examples of emergent gameplay

[pg]

wtf, one of my posts contained a copy of part of itself twice even though i only had it in there once. i think i fixed it now.

[DrSpike]

We forgive you.

[Q Classic]

in a game that sucks, like FFX-2, taping down the x button and walking away while it auto gains exp for you.

[Q Classic]

in civ2, using a spy to detonate a nuke. everybody declares war on you, but the good thing is, so far as i can tell, the only nation with whom your reputation has fallen is the one that was nuked.

[:) Smiley]

Take a look up at the Civ2 and Civ3 strategy forums, and you'll see just about every exploit imaginable.

[Dauphin]

ICS is the mother of worst 'egp's..

[pg]

yeah and civ 3 was practically designed around it. even the ai does it which forces you to do so too. one example of egp you'd want to eliminate.

[Jamski]

You can't ICS in civ3 because after you build about 2 cities the ridiculous corruption of shields makes it a complete waste of time.

The whole game is dedicated to stamping out ICS. Bah!

-Jam

[Qilue]

While I'm not sure if they count, a lot of character builds for Diablo2 involved squeezing as much out of the game mechanics as possible.

One in particular was a missle enchantress for patch 1.10. This was a sorceress who focused on warmth, enchant and fire mastery. These were enchanced with a combination of Razortail and Demon Machine(unique chu-ko-nu) and it's exploding bolts.

Razortail granted 50% pierce which stacked with demon machine's 50% pierce. Unlike the amazon pierce skill, the chance to pierce was always 100% no matter how many mosters the bolt passed through.

Added to this was the fact that enchant also added to the explosive damage from the crossbow. Fire mastery also added it's multiplier twice for the sorceress when she used a melee weapon.

The potential damage rivaled that of a javelin using amazon with lightning fury. In addition, she could cast enchant on fellow players adding 1000's of points of fire damage to their attacks.

[SnowFire]

Yeah, Diablo II had a lot of "features" that got changed by later patches. I know that by equipping a certain bow- it's been a long time so I forget the name- you could have infinitely piercing Sorceress spells. The bow granted auto-pierce (as in, it'd fly through targets and keep going, hitting many people), and for whatever reason this worked on your Glacial Spikes as well, so you'd cause multiple explosions of coldness in a pack of enemies. They changed that later. Also, Amazons with Spears used to use Jab as their main melee attack, partially because it ignored freezing or any other attack speed modifier. Another thing changed later.

Unfortunately, the line between emergent play & intended strategy can be a bit fuzzy. Blizzard games seem popular references, since weird strategies are most often used against fellow human players, or in highly cooperative games. In a solo-strat game, like Final Fantasy Tactics, it seems more like "AI exploits" than emegent gameplay. I'll add that card-collecting games (like Etherlords or Magic: The Gathering) have tons of emergent gameplay- all sorts of combos that can come squirreling out of the woodwork that were unforseen by the creators.

Nice avatar, btw, Qilue. First time I've seen someone else also take from Suikoden III on these boards...

[J Bytheway]

I'm surprised noone has yet mentioned RPGs... In BGII, for example, there are so many spells and items that, inevitably, you can combine them for strange or powerful results which were unlikely to have been thought of by the designers.

I'm also reminded of Magic: The Gathering. I played an old computer version of this for a while until I constructed a deck which always won, and then discovered that it consisted almost entirely of cards which were banned .

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Smiley
Take a look up at the Civ2 and Civ3 strategy forums, and you'll see just about every exploit imaginable.

yup, we've discovered quite a few nasty moves in the PTWDG.

[pg]

Originally posted by Jamski
You can't ICS in civ3 because after you build about 2 cities the ridiculous corruption of shields makes it a complete waste of time.

The whole game is dedicated to stamping out ICS. Bah!

-Jam

i hope you are kidding because everytime i play civ 3 the better i ics the easier it is for me to win(even if half my cities produce near nothing). as a caveat i don't usually play the higher difficulty levels(generally i play monarch) so maybe it is different there.

[DrSpike]

I thought PG would make the point that SP EGP is not as pressing as MP EGP. In any complex game (like a TBS or RPG game) there will be some EGP, but in MP there are pressing issues about whether to concentrate on balance around an EGP or eliminating the EGP.

[pg]

multiplayer is always more pressing because it's always more competitive. egp in single player generally is bad no matter what. in single player you play against the ai and any egp by definition is going to be game breaking more or less. if you look at eu2 it has tried to fix some of the egp that was discovered. generally they did this by removing or changing it not by making the ai take advantage of it(which would have been better but much harder to do). egp almost always makes single player no fun and not challenging.

in multiplayer players usually have a stronger voice and if they like egp it generally has a good chance of staying. in single you are really playing against the developers so it's your voice vs theirs(and we know how that usually goes).