Silly Game Mechanics

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Gambit37
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Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Gambit37 »

I'm sure we've all felt a bit "Huh!?" about how some game's mechanics either didn't make any sense or were poorly thought-out.
I thought it might be interesting to look at examples of sucky game mechanics... Here's some from Dead Island.

Dead Island, if you don't know, is a zombie-survival game that came out last year. It had a lot of "technical issues" (bugs) on launch and a lot of very strange design issues. Despite being a very flawed game, I sunk a lot of hours into it (what can I say, smacking zombies with baseball bats is fun!)

Cash based progress system
As you wander around the island, you can loot items and money from cupboards, corpses, boxes, and containers of all kinds. Items include health and ammo, but mainly it's stuff to help you make modifications to your weapons. You find crafting tables in "safe" spots around the gameworld, where you can fix your weapons and modify/upgrade them (using the items you found, and blueprints that you've found or won as quest rewards). To do any of this, you need CASH - cash that you got by looting, or were given as a reward for one of the many quests you undertake.

Why the hell do I need cash to do this, and who am I paying it to? The crafting table is just a table. There's no-one there. I should be able to do what I need here without requiring cash to do it. Given that I can loot items all over the island, and I get blueprints as quest rewards, why do I ALSO need cash to do anything with them? I should be able to fix and make stuff using what I find, without also requiring cash.

You also lose an amount of cash when you die. How? Did those mindless zombies see my roll of fifties and think "I'll have some of that!" I don't think so....

Given that the world has gone to pot and cash is no longer important, it's a really daft contrivance to make cash a requirement for game progression. It completely undermines the "survival horror" aspect of the game.

Single player game
The game is really designed for co-op online play. I never played it that way, I only played it single player. And that's where you realise the devs had no-idea how to fix the single player game in a way that makes sense:

1) Every area resets and respawns, so you can continually loot the same items over and over (again, basically destroying the ideas of threat and survival). Reset boundaries are also very close together: in some instances, you can enter a house, kill the zombie occupants, leave and walk 5 meters outside, then actually *hear* the zombies in the house all respawn! This sort of thing was fine in DM's screamer room, but makes no sense in modern survival horror.
2) Due to the above resetting system, if you drop your best weapon by mistake, and have to go back and find it, it will have vanished. That may be a weapon you've invested thousands of dollars and upgrades in. Maybe you could argue that would be realistic (would you be able to find a lost weapon in a zombie infested area on your return?) but it's quite unfair on the player. Also bear in mind that throwing weapons at enemies is a core fighting mechanic -- and if they miss, these thrown weapons can fall straight out of the game world! Doubtful this is an intended mechanic and is just shoddy programming, but either way, It really sucks.
3) Due to the resetting system, if you die while on a quest, you may be relocated right back at a point at the beginning of the quest, in a place where you can't possibly hope to survive.
4) And again, due to the resetting system, you can visibly see areas reset if you come at them from a direction the devs didn't consider, or out of sequence from the expected main quest line. It's quite funny walking into an area that looks empty and suddenly some cars and zombies appear on the ground!
5) When you get to a cut-scene, they play out with all four playable characters in the game as if they are working in a team. So you've been wandering around for hours on your own and suddenly are shown a cut-scene with 3 other people you've never seen. Totally destroys any believability. Bonkers stuff.

Those are just a few stupid mechanics in one game. What have you found in other games that either don't make sense, don't work, or are badly designed?
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by beowuuf »

Money is the default system in many games - like Borderlands. In Borderlands though, you have a commerce grid, and everthing - buying ammo, weapons, even ressurecting - is a cash transation with the system.

So using money for all those activities is the default. To you, that's odd and takes you out of it in this iteration because the end mechanics aren't lining up., However, almost everyone else would be taken out of the system is something else was used in its place. It would be a csse of 'well, how does that make sense, why not money lying around' because the end actions are just metagame stuff they have long internalised. and the delivery system would constantly take them out of it.

Creating new systems for real world verisimilitute as opposed t othe working numbers in a currency balanced system, you introduce new work for a team of people and potential balance issues and new unknown bugs in favour of a method that works in other games.


so I see what you are saying, but there are a few good reasons for the currency system to remain the same, and the end result just to be hand waived in a player's mind.


The resetting mecchanic is again the same as many use. It just sounds like it's not been properly checked to ensure the spawn points make sense - or more likely, the spawm points were't a priority bug report and weren't fixed, or shifted later, etc.


I guess many of the mechinics would actually would take peiople out of it if half heartedly tried to explain things. And there will a;ways be a game-breaking exception when you try too hard to explain game mechanics that by their very nature break narrative.

As I said, OI have played borderlands and borderlands 2 recently, and they do a good job of a) having a humourous and fourth-wall breaking tone at time to the game to actually explain or wink at all of these sorts of things. However, even by doing that very well, there is still the fact that they didn something in ther narrative for story purposes, and yet by the nature of these mechanis explaining things you can then ask why the story point couldn't be mitigated. Exept, of course, the mechanial explainations exist in that winking at the audience area, while the story for those moments was actually being serious. They could hae come up wigh narratie explaination for those moments, howeer it would hae been transparent for being exactly what it was, as as a consequence broken the narratie instead of strengthening it...and so it's easier for games to exist in three states - the narratie, the meta-narrative where the overall story or the mechanics expaining a story may not quote gel with a 'real world', and the metagame which is completely seperate and you just ingore it.


In the spirit of the question though, a game I haven't played but a mechanic that sounded silly was in Demon's Souls, where if you die you ome back as a spirit with half the health, and you get your proper form back when you kill a boss monster. So - as Yahtzee said - you have to prove you are good at the game in order to come back from a state caused by you not being good at the game!
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Gambit37 »

I understand where you're coming from, and I can see money working in a different type of game where there's a logical commerce infrastructure based off it. The problem I have in Dead Island is that in the context of the game (survival horror), cash isn't really the thing you should be worrying about as a player.

What's made especially odd is that they do also have guys holed up in safe houses who act as shops - you can buy weapons, ammo and items from them. Cash is fine in this instance and makes sense (although I still think it would make even more sense here to use item trading rather than cash). But it's the paying to upgrade and fix your weapons at the crafting tables that seems a daft mechanic, given that you're basically supposed to be surviving with the stuff you find lying around...

"I found this baseball bat, and I found these nails, batteries and wires. I also found a blueprint that shows me how to put it all together into a spiky, electrified club. I remember where there was a crafting table to put all this stuff together, it's a bit of a trek.... " So you get to the table and then discover that on top of all that stuff you had to do to get here, you've got to PAY to put it all together? That's nuts, especially when there's ALSO a skill tree system that could have been extended to handle this aspect of the game without requiring cash for it.

I guess I haven't really played many games where money is a core part of the gameplay infrastructure; given what you've said, I'm sure I'd find it just as silly in other games. Does Skyrim work the same way? I only played a couple of hours of that before getting bored, and didn't get anywhere near upgrading anything so have no idea what these other AAA RPG games do for character / item development.

Borderlands sounds fun though!
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by beowuuf »

It does sound liek the usual tropes don'#t work for something that's trying ot be survival horror. I understand that the initial zombie strength is such that to start with it's quite frightening to face one in melee? But that they also have the normal sooter trope of you drawing agro from everything around so it's a little nasty? And then I guess you just improve your weapons to being able to take out lots of them at once?

I guess the money cost could be attributed to you going back to the people holed up, buying materials, then coming back to craft stuff - and that happening off screen.


Like you I've played little Skyrim. I didn't ntlice if respawns cost you money, I believe you just sell items right out of your inventory, don't you?



Borderlands is fun, though the the core gameplay is just going fetching stuff or killing stuff, and dealing wiht waves of mobs that can respwn when you leave the area to do it. It's the characters and stuff around it that pushes you onwards, really. The other core mechanic is really the diablo three random loot thing. I know there was once or twice where I thought I was burnt out, but the story or a new weapon got me back.

Really, this is more borderlands 2 than borderlands. The original borderlands is less story focused, it sort of happens incidentally, and really it's only later - or because of knowing people in the DLC and second game - that I stuck with it to get to some of the more fun later bits. So check out BL2 over BL I think if you were going to check out either.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Gambit37 »

Indeed, the learning curve / weapon strength in Dead Island is brutally against the player to begin with....! By the end though, you get some great blades that make chopping off heads pretty quick and easy.

In Skyrim, I didn't even get as far as working out how to use my inventory.... biggest waste of money I've ever invested in a game! I'll have a look at BL2 though, when it's in a sale.... ;-)
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Gambit37 »

OK, so another example:

Tomb Raider 6: The Angel of Darkness

By all accounts, this game was an utter hash. Core Design had intended it to have more RPG elements than previous installments, but ran out of time & money, had to strip out a ton of stuff, and ship a half-complete game. Including these daft things:

Respawning single ammo clip
In one of the boss fights, you run around a circular chamber shooting at a large flying human/mutant thing. You can quickly run out of ammo. There is a SINGLE AMMO CLIP hidden on the floor that respawns to give you more ammo, but it's incredibly fiddly to pick up and means you get killed nearly every time you try. Why even bother? Lara always had infinite ammo in the other games, and by offering this respawning clip, the designers are basically doing the same thing -- so why not just give her infinite ammo in the first place? They've just added some arbitrary and artificial difficulty to this fight for no good reason.

Get a moronic strength boost
I can't quite remember the exact puzzle, but in one place Lara is not strong enough to do something yet. If you run to the end of the room and push a crate, she says "I feel stronger now", then you run back and can complete the puzzle. I think it's one of the few places this was actually used. It's completely moronic. They should have ripped this puzzle out completely because it's opaque and doesn't work in context of the rest of the game since nearly all the other "physical action -> character boost" had already been removed.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Jan »

I sense a disturbance in The Force over certain areas of the UK. :wink:

I'm currently enjoying Rogue (from 1980) again - no silly mechanics there. :mrgreen:
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Gambit37 »

Ha ha, nice, no indeed, *no* silly mechanics there at all.... *frown*

I'd love to hear what the rest of you have found in games that you thought were daft or just plain didn't work. Or am I the only one who thinks about this stuff?
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Jan »

I've been thinking about your question for about 15 minutes now, I started writing my response for several times and always deleted it. It's because I've got no answer - it's probably a very philosophical matter. And I also only play "oldies but goldies" now.

I'm not quite sure I understand your "silly game mechanics" concept fully. Does it mean that the game - or its certain part - is not realistic (logical)? It's very relative, IMHO.

The game must be consistent in its logic I think - it creates / establishes a certain world with its rules and then has to follow these rules. These rules can be logical from someone's perspective and totally silly from someone else's, they can be completely "Earth-realistic" or a pure up-side-down fantasy, but the game must be consistently believable / credible / plausible / sustainable within these rules. There are many examples of games that included completely silly mechanics but were still credible because they were constantly / consistently silly. Like Doom. Or Monkey Island.

But if a game breaks these rules, it becomes unbelievable / unsustainable. Like if it looks completely realistic and then you become invincible or get unlimited ammo. Or when the game is a comedy and then you get killed out of the blue.

But a game must simply be good. If it's a crap, no bloody rules can help. So Rogue I think is a bloody good game because it has no silly mechanics from my perspective: I've accepted its rules - its form of abstraction from reality (and it's very abstract!) - and the game is consistently following these rules.

Dunno if I answered your question or not. :mrgreen:
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Gambit37 »

Interesting point, and I hadn't even really considered that side of it.

The Dead Island system is internally consistent: cash drives everything. Its mechanics fit within the established game rules. So what about its credibility and plausibility? I don't think a cash based progress system is a credible mechanic to use in a survival horror game. Cash is the last thing you'd be worried about.

So for Dead Island, while we might accept that all the rules are internally consistent within its established system, they aren't believeable, at least not to me.

The game therefore fails Jan's ctriteria of "the game must be consistently believable / credible / plausible / sustainable within these rules" -- and thus has "silly mechanics".

That works for me :) :)
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by beowuuf »

Any fiction book that allows you to know a character's thoughts is automatically unrealistic, as no one can know another person's thoughts. There are meta-mechanisms in any media to tell the story and our brains are adapt at just accepting them if we let them. The nature of games and technological limitations will always throw up items that make no real world sense. Unless severely limited, I assume your Dead Island inventory screen makes a mockery of a normal person's carrying capacity?


RPG rules for tabletop gaming can stumble across similar narrative leaps if you don't accept that abstraction and meta-gaming plot telling mechanisms allow the story to carry on, and finding narrative justifications for everything can make a system cumbersome and get in the way of the storytelling.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Gambit37 »

This is all getting far too clever for me. :-(

It really can be as simple as the fact that in some games, the mechanics either don't work, or don't make sense. That's all I was looking to discuss.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Jan »

I might have only been waffling. :mrgreen:

The trouble is that I've never played any of the games you mention, so I'm not able to discuss your points specifically, but only on a general level. Therefore I think I'd beter quit this discussion.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Gambit37 »

I suppose I was simply looking for people to share stuff that they have personally thought was a bit silly in a specific game they've enjoyed. Perhaps it's simply not possible to do that without discussing what defines a "silly mechanic"?
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Zyx »

I understand your point. For me, immersiveness is a core requirement for any rpg-like game, so some thought must be put into naming and meanings.
The debate is interesting, however, since it reveals something concerning: the intuitions of a player (or in a broader perspective, consumer) depend on the formating he's received. The industry massively follows recipes which end up molding the references, expectations, and any critical capacity, replacing the natural common sense by something arbitrary, thus stupefying in a way.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Ameena »

I've been trying to think of cases where I've come across "silly mechanics" in games since this thread was started, but have been having trouble coming up with anything. This is probably a combination of the fact that I've played so many games I can't remember every detail of every one, and that there doesn't seem to have been any particular times when a mechanic has been so silly I've remembered it for a long time afterwards. I suppose I tend to not really pay attention to that kind of thing, and just have suspension of disbelief because it's a game and they have to make stuff work somehow. But I might have just forgotten some instances where games have done something really silly. I'll have to get back to you ;).
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by cowsmanaut »

Your initial post made me laugh out loud :) Oddly enough by a certain point I was reading it and hearing the "zero punctuation" voice over.. :D

Anyway, games have been doing this sort of thing a long time, I've even participated in an indie game that had similar issues (you were only able to walk on the path, even though there was no physical barrier and it was all fairly contrived anyway).. I've always hated such things though, and we're not alone. Many designers have listened to the cries and said "you know what? .. you're right and we'll do our best" .. Valve as an example does their best to make things appear to make sense on some level. If you watch the "making of" for team fortress 2, you can hear them talking about how people didn't like or believe in false borders until they gave some justification and a visual deterrent to make them not want to go outside the map. This is not your Diablo wooden fence that you can not jump over for the life of you even though it only comes up to your thigh..

Assassins creed had that lame "I'm a world class assassin but if I touch water I die" .. which they dealt with in the second game. Various games have allowed you to bust up items and even bits of the world with weapons and yet strangely, items of similar construction are invincible .. (even Valve had this in some of the recent half life games where some wood boxes can be broken while others can not).. The invisible forcefield that prevents you from walking the rest of the way through that feild or other false borders that make no sense (the diablo one mentioned above) come in many flavours.. some have tried to justify it well.. sometimes preventing you from advancing too far.. In some games they put big bad monsters that kill you in seconds.. so you don't go there until you're leveled up enough.. games like assassins creed put the whole "desyncronization" aspect into play to justify it... there ware ways to do it and have the player be willing to accept it... not be happy about it.. but accept it all the same. :P

I think really all we want as gamers is to see a little effort being put into the justification for a rule.. a story element or visual cue that explains why we shouldn't go there, or why things must be done "this way" or why we can't break/destroy that ... whatever it is... I hate seeing doors I can't open, if it looks like I can climb it.. I'll try.. etc.

As a visual person, I also hate games like gears of war where you put grey outfits on grey backgrounds and make sure the members of your team and the enemy are relatively the same bulk and shape.. I can't remember how many times I emptied a clip into a team mate and then realised.. oh.. geeze that's one of my own.. and yes I understand that in war people might wear camoflauge.. but I'm this is a game and I'm not using my real eyes and you shouldn't really be expecting me to make out those 10 pixels as being my best buddy bob from accounting.. :P Also, false items of interest.. play the game Mass effect and go down to a planet see some large crashed alien vessel.. click on it.. try to search it.. nope.. it's just to look pretty, and has nothing of relevance for you.. you went down to this planet through the animation and the load times for absolutely nothing.. and you're going to do that another 100 times.. I've seen such things countless times in games where some enthusiastic artist makes a really cool bit of artwork, they throw it on a bland landscape and you think "MY GOD.. what great powers this must hold.. or treasures or .. or... .. oh... it does nothing" highly dissapointing.

I also dislike make work projects.. I don't like them in my job, and even more so in my play. Games that make you wander half way around a large map to grab a single item that takes 10 seconds or less. but takes 5 mins to take it back to the other person all for a request for yet another 5 minute trek across the map for another 10 second adventure.. If you're going to make me travel that far.. make it worth my while.. give me challenges.. puzzles and then the reward.. and when I travel that 5 minutes of map again.. make some evil villain be wating there for me to try to take back the item and I have a battle of skill and wit to defeat him.. or heck... have the guy just come with me or meet me outside the door to take the item and thank me.. so I don't have to go back.. or give me a potion of teleportation... SOMETHING.. :P

So yeah.. there are a lot of them.. and if we shut off our brain and just try to enjoy.. sometimes we do.. othertimes it's hard to shut off that incessant chatter in your head saying "this is stupid" .. :D
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by beowuuf »

The respawn mechanic can be hair pullingly annoying in that regard if the quest giver/area then has the same creatures respawned. So you wade through them for the quest, wade through what was left to leave for the quest, then wade through them again when you've finally finished the quest and are sort of ready to have the bow put on everything.

That's more level design in a way, but it is the core respawn mechanic I guess that needs designed around!
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Ameena »

Ah yeah, stuff that respawns (outside of an MMO). That's annoying. I think it's why I didn't get very far with Arena (can't remember whether it was the same in Daggerfall) - I'd systematically clear out an area, making sure I'd killed everything...then moments later loads of mobs would be after me 'cause they were just randomly respawning :P. Certainly annoying in dungeons or other closed areas where there's no realistic way these things could have just wandered in. Less so in wide-open, outdoor areas where even if stuff respawns nearby, I figure that as long as you don't see this happen it's not so bad 'cause the mob could have just wandered over from further away where you couldn't see it ;).
If stuff respawns due to a trigger this is a bit different, as long as you can tell or work out what caused it and so not accidentally do it loads of times and get yourself flooded with mobs (CSB worms, anyone? ;)).
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by beowuuf »

And let#s face it respawning is in DM, so I don't think it's a silly mechnic in and of itself, it ensures areas still have a life if you go back to them. It's more the level design and mision structure that makes it silly. And I guess if things respawn while you are there, because some of us aren't the most skilled people, and really need to take our time wiping out things :) So yeah, trigger points better. And I like when the respawn is a small fraction of an original mob, or is random so it's not always the same five elements, etc.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Jan »

Respawning is not the only thing that made me go "meh" in DM. For instance, I've always wondered about the design of some of the levels and how would the whole thing hold together without collapsing due to the enormous weight of the rock above. So for example the Ghost level is a huge arena with a flat and low ceiling and almost no pillars / columns supporting it - how on Earth could it stay like that? It's a physical impossibility.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Ameena »

Magic, Jan ;).
In DM, the respawning isn't too bad 'cause, as mentioned, it's done via triggers so if you know where (not) to step, you know how (not) to trigger the monsters, so you can clear out an area and make sue it stays cleared. Even if a trigger spot is unavoidable, you can still lock yourself in a small room and know you're safe there unless you're on a level containing Beholders or Vexirks or whatever. In Arena, stuff would respawn right next to me, sometimes when I was even facing in that direction and saw it happen (so could stop being paranoid that something had somehow managed to sneak up behind me). It meant I couldn't stop and "take a break" anywhere 'cause stuff would just randomly appear. Not that the mobs were particularly tough in that particular area, just it was really annoying - I couldn't get any sense of completion out of it 'cause it was never, well, complete :P.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Jan »

Ameena wrote:Magic, Jan ;).
Yeah, I know. Deus ex machina. :wink:
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Gambit37 »

In DM, respawning is justified by way of Chaos' power: he creates all the creatures from magic (which is why they vanish in a puff of smoke when killed.) I've no problem with it in DM or CSB, since it works in context of the game and its background.
Respawning in Dead Island on the other hand is just badly managed.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by beowuuf »

I like how borderlands (sorry, it's the only new game I've played for more than a few moments) handles it - you will have open caverns, huts, etc that monsters and people come out from - I assume that's default. It also means things won't appear right beside you, they appear logically out of the surroundings if the area respawns.

Half life also had the logical means of creatures coming from Zen and so randomly appearing with the green flare.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Ameena »

Yeah, stuff reappearing with a given reason/at a certain point is fine. It's when stuff randomly appears in unpredictable places so you can't do anything about it that it gets annoying. 'Cause then you can't clear out a place and be certain of being safe anywhere, 'cause stuff could just reappear and even locking yourself in a small, empty room has no effect since stuff can just respawn in there with you.
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by beowuuf »

There we go, friggin' minecraft! Sil;y mechanic, stuff appears in the dark if you are around 25 squares opr more away from it. So you create the perfect, air tight home, and a friggin' monster swawns in it unless you cover every inch of the place with a torch - and if you have the brightness turned up, and so can't spot the shadow,s you keep getting the rogue critter spawning.

For a game that's all 'look, you can build lots of cool stuff' having it be poluuted with torches on every single available surface is a little silly. Especially if the pace is air tight,...I wish there was a way to create a safe zoneenclosed in a bubble.
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Gambit37
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Gambit37 »

^^^ Really!? Glad I didn't play Minecraft, that would do my head in *smcks head on table*
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Ameena »

Err, play on Peaceful mode? ;)
Also, you don't have to use torches for light - there are also Jack-o-lanterns and redstone lamps. Or you could just make sure it's always day by either sleeping as soon as it starts getting dark, or using commands (which have also been accessible in Single Player mode for a while now) to change the time...though of course if you're indoors, this won't make much difference if no sunlight can reach inside ;). Finally, one of the new commands added in the new patch a few days ago simply lets you turn off mob spawning :).
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Re: Silly Game Mechanics

Post by Gambit37 »

So there are cheats and new mechanisms in patches to solve existing silly mechanisms? I feel vindicated :-)
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