I’ve been playing a lot of Deus Ex 3 lately. Most of the office has. It’s got me thinking about how its different mechanics are spaced throughout the game. For the topic of pacing, I’d categorize them into core and intermittent mechanics. The core mechanic in DX3 is the sneaking or not-sneaking around buildings–taking out and shooting included. You spend most of your time doing that sort of stuff. The intermittent mechanics include both hacking and the talking/negotiation game. Intermittent is a good way to describe it because both hacking and talking stop the core mechanic from happening for a time. When you’re hacking, you better not be trying to sneak as well because you’re always in danger of someone seeing you. When you’re talking, you’re automatically always in a non-hostile area. Therefore, the core mechanic is put on hold for the duration of hacking or talking.
(Minor Spoilers Ahead)
The point I want to make is why these things are categorized the way that they are. All three mechanics are well executed, the main difference is their frequency of occurrence in the game. What would happen if hacking or talking occurred more frequently? One argument is that it wouldn’t be Deus Ex without the sneaking. Humor me. Hacking and talking are extremely satisfying to complete. Being able to capture multiple points simultaneously and racing against the clock is gratifying. Watching the little graph and an NPC’s expression change when trying to talk down a terrorist. Like I said, completing these things are awesome. But would I want to do these things all the time?
If I had to talk all the god damn time then I’d be more or less playing some antiquated RPG with conversation trees bigger than sequoias. Sure, there was a time where I liked doing that but those have gone out of fashion. I get tired after a while. Even Dragon Age, a game I love, got tiring with all those conversations. So what if I were to hack all the time? Again, a different mindset that I would have to be in. Stoic and calm–try playing Uplink. The frequency of pleasure and how it is sustained by the kinds of actions that produces said pleasure becomes the template that all other mechanics must mimic. I would describe sneaking around as being constant high-tension but with a calm mindset. Engaging in combat has tension but it rises and falls as hostiles come and go. Its mindset is frenetic for the same reasons–see enemy (conflict), react with bullet, retreat (resolution).
The feel from talking/negotiation maps to sneaking and hacking maps to combat. We already know what talking and hacking are like by just playing the core game before we encounter the two intermittent mechanics. When we encounter hacking and talking for the first time, I would argue that there is a subconscious familiarity to them. However, the two do not compete for time with the core mechanic. Instead, they strengthen it. The times when you talk are carefully placed and are presented as key narrative points in the game. Only some of the time are they initiated by the player (side-quests etc). Hacking on the most part is entirely initiated by the player. Some of the time do you need to hack something to gain entry. If we take this into account and only measure the times the designers put the intermittent components in front of the player, it reveals to us the intended pacing of each mechanic.
So what does this mean for Guns Online? What I’ve learned from Dx3 is that our actions must reinforce each other. Although, because we have 3 unique roles/play styles we are trying to incorporate, it is a little harder in our case. In some ways there needs to be a rock paper scissors thing going on. Delving a little deeper, each role will need a balancing of its actions just like in Dx3.
The engineer is something we’ve been testing heavily recently. With our newest prototype, I think we’ve found something that is extremely engaging and matches the kind of play style we want to accommodate. We aim to balance performing other actions like shooting an unmanned gun or taking the helm for a quick second to break up the flow and allow for flexibility in all the classes. Unlike Dx3 where its intermittent mechanics support the core (supporting mechanics?!), we want performing your non-role mechanics to strengthen the understanding of team dynamics on a ship. Each role has its specialties, advantages, disadvantages, and that cooperating leads to more wins.