Dreading Water

I saw that the next Destiny 2 expansion is going to be a mostly underwater zone called Season of the Deep, which prompted this as a response, which most experienced designers saw and agreed with.

I routinely do lots of job interviews and I ask a lot of lead designer/creative directors what's the worst mistake they ever made and you'd be shocked at how many say 'not killing the underwater levels when we had the chance'. https://t.co/O3X4erHmJB

— Damion Schubert – @ZenOfDesign.com on bsky (@ZenOfDesign) May 15, 2023

For what it’s worth, this goes back years, and I’ve heard this from at least 3 different candidates referring to 3 different projects, two of which were MMOs, and not to name names or anything but one of them was talking about his experiences working at a company years ago that rhymes with ‘gizzard’, so we’re not talking about companies that are short on cash or world-class talent. Still…

Now when we’re talking about underwater zones, I’m talkin’ your full-on atlantis scenarios, where all movement and combat is happening beneath the surface of the waves.

And it’s always a death by a thousand cuts.

See, it sounds simple enough. Although, you will want to have all unique geometry for down there, not to mention all unique enemies to kill. And all of those enemies need to swim rather than walk. And aquatic-themed attacks. But hey, that’s just the cost of a new zone, so that’s nothing new.

And then when you play it, you realize, wait, the player needs unique animations too. Not just a looping idle and movement (i.e. swimming) but maybe for combat actions like fighting, casting or death. Some of the particles will need to be adjusted. It’s going to look stupid if the player takes his horse down there, but players move too slow, so now you’re gonna want to add seahorses or some shit, and those need animations too. And wait, should things like torches work down here? And so on…

But it still doesn’t feel right. The way that characters move should feel like there’s resistance. Little things like ‘jumping’ should behave differently. In fact, ALL physics should feel differently. Every playtest will come up with other things that just FEEL wrong.

And when you fix all these things, you’re likely to end up with something that feels ‘right’ but still sucks. Remember how we slowed you down because you’re in water and should feel resistance? Turns out, moving slow sucks ass. Moving through empty space (i.e. mid-ocean) will feel worse because there are no landmarks that help you gauge speed, so it feels even slower.

Also, your game has probably been designed for 2D, and your players have trained for 2D their entire career in this game. Suddenly, 3D navigation is important. Being able to find ‘up’ is incredibly important. Turning a camera around too wildly can result in the player being wildly disoriented. When fighting, damage can suddenly be coming from any possible direction, and your damage direction notifications were probably designed for 2D. Your mapping system, as well, was probably designed for 2D as well.

And in most games, the player has to learn how to navigate all of this with a breath meter ticking down towards certain death.

The simple fact of the matter is that if your game is designed for land first, and 98% of your content is for land, then your underwater zone is just going to be a shitty experience by comparison. Your players are trained to play a different way, your UI/UX is designed for overland play, and frankly, the overland experience is going to have 1000X the time putting in to bugfix and polish the experience. Because its the default play pattern.

Granted, what I’m talking mostly about are MMOs and action RPGs with significant areas that are completely submerged and have combat. These concerns are less applicable to things like Assassin’s Creed where the player has to swim through a short tunnel every now and then. That being said, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that most games just avoid combat while the player is in water altogether.

Now then, I haven’t played much of either Destiny, nor do I have any insight in terms of how they’re approaching these problems – they ARE solvable, with enough time and money. But as a general rule, my advice is to avoid water zones unless you’re literally making Subnautica. If not, let the lost city of Atlantis remain lost.