You ever see a system or a game mechanic that just seems useless?
That just makes you go: 'Why did they even bother to put that in a game?'
Well usually there is a reason
Sometimes it's not a very good one, but there is a reason
Marginal Mechanics and Red Herrings
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You've probably played a RPG where there is some debuff or damage over time spell
That you looked at and you asked yourself
'Why would I ever use that?'
'Raw damage is just objectively better.'
And you know what?
You were probably right
And you've probably played an FPS with some wacky gun, that you would never ever use
Or a grenade that just seemed objectively worse than the straight forward toss grenade blow up area variety
And again
You were probably correct in your assessment
So why are these things in these games?
First off
Yes many of these things end up in shipped games, because somewhere along the way somebody built them
Thinking that they'd be awesome
But instead they turned out sub-awesome and somebody else said
'Eh we already build it. It's content, keep it in.'
Now we could and probably will do a whole episode on that mindset later
But for right now, let's focus on the 3 actual design reasons that these things make it into games
The simplest of these is the idea of the red herring
Now personally James finds that red herrings mechanics are not good game design
But they do have a fascinating secondary use
That is worth a lot more exploration
The basic idea behind a red herring mechanic
Is that as a designer, if you're making a game that's about a strategic or mental challenge
You throw a group of bad mechanics or abilities into your game
In order to make the decision-making-process for the player more challenging
By giving them a number of bad options you force them to analyse more
And to think more carefully about their strategic decisions
Now that's the version of the red herring mechanic that James doesn't like
He feels it actually adds unnecessary confusion and clutter to your game
Punishing players for not parsing your rules finely enough
Rather than punishing the player for not making interesting decisions with your rules
After all a good designer can always find other ways to create depth
But there is a version of the red herring that James finds much more arguable
This is the idea that by putting bad or useless abilities or gear into your game
You can actually use them as a learning tool for the player
Because it's often easier for us to assess why something is bad
Then why something is good
So by putting in a bad ability
You allow the player to easily identify why it's bad
Which in turn helps them assess what is good without telling them directly
Or putting in another tutorial to teach them
By leaving in an ability that you know the player will be able to see as sub-optimal
You make the player feel smart
And lead them down the road to feeling smart again for subsequently recognizing which abilities are good
Which is an intriguing approach
The only caveat here is that if you're going to do this
You have to play test the heck out of it
After all you really don't want to be wrong here
And have the players frustrated because they end up using a bad ability
Without realising that it was a bad ability
That they were not meant to actually use
But there is yet another reason these mechanics keep appearing in games
Other than being red herrings
Or bad ideas meant to illuminate the good ones
And that is what we call
Marginal mechanics
Marginal mechanics are mechanics, abilities or items that have high utility in marginal cases
And there are actually two forms of these
The most common are 'specific case marginal mechanics'
For example
Imagine a RPG where poison spells weren't usually very good
But then you get a boss that has a ton of armor and elemental resistance
But not a lot of poison resistance
All of a sudden your poison spells become very good in a marginal case
Now this is a little bit lazy in terms of game design, as it tries to make a specific fight into sort of a puzzle
But since the puzzle doesn't have that many solutions
Can be brute forced
And is made immediately obvious
By the very fact that the player has had spells that were otherwise useless
Staring them in the face for the whole game
It really doesn't create that interesting of a puzzle
And at the same time using marginal mechanics in this fashion
Comes at the cost of creating a whole line of spells
That the player probably spends most of the game thinking are stupid and useless
Heck the player is probably even disappointed whenever they find or learn any of these spells
Which is really not the result we're looking for
The other side of this though is much more interesting
These are what we call 'combinatoric marginal mechanics'
Combinatoric marginal mechanics are things that look useless by themselves
But if you can get the right set of gear, abilities and stats together
They will actually give you an advantage above and beyond the generic good abilities
Finding these combinations usually requires a deep understanding of the game
Both in terms of what sort of gear or abilities are available and exactly how the systems in the game work
And this can be incredibly rewarding for hard core players
These are the sort of deep strategies and builds that really allow players to push the limits of the game
These are the things that bounce around the internet
And get people to discuss the finer points of how your systems works
But too often I see pieces of these combinatoric marginal mechanics sets introduced early in the game experience
Long before the player has any chance to really see the value they might eventually have
This leaves the player viewing these pieces simply as useless
As underpowered abilities or gear
And often by the time they're able to think through the possibilities these pieces present
The player has already dismissed them for so long, they don't even think about them anymore
Which means that while you as a designer think that you're putting in a very interesting decision
All the player experiences is disappointing clutter
If you're going to include this sort of marginal combinatoric system
The pieces need to start being introduced later in the experience
Once the player knows enough about the game to not just discard them as worthless options in their strategic toolset
So back to the question
'Why are seemingly useless mechanics, abilities and gear in your game?'
Well they are there to either
A) Serve as red herrings that force you to really examine what tools are available to you
In order to make it more challenging to pick the good ones out from the bad
B) To act as learing aids to help make the good choices much more obvious by juxtaposing with the bad ones
Or
C) To useful in a small margin of the situations you'll encounter in a game
So next time you see an ability or a piece of gear in your game that seems useless
Take a moment and see if you can identify which of these three it might be
Or it's just something that got left in the game, because no one could bring themselves to cut it
See you next week
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