Long time readers will know that at Well Played Games we believe in being as open with players as possible. As part of that I often use these posts to call out current issues with the game, both to show that we’re aware of the issue and talk about why it’s present and what we’re doing about it.

 

Tyranids?

This is the sort of ‘bug’ we’re talking about, right? That joke, copyright 1985. (Also, you’re fired – ed).

If you’ve been playing Combat Cards recently then you may have encountered two annoying bugs – 1, the game taking the energy to begin a Campaign battle but not getting to finish it, and 2, problems with the opponent’s traits and special rules. We’ve been working hard on a series of ‘behind the scenes’ changes that should fix these issues and also prevent others like them from occurring as we move forwards and keep adding more traits and special rules to the game.

In an ideal world you guys would never know about the changes we’ve made, the bugs would just stop happening. Unfortunately, in this case there’s a short-term cost for this long-term gain.

 

Feel

When the latest update goes out you may notice some new, minor graphical issues occurring as a result of the behind the scene changes. Obviously we’re working to iron out those glitches, and the fact that you’ll see them at all shows how important we think it is to resolve the big issues that have been annoying players, even at the cost of introducing new (albeit minor) graphical bugs.

This is where the importance of a game’s ‘feel’ comes in. Thinking strictly logically, none of these new graphical glitches prevent you from playing the game, they just look odd occasionally. So in which case, why bother to worry about them at all?

We worry because they affect the game’s ‘feel’, and this comes down to two things – ‘perception of quality’, and ‘responsiveness’.

 

Polish

Perception of quality refers to the fact that you can take two games which play identically, with the only difference being that one of the games has had a lot more effort spent on its graphical and audio polish. Players will report enjoying the polished game more than the other, even though they have identical gameplay, and this is because the polished game feels more ‘trustworthy’ and finished.

Of course you can go too far, leading to games that are all style and no substance, but in general a certain amount of polish subconsciously tells players that someone has invested time and money into making this game a quality experience.

 

Control

Responsiveness is important because if you dig down to the very bottom layer, videogames are purely about ‘call and response’. The game outputs the current state to the screen and the player decides what to do about that situation (even if the answer is ‘do nothing’). The game then updates its state based on the player’s input and displays the new game situation. Repeat.

All this means that if the game doesn’t respond to player inputs in a quick and clear manner then the player is left unsure if their command was accepted, and over time that ‘fuzziness’ makes the game frustrating to play. Good games spend a lot of effort on providing feedback in all sorts of ways that you (hopefully) don’t notice but which add up to making you feel in control.

For example, Combat Cards tells you the rarity of a card that’s been deployed with the effect when they hit the ground, leading up to the Warlord’s arrival, which has the biggest effect and a music change. Another example is that we use ‘stone’ sounds for bodyguard actions, and ‘metal’ sounds for the Warlords, giving subtle clues to who’s doing what.

 

Conclusion

There are a lot more of these very small graphical and audio effects in Combat Cards, which all add up to making the game feel nice to play, and it’s because our behind the scenes fix has affected some of this game feel that I’ve called it out. The glitches are tiny, but they matter to us, and fixing as many of them as possible is what’s caused to the short delay in the game’s release.

Do let us know if you have an opinion on whether we should take a ‘delay game updates until they’re completely polished’ approach, or think we should go for more ‘rapid update releases, even if that causes minor graphical issues to creep in’.

You can leave a comment below, email [email protected] or get in touch through our Facebook page.

Thanks,
Stu