A Betrayal of Their Own Design ► IMBALANCE, DESIGN PRINCIPLES, & SOLUTIONS!

Comments · 516

• DE

  @DesignFrameCaseStudies · 3 years ago (edited) · pinned

  <i><b>Thank you all for watching!</b></i><b></b> It means a lot that y&apos;all would engage with heavy game design like this! Your viewership and Liking the video help a ton and I greatly appreciate each one of you!<br><br><i><b>Here&apos;s an FAQ for your interest.</b></i><b></b> Critical comments are always welcome but please take a look here first, in case I&apos;ve already addressed it. I address much of these in the video already, some I don&apos;t, but I also understand stuff can slip through while watching, and there are more common possible comments than others, so I feel it&apos;s best to help clarify.<br><br>============================<br><i><b>FAQ</b></i><b></b><br>============================<br><br><b>1. Pacing/repetition</b> ► From generalized feedback, we have determined behind-the-scenes that I repeat the topic of Ms. Chalice / Astral Cookie a couple of times unnecessarily. Other callouts based on pacing or tone is due to moments where I don&apos;t slow down the pacing of my speech. I appreciate the feedback and I&apos;ll keep improving my videos with this in mind. A quick note on length: the video is as long as it is because it&apos;s comprehensive and covers pretty much every possible angle and argument with attention given to not making it too difficult to follow. This includes a wide array of solutions. I encourage you to give it a chance!<br><br><b>2. Surrealism</b> ► Yes, surrealism is illogical and cartoonish, but that isn&apos;t the issue. Its illogical nature can be used well if it&apos;s used to enhance a boss&apos; theme and mechanics rather than seeming random. Bosses should lean on and draw mechanics out of a central theme, and surrealism can be used to great effect there rather than derailing that central theme. The core of it is related to how surrealism is used in conjunction with gameplay, because, unlike cartoons, gameplay can&apos;t be divorced from it. The thesis only contains a high-level overview of the concept and how it applies to Cuphead, so I don&apos;t go into detail. I talk more about core/central themes in the next video and the gameplay ramifications of them. For more on surrealism, I now explain it in the High-Noon Hoopla case study.<br><br><b>3. &quot;Just don&apos;t use the items then.&quot;</b> ► They&apos;re options for players to use that are accessible early on, and the mindset behind it is quite simply, &quot;Why would I use anything else here if this thing helps me the most?&quot; You should expect players to use the content that is given to them (this doesn&apos;t mean they will, but it has to be assumed). This also aligns with the famous quote, &quot;Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.&quot; Player options is what you want in a game like Cuphead because it emphasizes player choice and playstyles rather than the meta, no matter whether a player actually uses those options or not. This doesn&apos;t mean the options have to be less fun, they just have to be either situational or relatively balanced against each other.<br><br>There&apos;s also a difference between difficulty and content, in that the items shouldn&apos;t be the difficulty slider. Simple Mode almost provides an easier difficulty but falters as I briefly mention. However, in this video, I mostly convey the current purpose of Simple Mode and not what it could&apos;ve been as a difficulty system. For the purposes of this video, I assume the singular difficulty demographic that Studio MDHR established as their design intent, even if that can be criticized. Items shouldn&apos;t and cannot be the difficulty substitute in this case.<br><br>The items wouldn&apos;t be good accessibility options either since then it removes player options and choice from those players who need those accessibility options (as in, they can&apos;t use anything else). Labeling these options with some kind of &quot;difficulty rating&quot; also reduces player options across each rating. Those last two options, however, do have pros and cons, but aren&apos;t ideal in Cuphead. Power creep works in a game like Magic: the Gathering for very specific reasons that don&apos;t apply here (the reasons are beyond the scope of this video). It&apos;s important to recognize that we aren&apos;t here to apply a bandage to the problem. We&apos;re here to fix the problem.<br><br><b>4. &quot;Play the game in order, from Isle 1 to 4.&quot;</b> ► The previous answer applies here as well. I do want to re-emphasize though that Isle 4 and Ms. Chalice are accessible from Isle 1, and DLC items from Isle 2 (or sooner if you go to The King&apos;s Leap before Isle 2). Isle 4 is also intended to be around the Isle 3 difficulty, so the base game and DLC charms should not differ in power level in that regard as well.<br><br><b>5. &quot;The OP items are fun so I want to keep them.&quot;</b> ► This assumes that only OP can be fun, which isn&apos;t true but also is quite a shallow and fleeting feeling. Again, the options don&apos;t have to be less fun, they just have to be either situational or relatively balanced against each other, and if well-designed, will be fun. It&apos;s natural to temporarily yearn for OP equipment, but that&apos;s not healthy for the game (other than Divine Relic) and, again, is only a desire to satiate a lack of patience and commitment in a game that demands it, a desire that only exists here in the first place because of the initial poor design of the equipment.<br><br><b>6. Difficulty</b> ► This is a complex topic. I establish Studio MDHR&apos;s design intent in regards to difficulty and their arcade demographic because that&apos;s all that&apos;s needed for the purposes of this video. A deeper discussion of difficulty doesn&apos;t quite fit here but rather a future video, and I&apos;m also learning more on this topic. Again though, this video assumes Studio MDHR&apos;s one intended difficulty, and the game&apos;s design discussed in this video is in regard to that difficulty.<br><br>To expound a bit more on this topic: Cuphead assumes a singular default player which narrows the audience to a fixed demographic (and to be clear, this affects both less AND more skilled players). Obviously it&apos;d be great if players with different physical capabilities could have the same experience, but also difficulty isn&apos;t as easy as many lazy implementations make it look to be, such as making enemies bullet sponges. Studio MDHR most likely didn&apos;t have the knowledge or development capability (including time and resources) to do this. We can see evidence of this with Simple Mode&apos;s lack of a last phase but also the new addition of the extra health that Djimmi provides from spinning in circles. The goal would be to look at which adjustable options are useful and which run counter to the game&apos;s design. For Cuphead, the aim is to test the player&apos;s knowledge of attack patterns and keep up the pace of lose-fast quickly-try-again. Djimmi&apos;s health doesn&apos;t do this but instead provides the same potentially physically impossible experience for certain players but with a higher chance to brute force it, which simply isn&apos;t a fun or satisfying way to approach difficulty. This is just one example, but it showcases the complexity of difficulty and why the attempts at it in Cuphead aren&apos;t implemented well but understandably so.

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• MI

  @mirosVEVO · 3 years ago

  Seeing Edmund McMillen tear up at the thought of inspiring people into game development really hit me. What a fantastic reminder of just how lucky we are that indie games not only exist, but can be just as popular as the games made by massive studios and companies. What a world.

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• OR

  @Origami_paper8 · 3 years ago

  Everyone know the real difficulty is in playing with someone else.

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• UN

  @Untolddead · 3 years ago (edited)

  I always consider miss chalice as easy mode that journalist asked for.

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• DR

  @drduskbunny · 2 years ago

  I read the title, got confused, and am now reveling in how analytic this whole channel is. This is the best kind of game analysis.

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• NU

  @nullspaceindustries · 3 years ago

  I... had literally never tried the sugar or whetstone before. Because I read it as one parry / one attack per fight and they both sounded stupid. I don&apos;t think I would ever consider &quot;first parry move&quot; to mean once per jump? I can&apos;t say for sure but I think if I found out how these actually work without you explaining it I&apos;d just think &quot;oh, the description is wrong. They should fix that.&quot;

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• AU

  @augster999 · 3 years ago

  I entered the video confused about what design failures cuphead could possibly have, and left agreeing with nearly everything you said. Excellent video, and wonderful editing!

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• SU

  @superl8296 · 2 years ago (edited)

  the worst part about the power creep and equipment that cheapens the experience in games for me is the type of mind game it makes me play. i have to analyze the tools given to me and decide which ones are “fair” to use. it doesn’t feel good to have to think about what i shouldn’t use. i want to be able to trust the game and trust that i will have fun by playing the way the game presents itself to me. it doesn’t bother me to a point that it ruins the experience but it does give this faint underlying stress making me wonder if i’m playing “correctly”<br><br>edit: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07StwLBy3fk&amp;t=9000">2:30:00</a> oh my god game designer final boss time

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• SH

  @ShadwSonic · 3 years ago

  So, to avoid cheating myself out of clearing whatever S Ranks are left:<br>1. Don&apos;t use Heart Ring.<br>2. Don&apos;t use Crackshot.<br>I would say that Ms. Chalice is also a no-go, but there&apos;s two problems with this idea: the first being that I <i>have</i> to use her against all bosses (that unlocks a gold skin for her), and the second is that her increased parry window is more than offset by her lack of parry <i>control.</i><br>Cuphead can consistently parry things above and below him, Chalice cannot. This, I believe, is enough to put her back into <i>reasonable</i> territory. <br>Unless I&apos;m using Shield Heart. Speaking of:<br>3. Don&apos;t use Shield Heart.

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• BI

  @birdlegscass · 3 years ago (edited)

  I think you overestimate Charge. It adds a high level of extra mental overhead that makes it difficult to use optimally while also paying attention to the boss. To use it optimally the way you describe it, you need to pay attention to when it&apos;s charged and constantly switch between dodging and aiming--not necessarily based on when the right opportunity arises, but based on when the charge comes up. This often means either waiting extra long to deal damage or putting yourself into a situation you&apos;d normally not deem worth the risk to get the damage in immediately. And if you do miss after all this, you need to charge it all the way up again. Even just the skill to get down the rhythm of when the weapon will be charged and releasing the button at the right time is a specific muscle you have to train that other weapons just don&apos;t have<br><br>While some players might be good enough to make very optimal use of Charge all the time, I only deemed all this extra overhead worth it for specific scenarios when I was getting all S ranks pre-DLC (and post-DLC, as I avoided using Chalice and any of the heart charms, as I also considered them OP), such as on Brineybeard, where most shots from other weapons would miss most of the time anyway since you need to jump/stand in a specific spot to hit him, or the final phase of baroness von bon bon, where I find myself spending a large amount of time dodging and a small amount of time actually having an opportunity to hit the boss

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• SP

  @spouwnerring · 3 years ago (edited)

  When Jacksepticeye replayed the game when the DLC game came out he was able to 1 shot Rumor Honeybottoms final face using Miss Chalice&apos;s &nbsp;Ilse 1 special.

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• AM

  @AmyTheUsername · 3 years ago

  Most of the problems could just be solved if the game required you to no hit bosses for s rank instead of just having 3hp

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