Rings. Coins. Lums. Which aspects work, which don't, and why?

I recently bought Rayman Origins which got me thinking about this topic again.

This thread is about creating some discussion on the fundamentals of items that you gather. Fundamentals like... you can lose rings but not lums.... only coins carry across levels... lums don't give lives but the game has infinite lives... etc. I am after some ideas on how to make collecting a ring feel better to the player, so this post is looking at the parts of rings/coins/lums that make a player want to grab one that he sees.

If not a discussion of fundamentals, this thread is also just a place to throw any ideas around and bounce them off each other. What else might rings do that isn't too cheap? That is, if anyone else is interested in such inanity heh.

Well here's one guy who was; a blog from 3 years ago about game fundamentals. On this particular page he has written about rings, comparing them to Mario's coins and finding fault with their handling of suspension, positioning and survival.

Back in the day it was completely common for a platformer to have something to gather strewn all over the place. I always thought there must be some cheap psychology to it and not much more, like either constant reinforced support throughout the game or simply a way to increase play by there often being something to jump at, even if trivial. But there was always some justification for gathering those items even if the justification was a 2nd priority to simply having them there. Different games justified them in different ways, so collecting items feels different in those games.

I thought I'd compare rings, coins and lums and see how it goes from there. For these comparisons I am making the assumption that no-one cares about the score (seriously I can't even remember if Mario games had a score), and I am ignoring the gameplay of just wanting to collect as many as possible if the game doesn't even acknowledge the effort. The games I refer to in this post are the classic Marios, classic Sonics, and Rayman Origins (I haven't played the original).

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Coins



· In my opinion coins feel like the most worthwhile to collect, largely due to their low quantities. Repeatedly headbutting a block for its coins doesn't feel too stupid in a Mario game.

+++ : A huge positive with coins is that collecting one is never, ever meaningless. The coin you collect is still counted after the level, is never un-counted, and counts towards something that never stops functioning.
+++ : Collecting coins is never, ever necessary. No problem ignoring them, but if you collect one it is only a good thing.
+++ : Coins come with variety. Silver coins, outline coins, bubble coins, POW items, coins that fall, bricks that give coins, bricks that turn into coins.

--- : I can't really think of a single negative to coins that is in terms of coins. I could say that they don't do certain things, but they would be things coins aren't trying to do. Coins keep it real simple.




Rings



+++ : The biggest plus for rings I think is that they directly affect the game as it plays; you can drop them and there is need to chase them. Fairly unique among platformers and for me this particular aspect always made rings so much funner than coins.
+++ : When it is a matter of health, finding rings is more satisfying than finding coins.

They make the game really easy as the player is permitted to screw up, over and over again. This means:
+++ : that there is quite a strong statement that the fun of the game comes not from staying alive, but from playing around freely.
--- : that bucketloads of tension are thrown out the window if the player doesn't about the quantity of rings carried.

--- : In terms of their main function (protection), the more rings you collect the more meaningless they become. 1 ring is all you need, 32 rings is all that will make a difference, but after about 10 to 15 it's easy to stop caring. This means that for the majority of rings collected, the motivation actually switches to that of coins: extra lives. But done in an arguably worse way.
--- : When you finish a level, every single ring you collected that was greater than 50, 100, or 200 turns out to have been a complete waste of time. I think this particular issue with rings is quite significant and that we don't notice it so much perhaps because it's simply what we're used to. But it sits at the back of the player's mind reminding him that if he isn't going for an extra life, that ring in the sky is completely meaningless. This also reinforces the part about the more you get, they less they're worth. There are 292 rings in Emerald Hill Zone act 1, but if you have 200 you may as well stop noticing them.
--- : Apart from the 10 ring monitor and lightning shield shenanigans, there is literally no variety in collecting rings. Not even moving in the air. They're really quite lifeless.



Lums



A quick description since not everyone has played Rayman Origins. Lums are little yellow critters with eyes and arms, found floating around, or by killing enemies, or escaping from pieces of scenery that you attack or touch. In the latter case they are contained inside bubbles that can deliberately position themselves away from you as well as float upwards before popping, bringing a time limit to their retrieval. Apart from being something to gather lums have nothing in common with rings or coins, as Rayman Origins uses infinite lives. You collect lums purely to win electoons, required to unlock 10 particular levels which in turn unlocks an extra level that shows no mercy. Electoons also unlock optional skins. In most levels, finishing with 150 lums grants you 1 electoon, 300 gives you 2. Gaining 300 is never a huge challenge. Once you earn an electoon you can't go back and earn it again. If not gaining electoons, lums have no meaning apart from setting records.

+++ : Lums have character, loads of it. So much that in some levels you know the music is the lums singing.
--- : Can be a bad thing too. Collecting a king lum makes me embarrassed if someone walks in the room due to all that burbling.

+++ : They are collected in a few different ways: enemies, floating, and released bubbles.
+++ : They move around in pleasant patterns.
---- : Some patterns just mess you about, making you question if it's worth collecting some.

+++ : The game acknowledges and records the maximum you have collected in a level.
--- : This is literally the only endgame of lums.

+++ : King lums temporarily double the number of lums gathered, creating a kind of "Bonus Time START!" scenario. While it applies to the player's progress this is a bit of extra fun.
-+- : It is often still surrounded by the tension of the level dangers though. Can be a good thing but not always.

--- : I think lums are pretty terrible at filling the role of something to gather. Their positioning and discovery is fine but their reason for existing has a use-by date. Lums are an n-times-only affair before there is no reason to collect them at all apart from records/completionism. And for the majority of Rayman's levels, n is something like 5, if that. Five or less tries at most levels before lums lose all meaning.

--- : Farming. You have to farm lums. It's a mechanic that the game is built around and that's fair enough; the game is long enough to handle it and lum collecting doesn't push into frustration. It does push into trivial though, I assume in order to avoid said frustration. There isn't a good middle ground; the gameplay isn't built to keep a player happy despite repeat failures, but is built to avoid repeat failures. So farming them is what you do. It's a chore you have to do and thus every lum that floats out of your grasp or every heart you lose (costing you 5 lums later) or every king lum that you mess up isn't compelling, only boring. I just generally dislike farming put into a game if the farming itself isn't the focus of the game. Even in Rayman it's not the focus. I enjoy the game but collecting lums is the last thing I want to do (and the last thing I complete).

--- : Basing gameplay on a mechanic that eventually stops being a mechanic raises its own questions about replayability, compared to games that are played without such a mechanic being used to compel the player. This point is really straying away from the topic though. Rings don't do this so it's not worth dwelling on.


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Having written all that, a few more things to consider:

· Bashing lums is all well and good, but it's worth remembering that the life-gaining feature of rings and coins also becomes quite meaningless to a player. Consider Episode 1 with the ridiculous triple digit lives counter. Not to mention that lives really stopped having much significance years and years ago; today's gamer has absolutely no interest in ever being told they have to start the whole game again. However it is at least something, a something that always exists; there's always a free life to feel good about when you earn that reward. Who runs out of lives in Sonic 3? Now who likes the free life ditty when you get 100 rings in Sonic 3? Exactly. I believe that simply having a reason to collect a collectable is more important than the reason itself.

· In the classic Sonics, there is the player who wants to enjoy and complete a level, and the player who wants to gather a lot of rings and make it to the end without losing them. These guys are playing very different games; the latter meeting a tension that the former barely notices. Mario and Rayman don't have this distinction.

· Needing to reach the end of the level with 50 rings was a method of creating that tension, a method that became less and less significant over Sonic 2, then 3, then Knuckles where even 20 rings could get you access to the crappier bonus stage. It's funny that the bonus stage that awarded you the most rings was, itself, now the biggest reason to get rings in the first place.

· Even if you removed the catch-your-dropped-health mechanic from rings, that is still a hell of a lot of "hearts" floating around the levels.

· Stereo chiming was the business.


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Can anyone think of a motivation for ring collecting that works like coin collecting? As in, suspended across levels, always having meaning, and still completely optional.

Any good ideas for changes to rings that don't completely mess up the game as we know it?



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@Strife, I agree about James Pond 2 as well heh. It's weird how there is so much different junk everywhere and you just wanna grab it. But I imagine this is only the case because of the variety. Not something I want to implement in a Sonic but a good point anyway.


@Tyty, that's a good point I had completely forgotten about while writing the OP. The blog I linked to mentions it as well, and in other articles he bullets a few points about coin positioning that:
· encourages interaction without producing threat
· creates optional challenges
· provides guidance on where a player can go
· sets the difficult tone of later levels with less or harder to reach coins. Note that this is the only positioning factor that depends on the reward.
· slows the player down

But this is all positioning. I'm more interested in the reward aspect that gives the positioning meaning. I probably should have noted that in the OP; I'm thinking more about why the player would go out of their way to collect them than I am thinking about why they should exist.

Still, the positions of collectables are largely the whole point anyway. Or at least "phase 2" of collectable design.

One interesting thing about coins I think is that they are implemented so well, yet justified by something that is really losing meaning; lives.

Lives used to be 2 things:
· Chances to complete the game.
· Something you can only earn once. Back in the day you could never go back and farm lives.

Nowadays, extra lives:
· Are nothing more than chances to complete a hard part, thanks to level saves or infinite continues. (Sonic 3)
· Can be harvested effortlessly anyway. (NSMB)

Classic Sonic and Mario games both use 100 items for a free life but for coins there is no other reason to collect them whatsoever. So what happens to coins when you put infinite lives into a Mario game? I guess then it just comes down to positioned guidance and optional, unrewarded challenge. Collecting a coin in Mario 1 was a much bigger deal than in NSMB, where in 3 minutes you can do 1 invulnerable run through level 1-1 and come out with 7 or 8 more lives.


@dsrb, yes but I was only thinking of the classic Marios, where coins provide not a thing more than extra lives for every 100 you get. If you think rings are useless, what about these coins? That's what I was referring to when I said that coins feel like the most worthwhile to collect, which shows that even without health functionality, a collectable can always be a good thing in the player's mind. Therefore rings should be able to feel a bit more rewarding than they do, imo.

I agree with pretty much all you say about lums. Although I find the large majority of the lum-activated electoons to be bordering on the edge of not challenging enough, in a game that doesn't want to make things more challenging, and simply game filler, hence my rant in the OP. Lums aren't that bad though and I get the completionist thing. The game does that well enough since there are enough levels and enough challenge in collecting all medals to satisfy in this regard. But they still have that underlying issue that rings and coins don't: unless you are replaying a completed level to collect every lum, you may as well collect zero lums. This is the kind of thing I think about when questioning the fundamentals of collectables. Rayman's approach is fine in Rayman, but being obligated to collect rings and then seeing them become meaningless later is not something I'd like in a Sonic game.

As for missing that one lum... I'm still at a point where I glare at the keyboard angrily instead of feeling like it was my fault.

Btw, you played NiGHTS?




Anyway, any suggestions for improving the feel of collecting rings in classic Sonics?

Completely random idea:
· Less than 50 rings = shield is only a power, not a shield.
· More than 50 rings = the shield's free hit ability is enabled.
Could be played with but I wonder if it's fundamentally a bad idea.

 

@Luke
Is that true about Sonic Rush? I noticed it and had wondered, but never really checked. I like the idea anyway, if for only making it impossible to abuse 1 ring.

It sounds like you play a Sonic game like I do heh, but that's an aspect I think is important. Sonic games are about flying about enjoying the ride, not being afraid that you're going to die all the time. It would be hard to implement that kind of tension into a game where you are able to move multiple screen-lengths per second. So I think the very kind nature of rings is a deliberate thing, that's part of the feel of a classic Sonic. As it is, the player still doesn't like ever getting punished, but imagine if it was 2 hits to die... Stressville.

So I would like something that makes rings more important, but for that something to not be tougher survival (though the point about Rush isn't bad). I would also like it to not feel like farming, and that's the real dilemma I feel when trying to think of rewards. For example, if you collect 1000 rings you get a reward. Great, so now go play a whole zone 3 times. Blegh. That's the thing about the extra lives of coins; a free life is unquestionably a good thing, but not something you go and farm for, or if you do it isn't prolonged.


@dsrb
Aye, so no Mario game where coins do nothing at all except bring lives? I think it's safe to say that a Mario 1 coin feels more important than a NSMBWii coin.

Hooray for some NiGHTS lovin' hehe. My Saturn is on the other side of the planet so no idea what my scores were like. Actually I played Christmas NiGHTS a lot more... absolutely love it.

I could write about the difficulties of different stages in Rayman but it would be too much off topic. I will say one thing for you though; don't worry it's not a spoiler, but a bloody necessary tip. In the 2nd last level (you'll recognise it because you're running on falling brown pipes from the very start), frigging LET GO of the run button for a second. Origins has a derpy control where holding the run button is capable of reversing your left and right for a while and you don't know this, because there is no need at all for it in the entire game, except one part, one single jump, right at the end of the game after you've played 60 or 70 levels with no mention of it. For a Sonic player who is used to getting their lefts and rights co-ordinated properly with running up walls, it's the most annoying thing ever. Where exactly do you let go of the button? The place where you die about 20 times in a row because you fall right while pressing left. Yeah... there. >_<
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Yeah they're both good ideas, rings and shields I mean. Honestly I never thought of rings literally carrying over at all until last night and then you pop up and write it anyway. Yay the thread is working.

Because it's not like you don't start an act and get some free rings handed to you, guaranteed, every time anyway. So who cares about that 4 seconds of being vulnerable? And yeah totally agree about the shields too. When it comes to shields vs Mario suits I think suits win in practically every way, so I'm all for copying their ideas with shields.

The ideas of 100 = shield, 100 + shield = invincible... I like it. It does mean that when you hit 100 two things happen at once, unless free lives are removed.

Something to work with. Ta.



Hmm when you think about it, it's not that Sonic levels have more rings than Mario levels and coins, it's that they have more space. No?

 

Ah they're a bit too babyish for me. It really lets loose in the end credits when they kind of break down into a long baby gurgling solo. Anyway, it's only a way to point out that added character is usually a good thing (I think the shields vs suits comparison illustrates this well too) but it can push the player's taste too far if it tries. Neutral items skip the benefits of character but also skip the risk.

You mean obligation; the player knows that he will never get something he wants if he doesn't collect them every chance he has. I think if something isn't choice then it isn't a reward, just a task. The difference is borderline semantics yeah, since the player doesn't really have to play the last 11 levels or collect the other skins, but I think it's a real and important difference nonetheless. I could accept that losing out on the skins wouldn't hurt a player too much, but you have to agree that missing out on 11 levels is a disappointment the player wants to avoid.

Not that a focus on completing tasks is a bad thing. As mentioned in the OP, farming lums is a mechanic that the game is built around and handles pretty well. While you are going back for more electoons, Origins plays how it's meant to. The player takes on the challenge of every lum, it works, the lums are the game. Finishing without 300 lums isn't an irritating disappointment like Sonic and 100 rings, it's the game the player signed up to.

But let me ask, how many times do you replay a level in Origins if you don't need to collect lums? Everything beyond the 2 electoons has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of lums. To refer to the OP again, "basing gameplay on a mechanic that eventually stops being a mechanic raises its own questions about replayability, compared to games that are played without such a mechanic being used to compel the player."

So:

1. Collecting stuff is a task, not a spare layer of gameplay the player can choose to enter and exit.
2. If the gameplay is focused on completing tasks, it becomes exposed when those tasks are removed. I don't like how once I have the trophy and medal, I feel little interest in replaying especially the platforming levels. Viewed in their own right they have very few secrets, are very linear, and most of them are very simple. Lums are the principle justification for this.

Compared to replaying a Sonic zone, the difference made by how much focus is put on collection is quite a big one.

Personally I don't like a platforming game that depends on farming to make the player want to play it. I feel a bit patronised instead of free, but that's just me and arguable I'm sure.

Coins provide coin-collecting challenges just as readily, except they aren't obligatory.
And they always come with a reward even if small, instead of losing all meaning once the job is done. I think any small reward is better than obligation-or-nothing.

Too true. As I said in the OP it's especially noticeable in Episode 1 with the ridiculous triple digit lives counter. Not to mention the role lives have in general these days, when continues, level saves and backtracking for easy farming are the norm. But again in the OP: " I believe that simply having a reason to collect a collectable is more important than the reason itself."

I believe this because if you take an empty screen and chuck in a floor, a character, a collectable and an optional obstacle, there are 2 questions in the player's mind:
1. Do I have the skill to reach it?
2. What does it get me?

We want the player to play, more. We want the player to go out of his way to get that collectable.

Question 1 soon becomes meaningless as the player's skill grows. If this was the only question that existed then player's would run on by feeling no need to prove something they know they can do.
Question 2 is what keeps things going. There has to be something that says to the player "that 4 seconds of your time was worth it." Definitely yes there is the matter of balancing effort and reward here, but as long as there is something that is guaranteed to leave the player better off than before, you're already a leap ahead of having no reward at all. As long as the reward is unquestionably being better off than before, even if small we can ask the player to consider more challenges than no reward at all.



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