Emergent gameplay design(Food for thought)

[Sandpark]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_gameplay

http://www.gamespot.com/videos/the-p.../2300-6426981/

Quotes by Danny O'Dwyer from above video:

Emergent gameplay are engines of perpetual novelty.

Emergent gameplay: What happens when simple rules and mechanisms are combined together to perform unexpected results.

Two forms of emergent gameplay:

Intentional emergence: Set rules or mechanisms allows you to find creative means of utilizing them to complete an objective.

Unintentional emergence: When players find ways to do things developers did not intend.

The best intentional emergent gameplay is when developers actually create worlds that react to clever ideas.

Most games are about getting high scores, unlocking all the stuff, killing all the dudes, these games reward you for being skillful.
But emergent gameplay systems rewards you for being clever.

When you come up with a solution it feels far more satisfying than any test the game has exculsively given you. It feels like your moment and your solution and that is the power of emergent gameplay.

A decade ago many game designers said emergent gameplay was the future of game design. These kinds of games are hard to make. Not neccessarily in terms of cost, time or people power but in terms of thought.
Emergent systems are difficult to design which is why they require talented designers to create them. They take risk,care,and love to create, but when they work out they result in games we continue to talk about decades later.

These emerging systems aren't just about completing a task. These games encourage you to do task in the way you see fit. They reward experimentation and take your actions into consideration.

Compare emergent games to recent less popular open world games,Take Arkham knight, assassin's creed untiy, watch dogs, maybe even mad max. They are similiar due to the open world freedom they allow. Many of these games have excellent combat and large beautiful worlds. But ultimately everyone plays these games mission in the same linnear way. Or at least the type of variety they employ has become commonplace.

I mean when exactly is the last time AC required us to think on our feet.In fact of many of these non emergent games do alot of reminding you of how exactly to complete the mission than encouraging you to explore the gameplay yourself.

Now this doesn't make the non emergent games bad.Many of these games have great combat and interesting environments to explore.

But in a world with more emergent gameplay the standard non emergent games become less and less interesting.

I see thread after thread with unease about the direction of FFXIV. These range from the high grind and lockouts associated with endgame, repetitive endgame design, horizontal vs vertical progression debates, item bloat, skill bloat, dislike of jump rope/memory only in dungeons,methodically reused dungeons mechanics design,etc,etc.

The real want here is emergent gameplay systems. A system where players by performance can change the outcome of content by using provided tools to either progress faster, smarter, or smoother.

1.A lockout- There is no player input here to change that outcome other than not doing content.
2.High grind- This is an mmo by design. What the player wants is some way to make the progress more interesting, smoother, or faster via player input.
3.Repetitive endgame dungeons- Se can add branching paths or random enemies, but imo that still don't make it emergent only adds flavor. The solution imo is different types of unique endgame such as solo,duo,4man,8man,16man,24man open world, instanced, public, or mixed.
4.horizontal vs vertical, item bloat, skill bloat,memorized repeated fight mechanics-It's not about how many items or skills you have. The answer is how useful and how good/situational each item or skill is. Can I as the player use a tool to change the dynamics of a fight on a situation by situation basis.

Combat:
A healer can heal and increase defenses globally. But an emergent element would be a counter for a specific thing requiring a specific set of rules.
Example: Casting a barspell during the casting of an enemies elemental spell.

A DPS can deal damage and increase offenses globally. But an emergent element would be a certain skill being useful in the best possible time to counter an enemy.
Example: Stunning an enemy skill or a skill dealing extra damage depening on situautional enemy parameters.

A tank can tank and increase defenses globally. But an emergent elemen would be the ability to cast a skill at the most appropriate time to minimize a particular skill set of an enemy.

There could also be moments when things in the world are interactive such as:
Electrifying a body of water to do random stun or additional damage, casting fire on a gas to ignite enemies,etc.
I admit there is some of this to an extent but it needs to be explored further and not just in dungeons.

Thought on why global cooldown should die. It takes emergence out of gameplay.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3261005

Gathering:
Gathering got emergent gameplay down pat. The only problem is that with abilities costing so much and gp regening so slowly. You get to alter things the way you want then get resigned to waiting on slow GP regen.

I compared my 40blm to my 35 miner.

BLM regen: 1min from 0 to 2kmp.
MNR regen: 3min from 0 to 500GP.

Imagine if on blm your best crit spells cost 80% of your mp and the only way to cast again after depleting mp was to wait 3min on regen or pop a potion on a 4 min cooldown...
They should:
1.Raise GP returns on hits lvl1=5gp,lvl30=10gp,lvl60=15gp.
2.Raise GP regen rate higher than it is or closer to the rate of mp regen.

So If I decide not to buy gp fill potion. I am resigned to to non emergence for 4min whil trying to crit HQ.
Basically swinging with no ability input, it's like playing dps with only auto attack.

[Kitano123]

None of your examples are of emergent gameplay they are all intentional designed mechanics, in fact nearly all of them are in the game already.

Combat:
A healer can heal and increase defenses globally. But an emergent element would be a counter for a specific thing requiring a specific set of rules.
Example: Casting a barspell during the casting of an enemies elemental spell.

Virus.

A DPS can deal damage and increase offenses globally. But an emergent element would be a certain skill being useful in the best possible time to counter an enemy.
Example: Stunning an enemy skill or a skill dealing extra damage depening on situautional enemy parameters.

Stuns are already in the game?

A tank can tank and increase defenses globally. But an emergent elemen would be the ability to cast a skill at the most appropriate time to minimize a particular skill set of an enemy.

Defensive cooldowns.

MMO's like FFXIV are too tightly designed to offer real emergent gameplay, its much more suited to games like WarZ, Ark etc that allow players to manipulate the systems in ways that are unintended and unexpected.

[dejavutwo]

I don't really think any of those examples are really emergent gameplay, and as Kitano pointed out, are already in the game. Its just they are in the game in such a way that if you don't stun the mob at the proper time you wipe.

However, one of the cool things about subbing into another group is seeing how the other group solved the fight, and there are quite a few variations for some of these. Just looking at T9 there were at least 4 major strategies for dealing with meteors. That comes closer to the emergent gameplay you are talking about, but with these fights, most people look up strategies and pick one they like.

[Sandpark]

None of your examples are of emergent gameplay they are all intentional designed mechanics.

Virus does not adhere to my example because it can be used anytime and is. Emergent would be if it was only good to counter a move real time.

While you can apply things before hand. There are not many things that are done to counter something in the moment.

Yes stuns,heavy and other debuffs are in game. Unfortunately, anything worthwhile fighting resist it like the plague, so combat resorts to just dodge and attack.

Take most dungeons, people say dodge the red, almost never do you hear stun the monster right before or as the red comes.

Defensive cooldowns.
There a few mmos out there that handle real time stuff just fine.

My examples are emergent gameplay because you are given tools to solve problems on a one for one basis as opposed to how it is now which is X skill works in most all circumstances regardless of what the enemy is doing.

[Kassiekane]

snip

The reason why most mmos don't have fully emergent gameplay is because of balance.

Let's say, that you have open-world bosses that wonder, and their skills, abilities, and tactics change according to environment and other conditions. Emergent? Yes. Fun? Definitely. Fair? Absolutely not.

In one situation, the boss can be defeated easily and players will be able to get rare loot without much effort, as where another situation players have to work really hard to beat this boss, and there is a chance that the group may not even be good enough to beat it and they won't get their loot that time around.

Now this would be fine IF the entire game is centralized on emergent progression. If at any point that players feel like they are on a gear treadmill, while the methods of obtaining gear is unpredictable as hell, then the result is industrial volumes of nerdrage.

[dejavutwo]

The way you are describing it sounds more like the way the steam from the legs works in A4 (immune until they start steaming then you can stun them to reduce damage). It doesn't really feel any different than stunning a slime as it casts its sprint. Just a different tell for when you are supposed to hit it.

[Adrasteia]

The way you are describing it sounds more like the way the steam from the legs works in A4 (immune until they start steaming then you can stun them to reduce damage). It doesn't really feel any different than stunning a slime as it casts its sprint. Just a different tell for when you are supposed to hit it.

That describes binary gameplay, yeah. You only want to stun the legs in A4 at a specific time (in order to interrupt the laser); it's not really "emergent."

"Emergent" gameplay is gameplay that develops unintentionally, typically involving the novel use of mechanics or programming peculiarities. A lot of stuff in DotA, for example, is emergent gameplay: the way creep camps can be blocked by wards; how Tiny's Avalanche hit twice; how denying became a mechanic at all; etc. In FF14, emergent gameplay is mostly restricted to circumventing or making certain mechanics easier: the Twintania Trench, single tank strat for Nael, soaking double Prey on Ravana Ex with a beefed-up Adlo, or the recent stuff Lucrezia did during their AS4 clear.

[Kitano123]

Virus does not adhere to my example because it can be used anytime and is. Emergent would be if it was only good to counter a move real time.

While you can apply things before hand. There are not many things that are done to counter something in the moment.

Yes stuns,heavy and other debuffs are in game. Unfortunately, anything worthwhile fighting resist it like the plague, so combat resorts to just dodge and attack.

Take most dungeons, people say dodge the red, almost never do you hear stun the monster right before or as the red comes.

Defensive cooldowns.
There a few mmos out there that handle real time stuff just fine.

My examples are emergent gameplay because you are given tools to solve problems on a one for one basis as opposed to how it is now which is X skill works in most all circumstances regardless of what the enemy is doing.

Virus is always used for specific abilitys (tank busters etc), people dont throw it up for no reason.

I stun aoe's in dungeons all the time, most people do.

Real time stuff? This game is all in real time, im not exactly sure what you're talking about.

None of your examples are emergent gameplay, I think you should read your own links to get a better idea of what it actually means.

What you seem to be asking for is skills that can only be used in very specific circumstances, which would only create massive bloat to our available skills without changing gameplay much at all. It would be a hassle to swap out skills for every single fight.

[Wobi]

What you are asking for is more RNG to battles, which ultimately there are only so many abilities they can program in before it gets ridiculous and if a few of those attacks prove to be detrimental if they are not stopped the classes with the ability to do so will be favored thus tipping class balance for that particular instance. FFXI suffers from this to this day, a constant back and forth teetering of class balance and bandwaggoners.

Eventually people will figure out all of the particular of a fight and sit on the cooldowns for the abilities that prevent said attacks from going off and use them whenever said ability crops up. This means for some groups the fight could go spectacularly easy depending on what the boss decided to use and for others could be a nightmare. As there is no true AI you cannot possibly program infinite scenarios, just more random attacks/abilities to fire off.

[Nadirah]

Sounds obnoxious from a raider point of view.

Part of learning the fight is learning the script.

And your complaint about Virus? Ok. Disable, then.