Read on Twitter
I was having some trouble with some close quarters combat #leveldesign in #HalfLifeAlyx today, and me and a friend got to talking. I had noticed a large dispersity between difficulty from different types of players in the map (and to a lesser extent in the main game)...
And we realized it was due to some of the concepts we've seen taught in room clearing. Speed and aggression are often the keys to a successful engagement, and due to the way the Combine combat in Alyx is designed, this is the case too...
I realized more timid players (Like my self) would get easily pinned. Especially when you get close, if you don't act fast, the combine quickly suppress or flank you. More aggressive and skilled players were able to easily trigger flinches and force them to retreat...
But not everyone is so operator. In more open environments this isn't as much of a problem, but what about the interior areas? How do they encourage players to make more risky moves without gimping the combat?
One way I noticed them doing this is by increasing "confidence in the environment". Look at the picture here. There's a massive LOS blocker here. There's an entire room behind it, but you can't see it and you have no idea how it connects...
But here it's more of a "shooting" gallery setup. Due to how it's constructed the "unknown areas" are much further away. Especially if a player is using teleport movement, they can have more confidence in knowing where they're going to is safe...
These fights also tend to be "wide hallways," funneling combat in one direction. However, the cover isn't so strong that player's can just feel safe and camp. (Certain enemy types help mitigate this too)...
They save the more open spaces for flank heavy arena combat, where there is the distance to allow for slower reactions. However, this doesn't stop them from making cover very readable or making sure player's explore the space before an encounter.
There's a bunch of other tricks I noticed the dev team using, but I think this partly explains why my "hallway hoedown" encounter played way better then the one I have in development. The environment is too unknown for the encounter I chose.
I think the guys at Valve did an excellent job making an accessible yet challenging game for less experienced VR player's like myself, and I hope to one day make an encounter with the same blend of fun and challenge for this game.
