Why Hard Games Feel Great - Extra Credits Gaming

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🕹️ Ever felt like your gaming progress hit the brakes or went into overdrive without warning? In this video, we unravel the overlooked yet critical concept of V and delta V's Jerk Principle in game systems, exploring how these terms represent velocity and change in velocity and shaping the player experience. From leveling systems in MMOs to weapon balancing in action games, every tweak in Delta V can lead to drastic shifts in gameplay. Join us on this journey to uncover the secrets behind those sudden shifts and balanced gaming progression!
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#ExtraCredits #Gaming #GameDesign

[@extracredits]

Play Cell to Singularity for free on Steam, iOS and Android: 2ly.link/1vyXZ Thanks for Watching!

[@danielsantiagourtado3430]

You guys are the Best 😊😊😊

[@Joeballs187]

This reminds me of the power creep people talk about often in Shonen jump anime

[@Joeballs187]

​@danielsantiagourtado3430 yes for real you are so great

[@Joeballs187]

At 5:50 is that the Xbox Accessibility features or the controls with odd inputs

[@NexasXellerk]

Thank you for recommending and telling us the developers actually really care about it. I put it down soon after it released and forgot about it and could never find it again.

[@DylanOtruba]

I love using the Physics concept of Jerk to explain this. To clarify, you do feel acceleration. When a car is accelerating at a constant rate, you feel that as a constant pressure, pushing you back into your seat. That is also how we experience gravity; a constant push towards the ground, caused by the constant acceleration exerted by the planet. Jerk is when that rate of acceleration is changing; so when someone slams on the brakes, or accelerates at differing rates, you feel that as a changing pressure. The change in the force you feel is due to the amount of jerk.

[@kaltaron1284]

To further clarify, you also don't feel acceleration but force. Thankfully our mass isn't zero so the two correlate. The chain of derivatives (and integrals in the other direction) goes distance over time, speed, acceleration, jerk.

[@Gorm169]

@@kaltaron1284 You mean distance, not "distance over time" (which is speed)?

[@Tenadarii]

My favorite is to show people the continuation of derivatives after Jerk.... Snap, Crackle and Pop.

[@kaltaron1284]

@@Tenadarii You will probably have to explain the joke to most people or are those three still popular somewhere?

[@johnnydarling8021]

>"I dreamt I was a giant, but everything else was to scale." >"Then how did you know you were a giant?" >"I was wearing size 1,000,000 pants."

[@_korbo_]

"wind resistance was a bitch"

[@AdmiralArmada]

using a capitol D for delta just hurts (instead of the greek letter or lowercase, which is what math does)

[@HoxTop]

D is sometimes used to denote a derivative which fits the usage in this video

[@GomesNia]

​@@HoxTop He reads it as "delta" though

[@colinjustice420]

Physics major here with a fun fact. The derivative of Jerk is called Snap, the derivative of Snap is call Crackle, and the derivative of Crackle is called Pop. These are real physics terms.

[@nomukun1138]

Lol. What's the real-world application for the sixth derivate of position with respect to time?

[@trevinbeattie4888]

1→60→70 - I know you’re calling out WoW for being jerky without actually pointing to WoW. 😅

[@extracredits]

😉

[@TheAserghui]

Counterpoint: 60-70 I felt like I earned it, with plenty to do at lvl 70. While the following expansion to lvl 80 felt too easy, done in a few days, with nothing to keep my interest except a lot of grind quest that made the game feel like a part time job for 2 hours a day, minimum

[@majorfrostbyte7022]

I've been trying to figure out why I'm so frustrated with Monster Hunter Now. I think this is it. All my equipment is at 5:5 but getting gold mats is incredibly hard (lucky/unlucky), so upgrading my equipment has ground to a standstill. After a bit, you just start asking yourself, "what's the point of continuing to try?"

[@drillerdev4624]

Backtracking (for example in metroidvanias help you notice how much stronger you've become. Then again, good metroidvanias usually level up your character through skills (that you need to master), rather than number crunching. Which is more difficult to implement, but much more satisfying. On the other hand, every RPG hero comes from weaksville, and any smooch from the other side of the globe could become emperor of your region if only they were more proclive to travel.

[@lorenzmaut3708]

In dark souls many parts of the game is to face a wall and get over that with levels, skill and weapon upgrades. Certain builds are going to have easy opportunities to get more damage, like just using a heavier weapon or putting more armor, other builds are going to struggle and require more experience and it's going to be more of a planned trip rather than a learning curve.

[@calvin7330]

Also some builds have power spike points where you finally get a certain weapon or spell, or you get enough stats to wield said weapon/spell. There are also explicit jerk points where increasing an attribute gives you way fewer stats

[@TheKarishi]

One of the things your own example brought right NEXT to the spotlight but not quite into it: Part of what makes Jerk difficult to balance for is that your acceleration is (in many games BY DESIGN) operating on several axes, some of which you as a player have direct control over. If we look at, say, Path of Exile, there's a pile of methods of gaining power. Your damage per button press and therefore monster death per button press is a result of x * y * z at the very least, ability damage * equipment effects * level grid effects. The disparity between a cleverly planned build and a "slap together whatever I pick up" build is multiple orders of magnitude, on purpose. And in those cases the objective/solution is to give the players the means to find their own balancing point, whether that means adaptive difficulty, a Hades-style system of a la carte debuffs, or challenge zones like PoE or Warframe have set up as their endgame. You allow the clever players to go WAY below 1:1 on hits/kill, and only get back up to that 3:1 ratio in the wild world of Steel Path or 15 Heat or Challenge Rifts.

[@templetonf]

You forgot your Δ in "Delta V"

[@SageWon-1aussie]

Helps you to not confuse design choices with laws of physics heya

[@DaikoruArtwin]

MMORPGs are known for having super grindy leveling curves, and quite many of them got private servers with flat exp multipliers. But that actually creates a weird phenomenon: You climb through the Delta V super quickly and you feel that bump even stronger. So somehow, even though you are objectively leveling up many times faster, you still feel like the game is grindy.

[@OfficialJanky]

A great example of this concept is Terraria! When you eventually prepare to beat the wall of flesh, you will have likely reached your maximum HP at that point in the game, and you'll feel like you're on top of the world. Then, once you venture down to the pits of hell and beat the wall of flesh, the game transitions to hard mode, and the game that made you feel unstoppable suddenly brings you crashing back down to being as vulnerable as a baby bird.

[@Stratelier]

My favorite RPG fun fact: In the Pokemon main series, if two Pokemon of the same level use the same moves against each other, they will deal roughly the same _percent_ damage to each other independent of what that level actually is. This is because of how damage (and stats) are calculated: * "Attack" multiplies the damage dealt to an opponent (obviously). * "Defense" inversely multiplies (divides) the damage dealt to an opponent. * Both Attack and Defense scale linear with Level. Thus, when scaling a battle to level X or Y or whatever, these effects mostly cancel each other out. * Actual damage dealt is _itself_ scaled linear with an attacker's Level. * Maximum HP also scales linear with Level. Thus, when scaling a battle to level X or Y, these effects _also_ cancel each other out!

[@llaffer]

Reminds me of early EverQuest when every 5 levels was a "hell level" that took about twice the XP as you'd expect based on the previous 4's "delta" in order to level. Then that first level post-hell level seemed to be very fast in comparison. They eventually did even it out so the XP required for every 5 levels was overall unchanged, but slowed down the previous 4 a bit while decreasing the XP required for the 5th so that delta acceleration is more smooth.

[@bellehogel8665]

I love how the O&S fight in Dark Souls 1 is synonymous for road block

[@Flameo326]

Of course, an important point to make is that Jerk is often necessary for games because if they have no jerk at all, then everything feels very samey. The battles in the Tutorial are just as hard as the battles in end-game and that can often cause player burnout. Jerk is necessary for enhance player experience.

[@flameboy5096]

as a lover of both whiplash and darksouls, this video was incredible

[@Babbleplay]

Darkest Dungeon has a high Jerk Factor. Most of the points that stop people dead and caused numerous to lose interest are big, specific event bosses, with nasty mechanics that only apply in that fight.

[@Shearluck_Holmes]

Any D&D GMs out there go aaah yes the level 5 moment.

[@TheShortNeckWonder]

Calculus truly is inescapable...

[@kaltaron1284]

So is Physics.

[@deltamico]

Use backslash \

[@geologist1235]

For Tower Defense games, the analog to velocity would probably be the increase in average rate enemies enter the track each round. The analog to acceleration would then be simply the increase in that increase each round. But it is actually more complex than that given that different enemy archetypes can move at different speeds. The interim between enemies entering is just one factor. Instead, thinking about it in terms of the temporal distance in relation to each enemy and the temporal distance of each enemy to their goal might be more applicable. BTW temporal distance (spatial distance divided by velocity) is the metric that seems the most applicable because 1) the temporal distance between enemies relates to how long those enemies will stay within the range of a defending tower and how many "shots" (damage ticks) the tower will be able to inflict the enemies with over that spatial range, and 2) because the temporal distance between each enemy and the goal describes how long the towers have to destroy that enemy. Velocity could be subdivided based on AOE towers and Single-Target Towers. With a game like Bloons TD, this consideration is simplified since the invader (bloon) speed curve is well-defined and centered around pink bloons with the higher the level above pink or the lower the level below pink corresponding to a decrease in invader speed (ignoring DDT's and Boss Blimps [& optional golds] added in BTD6). This puts into focus how slowing and immobilizing towers (the ice and glue monkeys for BTD)

[@TheMerchant3773]

Ultrakill does a really good job and handling the v and dv situation by introducing an enemy that seems way harder than the rest of the enemies, lets you struggle with it for a bit, then gives you a weapon in a later level that that enemy has a weakness to or was designed around how that enemy works

[@isaacthek]

Don't forget that you have more levers to adjust than damage output! Enemy speed and abilities can be great levers to distinguish one area from another without requiring the damage output to jump up heavily, and changing that curve doesn't feel as jerky as altering hits per enemy.

[@danielsantiagourtado3430]

Love these videos guys! Thanks 🎉🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤

[@Tuss36]

A bit late to edit it in, but I do remember your Breakpoints video being a great illustration of this concept for that middle example you provided.The numbers don't often matter so much as their execution. You could be doing a million damage, but if things are dying in three hits, it's the same as when you were level 3, and so it's the hits-to-kill, not the number, that needs focusing on for the actual feel (though the numbers are their own factor in a way of course)

[@CallerRagnarok]

WoW was referenced here but my brain goes to Final Fantasy XI where once you passed level 50, suddenly the experience points required to level up detonated. Up until that point, you would need an additional 100-200 exp required per level to reach the next level. So for an example, leveling to 25 would take 5200 exp, and to 26 would take 5300. And so forth. But once you hit 51, you started needing an additional 1000-2000 per level, requiring more the closer you got to the level 75 cap at the time. In a game where you got a capped 200 exp per kill -- 300 if your party was capable of rapidly defeating enemies well above your level back to back to "chain" them -- and where most "good" parties averaged around 3k-4k exp per hour, and where you lost around 10% of the amount of exp required to level if you were killed...yeah before they added experience point bonuses and made it easier to chain, to say the leveling grinded to crawl at this point is one heck of an understatement. It made leveling up an achievement in and of itself. The game isn't like that now, though!

[@Ryu_D]

Thank you for the video.

[@pieterfaes6263]

Well if you want to be sciencey, you could have said 'dv' is commonly called 'a', so you could get Newton on board (F=m*a). That way you also can explain why jerk relates to the change of force exerted on you. (In the car example, mass stays +/- the same so it works out.) Or why Smaug hits you like a bloody truck.

[@auroreinara7322]

Any Tom Scott fans should know what Jerk is.

[@Lightmagician60]

1:25 if you're going to make Lv119>120 take 3 hours. it should be "worth" 3 hours as well. spending that much for like a 1~10% stat rise is going to feel awful 4:47 rather then making the jump from 15 HP to 45 HP if had it continue as normal, as as soon as the enemies reach 18 HP (the next step in the scaling) they require 2 hits for the "Rewarded player" to kill it won't be until 33 HP that you get back to 3 hits. so rather then changing the whole curve, change the impact the "Powerful weapon" had since the 15 Dmg weapon was going to be 2 hits anyway in the next area (15>18HP) you can make it deal 10 Dmg rather then 15. making it still a reward, and now it returns to normal Curve at 21 HP which isn't as long, but you never touched the stat curve for enemies. Optional Rewards should be impactful but not Reshape the game.

[@postapocalypticnewsradio]

PANR has tuned in.

[@DaniilVodopian]

Delta V is written dV , traditionally

[@thomaskuzma4360]

5:20 is that an onion knight? i feel there are LAYERS to this weeks essay

[@shada0]

I've been applying narrative design to gameplay & I'm really starting to question just level up to deal with everything it feels flat. Varying up the difficulty to force the player to think of different solution to get around unique obstacle, like here I'll get killed so it's best to stealth & if the player needs to back track their then at a higher level so they can just run through (Dark Soul's poison bog). In storytelling failure is used to force the protagonist to think outside the box, IE Luke Skywalker get's his ass kicked by Vader, so in the final encounter Luke appeals to Vader's humanity despite everyone telling him not to

[@deeps6979]

2:04 Oh good. I didn't have to explain the joke. :)

[@mage1over137]

Here I thought he was actually going to talk about the acceleration derivative when I saw the Jerk Principle.

[@SonicSanctuary]

yeah man, you wanna get a few levels before you fight Margit. Go to the weeping peninsula, its where you can find both the claymore and the zweihander.

[@sirloin869]

You prayed up; stay prayed up: hey,you prayed up?...

[@ICountFrom0]

Beyond Jerk, you have Snap, Crackle, and Pop.

[@TechJolt3d]

High jerk may make the player's bones snap with a crackle and their joints pop out with a pop.

[@typemasters2871]

Reminds me of Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon I manage to get through two or three dungeons with no difficulty, and then I hit a wall of difficulty with a dungeon that I have to try multiple times to clear Ended up quitting the game because I was at a difficult story dungeon but I was not able to stock up on items that would help me clear the dungeon (I.E. I could use the items I have in storage but with no method of replenishing those items, if I end up fainting in that dungeon then I loose all my items and then I am stuck with no option to use any items at all)

[@delongjohnsilver7235]

I think there is something to explore with jerk and cinematics or level progression absent from number scaling. For example, I’m playing Alan Wake 2 and I’ve made it to the retirement home (if you know you know) and I can tell you I’m feeling some major jerk that isn’t related to enemy or gear design

[@Drraagh]

First: When you brought out the Jerky Jerks... is it wrong that I was waiting for a 'Jerky Boys' reference in the art from that point onwards? Second: You could also have games where the weapon has no impact on the damage. In Ultima 3, for example, Richard Garriott commented that the weapon damage code did not factor into anything, so you just kept doing more damage as you levelled up... but weapon choice never factored in. You just did more damage and it felt right.

[@stevenorrington473]

Every time you say delta V I think of it in the spaceflight context. Funny what Kerbal space program does to you

[@brockmckelvey7327]

If I can control the change in difficulty in the game I'm playing, does that make *me* the Jerk?

[@chebikitty5566]

Ive felt sometimes the curve gor leveling sometimes is the worst in the middle of the curve. For example I was playing Palworld recently and i got to level 18 and the leveling slowed to a crawl until I hit about lvl 25 when all of a sudden it felt like it sped up again. Ive felt this before ia other games, the middle of the curve just doesnt get as much attention as other points ao i think it has the most moments where the game theoretically slams on its breaks.

[@alexandredesouza3692]

How could this principle be applied to TTRPGs?

[@ChrisKetcherside]

As a FromSoftware fan I aprove

[@milliequick1271]

What is kloogmath?

[@Artista_Frustrado]

2:32 and that's why you wear your seatbelt, kids... and yes that does apply if you're in the backseat

[@UnrealityZero]

Change in acceleration is jerk Change in jerk is snap Change in snap is crackle Change in crackle is pop Snap crackle pop

[@_korbo_]

Well I don't know about regular games, but in mmos? I kinda enjoy the jerk. When you get to the point where levels take more effort you're like "Oh I'm in the Hard mode now" and it sort of gives the whole game a new taste, every level means something entirely different because you, and everyone, knows that the difference between 55 and 60 is not even comparable to 60 and 65. probably depends on the game but in general, I don't necessarily hate it.

[@TheLordDracula]

I liked the Whiplash reference at the beginning of the video.

[@FighterFigger]

I don't get it - with 3 minutes DV and starting at 5 minutes from lvl-1 to lvl-2, I always end up with like 6 hours from lvl-119 to lvl-120. Could someone please point out what I'm missing here? Thank you. :-)

[@Verchiel_]

This feels like a very Borderlands kind of topic. The constant linear stat scaling with the fairly common jerk

[@EmmanuelEytan]

Um... When I saw "The Jerk Principle" I tought, "Ah, yes. The acceleration of the acceleration." And when I saw the start of the explanation, it was clearly going to how dV was going to change, which is about the actual jerk. And I am NOT a physics major. I'm just a drama major who is curious about stuff. (And if KZbin says I didn't actually watch the video, it's because I watch on Nebula.)

[@soccerandtrack10]

Im useing axes for dark souls 2, they get harder with the flame tower place.

[@KiiXii]

Take a shot every time he says jerk

[@Querian]

wow, I've always preferred games like rainbow six siege which is hell to play. But now it makes allot more sense why I did.

[@datuputi777]

It's bad principle enemy should never scale with player progress. It should be that when you get stronger you feel strong and it becomes rarer to find a challenging opponent. Also opposite should be the case when you're weak everything should feel to powerful.

[@kierannurmi5488]

Isn't this the 1>3>2 principle dressed up differently?

[@SageWon-1aussie]

More about how the 1-3-2 principle can be implemented.

[@chadjones1266]

Thanks Ash's Aaron

[@TJ-vh2ps]

Henceforth, every time I see V or dV I will imagine a tortoise 🐢 on a skateboard 🛹 strapped to a rocket 🚀 😂

[@MDSunglasses]

1. I have played "cell to singularity" and it certainly is not a good example. It's Dv is certainly unbalanced 😂. There jerk-moments. I do not recommend this game. 2. Awesome video ❤

[@endplanets]

Goku: I don't get it.

[@Uni790]

Wargaming should see this, lol.

[@lancemckenzie1074]

Guild wars 2 mastery levels.

[@kaijuge6934]

I am one of the physics majors who got the joke.

[@_jonathancollins]

I disagree heavily on cell to singularity. Some components are balanced alright, but others are awful. Unless it's received a major overhaul since I last played, the solar system component takes forever to progress. Of course, as an idle game that relies on in-game currencies to mitigate the waiting time, this feels like an unethical way to incentivize spending real world money to make progress.

[@Roccondil]

Why does this video feel like a re-upload?

[@flamshiz]

oh I've played cell to singularity! it's pretty cool

[@Diceyed]

Look ive played Kerbal space program, i know my way around ∆v

[@LittleTinyHoare]

An example of a great game that does this poorly is Divinity: Original Sin 2. Brilliant, but the leveling curve makes the best items from 2 levels ago irrelevant next to a random contemporary item, in a 20 level game. Not a good feeling.

[@josecarlosmoreno9731]

Or... we could just not use leveling in game design and focus on making it a coherent whole rather than series of number go up progression. Add more mechanics or ways to utilize existing mechanics instead or just make the game loop good enough to not need progression.

[@ace5762]

1:25 Runescape has entered the chat

[@bubbles581]

The first hard game i ever beat was mega man 2. The end credits were soooo worth it

[@cloud99337]

mm i feel this is way to simplified

[@_xeere]

I've always wondered why games bother with this random numerical stuff. I think it's to copy TTRPGs, but without the RP aspect, you are just fiddling with a bunch of numbers for no reason. And as a new player, it's a terrible experience. Often the first real decision a game asks of you is which state you want to put skill points into. How am I supposed to know that? Sometimes this happens before gameplay even starts (happened to me in Fallout NV). I don't know what any of these stats do or how important they are and now I have to I'm gonna permanently assign points to them. It's stupid and off-putting.

[@frogsinpants]

I know you don't want to alienate non-mathematicians with scary symbols, but I take psychic damage every time you say "delta" and write "D". The good news is I didn't suffer through the whole video because I died instantly to the psychic damage from the first example, where the "change in velocity" from 1/5 level per minute to 1/8 level per minute is stated to be +3.

[@SageWon-1aussie]

We make design choices look science-y! Actually, I find the attempts to make things look science-y has its own level of jerk. Still, the video did a good analysis of the design choices, and why they do (and don't) work. Not work like in physics... Oh gods, the psychic damage goes up +3!

[@fuzzyhair321]

Then when you feel the jerk, you go. Well im skipping past you, when you learn how to skip areas you are gud

[@abigfavor]

Hard game feels good because of Jerk? Oh my

[@AidanRatnage]

Why not just call it acceleration?

[@hebl47]

It's CHANGE of acceleration.

[@AidanRatnage]

@@hebl47 it it was it'd be Δa but it's Δv which is acceleration. Just like Δd (change in position) is v.

[@hillary5998]

🤔 *promosm*

[@jessicacarpenter871]

Who ever is reading this... have a great day! 🌼😄

[@ceulgai2817]

Nah, just because you didn't get the joke doesn't make it any less funny. That kind of thinking is how we get bottom-of-the-barrel lowest-common-denominator style comedy and no real innovation.

[@MaxIzrin]

"363 hours... Yikes" Amateur. Filthy casual, even.

[@emi-ber]

You spend half the video explaining power creep

[@SageWon-1aussie]

It is a very important balancing issue, from a design perspective, with a massive impact on Ux.