. I thought you were going to say like you had like a slight slope or incline up to your base and they just kind of went, they just ran straight off into the space, the great A-thing.
00:20:25
Speaker
I actually like thought about it and I gotta give the game a little bit of credit for this. I like built the wall around my base and you can put like harpoon guns or like kind of rapid fire like chain guns or things whatever on your base. Those are the late game weapons I think. But I was like it seems kind of inefficient to have the gate in the front and the enemies will just run up and start like hitting your gate. So if you think about the gate as like a flat line or your wall with the gate on it is a flat line.
00:20:55
Speaker
The enemies can just run up and hit your gate and you only have a couple gunners on either side of the gate that can actually hit those enemies once they're all up close. So I mixed it up. Did you horseshoe it? I made a U-shape exactly. I'm just like walls of death and enemies would run up and be like we're taking the gate and it's just like harpoon harpoon harpoon harpoon.
00:21:16
Speaker
Jake relearn the the old French war strategy of cul-de-sac Which cut off their ball But yeah all of that it was really fun I like trading I like going out exploring the world and then to just hit like a plateau and
00:21:36
Speaker
Where I was like, I don't have anything I want to do. There's a lot of things I could do Mm-hmm, but I don't have anything I want to do and I just stopped playing like I just quit the game I just never started again So that sounds to me like it has a good Loop in general, but it might plateau. Yeah, we're like certain games again going back to Path of Exile being a great example of game design in my opinion and
Player Engagement Strategies in Games
00:22:04
Speaker
They have so many ways to keep bringing you back as far as the progression tree. Oh, you want to farm something? Here's this type of minigame, or this type of challenge minigame, or this type of challenge minigame. They keep adding content like that, or they'll have new seasons in the same way Diablo III would. You'd be like, hey, come back to us. Come check out this cool new shit. They keep trying to get you back into that progression and being invested in the game itself.
00:22:30
Speaker
And for the most part, they play around with the same core mechanics. They just change up the loop a little bit. They modify the mechanics a little bit. But for the most part, it's like other action hack and slash games where you're running around killing things, getting gear. It just boils down to that, but they add enough variety in the mechanics and the enemies and the skills and the personal progression that you can do that same loop over and over and over and over.
00:22:58
Speaker
and still feel invested in like you're accomplishing something. Yeah. And for the people who are listening who are like, all right, but I'm not into those types of games, are you into fucking roguelikes? Yeah. Or something like Dota, any type of MOBA, those have the loops in and of themselves where you are essentially going to redo the same content. And through Dota, you don't really have progression outside of rank and cosmetics. But that in and of itself is like incentive for me.
00:23:28
Speaker
i mean i enjoy the gameplay obviously that's why i play yeah but i enjoy being rewarded with buying cosmetics like trying to get my rank up for a season like hey here's my new mile marker i did this well here's what i can do here's what i would like to do
00:23:43
Speaker
Next year like like in dota you start the simulation basically a new A new every time and you just change the variables a bit like i'll do my best personally, but like taking a step back from that It's always just 5v5. Hopefully uh players versus players Um trying their best playing different heroes. So that's a variable in the simulation maybe picking up different items That's another variable in the simulation having on our off days another variable their own personal preferences
00:24:11
Speaker
And like all of those variables and the exact same loop of farm, fight, push, farm, fight, push, farm, fight, push, like is a game of Dota and you can play thousands of hours of it. Yeah. There's never been an identical scenario. It's impossible. Yeah.
00:24:32
Speaker
But you do pick up things like oh If I'm a techies player, I know how people are expecting To see my minds for this patch and you you play with that you work around that. Mm-hmm You know what you know for a given patch and your abilities of your character and they know their abilities but maybe you outsmart them in a game and
00:24:53
Speaker
Maybe they think they have you and you use a clutch mechanic they forgot about. Yeah. Or use it aggressively versus defensively and turn things around. Personal skill comes into it and each new match, you hopefully are, are taking something from that collective experience to play better. Maybe that's ambitious. Exactly. That's the knowledge. Like you said, my personal experience, my, my play was great. My team though. It is always the team. That's what, uh, playing online games have taught me.
00:25:22
Speaker
I think that if I was the only person ranked in any video game, I would probably be number one. Skepticalize. If no one else could be ranked, I would be number one. But yeah, it's like you talked about roguelikes a little bit. I know like we've talked. They actually have progression though. Exactly. They do have like meta progression, but that pushes you forward. It keeps you unlocking things.
00:25:48
Speaker
Like Binding of Isaac would be a really good game, even if you didn't get unlocks at the end because of like how solid the gameplay and the mechanics are. But maybe people wouldn't put their crazy amount of hours they have into it. Like if you couldn't unlock a new item at the end.
00:26:07
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and the fun thing is like, let's say you go through the first time and you unlock some stuff. You're like, Oh, cool. You don't know what unlocked it. You just know that you did some achievement throughout the game. And that now puts this cool new item in the item pool. And part of the drive is I want to get more of those and see how they interact together and see what happens with RNGs as I pray to him on this run.
00:26:29
Speaker
Maybe you have something that pairs together really well. Maybe you can't see what the item is and you pick up soy milk and it completely castrates you. It always does. Yeah, that's what soy milk does. It's a little known fact. Little soy boys.
00:26:44
Speaker
Yeah, and even once you've kind of developed, you understand the items, you understand the meta, it becomes a, how far can I exploit this? I've got this cool item, how do I build around it? There's a lot that happens in the binding of Isaac choice. The choices you have, even though so much is determined by RNG, that I feel like that keeps that kind of game really fresh and interesting.
00:27:10
Speaker
Um, and for me, like, so I haven't put like a crazy amount of time into binding of Isaac, but I played like, well, literally no one has put a crazy amount of the basic time in compared to you. But, um, I mean, I got like to the, uh, Isaac fight, like the angelic Isaac. Um, I think I beat that. I think I worked my way down. Mom was before that, right?
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah, so normally it's mom, mom's heart and Isaac and then there's stuff beyond that. There's like heaven or like she'll, I don't think I ever beat Satan, but, um, but I have put like a fair amount of time in the game and it has, uh, just a lot, you can get invested into the runs.
00:27:57
Speaker
Even if you've done so many runs in the past, it'll pull you in because you're like, oh, cool. I've got this nice little combination. Here's how I can kind of exploit this as a strategy I can use. And that keeps the game fresh because you don't know what's going to happen next. I think that's really, obviously, the strength of Roguelikes is you don't know what's going to happen next because it's not predetermined.
00:28:19
Speaker
Yeah, but as you go like you notice certain things that kind of impacts how you play like Using bombs keys and health as a resource throughout that game. Yeah with Isaac being the example Okay. Well, I can maybe save this to gamble on I hope there's something over here. I technically need that much money. Do I really want to Spend the key to open the shop. It might have shit items. I
00:28:43
Speaker
Right. Oh, maybe I can do a bomb from the other room and stuff like that all ties back into how you approach it. And then how you go in the next iteration of the loop. Right. You develop knowledge and skills like for the particular rogue, like you're playing.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yeah, but anything that actually has, um, passive progression, whether it be rogue, like an unlocks or just putting points in passive through your character. Love that shit. Yeah, actually like, um, so we've talked about.
00:29:14
Speaker
Did we talk about risk of rain? Do we have a risk of rain episode? I feel like we might have. No, we didn't. We definitely did not have an episode. We didn't. If you're listening to this in the future, maybe that's not true anymore. I prefer the RNG and Isaac a little bit more to the RNG and risk of rain because I feel like
00:29:33
Speaker
I feel like it's more immediately impactful. Risk of Rain 2 for clarification. Didn't play like hardly any of one. Just for people who are unaware, Risk of Rain 1 is a side-scrolling platformer where you have like a little pixelated character and the character has four different abilities and use it to stave off waves of monsters to go to the next area. You can also spend money that you get from killing stuff to unlock chests, which give you cool new items to help you kill stuff.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really fun loop with chill ass music but two They brought it into like uh, what do you see the art style is like cel-shaded? Yeah, like a cel-shaded third person shooter type. Yeah, that is Still really fucking enjoyable in my opinion. Yeah, it's it's still fun. We put some time into it not like a crazy amount but like some time um
00:30:26
Speaker
But the RNG feels like slightly less impactful individually over time. You know, it can have a huge impact. Um, but for the most part, like the upgrades you get aren't game changing. Like you can get a game changing as your first major upgrade in Isaac that you're just like, all right, this dominates my build choices for the rest of this run.
00:30:44
Speaker
Ipecac, you're like, well, I'm shitting out explosive damage, so everything will be around that. Yeah, exactly. And there's nothing quite to that extent, I think, in Risk of Rain. It's a more consistent experience overall that's less impacted by the RNG. And for some games, I prefer that. But in others, I want more swinginess or more cool, exciting things. And that keeps me invested in the loop of playing it over and over. So the difference between a couple Isaac runs for me
00:31:13
Speaker
Is I may be a completely different creature by the end of it like whether I die or when whatever and like risk of rain it's usually like Just trying to get like minimum damage like as much damage as I can get like maybe some support II things Maybe a couple specials, but there's really the same specials Like let's say you're playing by yourself and not with me because it's a shared item pool Yeah, if you're playing by yourself, you don't really have choices of do I get this or do I not right?
00:31:41
Speaker
I mean, I guess you have money to spend to buy the item, but typically if you're going through an area, you can afford every single thing that's there. Yeah. It's just how much time you want to spend there. Cause as you go on throughout the game, it gets harder over time. Exactly. It's just constantly getting harder and it's your choice kind of when you want to leave the level, as soon as you find where the exit would be and you complete the boss fight. Um, but of those two, I kind of like the variance and Isaac a bit more. Definitely more.
00:32:10
Speaker
Not to say the co-op experience is bad. I think that's like injecting another player into the loop can have a pretty big impact on Your game's enjoyability Like a co-op game we've played a lot of as a payday to like one of our first episodes Nobody go
Cooperative Gameplay and Challenges
00:32:29
Speaker
back and listen that one. Please fill the audio is comically bad. Yeah comically bad and
00:32:35
Speaker
Should just delete that at some point. But anyways, no because I can listen to this one and then go back and be like Yeah, this episode is fucking amazing All of them are amazing compared to the other but like the loop in that game is Step one get friends. So, you know, maybe out external loop there, but get your squad together and
00:32:58
Speaker
Like figure out your kit, your build, um, always run shadow raid, but barring that, consider like the mission you're going on. You want to go still, if you want to go loud, like get your, your kit together and then complete the heist, get the reward and do like allocate your skill points to be leveled up and do it again.
00:33:19
Speaker
Yeah, but you also have the freedom of having a perk deck. So, hey, maybe you want to have a bill that's a little bit more this way. Maybe you want to switch it up for this mission. You want to put points. I think you could reallocate the perk points right here. Yeah, you could pay to respect them, I believe. Or you're talking about the actual perk deck. You can switch the perk decks at any point. The perk unlocks were linear. So you extended a bar out the deck.
00:33:47
Speaker
Okay. So perk decks are the ones you could switch between. Yes, exactly. So I could be like, Oh, I'll be joking this time around. Or, Oh, I'll be like a tank. Yeah. You can be like the specialists like, um, uh, like the melee ones or, um, I can't remember the names of any of the perk decks grinder grinder was my perk deck, which was heal on damage dealt. But the skill trees were once you put points in those, you spent for that. Yeah, you were locked. Um, you could respect them, but it took money.
00:34:17
Speaker
Yeah. And I think, I can't remember if you dropped the entire tree at once or if it was skill by skill. Doesn't really matter for the purpose of this discussion, but you had choices to make. Yeah. And it was really fun to go in squad deep with people, listen to the sweet bass of Shadow Raid, but have the division of labors.
00:34:37
Speaker
Like, so typical shadow raid, everybody runs through the chest. We try and see if we can accidentally spawn an extra thermite. We go our separate ways. Dan would always go into the, the yard of the crate yard. Yep.
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah, the ship was a shipping yard I went security door somebody would always go I think you went high. Yep plays it I think AJ whoever else we play with it also go low. Mm-hmm. I would also go low so I could thermite the first thing but I always go to that first camera on the corner in the back where there was a drop-off point and
00:35:13
Speaker
I'd get up my wad of money and as soon as the guy turned the corner, I would kill him with a wad of money Yeah, then answer his phone and tell tell his wife that he still loves her. Yeah It was something like that like We had our own loops actually within that particular mission because we did get it down to just roll based Yeah, execution, but we'd we'd know where certain things could spawn. Mm-hmm. So we go check out things like hey this is here
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah. It was a really good loop, but we got efficient with it because it felt good to succeed in the mission and get the rewards versus get close and have somebody fail. Yeah. And shadow raid paid out like a lot. So that's the reason we ran that mission for difficulty and time invested. It was worth it to learn it. Um, do you remember framing frame?
00:36:06
Speaker
I do. That was not what I was particularly fond of. Do you remember the one time we spent two hours on trying to perfect that or actually complete it? Yeah, that mission was heck obnoxious. Man, that was just a waste of time. Just looking back on that. And if it was like, that was a three day. The original one was a three day before they split it out into a single mission. And if you failed like any of them,
00:36:34
Speaker
It was like over until we had like a mod that I think allowed us to restart. Hawks head is what it was. Yeah. No, those are good times, though. I look back on those, those like memories fondly. The game is not aged super well and the engine's kind of garbage. The shooting's not particularly great, but, you know, playing with friends and this.
00:37:00
Speaker
I almost said the term counterculture that's too hipster even for me. Yeah, I'm just gonna say like You get to be the bad guys get to be the villains you get to be h3h3. Yeah, yeah or jacket Yeah, it's true. That's the that's the subversive element. I liked when they put that in mainly because of the What what track was that? How I'm what?
00:37:23
Speaker
They added two tracks when they added the hotline Miami DLC. Right. Yeah. I always put that on for every single mission. Yeah. And that for me was its own thing. Cause it'd be like, we're fighting cops. I have this. Whoa. What just happened? There's an earthquake. I had this like cool eighties upbeat music going on, which had me pumped to be like, yeah, feeling jazzy. You know, normal eighties things.
00:37:47
Speaker
But like if you have some way to draw somebody's investment, as you keep saying, whether it's through custom adjacent customization or choosing how you play the light the game, but then also going through those same mechanics, like it's not different permission. I still have to shoot down any cops or specials who are trying to get me. And then also do the sub objective of, um, unlocking a safe, taking the money from the safe into a car. That's parked really far away.
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah, you know there was a lot of repeated mechanics and like most of those missions sometimes we would do one for fun or to vary up the um, uh recent mission penalty because we'd get to like negative 75 or something on chatter. It's like please play another map We're just like, all right guys, let's ground out grind out some well, then we do like a jewelry store Yeah jewelry like no money. It was 100k, which isn't shit at that point in the game
00:38:40
Speaker
Or it was like, did I go back? It was the something job. It wasn't Italian, it was a joke on that, but where you get the tiara. I can't remember the name of it. It's been a long time. But yeah, even that core loop of getting progression, because they had a similar mechanic to some other first person shooters, we could go infamous. And you'd get a slight discount on how many points would be necessary to climb the trees.
00:39:08
Speaker
Um, or some other unlock, like sunglasses was the first reward. Um, and then you're just like, start at level one, do it again. So you could spend a stoop as much time as you wanted, basically on the meta progression. Um, but it was, it was heck of fun. The social aspect just added to it. Um, I think the loop, the gameplay loop for what payday provided would have bored me much faster if it was just single player.
00:39:36
Speaker
I don't think that's too hard to say. Yeah. Certain things were designed as going squad deep. Like I can't imagine playing Monster Hunter by myself. Yeah. I mean, that's actually, it's in some ways more viable to play it solo than as a duo, just because of the way multiplayer scaling works. They've changed that now. Did they actually?
00:39:58
Speaker
So single is standard health. If you're playing with two people, it is only double health versus going to the full, I think three and four are both. It's full party. Okay. Okay. That's good. That's a necessary change.
00:40:15
Speaker
Um, well, we only have, I want to play with my friend. Oh, we only have two friends on. Let's not. Yeah, I know. Yeah. That's, that's a toxic kind of, not maybe not toxic, but it's a negative outcome for a positive intent. I want to group up with the playing with people unless you have a full party. Yeah. So for clarification, the previous mode was as soon as it was multiplayer, there was just multiplayer health. And so two people was the worst combination.
00:40:42
Speaker
because it's scale up to as if you were playing with four people and you're like, this doesn't die. My time is running out. Yeah. But there's, there's other games kind of like in that space that are maybe less, uh, directly cooperative. Like we all played call of duty back in the day. Everyone's played call of duty back in the day, obviously. Um, but like cod for.
Multiplayer Progression and Decline
00:41:07
Speaker
Modern warfare 2 modern warfare 2 those are the two really big ones Those games really solidified what the progression loop looked like for multiplayer and like what the but the loop looked like like you could break it out to just Play a match queue up for a match play a match queue up for a match play it out play a match queue up for a match But the in-between part was the progression, you know you start out and you only have so many weapons available to you and cod for
00:41:35
Speaker
And you're like, man, I really want to get that AK or something like that. The AK is the go-to, right? It's so good. And you would only unlock it at level 74, whatever nonsense. So you're like, all right, I'm going to play through some of these matches, get my unlocks, unlock some perks, customize my character a bit.
00:41:54
Speaker
Then you get to the end and you're like i've unlocked everything and the game's like wouldn't you like to um Wasn't called infamy in that one prestige prestige. Yeah, the prestige they made a movie about it. Actually the mechanic was so popular um And you're like, ah, do I really want to unlock? Okay, fine. Yeah, you know get a gold border or whatever it is Yeah, because now you can show off to people like hey, I guess you already Kisses muzzles did this this guy
00:42:21
Speaker
And then you get killed by a guy. He's on like his 14th prestige. Freakin' nerds. Wow, this guy's in point of the games. Go outside, dude. Yeah, right. Everyone lower than you is casual. Everyone better than you is dry hard. Yeah, pretty much. That's how it works. It's like the George Carlin joke of driving. It's like everyone who's slower than you is an old grandma. Everyone who's faster than you is a fucking maniac.
00:42:51
Speaker
That's pretty accurate. Um, there's no one faster than me though. So I don't know what that means. Let's go. Um, but yeah, I really did enjoy probably more of my experience would have been with modern warfare too. Um, but just getting the progression of the skill trees and passage being like, Oh, my character will be better at this and this will unpack my play style.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, and I would try and vote for maps where it's like this behooves me, right? Like playing at a lake house be like, oh, are you inside? I have wall penetrating bullets. Yeah There was the uh, the um, uh map with the the trenches and like uh The map was almost entirely bisected by like a bunch of bushes and shrubs and there was like some helicopters off on two sides I know sniper map is basically what i'm going for but
00:43:43
Speaker
I can't remember the names of anyone. I know I flayed it, and I know that's where people would always get their 25 killstreaks and nuke. Yeah, exactly. Because it was clustered tunnels. I thought there was like a ring outside with bushes where people would just kind of sit in the corners and snip. Yeah, we were just like, well, I've got cold-blooded on and a sniper and like a silencer. And good luck. You're not going to find me. I'm going to get 25 kills and end this match.
00:44:07
Speaker
A bush sneezes, a man dies. But yeah, I like that game. It was really engaging. Obviously they don't really change the formula much in Call of Duty. And I understand why, you know? Do you want to change the thing that prints us all of the money we make? No. Slap new skin. Ship gang.
00:44:28
Speaker
Yep. Um, but even if you had like a bad match, it was like, Oh man, I should quit. You're like, Oh, but I'm so close to that next unlock. All right. We'll do, we'll, we'll, we'll jump into the next one. Yeah. And it feels good. Even if it is just a bar going like, Hey, you're now level 37. You're like, nice. Yeah.
00:44:44
Speaker
It's like that little mental progression, that little drop of dopamine where you're like, I'm making progression. I'm being productive in some way. It's a reinforcement to keep you playing. Yeah. And it keeps your mind off of the fact that you're just alternating kills and deaths, spawning behind someone or being spawned behind, you know, which was my takeaway from that whole series. No one weighs in more. Someone will spawn behind you.
00:45:13
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's been a long, long freaking time though. We don't even really play that game at LAN party anymore. It's dropped off the, uh, off of the docket as it were. Yeah. I stopped being good at first person shooters. I don't think I was ever good at first person shooters. Not since, uh, Halo two when I owned an X-Box. Right. Halo two is a good game to be good at though. There's a lot of enjoyment back in those.
00:45:42
Speaker
Yeah, it was a good visceral multiplayer. They could split screen with people.
00:45:49
Speaker
Screen look oh my god. Yeah, I would really try not to but like i'm also not blind So right. Yeah, you're just like i'll close one eye So then my peripheral vision isn't the entirety of your screen It's always like you see you're not looking at their screen, but then out of peripheral vision You see your character again, but like from a behind view and you're like i've done it again The thing is uh, is it morally right to turn around maybe like
00:46:18
Speaker
Oh, there's something behind me. Let me just double check. Oh, it's a person. I've checked on my lemon trees in a while. Where have the lemons gone? It just becomes fuzzy. They've been stolen.
Minecraft and Creative Exploration
00:46:31
Speaker
Another old one I have on the list is actually Minecraft. Oh, yeah. Oh, that was interesting. I'm collecting shit. I'm building shit. And then I want to build more shit. Therefore, I need to collect more shit. So I need to actually go out and explore. And then my.
00:46:50
Speaker
Eminent domain kind of grows. Um, maybe we need to take more real estate for a base so I can have like, this will be my area for crafting. Let's be my area for potions. JK. I've never fucking made potions in my life. I've made potions though. It's fine. It's fine. Here's my anvil and other things. Maybe you have like a mine track, underlying underground, underlying what the hell. Yeah. Words today. No, we don't need, we don't need words. It's not like this is a podcast or anything.
00:47:20
Speaker
We think in thoughts. We speak in thoughts. I also don't have words today. But like it was a nice loop of like you there's an incentive to go out. You are rewarded with finding materials and other things. Yeah. Or just seeing a real query. Oh, there's a town over there. Holy shit. I can trade with them and I can buy enchanted leather pants for a couple of green rocks. I don't use. It's worthless green rocks.
00:47:49
Speaker
Meanwhile the villagers are powering their fish and reactor I actually I really like minecraft as an example because It is so open like there are other open world games Technically minecraft is an open world game there are other like open world games where they're like we have so many mechanics like Grand Theft Auto, you know, I
00:48:12
Speaker
tons of you can like go bowling and you can do all this stuff but like so much of it you don't care about or you only care about it in like a short burst so it turns out into it turns those options into just cool that it's there but i don't really care yeah and minecraft is like
00:48:31
Speaker
less or fewer, um, like, uh, super developed mechanics, but just a lot of things in the world you can do. So like, maybe they didn't spend like 5,000 hours of dev time getting the bullying simulation perfect, but it feels pretty good to make a wheat farm. So you do that. Yeah. And you're also getting something out of that, which would be bread or cakes. Exactly.
00:49:00
Speaker
And it feeds back into the game, whereas bowling just is like a cool side thing that's unrelated.
00:49:08
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, um, uh, like in Minecraft, there are so many mechanics that it's, it's, it's like, uh, so while other games may be a loop of get quest, kill monsters, uh, complete quest, get quest, deliver item, complete quest, whatever in Minecraft, it's like, all right, we'll plan your itinerary for the day. You can do whatever you want. If that's a lot of the same thing. Cool. If it's not cool.
00:49:36
Speaker
We don't care. This is like the most chill game imaginable. So that's why, you know, I would, you know, mine out the nether and like try to get all of the nether rack and things like that and like create cool and interesting like block types for your base. Make a giant J made out of gold or diamond or whatever. Cool.
00:49:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I knew that like Jake had worked really hard on getting those resources So I would feel incentivized to make a chicken engine to shoot and shit all over his accomplish But like that would be my loop and incentive in the game is like making a small dumb machine or making underground bass that sounds loud and oddly
00:50:21
Speaker
Chicken run actually Basically what we're talking about I'm trying to recreate a classic movie But it's I think it's a it's a big accomplishment for your game if you trust the players to find the content or Determine what they want to do because that's risky like there are open worlds up open world games out there where it's like Here's a bunch of stuff you could do and the players like no that sounds great and they close your game
00:50:49
Speaker
You know Minecraft is very much figure it out maybe less so than in the past because they have achievements they kind of like tell you what to do for the most part and the early parts at least but
00:51:03
Speaker
It's run by the player's own, much like Factorio. It's run by the player's own goals that they're setting for themselves. And you just trust that your simulation and the mechanics you've set up are such that the player can make their own loop for what they want to do. Literally their own loop in Factorio. Exactly. My train will go out of here and then come back here and go back out again after dropping off materials.
00:51:28
Speaker
or your AFK space where it's just a micro circle of conveyor belts going and going around. You can stand on it. It's one train that's in the conveyor belt. It can never leave. Yeah.
00:51:43
Speaker
So what would you say is your favorite game loop or best example of a solid game loop tie-in? Whether it's from a previous one we've mentioned already tonight or something totally unrelated that speaks to you? I think like that's actually an interesting question.
00:52:03
Speaker
Because usually it ties into whether I'll like finish the game out or not. And I could get really controversial really quick and mention some games that I stopped playing because it just didn't draw me in as much. Don't anger our audience, Jake. They're all we have. That's true, right? I felt like I still haven't finished Kingdom Hearts. Like the new Kingdom Hearts. And I don't immediately have any plans of playing it. How far did you get?
00:52:29
Speaker
like world three or four or something like that like i've got i've got time into it but it feels really samey and i don't really have a connection to the story at this point because it's progressed so far since the last major installment that i played and hey jake the stories even have connection to story story about that yeah but like like the the lack of the story to keep me going makes me think like
00:52:53
Speaker
Oh, a lot of these mechanics are really trivial or it, I feel it more that it's just kind of like button mashy, press the X button until you win press the special button when it comes up. Like I know I could up the difficulty, but then I'm just kind of.
00:53:07
Speaker
Playing a hard on fun game. Yeah, exactly exactly actually Um, so like I already mentioned factorial so that's cheating but that game is crack like crack cocaine that is what that game is um Because I can just sit down and be like, all right I want to do this task and then I look up and it's just like an excel document of like completed tasks and goals for the future and input output ratios and nonsense i'm like
00:53:36
Speaker
That's amazing, you know, like that feels really good when you can just lose yourself in the loop and Enjoy it
00:53:47
Speaker
Um, are you sure the loop is a game? It's also cocaine. Cocaine. You're very much one for optimization in games. And even if the game's not like, Hey, this is what this game is about. You'd be like, but I'm going to make this game about this. Yeah. So like you're kind of super imposing your own loop onto the game itself. It's true. And as I'm sure, you know, cause you played many games with me over the years, I'm always the murder hobo.
00:54:17
Speaker
Where I'll be like, I don't care about the story. I mean, if I'm invested, I'm invested. Right. But there are times where I just go around to try and kill everything scavenge as much as I can to become all powerful and draw all power into myself. But like, I would not bat an eye to like beat up an old lady to get two shekels and a loaf of bread. Yes. Net gain.
Rich Storytelling in Divinity: Original Sin 2
00:54:43
Speaker
What's, what's funny there is you say that, but like, I know you've played defend divinity.
00:54:47
Speaker
and I know like you're willing to make actual moral choices that aren't always murder hobo like As you kind of like get more attached to the game and the story itself the less attached you are I feel like the more likely already to go full Full hobo, but yes. Yeah, I will definitely say in the episode that we'll never do divinity original sin 2 But we will allude to it forever You know that game divinity
00:55:15
Speaker
You know, it has a really good and deep, deep, deep story. And there's every fucking character has their own storyline. That Squirrely encountered has a fucking storyline. It does actually. It's an actual, not even a joke.
00:55:32
Speaker
But it also has, it's really pretty, it's good musically, it has super solid mechanics too. But it was fun to, regardless of what race you pick or class for like starting abilities, you can build into what you want. Do you want to be more persuasive and try and barter? Do you want to be sneaky and steal things from people's pockets? Nickpocketing, I believe they call it.
00:55:56
Speaker
Yeah. Which pocket is it? Pick that pocket. I pick that pocket. I'm wearing these pants. Give me the pocket. That would actually be a hilarious subversion of pickpocketing as a skill. I could see this in Kingdom of Loathing or something where it's like, oh, your pickpocket skill. And then every time you use it, you just get another pocket in your inventory.
00:56:23
Speaker
You're just like this one guy who has like a leg of super cargo pants and just pockets all the way down Just stuffed with beanie babies because it's a 90s reference. Oh, man Yeah, I think I interrupted what you're saying. There's the joke within the side. I can't remember. I mean we do that Yeah, I was just ranting about how good divinity original sin 2 is. Yeah, but it was nice to
00:56:49
Speaker
I mean, we played Yumi and Mike and we go around and explore. Yeah. I think at a point it just became me and Mike. Yeah. That might've actually, I mean, you guys played through. The whole game. The entire game. Yeah. And I think we might've tried to play together once or twice, but I've had trouble sticking with it. I appreciate that. It's like an amazing game. I've just always had other games playing like at the time.
00:57:13
Speaker
Oh, gotcha. It's harder to get like a group of three together for it too. Two is much easier in today's modern society. We live in a society. Um, then, then, uh, it's easier to get two people together than three. That's what I was saying.
00:57:28
Speaker
This is true. This is all true about my sex life as well. Still trying. But what I was saying about... You're not satisfied, Dave? But I really liked how you could explore around town, talk to some of the shop people, see some like, oh, they have skill I want to buy. Or maybe I can try and like steal them, steal something from them when a guard is going around.
00:57:56
Speaker
Hear me out you can pick up people. So I am not technically wrong Or do you just walk them It's like the shitty effect where it just has like the static picture like, you know like those 80s videos Yeah, where they'd kind of like roll thing onto the the screen and expand it up It's a reverse where it just goes into your pocket like
00:58:22
Speaker
But it was cool to explore around town and they're like, Oh, I'm gonna go out here. Oh, there's an encounter. There's a fight. And then you're working around the mechanics of that and the turn based combat. Or maybe you have one person who's outside of combat who's positioning or you try and cheat the game. You got your rogue.
00:58:41
Speaker
But it felt really good as far as progression for the passive points you got, where it felt very, not surprisingly D and D esque. Yeah. For all those interactions and base. What would be the word for that? I have no idea what you're talking about. You got interactions and base.
00:59:05
Speaker
something. It's like in a classical magical world, you'll have things like strength, dexterity, intelligence, statistics, attributes.
00:59:15
Speaker
I guess attributes or skills are kind of things in like the video game and the magical universe. Right. Or like high fantasy. So that's pretty common. They have all those things down to a T, but it's really fun to nitpick those progressions in between. Like for the assassin I had, she was full assassin. Right. And would occasionally get a little bit of CC of turning people into a chicken. Standard assassin.
00:59:42
Speaker
I do still get your contract payout if you turn the target into a chicken. And you give the one chicken an eye patch? Like no, that was the raider captain. Oh man, it'd be great.
01:00:02
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, it's, um, this is the opposite. I think of some of those, those simple games where you largely do pick so many, there's so many choices and divinity. Um, it's more structured than Minecraft one would argue because there are quests. Yeah, but wrong. But, uh, yeah, you get to, you get to pick how you play. And I think that a lot of people enjoy that play style. I know
Closing Thoughts on Game Enjoyment
01:00:29
Speaker
I do. Um, as long as your game doesn't suck.
01:00:32
Speaker
And it's fun. Good, good words to live by. Don't suck and have fun. Or if that's your thing, suck and have fun. Right. Words to live by, really. But I mean, I think the key part of that is it is a fun mechanic that you like abusing or redoing, but there is some degree of customization, whether it's just cosmetically, something like Overwatch.
01:00:59
Speaker
Don't progress as far as own level 77. I don't have access to this ability. Yeah, you don't get the game is played. All right Moira gets the ache. I Mean the death ball is the a.k. Yeah, if you only you would let me cast it. Yeah, just unbound you're Right mouse man, like I'm out of juice like worthy trade God
01:01:26
Speaker
But in other things, I really like when you get to choose how to play, specifically something that fits your play style. Cause I think almost all games I enjoy have a degree of that. Whether it just be how I approach talking to people or murdering them in Dave's ex, or if I get to nitty gritty customization, like path of exile. Right. Yeah.
01:01:50
Speaker
It's good to have those options. I think that's something that we're kind of spoiled with now in games. It's like if you have no options, then it's... Then you're not an option. Yeah. Good point. Good point. I agree. Thank you.
01:02:12
Speaker
As always, if you guys don't want to call in, you can't do that. We don't have a phone number, but if you want to write in, you also can't do that. But if you want to type in, you can reach us at soapstonepodcast at gmail.com. That's an email address. Or you could join the discussion on Facebook at Facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one.
01:02:39
Speaker
Alternatively, if somebody wanted, they could open the little bottles that they put their ships into, which they're folded by the way, and then they open them up. That's how that works. Okay. But they could kind of like shout their thoughts and feelings into that cork it. So it can escape and then mail us that. How are they going to, how are they going to mail it to us though? Probably email. We don't have a PO box. Take a picture of your message in a bottle and email it to us. Whoa.
01:03:32
Speaker
We should really end this one.