Jumping/simple climbing-Is it difficult to do?

[Oscar Wilde]

Something I've noticed in many games, my example given being Mass Effect, is that your character can't jump, or even climb for that matter. This makes the many waist high walls that seem to riddle the field an annoyance, something you have to find a way around, rather than in other games, which allow you to simply jump over them, or climb.

Is there a purpose behind not letting us do something small children can become adept at (and they climb trees and shit), or are dev's just being stupid again?

[Stark]

Removing jump is generally a genre choice, because jumping is stupid. Not replacing it with climbing or mantling, however, is just lazy design. Imagine all the places you could get stuck forever in level geometry if you could jump in ME?

If they'd designed the game so you never WANTED to jump it'd be fine, but they didn't. Being able to deal with simple obstacles by climbing is one of those things that just isn't very common.

[weemadando]

The "Tom Clancy" series have been awful for this. Rainbow -unstoppable, except by shin high picket fences which prevent us from entering the target building from the angle we'd prefer. Ghost Recon - there's nothing more dangerous to an elite force than a 2" differential in ground heights, it's completely insurmountable.

Frankly, I'm with Stark, if a game doesn't give you the option to jump/climb, then don't arbitrarily block my progress with something that would be ridiculously easy to bypass for anyone who's not in a wheelchair. I can't remember what game it was (I want to say GTA), but there was a classic example where I'm playing as a criminal who has already murdered hundreds of law enforcement officers over the course of hte game and decide not to make my escape out a particular exit from a building because there's some old police crime scene tape across the exit. Geez, after all my murdering, I guess I draw the line at tampering with evidence.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

From the other end of the spectrum I offer Shadow of the Colossus. A game where you could jump, climb, mantle, rapple across and shimmy over pretty much everything. In fact that was the central way to get through the game, finding a way to climb up enemies several hundred times your size and get to their weak spots. It's far from impossible and, at least among the games I've played, SotC does it the best. Other games should be able to easily incorporate ninety percent of SotC's gymnastic ability without making it the central concept of the game.

[DPDarkPrimus]

The hilarious thing about Mass Effect is that it DOES let you climb up low walls, but only in a particular section of the end-game area.

[Karza]

The hilarious thing about Mass Effect is that it DOES let you climb up low walls, but only in a particular section of the end-game area.

Actually, you can mantle on top of some crates in some of the sidequests that take part in spaceships (possibly in other environments too, but I don't remember for sure). The thing is, you won't get anywhere that way, and there's nothing interesting on top of the crates anyway .

[Kamakazie Sith]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/27/

Seems appropriate...

[Braedley]

Guild wars. Can't jump from the high ground to the low ground.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Seconding Stark: It's lazy design, and rather stupid too. Turn the clock way back to the original Tomb Raider. A rather simplistic game that nonetheless had a highly versatile jumping and mantling system. If a decade+ old game could do it, it should be child's play to incorporate most of that system to a current game even if the focus isn't on jumping/mantling.

Just thought of another game where the system is pulled off well: The entire Monster Hunter series. That also did a great job of incorporating defensive moves as well.

[Starglider]

Jumping and climbing seriously complicate beta testing. Just look at the speedruns for games where you can jump (e.g. HL2) vs games where you can't (e.g. Gears of War). The former tend to use a variety of jumping-based glitches to bypass huge sections of the game, while the later are usually forced to play through the whole thing (actually there are sections where you can physics-glitch a pseudo-jump in GoW, but not many).

[Zixinus]

The problems created by climbing and jumping are not insurmountable. Dark Messiah was able to give you both.

It is especially jarring in open-area games like Far Cry 2 or Crysis. In both, you can do some pretty incredible things, yet you can't sling your gun up your ass ,like every other gun you have, for a second to grab a ledge.

[Oskuro]

Jumping and climbing seriously complicate beta testing. Just look at the speedruns for games where you can jump (e.g. HL2) vs games where you can't (e.g. Gears of War). The former tend to use a variety of jumping-based glitches to bypass huge sections of the game, while the later are usually forced to play through the whole thing (actually there are sections where you can physics-glitch a pseudo-jump in GoW, but not many).

In other words, limiting the variety of actions the player can take is an easy (lazy) design option.

[Starglider]

In other words, limiting the variety of actions the player can take is an easy (lazy) design option.

Sometimes it's laziness, but sometimes it's just budget. There's only so much time and money availble, and making the graphics extra-shiny usually takes priority.

[White Haven]

Budget is NOT, however, an excuse for not telling your level designers to clean up your act. I don't demand the ability to jump/climb in the games I play, but if the jumping/climbing that a normal human being is capable of would bypass content, then the map is terribly designed. Don't want a player going somewhere? Cliffs, ravines, M60s firing from cover, and other such genuinely difficult-to-pass obstacles are your friends.

[General Zod]

Seconding Stark: It's lazy design, and rather stupid too. Turn the clock way back to the original Tomb Raider. A rather simplistic game that nonetheless had a highly versatile jumping and mantling system. If a decade+ old game could do it, it should be child's play to incorporate most of that system to a current game even if the focus isn't on jumping/mantling.

Just thought of another game where the system is pulled off well: The entire Monster Hunter series. That also did a great job of incorporating defensive moves as well.

The problem is Tomb Raider was meant to be a platformer with shooter elements. Taking a game and adding platformer style elements is a great way to increase frustration when the designers don't know how to do edge detection at all or the jump is so weak it's useless. If the game's not designed with some amount of platforming elements in mind from the start it's just going to blow donkey cock for incorporating the worst of both genres.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Seconding Stark: It's lazy design, and rather stupid too. Turn the clock way back to the original Tomb Raider. A rather simplistic game that nonetheless had a highly versatile jumping and mantling system. If a decade+ old game could do it, it should be child's play to incorporate most of that system to a current game even if the focus isn't on jumping/mantling.

Just thought of another game where the system is pulled off well: The entire Monster Hunter series. That also did a great job of incorporating defensive moves as well.

The problem is Tomb Raider was meant to be a platformer with shooter elements. Taking a game and adding platformer style elements is a great way to increase frustration when the designers don't know how to do edge detection at all or the jump is so weak it's useless.

In other words, if they don't know how to incorporate a simple concept that been implemented in games for years, and thus don't do it while still designing areas that could be easily passed if your character had the ability to mount a three foot wall, it's lazy design. I can understand not wanting to distract from the main thrust of the game, though I have severe doubts that making a functioning jump system is really *that* complicated to tie up so much theoretical resources. What I don't understand is that if they're going to not include that, why do they make the lack of jumping/mantling obvious when your musclebound protagonist lacks the ability to clear a single chair blocking a hallway.

[salm]

Budget is NOT, however, an excuse for not telling your level designers to clean up your act. I don't demand the ability to jump/climb in the games I play, but if the jumping/climbing that a normal human being is capable of would bypass content, then the map is terribly designed. Don't want a player going somewhere? Cliffs, ravines, M60s firing from cover, and other such genuinely difficult-to-pass obstacles are your friends.

What? Budget is time and time is quality. If you work on an inadequat budget you can not design a good game. Nor, in fact, anything else. Now don´t mix this up with a low budget. You can make cool stuff with little money. However, if your budget is low and the guy in charge wants Crysis IV like levels then the budget goes from low to shit meaning that you´ve not got enough recourses to produce a good level. You an tell your level designers as much as you want. If you don´t have the dough to pay them they won´t do shit.

The problem here is not communication problems with the level designers, the problem is designing a game you can´t afford to produce.

[Genii Lodus]

Very few games let you climb everything it looks like you should be able to. Some of those like Crackdown/Prototype have super-human characters and can get away with total outlandishness. Assassin's Creed is the only game I've played with a normal human being able to climb up arbitrary surfaces. For those games it was a big selling point and a major focus of development time and effort. I agree that the jarring inability to climb shouldn't be used in level design to block off areas but I think some people are suggesting it like it's almost trivial to implement and games developers are just being lazy for not doing so.

[General Zod]

Very few games let you climb everything it looks like you should be able to. Some of those like Crackdown/Prototype have super-human characters and can get away with total outlandishness. Assassin's Creed is the only game I've played with a normal human being able to climb up arbitrary surfaces. For those games it was a big selling point and a major focus of development time and effort. I agree that the jarring inability to climb shouldn't be used in level design to block off areas but I think some people are suggesting it like it's almost trivial to implement and games developers are just being lazy for not doing so.

It breaks disbelief to tell players that their character is supposed to be some extraordinary athlete, yet they can't overcome the monumental task of climbing over a two foot crate blocking their path when anyone who's taken high school gym in real life could do so with ease. It's laziness to simply not make reasonable obstacles instead.

[Stark]

It isn't just fences for player control, however; in games with powerful weapons or special powers or whatever, you'll often be prevented from going down the Wrong Corridor by a small pile of rubble or a fallen support beam that a child of six could wriggle around or move. But no; the rubble communicates 'blocked' so you go the other way and hit the Scripted Event instead of missing the Amazing Story.

[Oskuro]

Of couse, obstacles that you can't navigate because your character seems to be wheelchair-bound are second in frustration and design lazyness only to invisible walls.

[Ghost Rider]

One reason I dislike the no jump and climbing is as many said, it prevents one from doing what anyone else could for no reason. Though on the flip side, when you can jump/climb they want you to use it for puzzle solving in games that are not about hand eye coordination and in fact have horrible angles of finding a descent or ascent of said object. Why? I dunno the programmers need to have a puzzle?

Both are products of either poor planning or lazy planning, take your pick.

[Stark]

This is why things like mantling and contextual jumping are good; the platforming shit in FarCry2 was annoying as shit, and could almost entirely have been replaced by a pair of arms for climbing. The whole idea of travelling via jumping is entirely a videogame invention after all.

[Oskuro]

Not to mention the retardedness of bunny hopping in games that aim for somewhat realistic combat (Counter Strike anyone?). I like R6V for its use of interactive items to enhance mobility while retaining a semblance of realism.