Gradual changes vs staged changes.

Just out of curiosity.
In a very generalizes sense, do you as a player enjoy the clear-cut staged changes?
Like in platformers like Tribal Hunter.

Or the more granular experiences in most text based stories (like Tramp and noone’s text adventure)

I understand that these two options serve specific goals.
But im personally curious to hear what you have to say about these two distinct ways these changes in weight can take place.

In my experience, the staged weight changes have their benefit of being clear, obvious and convey more easily how size affects you.

But gradual changes leave more vagueness and grow more anticipation and reward when the feedback of weight is significant enough with different kind of milestones.

Please, if you vote or not, don’t even hesitate sharing on what you enjoy, when and why.
Or if i even missed an option to put in the poll that you think i should really consider!

I’m nowhere near making an actual full fledged game yet, but laying the groundworks for it and a lot of it is thinking ahead.

Make me think ahead!

  • Gradual changes (0-100%, 55kg - 300kg)
  • Staged changes (level 1,2,3,4. thin, average, chubby, fat)
0 voters
2 Likes

Honestly I think the difference is more of an engine/coding limitation than anything else. The only way to (practically) have gradual changes is code that parametrically handles the outcomes of weight, which is much harder when the character is visually represented, and multiply that difficulty if they’re animated! Unless the engine you’re using is set up to handle that, it pretty much forces stepped weight gain instead of gradual.
Personally from a dev perspective I like the stepped approach more because it gives more control over how each weight stage works, but I won’t deny that most of my attempts at gradual gain haven’t really gone anywhere, so I’m a bit biased in that regard.
From a player perspective I don’t know if I can pick a favorite! They both have a lot to offer, and I’ve never found myself playing a game with one type and wishing it was the other.

10 Likes

assuming the gameplay doesn’t benefit from one or the other I think I would prefer gradual but it is hard to say considering there aren’t that many examples to look at. we probably haven’t seen them much because you can basically only do them (visually) with 3d models

I do think that most games would gain more from the stepped approach tho. it is easier to balance a game with say 3 distinct weight states and since there aren’t that many you can make them play more different without much issues.

in a gradual game you would mostly do something like at x weight y gets a x% buff and z gets a x% nerf, so the player character plays the same in broad strokes. you could still do stuff like after weight x you unlock some special ability but then you are just doing stepped changes without the clarity of changing the look of the player drastically (sometimes you might want it to be ambiguous but generally not)

3 Likes

IMO staged changes work well for these types of games. It is much easier to make visually different artwork, you can create different dialog for different stages, and as a reader you can skip over content until you get to the new wording of a new stage. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a gradual one, but I think it is hard to convey it as well in a game.

1 Like

Overall, I prefer somewhat gradual changes. Every little increment is exciting to see, especially when they start adding up.

With that being said, if they’re too gradual, it starts to backfire. Tainted Elysium, for example, has such a smooth visual transition that it’s often difficult to pick out the differences until they’ve added up considerably.

Additionally, while stages aren’t as fun, it’s still hard to go wrong with them. The biggest issue I’ve ever run into is stages being irregularly sized or improperly scaled. I’ve encountered games where you have to work your butt off to get to one stage, only to whiz through the next 2-3 effortlessly, or where some size increases are dramatic and impressive while others are barely visible. But those are just technical flaws; the overall concept is good regardless.

IMO, though, the most enjoyable games use both. I have to shout-out Abducted++ as one of the best examples - not only is it well-balanced, but it provides both a gradual measurement in the form of the PC’s weight, and a staged one in the mirror descriptions, giving you both a sense of continual progress and a reward for reaching certain milestones. This is an especially good compromise when it isn’t practical to do full granularity, e.g. when you have to provide a visual representation of the PC’s size in a pixel game.

3 Likes

Gradual changes, for sure. The problem with stages is that they tend to jump quickly from normal or skinny to downright fat or obese and skip over the smaller states I tend to enjoy the most. On top of that, the stages tend to feel like I’m rushing to try and get to the next stage since there’s no change in the image that’s noticeable to tide me over. With gradual, I tend to keep the slow growth in the back of my mind, which is why I liked the Atlyss expansion growth on exp and the gradual gain/slower weight gain for the Sims 4 mod.

It’s funny that so far, people like stages more since they’re a lot easier to do. Other than in 3D games which could just use a shape key to do the gradual gain. Even then, it’s still more complicated than stage-based gains since you have to deal with stages for triggers. Since even gradual still has stages, they’re just hidden and/or in greater numbers, but are more minor.

So, I should keep in mind that people like the easier way out, much to my dismay.

3 Likes

I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s easier, it’s just whether or not you’ve got skills with blendshapes vs drawing every single animation many times over for each additional weight stage. Sure it’s a bigger timer investment at the beginning for parametric weight gain, but as time goes on you don’t need to spend as much time to expand that weight range compared to manually creating new stages.

2 Likes

I think a lot of it depends on the type of game and time put into it too. If gradual gain is just a number, it is much less impactful than having defined stages. And at some point everything (at least in a text based game world) has to have some semblance of stages to move from one line of text to a different one.

1 Like

I voted for Gradual changes just because there is no option where I can vote for both and I am going to explain why I need this option:
In my game I am making “Gradual changes” to weight to visually show how character gain weight, but for gameplay purpose there is fixed “Staged changes”. For example 55kg-80kg is weight stage 1. 80kg-100kg is weight stage 2. Weight stage is just a nominal value which needed to unlock different things like skills, access to locations etc. I can’t see any reason to use “Staged changes” for both: visual and gameplay purpose, unless it’s a limitation of the game engine or developer’s time.

1 Like

thanks everyone for the insightful replies and polling!

A near 50/50 split even!

I’ll mull it all over to see if i can work something fun out in what im working on in future :smirk:

maybe im a bit late, but personally im a numbers gal myself, so i absolutely love insane amounts of granular detail, especially in text-based games. it certainly takes more work to put into whatever youre making, but personally i find spending hours doing menial repetitive tasks somewhat zen, even moreso if its writing descriptions things i find hot.

honestly, one personal issue ive had with this is that it feels like not a lot of projects incorporate a granularity deep enough for my tastes, and those that do are often abandoned very early on. it makes sense, but in a lot of ways it feels like setting out with that as an ambition is almost setting yourself up for failure once you have to, yknow, actually do it.

1 Like

This is a false dichotomy because even games like Tramp have weight stages of some kind within their code. The question might be better framed around how large a difference in weight should be in order to see unique content based on it.

I am a fan of smaller jumps to begin with because when you are smaller, it is far easier to notice a small difference. It does not take much for a starving person to feel less starved or otherwise feel different as they move towards being a normal weight.

By contrast, the bigger you are, the less one extra pound is going to matter. Partly this is due to the square cube law (3D volume scales differently to 2D measurements). The bigger you are, the fatter you have to be to see the same discrete change, be it on the scale or in measurements.

I am really excited when games try to get funkier with depicting smaller changes, but it IS harder, since you have to start thinking about vectors rather than pixels.

7 Likes

I totally agree on it being a false dichotomy if you put it that way, good point!

I myself am a great fan of weight being very granular, but so far have been having a hard time properly communicating with the player on how they’re 1 pound too heavy to make a jump.
or 1 cm too big for a passage compared to last time.

I’d say that’s where clear stages win out on granular changes for player experience.

But i’d love to hear you out on this.
my focus will be on 3D games, not exactly as precise as vector art.

big fan of the square cube law.

would you like to tell me a bit more about these kinds of games you’re thinking of?
Like uh, if you could pour these thoughts of menial tasks into a 3D world.
Stamping papers minigame?

I think you could make code for this based on the difference between the weight threshold needed for success and the PC’s weight.

For example, let’s say there’s a rope and wooden plank bridge the PC is trying to cross, with a discrete weight limit.

  • A PC that’s light enough might be able to cross without problems, with minimal flavour text for say creaking beams or what not
  • A PC with a smaller margin of success could have more flavour (foot slips, plank drops, bridge sways)
  • If the margin of success is narrow enough, they might see warning text (gated based on how perceptive they are?); they might successfully cross over, but the bridge gives way just as they get off, or it is permanently damaged (changes future flavour text, makes crossing even more difficult next time?)
  • A marginal failure would probably have more warning text, plus maybe a chance to turn back midway during flavour dialogue (fraying rope, cracking around one of the fastening points), but they’d make it further across before it collapses.
  • A larger failure might simply have the PC take one step and either immediately crack one of the planks, prompting them to stop, or obliviously fall down the moment they try to cross
  • At a high enough margin of failure, they’d probably not even bother, or might even be too wide for the bridge altogether
1 Like

love this.
increased wear on attributes and thing “buckling” is a nice touch.