Editorial Gamasutra against Ability Cooldowns

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What computer games are there though, where those spells are meaningfully scarce? Every D&D game I care to remember playing allows you to rest so much, that recharging your arsenal between almost every fight that needs it is trivial.





And yeah, the article is quite poor. Why use DA2 as the example, instead of something halfway passable?

Cooldowns aren't fun, ending turns is.

Resting needs a cooldown

Thanks for the feedback everyone, some really good comments and insight here. Appreciate it.

Not to mention that having a bunch of helpers all the time sounds ridiculously overpowered - unless, of course, they suck, or the game gets extremely hard later on.

I think one way of limiting stuff is to use a Dragon Age-style cap on the player's mana bar when an ability is active. If you have those dudes out fighting for you, fine - but you have, say, 50% less mana. This will stop the player from spamming other skills of course, which is what I think the real issue is - Blizzard want the player to constantly be using skills because pressing hotkeys is "more fun" than pressing the mouse button over and over (see MMO "hit the icons when they light up" mindset). Their big uber summoning spell doesn't fit into their system that otherwise encourages spamming, so cooldowns are the only way they can reconcile the two.

This is a really good distinction to bring up. In general, long animations serve the same purpose as a cooldown. There are a few distinctions which were pointed out in the article's own comments section by smarter people than me:

• Cooldowns are invisible to other players in a PvP context, unless of course you are somehow able to mentally keep track of when the other player last used an ability
• Animations, by contrast, are not invisible - if a player shoots and has to reload, we can see (and hear) that and use it to our advantage
• Cooldowns typically can't be interrupted (some exceptions apply, like perhaps if you level up, or have another skill or item that can reduce/eliminate cooldowns)
• Animations can often be interrupted and thus tend to be more "organic" - for example, when casting a spell I can choose to stop casting midway if I need to flee
• Cooldowns happen in the period in between using abilities
• Animations usually occur before using a skill or for a short period after

I'm sure there are more differences, but you get the idea.

This is another really good point. In more traditional RPGs, the "awesome factor" comes out of the player using spells and abilities effectively to devastating results. In MMO-inspired games (and to a degree other games with cooldowns, like action and strategy titles) the "awesome" is something that seems to be built into the game itself by the designers. As I mentioned in the article's comments, this is also similar to players having to "play as the designer intended" rather than experimenting and working creatively with a system for the best results - sure, you can get through Baldur's Gate spamming Magic Missile and a bunch of other direct damage spells, but the truly creative players can do some really impressive stuff and are rewarded for it.

Because a) I'm familiar with it and b) talking about games with lots of problems is usually a lot more educational and interesting than talking about games that do everything well. I agree I could have used more positive examples in more detail, but I can't really think of a ton, to be honest.

sea, I liked the points in your article, but I do think it could use some more though on stuff like why we have cooldowns, where did they started and such. Inifnitron gave a nice insight:

That's a very strong point, aweshum modern gamers would hate to find thenselves without spells or attacks, like a low-level mage in Baldur's Gate or a Sorcerer in Diablo 2 without mana. Instead developers give them shitty filler attacks that they can keep using while the aweshum button is on cooldown. Diablo 3 itself has "signature moves" that cost no mana and have no cooldowns, so the awesome never stops.

You probably didn't intent for such a deep article, but the subject kind of begs for an deeper analysis....perhaps a part 2?

I don't like cooldowns in my RPGs either (same as I don't like vancian spellcasting and action points to an extent) but they're a perfectly fine mechanic that helps balancing.

Rogues and paladins were made for retarded people. Press your button in random orders on something like a Shadow Priest or Feral Druid and you would see how it went.

I've written a follow-up article if anyone's interested. Some of it is a rehash or expansion of discussion that took place in the comments (as well as over here), but hopefully I clarified a few things:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchwarz/20120504/169837/Cooldowns_FollowUp.php

That was quick.

Wut? Bashing an idea by using a horribly executed example might be easy but it doesn't really tell anything. Inspecting the flaws of an overall good implementation will get you to the systems inherent flaws much better.

That's what she said.

I agree with this and all, but I do recall making it an ASA-fucking-P priority to outfit all of my rear-guard casters with ranged weapons, even if it was just a sling that they'd never fucking hit with, just to have them doing something when I wasn't casting with them in BG/BG2 (not to mention, so that they wouldn't suicidally charge the nearest plate-mailed fighter if I'd left the party AI on, or if I just wanted to select all and right-click attack some low-threat (but still able to wtf-pwn your idiot melee-loving mage) mooks.

Magic is always bound to be broken in any game, because it's barely possible to implement proper rules for something not based on elemental laws of our world; and the more complex the system, the harder it gets. That's why realoading weapon cooldown is ok by all and casting spells cooldown is problematic. In conclusion: it's not cooldowns that brake the system, it is broken per se by having majeek.

Still I like how it was done in WFRP - the more powerful the spell, the greater the difficulty and the worse the consequences of failure.

But it's not the only fun ability to put into a game.

So how about change the ability? Maybe getting hit aborts the ability, and stuns you for a longer time than usual? Or there's a stun at the end of it, like a catching of breath. Or some other penalty or aspect that makes it less of a silver bullet.

No. During the cooldown of a skill in some MMO/D3, you can use a shitload of other skills in between. The reload animation in most cases blocks all other actions, which makes sense. As long as you're not blocked you can perform any action you like. It's a more intuitive limitation, not to mention reload animations are a second instead of a minute.

Well that depends on a weapon. Peashooters reload in a wink, mortars or catapults for instance take some time though. So same rules apply - more powerful weapons take more time to reload (aka cooldown).

Reloading a gun is not a good analogy because you can reload whenever you want. Imagine a mechanic that says "after reloading this gun, you can't reload again for 20 seconds". Also, you can't fire one gun while reloading another, because reloading is an active action just like shooting.

You effectively edited out and ignored my actual point.

What the heck has realism have to do with anything ?

That is just a correct assessment of the issue.
Very good article, glad to see someone put it all together like that. All coherent, clear and to the point.

Now if i ever need to discuss any side or angle or the whole issue i can just leave a link to it and go wash my dishes.

You need to do the follow up article on the Fallout intro too.

what? i don't know what games you've been playing lately but in the shooters i play reloading a gun only prevents me from firing that gun, it doesn't prevent me from

a) jumping
b) jetting
c) throwing a grenade
d) knifing
e) doing the objective
f) doing your mom
g) switching to another gun and shooting with that
h) etc

must be an awful game that disallows you from doing anything while reloading your gun. i doubt such a game was ever made though

what's important here is that sea is talking about those little cooldown timers you have on your ability buttons on various games, not about cooldowns (or "animations") due to the simulation itself. in this vein

Geoffrey Kuhns

is right when he says that sea has a problem with the presentation of the "time management element". you can either have time management grown organically into your game or artifically by declaring some rules, but a game without time management would be terrible.

Yeah, OK. To be honest I don't play a lot of mainstream games released the last 10 years, and certainly not "shooters" (I assume you mean first person shooters).

Anyhow, I'm sure you can't do the following in Call of Duty:

1) fire shotgun
2) instantly switch to pistol, fire it
3) instantly switch to rocket launcher, fire it
4) now a second has passed, and shotgun magically reloaded itself in the background, repeat from 1)

So, I can still see a clear distinction between the reloading and WoW cooldown: reloading blocks all other actions using the same resource (right hand), while cooldown abilities in WoW all use separate, imaginary resources. Also, the firing/reloading is an understandable action with a visual representation. I agree they are pretty similar, but not the same thing.

Horrible argument. That we have swords, guns and whatever in games that mirror real-life stuff has zero relevance on design. It's not like anyone (simulational games notwithstanding) is trying to mirror real-life mechanics behind how any of that shit works. FFS, 99% of games out there use a HP system. Where is the RL in that? Nowhere, that's where.

Let's not water down discussions with illiterate reasoning.

Stupid and pointless, - shemar/knotalt.

The review.

What shooters allow you to reload and throw a grenade or a knife or switch to another gun and shoot with that simultanously ? With the reloading commencing on in the background while you are doing these? Plus, a lot of the shooters from 2000+ cancel out other actions when you sprint, jump and sometimes even do an objective. Just to be factual.

yeah, but that is more of an issue of you being limited to two hand instead of 46 hands like in WoW. if you had a shooter with 46 hands it wouldnt be much different than WoW in that regard.

They are the same thing, but the presentation makes the difference. Where to put them? How to represent them to the player? It's all in the details. Good cooldowns/time management are certainly doable, shooters are doing it since day 1. It's games that put your artifically on hold like D3 and that's where I agree with sea.