Hidden Game Mechanics

[Bedinsis]

In the original The Sims there is a hidden stat for how good the Sim is at cleaning, how quickly they do so. It is improved by cleaning up. This might not be much of a secret nowadays since The Sims 2 has that stat no longer hidden.

In The Sims 2 apparently the various Sims have an innate preferred sexuality, i.e. some are more heterosexual than homosexual and vice versa. I only found out this through reading on a wiki years after I stopped playing.

 

[Zhukov]

Having hidden mechanics seems like bad game design to me.

Like playing chess with someone without telling them how knights move.

 

[RanD00M]

In HOMM3 if you have Cavaliers and ride into a neutral stables on the map, they'll be upgraded to champions for free.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Having hidden mechanics seems like bad game design to me.

Like playing chess with someone without telling them how knights move.

Almost every example provided in this thread so far has been from a single player game, or the single player portion of a game, so that analogy doesn't really work.

 

[Zhukov]

Having hidden mechanics seems like bad game design to me.

Like playing chess with someone without telling them how knights move.

Almost every example provided in this thread so far has been from a single player game, or the single player portion of a game, so that analogy doesn't really work.

*shrug*

So change it to playing against a chess computer. You're still going to want to know how to use knights.

 

[ChupathingyX]

*shrug*

So change it to playing against a chess computer. You're still going to want to know how to use knights.

The analogy still doesn't work. Knowing what a knight does is a critical and/or fundamental aspect of chess, while pretty much all secret little mechanics in games (particularly almost every one mentioned in this thread) are just little bonuses for those intrepid or lucky enough to discover them.

A better analogy would be if a Call of Duty game didn't tell you what the shoot button was, or if a racing game didn't tell you what the accelerate button was.

 

[Kyrian007]

*shrug*

So change it to playing against a chess computer. You're still going to want to know how to use knights.

The analogy still doesn't work. Knowing what a knight does is a critical and/or fundamental aspect of chess, while pretty much all secret little mechanics in games (particularly almost every one mentioned in this thread) are just little bonuses for those intrepid or lucky enough to discover them.

A better analogy would be if a Call of Duty game didn't tell you what the shoot button was, or if a racing game didn't tell you what the accelerate button was.

Actually chess works well as an analogy, it would be like playing chess and not knowing about castling. Castling is a little bonus that isn't critical or fundamental.

 

[Zhukov]

*shrug*

So change it to playing against a chess computer. You're still going to want to know how to use knights.

The analogy still doesn't work. Knowing what a knight does is a critical and/or fundamental aspect of chess, while pretty much all secret little mechanics in games (particularly almost every one mentioned in this thread) are just little bonuses for those intrepid or lucky enough to discover them.

Alright Hairsplitter McGee, change it to not knowing that pawns can move two spaces on their first move. Not strictly essential but super helpful.

Or lets talk an actual video game example. A few people mentioned the thing in Human Revolution where messing about too long in one area will result in some hostages being dead in the next. It's shit because it punishes the player for assuming that it will work like most games whose events will wait for you and there's no time counter or the like to tell you otherwise. And it's not like they're using it as an early indication of how the game will work because after that one instance the game goes right back to being like every other game and letting you putz about as long as you please. Messing about in the foyer will get the hostages in the factory killed, but once you get to the factory you can spend six hours bunny-hopping around the back door and the hostages will be just fine. It's just a useless, meaningless bit of one-off wankery from the developer.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Actually chess works well as an analogy, it would be like playing chess and not knowing about castling. Castling is a little bonus that isn't critical or fundamental.

My problem isn't that he used chess in general as an analogy, it's that he used 'knowing how to move a knight' as an analogy.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Or lets talk an actual video game example. A few people mentioned the thing in Human Revolution where messing about too long in one area will result in some hostages being dead in the next. It's shit because it punishes the player for assuming that it will work like most games whose events will wait for you and there's no time counter or the like to tell you otherwise. And it's not like they're using it as an early indication of how the game will work because after that one instance the game goes right back to being like every other game and letting you putz about as long as you please. Messing about in the foyer will get the hostages in the factory killed, but once you get to the factory you can spend six hours bunny-hopping around the back door and the hostages will be just fine. It's just a useless, meaningless bit of one-off wankery from the developer.

Ok sure, if you don't like that specific hidden mechanic that's fine, but there are thousands and thousands of examples of such things in many video games and making a vague and broad statement that they're all bad design in concept just seems very silly to me.

 

[oRevanchisto]

In Mass Effect 1 you can zoom in with the cannon on the Mako for precise firing. I played that game so many times before I realized this was possible. It's such a small thing but it blew my mind when I saw someone doing it on YouTube one day.

 

[DoPo]

Or lets talk an actual video game example. A few people mentioned the thing in Human Revolution where messing about too long in one area will result in some hostages being dead in the next. It's shit because it punishes the player for assuming that it will work like most games whose events will wait for you and there's no time counter or the like to tell you otherwise. And it's not like they're using it as an early indication of how the game will work because after that one instance the game goes right back to being like every other game and letting you putz about as long as you please. Messing about in the foyer will get the hostages in the factory killed, but once you get to the factory you can spend six hours bunny-hopping around the back door and the hostages will be just fine. It's just a useless, meaningless bit of one-off wankery from the developer.

It's not about time limits - the game makes a clear statement that your choices have consequences. It comes back loads of times.

Spoiler: Examples

- stealing stuff from your colleagues' offices will lead to them noticing and notifying you with their suspicions. Never explained it would happen, yet it's completely logical - you are the chief of security.

- going into the women's restroom will get you a chewing. Pretty much no other game does it, but again - logical consequence.

- killing people will lead to others disliking you. This is a bit more widespread, not in all games, of course, but at least some, yet again - consistent with other examples.

- Malik's death can be prevented, despite never being told that you can and that it's one of the hardest sections in the game. Heck, it's also a time limit, too.

- depending on your choices Sandoval can be driven to a suicide, in which case he acts as a social encounter boss, or he could be just a regular shoot-y guy. Another thing that's never even hinted at in-game and based on knowledge of other games it wouldn't even occur to you. However, completely in-line with actions leading to consequences.

- you can get an auto-win in a social encounter using the CASIE mod but that might affect outcomes as opposed to using pure speech choices. In most other games the "persuasion" option is just an automatic most favourable resolution when employed, yet brute forcing somebody to agree with you using artificial means is going to change stuff, realistically

- you are told to go to the LIMB clinic and get your augs repaired - you even get a quest and some XP for it. Yet by that point this should seem really fishy and indeed - if you do it, you will be fighting with a major handicap in the third boss fight with your UI and vision scrambled. You can just forego doing the quest and you will be fine. Can't remember the last time that a game rewarded me for NOT doing an objective, but there you go.

 

[BarryMcCociner]

How about the battle system for Crusader Kings 2?

The manual, the digital manual they give that describes the battle system? If you printed out just the section on how the game weighs two armies against each other is so thick you could probably use it as a weapon if you printed it off.

If you got up in orbit and dropped it back to earth it would impact with enough kinetic energy to wipe out all life on earth. Nobody reads that shit, nobody understands how that works.

 

[DoPo]

How about the battle system for Crusader Kings 2?

The manual, the digital manual they give that describes the battle system? If you printed out just the section on how the game weighs two armies against each other is so thick you could probably use it as a weapon if you printed it off.

If you got up in orbit and dropped it back to earth it would impact with enough kinetic energy to wipe out all life on earth. Nobody reads that shit, nobody understands how that works.

I am not sure I would call that "hidden", though. The battle system does have rules and you can definitely influence how it works at the same time, it's also not really easy to get into it. The entire problem is that most of the complexity hardly matters. You need more troops than your opponent and you will win in most cases. The only notable exception a new player needs to be aware of is using light troops against heavy troops - a tribal army is composed of only light infantry and archers and easily folds against a normal feudal army that includes heavy infantry. Even going with 2:1 numbers will most likely lead to a defeat. Other than that, though all a new player, or even an experienced one, needs to worry about is "have more armies than your opponent".

 

[Chaosian]

Do hitboxes count? Never really thought of it before, but they are hidden and pertain to damage mechanics. There's even such a thing as "hitbox porn", and apparently Dark Souls has it.


Not today [http://orig12.deviantart.net/2c4e/f/2014/094/4/f/reremake_by_aloo81-d7d2zxq.gif]

DS1 over/under [https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--7vAvYwV_--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/xuyn7j15uq3ten8yavwx.gif]

DS3 over/under [https://i.imgur.com/ovtKeC3.mp4]

Divine intervention? [http://i.imgur.com/7d8SZkB.gif]

Interesting strategy (or exploit...?) [https://streamable.com/ze5h]

Dancing leap of faith [http://i.imgur.com/4k4uDsd.mp4]

 

[twistedmic]

I discovered this one completely by accident in GTA V.
If you have a wanted level and you are in an undiscovered car the cops will drive right by you if you follow the traffic laws.
Though I will say that I did not try this trick on anything higher than a three star level and it will not work on motorcycles or open-topped cars.

 

[Ironman126]

In Mass Effect 1 you can zoom in with the cannon on the Mako for precise firing. I played that game so many times before I realized this was possible. It's such a small thing but it blew my mind when I saw someone doing it on YouTube one day.

Fuck that! The Mako has a coaxial machinegun! That is, of course, almost certainly not a hidden feature. Unless you're me. I rebound the keys the first time I play ME1 and overwrote the machinegun with the main gun. But the game doesn't make mention in the key bindings that you have a machinegun and who binds the secondary weapon to the primary fire button?

 

[lacktheknack]

Silent Hill 3 never really mentioned the "block" mechanic. However, a bulletproof vest and Heather's forearms in a blocking stance take her from "clumsy teenager" to "freaking black angel of death" if your timing is right. It's the ONLY way to 10-star the game unless you're the god of strafing and absurd luck.

Seriously. You can fight the first boss, a worm crossed with a shark crossed with an entire apartment, with an insta-kill attack and jaws that could swallow a shed, can be trounced in good time using nothing but a bulletproof vest, a broken steel pipe, an ampoule of medication, and Heather's forearms of titanium and brick, and the boss can only furiously chomp on your entire body at terrifying speeds, but will deal zero damage as he is slowly prodded to death.

And you'll only ever notice you can block if you try to run while wielding a weapon, aka exactly the moment you don't want Heather to stop freaking moving. You have to experiment with it to realize the absurd power carried within your very arms.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

The Souls series is the king of this. Dark Souls has shitloads of mechanics and entire areas that can only be discovered by experimentation and following player messages. For example, in DSIII the brilliant mechanic of pressing and holding down on the d-pad sends you instantly to your first quick use item. How are you supposed to figure that out? There's just endless things like that. For example, how you're supposed to enter the DLC in DS1. Or how the Pilgrims of the Dark covenant is found in Dark Souls II. Or how you're supposed to find the Purging Monument in The Ringed City. Or how Vagrants spawn (I have around 200 hours in Dark Souls 1, and have never encountered one. I only know of their existence from videos). Or the absolutely nightmarish conditions for most of the endings of Dark Souls III.

But Demon's Souls is perhaps even mightier in this regard. Two words: World Tendency. It's not exactly hidden since it is referenced in the game, it's just never explained how it works. Having the wrong world tendency can lock you out of NPCs, items and so on. Trying to manipulate it requires a wiki, you simply cannot figure it out on your own.

Another one, while not exactly hidden, is being able to arm and give followers gear in Skyrim. I mostly opted for solo adventuring during my first Skyrim quests, but bugger me it would have saved me some inventory management headaches if I'd known about it earlier. The game doesn't purposely hide it from you, it just never says you can do it.

Oh, and The Binding of Isaac, especially the Rebirth version, is an absolute swamp of this. Collect 3 Guppy-related items, and you become Guppy. Collect 3 fly items and you become Lord of the Flies. Use The Bible in either Mom or Mom's heart boss fights, and get an insta-kill. Using bombs on the angels in angel rooms is the only way to access Mega Satan. Hell, like half of the game is trying to figure out what most of the items even do. And the ultimate, utterly bananas beyond batshit hidden mechanic: the conditions for unlocking The Lost. They're so complex I can't even begin to explain them.

 

[Vassassell]

I wonder do mechanics clearly hinted by the developer actually count as hidden mechanics? For example, Nier Automata has a few animation cancel tricks required to get a few weapons, but the game never teaches you about.
Or, as another example, Spark the Electric Jester can actually block damage first few frames of his dash, but the game teaches you about it only after you complete both story modes and unlock unltrahardcore challenge.