recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Repetitive Battles/Interactions in Games Without Constant Combat Make for a Forgettable Experience

## Snack

There are a lot of combat-based
games that have breaks in combat where the player traverses a level and
interacts with other content in the game. *Bioshock*
is one example of a game to which this snack refers – the player has periods of
combat, and stretches of time searching for pieces of narrative, resources, and
solving puzzles. Just like a math teacher wouldn’t ask a student to solve the
same problem twice on a test, game designers shouldn’t ask the player to fight
the same battle twice (or solve the same puzzle twice). Sometimes these battles
are changed only by environment, which can make the experience unique, but can
also be used as an aesthetic excuse to introduce the same interaction twice.
This is not to say, for example, there can only be one battle in a game with
three common enemies – rather the outlying factors need to be different to keep
the player interested and for he/she to have a chance to create a memorable
experience. This can include hazardous obstacles in the environment, equipping
the enemy with special weapons, giving the player/enemy a drastically different
vantage point, offering different resources in the environment for
attacking/defending/interacting with, disorienting the player through
lighting/level design/enemy spawning.

When the player picks up the shotgun, the lights go out, and an enemy emerges from the dark to attack
them, and as the player approaches certain areas and kills enemies, more spawn,
and one even gets up off the floor when she looks deceased. This fight is made
up of about four to five common enemies, but creates a memorable moment in
gameplay by creating a very different situation than fighting them head-on in a
hallway.

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In Batman Arkham Knight, there is a lot of batmobile fight sequences which are repetitive and forced into the story by the designers. Initially playing with the batmobile and blowing up tanks, drones or helicopters was a wonderful experience but as the game progressed, not much variety was introduced to these battles and it felt repetitive and started to bug me. At times it felt that the batmobile was a forced inclusion in the story.

Here is a video of the battle with the batmobile.

**Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3**

The entirety of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 felt like a repetition of the same gun fights. Each level looked different, but by the end of the game I felt like each battle sequence was the same. The player is forced to hide behind an object and shoot at the incoming enemies. It felt lazy and forced.
Make The Logo Be Interesting

Game logo represents the game and it more or less shows people the art style or mechanics of the game. Persoanlly speaking, I would be impressed by the design of the logo of a game. If it looks good, I would be more than happy to buy it. Overwatch's logo is very stylized and interesting; the vault boy in Fallout 4 is also very intersting; ghostbusters's logo is also very interesting too, etc. On the contrary, Deus Ex's logo just looks not interesting at all. Its curvy shapes just does not make sense why the artist would design like that.

Examples:

Fallout 4, I wouldn't say Fallout's vault boy represents its game art style. As I first saw it, I would never belive it is the logo in Fallout. But it is interesting that vault boy is actually a mascot of Fallout series. His biggest feature would be his thumb-up, why thumb-up? check this out:https://gamerant.com/fallout-vault-boy-thumb/

**Pokemon**

I would say Pokemon has a well designed logo. It is very stylized and interesting. The logo includes the color(yellow) of the main character Pikachu and the key element Poke Ball.

**Street Fighter**

The logo of the game series depicts the theme of the game. Color scheme uses angry shades of red transitioning to yellow. The text is not just in a perspective view, it appears to jump out or rather attack.
Slow game speed when killing an enemy perfectly in RPGs makes players engage more into the game

In some of the RPGs nowadays, sometimes the game time will go slowly when players perfectly kill an enemy, which can be regarded as a kind of reward for players' skill. It's very exciting for players to see the killing animation because they can see every details in the killing and usually the character will do a different extremely handsome animation from the normal case. Players will also know they are rewarded and they will practice their skills more to try another perfect kill. So there is no denying that this design can make players engage more into the game.

## Example

1.Dying light:

In Dying light, players make their own weapons and fight against zombies with their skills. In normal kills, players can just knock down the zombies and attack them until they don't move, which means they are dead. But if players can hit their head accurately, sometimes it will trigger a slow animation. The character will do a handsome strike to the zombie and the zombie will die immediately in most cases. It's really exciting because players can see the skeleton of the zombie and the blood flying out very clearly.
Pointless weather

Having Weathers that doesn’t actually affect the
players makes the world less believable. Too often I find myself running around
my half naked character through a blizzard and having no side effects. I feel
this is laziness on the development part. If games are willing to go through
the trouble of adding in different weathers, why not add in some weather effect
too? By adding in weather effect it would add some much texture to a game.

An example to this is “*Skyrim*”. As you travel around the world of *Skyrim* you run into different region with different weathers.  However regardless if you’re running through blizzard
or swimming through frozen water your character will not suffer frost bite.
This is so apparent an issue that people went in and great mod weather mod effect.

Example2

Life is feudal: Forest Village

Currently, the rain doesn't seem to affect any stats of the game. The rain is just some sprite layer on the screen that makes everything hard to see while playing the game.
Poorly implemented rubber band AI in driving/racing games frustrates the player

Rubber band AI refers to a feature of artificial intelligence found in racing games that is designed to prevent players from getting too far ahead or behind non-player-controlled opponents. Well implemented rubber banding means that players who’re ahead feel a decent amount of tension while players lagging behind don’t feel entirely hopeless. However with poorly implemented rubber banding, players often complain about opponent AI suddenly overtaking them even though they made no mistake themselves. Many other players feel that risking their cars by playing aggressively to gain a lead is fruitless when the enemy AI bridges the lead rather unbelievably.

**Examples**

**Mario Kart 64**

Being in last place means the item boxes are likely to give the player powerful items such as blue shells and thunderbolts. In first place, the player could get nothing but mushrooms and banana skins.

MK64's Rubber Band Powered AI
Narration Within a Game Helps Guide Pacing and Player

Many games within the "walking simulator" genre have narration over the gameplay. Games like The Stanely Parable and The Beginner's Guide. This narration often subtly gives the player a threadline of a narrative or storyline to follow. However, the main game design aspect that these narrations have is that they often guide the player along the path that is otherwise extremely open and unstructured.

For example, in a game called Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist, when the player falters, walks the wrong way, tries to open locked doors, or generally gets stuck not knowing what to do, the narrator will openly acknowledge that and try to guide the player towards the correct direction without being too forceful.
Open-seeming world with restrictive exploration

Often games will promise exploration and open traversal of the game space, when in actuality that space is designed to restrict the player's movement toward objectives. This can cause feelings of dissonance in the player, as the premise is at odds with the actual design.

Example:

*Firewatch*

Players use a map and compass to explore a large forest, but often what look like small obstacles are actually invisible walls. This diminishes the feeling of an open forest, and the feeling of exploration gives way to a more restrictive set of goals.

*Dragon Age 2*

Dragon Age 2 seems to want the player to think it’s open world. Some of the maps are quite large with lots of landmarks and places to go, but when you look closer it’s clear that in every map you are actually confined to a pretty small space, or being shepherded down a very linear path. The variety in the maps is even further cut down as the same 5 or so locations are used and re-used simply with new linear paths opened up depending on the quest. It almost seems, when looking at Dragon Age: Inquisition, as if the very open maps in that game were Bioware’s attempt to apologize for the false openness and lack of variety in the previous game.
No protection time in Area&Flag&Spot conquering mode....Does not give attackers or defenders time to react

In some intense FPS games there are usually conquering and capturing mode in multi-play part. In some games, there is no protection time in these modes. This means if a player choose to bypass the defense or sprint all the way to the point, once he reaches he can immediately capture the area and the team of his will have victory. This at first might not be a problem, but the defenders would feel frustrated and upset because there is no time for them to react or change plans because their area falls too quickly. This becomes worse if the game mode is multiple area capturing.

## Example

Day of Defeat:Source(DODS) is a FPS game based on Half Life 2 just like Counter Strike. Different from CS is that DODS have different game modes, one of which to Flag Capture game mode. There are several flag point in the map and player fight to conquer these spots. However there are usually 5 or more spots in each side, the map is large, and it only takes a single players several seconds to take down a flag and conquer a spot. So sometimes the game is over before all the players are aware of, which would make the lose side upset because they could have secured that spot but the conquering time is so quick.
Item-Gated – Frustrating to the Player

Many linear gameplay stories use a technique called item-gating to keep the player on track. The player has to find an item to proceed. This technique can be frustrating to the player. Sometimes the player has to backtrack, searching the rooms where they have already been, just to look for the treasure chest they missed or a door panel that was not placed well in the level. For Example, In Pokémon, the master ball was presented in the middle of the game. Many players didn’t know what it was meant for in the beginning and used the ball on a Legendary bird instead of Mewtwo, ruining the conclusion of the game. It breaks the player experience when the player has to take time out of their experience to look for one object.

## Examples

### *The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind*

Although I'm personally an advocate of resting responsibility on the player, *Morrowind* has potentially game-breaking flaws when it comes to quest items. Whereas *Oblivion* and *Skyrim* have designed quest items to not penalize the player's carrying capacity and created the inability to discard them from inventory, *Morrowind* gave no such warnings and a player could do what they'd like with quest items just like any other item. This means they could drop them, and potentially lose them if they didn't remember where they placed them. Additionally, many containers in *Morrowind* would sometimes reset over a period of time, meaning if the player placed a quest item in a chest in a dungeon, that item could be erased from the game.

*Nancy Drew Game Series*

The Nancy Drew game series is comprised of puzzle-based detective games. The player frequently needs to find specific objects to solve puzzles and problems in order to progress. Many times, these objects do not intuitively go with the problem that the player needs to solve. This can leave the player attempting to apply all of the objects in their inventory to an area that they know needs something, they just don’t know what. The player can get stuck in this process, which leads to frustration, as they have no idea how to proceed.
Teach fight mechanics using harmless enemies

One of the challenges of designing a game is to explain the player the controls in a simple way, without being boring. Especially fighting mechanics can become complicated in RPGs and fighting games. Having an easy way to show the player the fighting mechanics without having to read anything, is quite hard, but there are some tricks.

One of these tricks is to introduce a very harmless enemy for the player in the tutorial. The player can fail using the fighting mechanic several times and still be able to defeat it. This makes the player able to process what the specific button and the mechanic do without being punished.

## Examples

### **ArcaniA**

ArcaniA uses a harmless enemy in the start of the game. When the hero wakes up, he immediately appears among a hear of sheep. Clicking the first mouse button makes you draw your stick and hit them. The player then gets awarded with a silly sheep death physics, and the player understands how his stick attack works.

### **Overwatch**

In *Overwatch*, players can learn the moveset of an unfamiliar character by experimenting with them in the Practice Range. This is an area populated by harmless "Training Bots" which either stand idly around the level or move around in continuous patterns. The benefit of the Practice Range is that players can focus on learning and practicing different combinations of moves in a neutral environment without fear of being killed by an AI or human-controlled player. It allows players to figure things out through experimentation rather than needing to be told.

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**Ghost in the Shell**

In Ghost in the Shell, the player is made to learn shooting
against harmeless enemies. The player is made to get familiar with the controls
and the player can also set to set his mouse sensitivity level without any fear of getting shot by the enemies.

#### **World of Warcraft**

In World of Warcraft, training Dummies are mechanical NPCs that enables you to test your dps out on different level mobs. Training dummies are located in all capital cities. They will help players learn their new abilities, and often are an objective of one of the first few quests new players will receive. These Dummies have low health and will despawn once "killed," reappearing in a second or two. This was a very useful mechanic for player to practice before they fighting with powerful bosses and reducing unnecessary deaths.
Not allowing players to pick up ammo from enemy weapons in shooter games

Ammo is obviously a big part of any shooter game. Players are going to spending the majority if not all of the game using ammo in their weapons and shooting other players or NPC enemies. As ammo always needs to be refreshed, players need to be able to find more to refill their weapons. Most shooter games allow players to pick up ammo from the weapons that NPC enemies drop after you kill them, but some don't. Some shooters don't let players pick up ammo from dead enemies weapons. In these types of shooters, ammo can only be found in ammo boxes that are placed around levels for the players to find and use to refill their ammo. This can become extremely annoying as players can run out of ammo and must go find a box to refill their ammo instead of just running near the latest enemy they killed and automatically picking up their dropped ammo.

## Examples

### Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

In Black Ops 3 players can't pick up ammo from dead enemies. Players must find different ammo boxes to get more ammo and refuel their guns. This part of the game does have a story connotation as to why players can't can't pick up ammo, but even then it can still be incredibly annoying and lead to situations in the gameplay where the player doesn't have any ammo and then ca't shoot any enemies and then is killed.
Nerfing Character Strengths in a Competitive Game Can Lead to Homogenized Cast

Balancing characters in a competitive game is hard. However, if you have a choice between nerfing good characters, or buffing bad characters, you should try to prefer to buff bad characters unless the good characters are overall unhealthy for the game.

Each character having their own strengths and weaknesses is important. Especially in fighting games, having each character have a gimmick or trick to them that makes them very powerful in one area feels good. It gives each character a distinct personality and it makes them known for that one thing.

When you nerf the strengths of good characters, it starts to make the whole cast feel bland and uninteresting. Instead, give the bad characters cool new moves or mechanics that let them shine in an area.

## Street Fighter V

Street Fighter V recently revealed some of the balance changes that would be coming to Season 2, and many of them were nerfs to the characters that are in the top tier of the meta.

Chun Li had a technique where she could use her Lightning Legs move very quickly immediately after jumping. This let her do high/low mix-up, and was also plus on block, meaning she could continue to pressure the opponent even after landing. This was a powerful part of her pressure game, and a relatively unique element about her in a game where so many characters feel very weak and stubby. It also required some skill to pull off, and missing it would make her very vulnerable.

In the season 2 changes, Capcom nerfed her Air Lightning Legs so that it would now be negative on block, meaning that players would no longer be able to pressure the opponent after going for a Air Lightning Legs and having it blocked. Many players on forums expressed dissatisfaction at this change, as it nerfed one of the coolest and most powerful things about the character.
Powerful loot found randomly can make an in-game economy meaningless

Some games make it so that the random loot that is found by the players scales according to their level, what they sometimes forget to do is scale the items that are available in shops. This makes the in-game economy meaningless after the player reaches a certain level because the loot that they find randomly around world would be much better than anything they can buy at the shops. If the developer wants the player to use the in-game economy actively they should make sure that players can find good items at the shops also.

## Example

### The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Skyrim is an amazing game in many aspects but once you level up past a certain point the loot that you find in dungeons and through some quests are much more powerful than anything you can find in the shops. Therefore the shops reduce to places where the player goes to off-load and sell all their useless junk.

   The Fable Series

 "Fable" always had a ton of loot in the games. I never used the shops when I played, and when I did it was to sell all the gear I had. The shops were designed for players who enjoyed customizing their characters. That aspect never appealed to me so I never felt the shop system was useful. I spent most of my time hunting for weapons and swords in the caves.
Misleading sound effects and music cues in multiplayer games

Sound effects and music cues are supposed to help players establish a realistic feeling as well as give players hint about what is going to happen immediately in the game. However, in some games, even those famous AAA games, it happens from time to time that they mess up the sound effects and music cues. More than often, it will lead to inappropriate surprises that decreases player's gaming experience.

## Example

### **Final Fantasy XIII**

The footsteps are extremely loud and annoying in Final Fantasy 13. It's like they are all wearing tap shoes. To be honest, sometimes it feels like that's the only sound in the game and it greatly deduced my gaming experience as a whole.

### ***Overwatch***

In Overwatch, it is hard to distinguish the ultimate sounds between your allies and enemies, I know someone would say there are differences exist, like every noise the enemies make is amplified compared to the ones your allies produce, and every time your opponents use an important ability you get a huge audio cue to warn you of the impending doom. Even though, you still can find yourself ducking and covering from a friendly ultimate ability no matter how muted the sound is, simply because you have been conditioned to do so through repeated deaths, and this is an issue that's not easy to avoid.
Mini Games in Level Progression

Many games, especially RPG's, have large amounts of mechanics and tools that they use in order to tell the story of there large worlds. Often, these tools include mini games. More and more, RPG's are trying to include an open world element to there games, this allows the player to wander and explore at there leisure. But with the idea of exploration and progression comes the need for area restriction or item restriction. This idea of holding a player back until they have progressed more, helps with player motivation and can give more longevity to environmental areas. Mini games give the game designers a cleaver way of unlocking restriction, while still trying to keep the player immersed in the games world. It also provides a level of skill and speed to these restrictions.

Example: Oblivion

In Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, there are several mini games used. Lock-picking is one of the most well known. In oblivion, locking picking is used in two ways to restrict the player. First, the player has to unlock specific levels of the skill in order to attempt to unlock a restriction item/place. Once that is achieved, the player has to attempt to unlock and item using skill and items (lock picks). This cleaver use of mini games helps to bring the player deeper into the games world while also adding a mechanical necessity to the game.

Watch Dogs:

***Watch Dogs*** is an open world action-adventure third-person shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. In this game, along with main storyline, various other mini games are available for the player to interact with. These include chess, poker, NVZN (Alternate Reality phone game), Shell game, Cash Run, Slots and many more. This definitely adds to user experience of gamemaking it replayable.

**Yakuza 0**

Yakuza 0 is a great action adventure game. There are many funny mini games in the game. After you achieve certain level, you can unlock them one by one. These mini games fulfill the background of the whole game. Since it is a high pacing battle game, players can have some relaxations between high intensitive battles. Besides, these mini games greatly enhanced the gameplay of the whole game.

#### Gwent in Witcher 3:

Witcher 3 was famous for making a mini game withing the game called Gwent. And it became so famous that CD Projekt Red is making a real card game out of it.
Lock On

The ability to toggle a lock on a target it an extremely helpful feature in games. It can help the player keep an enemy in their sights or focus on the biggest threat when fighting multiple enemies. It also allows the player to adjust for their skill level, if they are starting out and not confident in their aim, or if they are facing a particularly quick and tricky enemy, and helps them to focus on objects or enemies that might be a bit out of view or a little far off.

### **Example # 1 Kingdom Hearts**

Kingdom Hearts offers the player the ability to toggle target lock, and switch between targets quite easily. It’s very useful in many battles, but none so much as with the battle against Sephiroth. Sephiroth is an extremely difficult opponent. He teleports, can attack you from about halfway across the arena, and has attacks which can take you down to 1 hit point instantly. It is imperative that you keep a good eye on him, as loosing track of where he is can lead to a swift defeat. This would be next to impossible without the target lock function as swiveling the camera is just not quick enough for him.

### **Example # 2 Rocket League**

Rocket League is a game where you play soccer with cars. One of their useful features here is to lock the camera onto the ball so that the player can see its motion.

### **Example #3: GTA V**

In GTA V, there are multiple examples of camera lock to assist the player. The most obvious example is aim assist when using weapons - the camera will lock onto enemies for easier hit rate and transition between shots. The game is more about eliminating multiple opponents rather than focusing too long on battling one enemy in a gun fight, so this makes sense. The other is when hunting/chasing an objective, the player has the choice to hit a button that will automatically toggle the focus of the camera onto said objective, to help recognize and keep track of whatever the object is.

### **Example #4 The Witcher 3**

When facing a single enemy in The Witcher 3, especially in a boss fight, it is best to lock on the enemy so you can easily track their movement and anticipate their actions. That way, it will be easier to know when to dodge when to attack. It also adds more flexibility for the player to facilitate their skills and abilities.

### **Example #5 Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate**

The ability to lock onto a monster was added with the release of MH3U when it was released for the 3DS. Monster hunters lock on is not a true lock on in the sense that it doesnt always focus the camera on the monster you have targeted. Instead it snaps your camera to the monster whenever the button is pressed. This ability was very valuable for the game due to the fact that the camera controls were otherwise designated to the dpad on the same side as your movement controls or a virtual dpad on the touchscreen. Neither of these options were ideal and left the camera control rather clunky which lead to the addition of the lock on button. The ability to instantly snap your camera to focus onto a monster is very valuable to the player in order to line their next attack.
Multiple Campaigns with Little Variety Create Monotonous Gameplay

Games can present the player with multiple campaigns to play through as a character with little to no difference in comparison to any other character. By not including any significant changes as to the encounters a specific character faces or any unique gradual evolution in regards to gameplay dynamics or story, the player is left with a greatly similar game experience every time the game is completed. This reduces the incentive of trying out new characters as there is no meaningful and distinct outcome.

## Demonstrative Examples

Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness

In Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness, the player has the choice of picking one out of three main characters to play the game. However, each one of the characters has a very bland story arc with little to no evolution at all. The areas the player progresses through are the same for every character and the main boss fights are repeated for all three characters in the exact order. The play styles of the characters offer no unique strategies the player can further develop.
Minor Animation details make for a more immersive experience

Sometimes it's the small touches that really sell a game's atmosphere. A small stagger at the end of a brief period of running, a character wiping sweat of their brow, small, seemingly insignificant animations can drastically add on to the realism and character personalities of a game's cast. These animations can also be incorporated into seamless feedback, sprinting for too long might both drain your stamina bar in the games mechanics and be represented by a more lethargic animation on the currently controlled character.

Example:

**Uncharted 3**

Naughty Dog's Uncharted series attempts to be as cinematic as possible. In the third game, Nathan Drake

has plenty of small animations attached to most actions within the game. He also has general animations which reflect the type of environment he's in (showing exhaustion in hotter areas, etc.).

Guild Wars 2

In Guild Wars 2 to give the world a more lively feel they animate leaves, water and the environmental in whole. This makes the player feel like this world could exist and gives it a sense of a dynamic changing world. There is even smoke that emanates from fire. The animation gives the immersion that players want especially in RPG's and MMO's.
Sequels should be an iteration on the games core mechanic and not just a 'bigger' version of the original

Many game developers fall into the trap of the 'Super Mario Galaxy' sequel philosophy where the sequel must be in a bigger setting, have more content and have more at stake but really do nothing to the core gameplay mechanic. This is the lazy man's sequel. A sequel should tighten and iterate on the core game play mechanic so that the second game feels better than the last. This means players it will give something more meaningful to players then simply more content. Players will talk about the sequel as 'the one that fixed shooting' or 'the one that added an important key feature' rather than just more levels of the same content.

### Example 1: Civilisation 6 & Civilisation: Beyond Earth

Civilisation 5 was arguably the best iteration of the civilisation series and many disliked Civilisation: Beyond Earth as it felt like the exact same game with simply a larger environment and new game skin. Nothing was specifically tightened or developed in a positive way. This was corrected with this year's release of Civilisation 6, a game which was designed to improve on Civilisation 5's failures. One of Civilisation 5 players main complaint was that the mid-game was uninteresting and essentially played itself. With the addition of the civics tree and the reorganisation of the tech tree, Civilisation 6 has addressed this flaw.
Random Encounter Battles Executed Poorly

In games where it is required of the player to traverse an open world (here meaning that the player can freely move about a map as opposed to being locked to a linear track), it is often seen that battles with enemies are initiated as random events. The player is attempting to get from point A to B when suddenly, and often without warning, they are forced to defeat a group of foes in order to continue.

This becomes an issue in games in which it is necessary to back track in order to advance the core narrative. Especially in areas the player feels they have already "beaten" (completed all quests, obtained all items) but are required to pass through due to circumstances beyond their control, random encounters tend to feel much more like a chore than engaging gameplay.

*Chrono Trigger* was able to side-step this problem by showing enemy encounters on-screen as roaming avatars, giving the player the option to initiate or evade. This decision advances a sense of player agency in two ways. Firstly, in this mode, should a player choose to initiate they are given a first-strike advantage, incentivising battle. Secondly, it adds to the RPG element of the game, as the player is able to prioritize. Do they prefer arriving at their destination as fast as possible, or do they want the extra experience points? It's all up to the player, and fosters a sense of involvement.

**Example: Pokemon**

In nearly every installment of the Pokemon video game franchise, random encounters drive the game. They are how one catches the virtual monsters that the entire series is based upon. However, it has always been a common complaint among regular players that areas known to rountinely, and sometimes obnoxiously, spawn the same type of pokemon are the worst to traverse (tall grass comes to mind). Because this game requires backtracking, the battles become a nuisance that can even lead players to become fed up with the game.

Despite its flaws, the mobile app Pokemon Go was able to improve upon this by remedying the situation much like the above example of Chrono Trigger. Showing the pokemon on the map for the players to select gives the player a choice (especially if there are multiple monsters on the screen), and allows them to feel as if they are in charge of their own play as opposed to being at the mercy of random encounters.
Positive Reinforcement Through Audio Visual Cues

This snack is concerning the display of statistics and personal achievements. Specifically, when they are presented with a bit of audio and visual flourish. This is most commonly seen in games that utilize statistics to give player feedback. The audio / visual combination elicits a reaction in the player to want to continue to attain these effects,

 Examples

### Overwatch

   Overwatch, like many other multiplayer shooters, uses a post game stats screen to relay feedback to the user about their performance. In this phase, a number of audio and visual effects fire off when the stats are being displayed. The medals "slam" into the screen with a sheen and metallic sound. The XP bar fills with a tick effect that simulates a meter, and your best statistics have a green banner and exclamation to showcase your best efforts

**Diablo 3**

Another Blizzard game, Diablo III attaches a satisfying sound to most things. One of the most common

audio cues a player hears deals with loot. Each item rarity has its own sound, making it very satisfying to open a chest/kill a boss and have it drop a higher rarity item. These items also send off glowing pillars from the ground, with different light colors and strength showing off rarity as well.

**Candy Crush Saga**

This social network game exemplifies the above point extremely well. In a 3-match game where objects to be matched are candies, players are given an outstanding visual and audio cue whenever a match is made i.e. game objective is met. In addition to that, making combos has other equally good cues like "Divine", "Sweet", "Delicious" etc. which are deeply satisfying for the player.

**Groov**

This Xbox live arcade game is a twin-stick shooter focused on following a musical beat. Many of the enemies in the game move to the given beat and, when hit by a bullet from the player, will glow until the next beat is reached at which point they will explode and add elements of melody to the underlying music of the game. As the player destroys more enemies, more sounds are added by the enemies' deaths to the music of the game, leading to an increase in the intensity of the music over time.
Interacting with the environment- using one action button to interact with several objects

Many times during a game a button has one function. Left click to attack, right to block. They have these functions, and to not confuse the player, they keep it that way. To minimize the amount of buttons used in a game, a action button is often introduced. This is a button which is used for several purposes. Opening doors, opening chests, talk to people, etc. This is a nice way to tell the player that this is the go-to button for interacting with objects.

## Example

**ArcaniA**

ArcaniA's interaction button has multiple functionalities that encourage exploring and makes it simple to interact with the world. Some of the functionalities are sitting on a bench, sleep in bed, loot, brew elixir and talk with people.

Interacting with elixir table.
Slow Moving Platforms – Wastes a Player’s Time

Many games with a platforming element in them contain sections of very slow moving platforms. This forces a player to wait patiently for each platform to reach them. This defeats the entire purpose of platforming. If platforms are sluggish in their movement, they might as well be taken out of the game as they just waste time and add no additional challenge. This can apply with various hazards as well. Players waiting for a hazard, such as a falling wall, to run through its cycle before they can proceed is just as much of a time waster without any added pressure to the player.

Example #1

Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the most common offenders of slow moving platforms. This franchise is all about speed. Players have come to expect an endless run of action through sonic levels with minor interruptions to break the flow. Because of the game's fast movement, immersion is immediately put on hold when players reach a section with a leisurely moving platform that needs to be jumped on.
Smartcast Controls - Increase the Opportunity for Player Skillcap Increase

When PvP MOBAs give players smartcast controls, this increases the ability that players have to increase their skillcap when playing against opponents. Having smartcast controls makes it so that players can use their abilities without having to click in the direction that the ability will be used. This saves the player crucial seconds that they can use to leverage an advantage over opponents. This also rewards the player for knowing the ability well, and what the range is. If they have this ability memorized, then they will have a speed advantage in the matchup.

Example: Heroes of the Storm

In Heroes of the Storm, the default controls make you point and click your abilities after pressing the key. If you enable smartcast, however, the ability will shoot off in the direction of your mouse without having to click, which gives you an advantage, and instant feedback versus your opponent.
Interrupting Tutorials/Messages

Games are fast becoming increasingly complex and thus are requiring the player to understand more and more about the mechanisms. In an effort to appeal to these needs, games commonly have incoming messages to inform the player of necessary things. However, when these notifications surprise the player and appear over the gameplay space, it jars the flow of the experience. This is most noticeable when the player is in the middle of another action and a notification dialogue, meant to be helpful, suddenly appears on the screen proving to be just as much a nuisance as a boon, if not more so. Many games do this in the form of dialogues between characters, in game inboxes, and tutorials.

## Examples

### **Gauntlet**

In Gauntlet players battle enemies to advance through the levels. In the middle of doing so the game pauses many times on the first level to tell the player about chests, doors, and other things that not only interrupt gameplay, thus endangering the player, but also do not add any information that is pressingly important to be understood. While attacking a ghost, for instance, the player may pick up food then the game will notify them as to what the food does. A better way of accomplishing this would be to simply have the food heal the player and light up the health numbers on the side of the screen so that the player is clued into what is happening without being distracted from the action and, in this case, face the irony of an info box on a healing item causing them to lose health.

### **ArcaniA**

In the start of ArcaniA the player is released into the world and being able to explore the enviroment around. Unfortunately, it feels like it should tell the player about every mechanic in a big text box. These textboxes appear at certain points in the start. So if you pass a point, a big box will appear in front of everything and the game pauses. Here is a picture of a block plus my character frozen mid air.
Thirty Years’ War (Terra Nova)

The **Thirty Years’ War** was a war fought across much of Eurasia and the Americas between 1618 and 1648, although the war in Asia would continue on and off until 1662. Initially a religiously-motivated war between various Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmented Holy Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a more general conflict involving most of Eurasia. These states employed relatively large armies, and the war became less about religion and more of a continuation of the France–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence, the Chinese-Spanish rivalry for control of the New World, and the perpetual struggle of the Chinese against the Mongol and Jurchen tribes to the north.

The Thirty Years’ War is widely considered by historians to be the first truly global war, with some even going as far as to call it “World War 0”. One of the most destructive conflicts in human history, it resulted in 38 million fatalities not only from military engagements but also from violence, famine, and plague. Casualties were mostly centered in the Holy Roman Empire in Central Europe, Mesoamerica, and northern China, with most of the rest being large battle engagements between foreign armies. In terms of proportional German casualties and destruction, it was surpassed only by the period January to May 1945; one of its enduring results was 19th-century Pan-Germanism, when it served as an example of the dangers of a divided Germany and became a key justification for the 1871 creation of the German Empire. It also depopulated vast swathes of China and set the stage for the fall of the Ming Dynasty in China, the Imperial Exile, and the takeover of the Manchu Qing Dynasty.
Realistic sound effects and their contributions to creating an immersive gameplay experience.

The use of realistic sound effects contributes to a more realistic and immersive player experience. This design element is great when the game tries to create a realistic game experience. Incorporating real world sound effects into certain elements of the game give it its own uniqueness. This attracts player who want to enjoy a immersive realistic game experience.

For Example:

In *Call of Duty: Black Ops 2*, the designers beautifully incorporate this feature. It adds to the aesthetics and made the players more immersed. In the game, there is different sound for primary fires of different guns. The sounds are so carefully designed that even the sound of reloads for different guns are different. Expert player can tell which gun is getting used by their avatar even eyes closed. Moreover, these gun sounds are same sound of real world

guns which adds more to realistic immersive experience. It is one of the main reason why players got hooked to *COD Black Ops*.
Problematic input design - Can interfere with game play experience

Bad or problematic input design could seriously interfere with game play experience. Input should be as simple as possible, but at the same time hold certain level of complexity so players actions would not interfere with one another. Or it can become a big design problem that often cause player losing the game which leads to frustration.

**Example**: In *Torchlight2*, player can use left mouse button click a place order his or her protagonist to go there. Also, player can use left mouse button click on an enemy or object to “attack”. Simple enough, right? But when players is low on health and attempt to flee from danger, they would often accidentally click on a barrel or something and cause their protagonists to stop and attack the barrel, which often lead to protagonists’ death. Players would get upset because they didn’t make any mistake, they lose the game because the input design is problematic.

**Example Two: Pokemon Go**

Pokémon Go has problems with input design similar to those that many mobile games suffer from. In multiple cases there are small selection areas for desired activities. Some of these have the selection for various irreversible actions located right next to other harmless actions that the player might want to take advantage of. This can be problematic when the touchscreen of the platform is small, as it sometimes leads to the player selecting the irreversible action instead of the desired one and almost unintentionally changing an asset. In Pokémon Go, an option for ‘Appraise’ or ‘Favorite’ is right next to the option to ‘Transfer.’ This can lead to the player almost transferring a prized Pokémon on numerous occasions. Small selection boxes can also frustrate the player when they try to select smaller Pokémon available to catch, as it is difficult to get the game to sense the intended selection.
Providing hints to the player through intuitive character dialog

It is not uncommon for action adventure games to constantly hint less experienced players to move in the right direction. Often times, this is done rather crudely by giant graphical arrows pointing the player in the target direction. However, sometimes there might not be a target direction or it might be rather subtle. Such subtle targets or objectives require subtler suggestions, without which the game risks spoon-feeding the player. One common and effective technique involves dialog between the game’s main characters regarding the current objective. Often the protagonist of the game recites to himself/herself (as if thinking to himself/herself) the current objective. This provides an intuitive, subtle and natural way of directing players in the right direction.

**Examples**

**Max Payne 3**

In Max Payne 3, the protagonist keeps repeating to himself things like, “Maybe they went down the south side elevator” to direct the player and “A bullet will sometimes work as well as a key” indicating that the player must shoot towards the lock to open a door. This is much more subtle than having a directional arrow or highlighting game world elements.
Too much imformation - hard to navigate

Too much information showing at same time will be absolutely a nightmare. It is going to be so hard for player to organize the information while playing the game. Especially, when information are not well organized and randomly pop up. it will cause negative effects on their playing experience. If play cannot is able to get effective information while playing the game, they will gradually lose the interest of the game.

## Examples

**World of Warcraft**

World of Warcraft is a great well know game. However, the game interface during battles is so horrible. all players' heath bar showing on the screen. When there are lots of things going on, feedback start to overlap. Then, it is so hard for player keep tracking the information.
Out of Date Champions - Leads to Annoyed Players

In games with multiple champions, usually MOBAs, as the champion list grows, some champions get forgotten. It's easy for designers to focus on the new champions, and spend less time on revamping the older champions so that they are still playable in the new meta. When champions get forgotten, this creates an annoying situation for players who like to play that specific champion. This can lead players to play the game less, or even find another game.

Example: League of Legends (Heimerdinger)

One of the early League of Legends champions is named Heimerdinger. He has received little to no changes over his time on the rift, which leaves him in a vulnerable spot while facing off against the new and improved champions. This has driven many people who love Heimerdinger away from the game.

 Example 2: Overwatch (symmetra)

Overwatch began the game with 21 heroes and today now has 23. Many of the heroes have received changes but one hero that has stayed the same since launch is Symmetra. This hero is rarely played as she doesn't really stack up compared to other heroes in the game. Players looking to play competitively and perhaps enjoy the play style of symmetra will often meets lots of criticism from their teammates as the team is of course looking to win.