Cart racing games have a clear path toward dynamic difficulty adjustment: speed/acceleration adjustment, and powerup probability. Everyone seems to complain about these though, since they're very noticeable, and if they're visible enough you feel as though you have lost control.

This article points out that one game, Split/Second, would have been totally broken without extreme rubber banding (the post he references analyzing Mario Kart: Double Dash is also very good).

How do you feel about rubber banding? What pisses you off about it? what do you love about it? Is this discussion even worth having?

(Be sure to add people you think might have something to say about this)

Strategy games do this a lot - most RTS AI simply isn't good enough to win without cheating yet.

I don't know. The thing about Mario Kart is that it's usually played as a casual party game with friends. The rubberbanding works as a social band-aid because you aren't going to automatically kick your friend's asses.

I guess it's also similar to stock Oblivion leveling (which, of course, everyone loved and no one modded out of their game).

You might even argue that Cowwa Dooty style "wait for the red stuff to fall off your face" is a form of "rubberbanding" or "dynamic difficulty" as opposed to wound-based shooters like the old Rainbow Six games. If the game is getting too hard, you can just take longer to complete the level by waiting behind a crate every 5 seconds to heal completely.

This phenomenon seems so pervasive in modern gaming that it's practically unavoidable.

I think it's fine, as long as it's done well and invisibly. Absent AI that can actually race competently at the level of a player, you kind of need to do this to create a compelling single player experience.

It's kind of like Dungeon Mastering - make the player feel like you've created this massive world, when in fact you're improvising - or make them feel like they're in danger when they really aren't by faking numbers and rolls. These things make the game fun, exciting and memorable, but only if the player can't peer behind the curtain and see that you're doing it.

I feel like rubber-banding is so prevalent in racing games that it's almost expected at this point. I do know that it can be done much more transparently than it is in eg. Diddy Kong Racing or similar Nintendo titles. An especially good example of that IMO is Burnout 3.

One place where it really does bother me, though, is in action games (can't remember an awesome example). I've definitely played games in the style of RE4/Dead Space 2 that, after a number of deaths on the same room full of zombies, ask you "do you want to switch to easy mode?". Is this rubber-banding?

I'm not sure why this double-standard exists, though - is there something inherent to racing games that makes it feel more ok to know that you're being rubber-banded?

I'd like to draw a distinction between comeback mechanics (Marvel's Level 3 X Factor, Blue Shells, Split Second's Power Plays) and rubberbanding. The main difference is that comeback mechanics are a legitimate, stated part of play, and rubberbanding is done sneakily, behind the curtain (or so the developer hopes. Split Second contains both elements.

I'm okay with this depending on the game. Arcade style games for example work just fine with this, as long as it isn't too blatantly obvious. It does help make this less conspicuous if say every player is equipped similarly such that it doesn't feel like you should have an advantage over other players in one stat over another. Or, if it does, it makes sense that a stat of one player can possibly overtake your prominent stat. For example, acceleration vs top speed, then you can sneak this stuff in to give the player a more exciting experience, without ruining the immersion.

But yeah, as long as it doesn't become frustrating, or overly pandering, it's perfectly fine in my book.

This should never happen in a more simulation type game though.

On a phone but ill see if I can think of anything substantial to add.

Glad to hear that it's not completely hated on. I've definitely had less-than-desirable experiences with it (Burnout 2 became impossibly hard for me toward the end).

I guess the main challenge for devs is masking it then.

The guys who made Pure described their system as a "script," in that instead of making AI target 1st place, 2nd, place etc., you had a few different race narratives that would influence the AI's stats over time.

Link: gamasutra.com

Sin Episodes built a system that had specific reactions to specific metrics being collected about how the player performed (best example: for a player with a high headshot ratio, make more enemies with helmets):
ritualistic.com

Did anybody play either of these games?

Umm this is Joe Pham. I agree mostly with the sentiment, that mostly it depends on the reason people play the game. Competitive and realism type games are typically hurt when players notice cheating. And for party games people accept as it allows a greater variety of people to join the fun. Rubber

The problem with some mechanics is they become or are perceived to become the reason why someone won, rather than to just get ahead. In a lot of racing games the mechanic of rubber banding paired with drafting, and boosting leads it to being leads to the second place AI handed a victory( I played Split/Second too). So something to consider when implementing them is where to stop the rubber band behavior, while taking into catch up mechanics.

Ok, a few thoughts, towards multiplayer and single player separately.

W.r.t. multiplayer, making an option to remove items and rubberbanding is a must in order to account for multiple play styles - casuals should get the Mario kart treatment and those who want a pure skill based challenge shoulde able to turn those things off. - Unless the game is catered to one audience.

I think in single player there should be a scaling of risk and reward...it depends on the game, but reduce the rubberbanding and randomness of items as difficulty increases - it may be more frustrating at the hardest level but someone performing at that level is probably fine with the notion of a few selfmade mistakes forcing a restart.

i.imgur.com

So we keep saying rubberbanding is bad if you "perceive" it - if it's not "behind the curtain" so to speak. So what are some examples of games the rubberband and do a good job of disguising it?

For getting people in single player into an appropriate level of difficulty for a diverse audience racing game - ai difficulty, rubberbandinh on player and ai side - it would be neat to give a few test runs which then pick out what difficulty will be the most fun

I remember Fable had a mechanic where you take on disadvantages for more exp.

It would be interesting if more games incentivized the leading team to allow different rubber banding behaviors. Through achievements, grades, or a points with leader boards. Call it nobility or something.

The problem with identifying the good rubber banding mechanics is the old Futurama god problem: “When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”

DullSurprise -That sounds like fun, actually! Like a "I don't even need both my arms to beat you" sort of mechanic. If you can actually win the match without using both arms, you get <THING>. In fighting games, you could restrict one player to only using normal moves (instead of specials and supers). In RTS games, no Tier 3 units. I actually really really like this.

In general, I think comeback mechanics are more satisfying because they're legitimate, and not under the table. If you want to create either

-An unpredictable game experience where being first doesn't mean you'll win right now

or

-Something fun and accessible (and not too serious)

comeback mechanics are the way to go.

I'm not sure if they have a place in serious, competitive games, though. Marvel 3 players as a whole aren't too fond of X-Factor, and I agree with them. A good deal of matches have the winning player lose two of their three characters, then activate X Factor and killing all three of the opponent's characters with their one character power boost. That could have gone with some better tuning.

i think burnout 2 was a really good implementation. Basically you could go really fast by driving in really risky ways. So the leader typically won't take risks till necessary. So when the AI gained you could rationalize by saying it was taking risks, whether it was or not (because you don't really know).

Regardless of your ability perceive it is bad when the optimal strategy is to stay closely behind in second is always the best strategy.

Burnout 2 was definitely awesome, and risk boosting mechanic was fantastic. My beef with it was that once the AI got ahead of you, it felt extraordinarily difficult to get anywhere near to catching back up. I also may have just totally sucked at the game, just sayin'.

Why would they put rubber banding in a fighting game? That just seems to contradict everything the genre is about!

I would love the proposed multiplayer "anti-rubberbanding" in an online ego shooter. Can you imagine playing Unreal, totally dominating, and then halfway thru the match, you get a prompt asking if you want to play the rest of the match with Link Gun only? That would be siiick!

I imagine EXP-based shooters like Cowa Dooty could even give extra advancement for it.

i imagine that rubber banding is considered more acceptable in racing games than in the games emmett mentioned (re4, dead space) because the former is less likely to disrupt your immersion in the game world. in fact, i think re4's issue is less about rubber banding than it is about the pop-up asking you to turn on the rubber banding. by being so overt about it they're basically interrupting the experience and insulting your skills at the same time.

i guess that raises a dilemma of how transparent a game should be about the fact that it uses rubber banding. i doubt people would like an action game to automatically switch to easy mode, but is it worse than displaying a pop-up when you die too many times (or not having an easy mode at all)?

I quite like Super Smash Bros Brawl's use of rubberbanding - it's totally blatant! If you're losing hard enough, you have the ability to do a super move on your next respawn. (Normally you have to break open a Smash Ball to get that ability). No pretense at all.

I introduce "fairness": in Mario Kart, the players have control over their vehicles and hazards, and any randomness is effected by other players and available to all. On the other end, games like I Wanna Be The Guy and other ultra-difficult platformers are "unfair" since shit just happens to you (trial-and-error mentality).

Fairness is an important question to ask when we evaluate rubberbanding. Is it an undesirable solution if the ability is available to all players? I'd stress that we must evaluate the whole race, and not mere instances of one.

And is there really a difference between rubberbanding and difficulty (in racing games, at least)? Hopefully, a "better" AI would drive faster, anyways, and the net effect is the same

You have to be careful about equating "better" with "faster though. If an AI racer and the player both take an optimal path around a track, it's strange to see the AI's speed dramatically changing.

This wouldn't be available to all players, but may be necessary to keep the experienced player challenged. Is it "fair" that the experienced player may quickly have nothing more to gain from playing a game vs to a less experienced player?

Thank god for powerup weighting. This is where I really see fairness best employed in Mario Kart and variants.

I'm loving these self-imposed handicap and separation of rubber banding vs comeback mechanic ideas. And I'm definitely not a fan of interrupting the action for a difficulty change. Keep the flow!

I think Bastion implemented the "disadvantages for reward" mechanic particularly well. It was a bit hard to find (you really had to want to add the disadvantages) but made the game much more interesting. On top of that, it fit thematically with the world created for the game.

In racing games, I don't think players are too concerned with world consistency so long as there is rules consistency. That said, the problem I have with rubberbanding in racing (in particular) is that players feel it breaks internal rules consistency. So if I've been doing really well in a 1v1 race, suddenly my opponent receives a boost to both minimum and maximum speed (I'm looking at you, Burnout series racers).