How do you feel about rubber banding as a form of difficulty in racing games?

[Toxi]

This is an honest question sparked by watching the excellent SGDQ 2018 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 200cc speed run by AeonFrodo.



Despite AeonFrodo playing the game at an absurdly high skill level, she actually ends up losing a couple of the races to the AI, and the commentators note this is normal for a few races because of the insane rubber banding, with even the WR at the time actually losing a race. It got me thinking, if the rubber banding in a game is so extreme that even a speed runner who has thousands of hours spent practicing a game can still lose to AI with some bad luck, is that good design? On one hand, it means the AI can be challenging at multiple skill levels, but it also means that there's no feeling of mastery playing through the single player because the AI keeps correcting its challenge in response to your improvements. It reminds me a lot of the conversation about level scaling in RPGs, where some people enjoy it for providing a constant level of challenge while others find it frustrating because skill improvements aren't as impactful.

EDIT: For those unaware of what I mean by rubber banding

 

[BlueShineSpark]

From Nintendo's perspective, it is indeed good design because it was designed to be fun.

 

[Theswweet]

Generally, I don't like it. It's really a gradient though - some implementations are definitely worse than others. IIRC, Kirby Air Ride didn't have rubber-banding? Or at least, it's so minor that it stood out to me as an exception growing up.

 

[Samanosuke Akechi]

I hate it so much. Always have.

 

[Cenauru]

I've played many Mario Karts, and some of them with very weak rubberbanding are so insanely easy to stay in first that they're not fun. The fun from Mario Kart comes from being part of the "blob".

 

[Musubi]

Thats a tricky one right? Cause in racing games the fun is the balancing act of being able to be in first but always feeling like your vulnerable. If you just get first place and stick there within the first lap there isn't much fun to be had at least IMO.

 

[ArnoldJRimmer]

It depends on the type of racing game. An arcadey cart racer, sure, so long as it keeps the game fun.

I dont want to see that in my sim though.

Good racing games will give you a mix of skill levels every race. You then are working at the back ranks, the middle or the front pack, still giving you a sense of fun, challenge and progression.

 

[Ogodei]

Generally, I don't like it. It's really a gradient though - some implementations are definitely worse than others. IIRC, Kirby Air Ride didn't have rubber-banding? Or at least, it's so minor that it stood out to me as an exception growing up.

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I think you're right. If you knew what you were doing you could leave the AI far behind in a way that other games couldn't match, although Air Ride also just had powerups rather than items, nothing to really level the field of play that the CPU could even latch onto.

 

[Bernkastel]

I hate it so much. Always have.

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[famikon]

Hate this.

 

[Mauricio_Magus]

It's terrible.

 

[sleepnaught]

What's rubber banding? AI staying on your ass no matter how well you do?

 

[Toxi]

What's rubber banding? AI staying on your ass no matter how good you do?

Click to shrink...

Yes. AI getting speed boosts when you pull far ahead (And sometimes AI slowing down if you fall behind).

 

[Chaserjoey]

I despise it. If I'm far ahead of the AI, keep it that way.

 

[Coi]

For me it's ok. MK it's a party game, so I don't care about playing it at high skill or having second or last place on some races. It's part of the fun.

 

[Kapryov]

I hate it so so much.

But I understand why it's there, the reasons can make sense, and for a party game like MK I guess you can argue it's even more reasonable... in MP mode. Single player when you're trying to get the trophies though, that's just mean.

On the topic of Mario Kart though, the weapons specifically targeting 1st place already even the playing field some. Rubber banding is overkill.

 

[Xeteh]

I think it is bad design. If I want to be challenged then let me turn the difficulty up. Dominating a race to have the AI cheat to catch up is not fun or challenging. Its just cheap.

 

[ZeroX]

Rubber banding and borderline unavoidable/uncounterable items are so fucking annoying to me. And together? That video was painful to watch. Really hate it.

Never bought the argument for "more fun!", if that were the case it should only apply to local co op or be a toggle. MK is a real nightmare for it.

 

[MegaManTrigger]

Rubberbanding is bullshit, if you mastered the game then you deserve to use your skills to do some great things. It's like if Smash implemented one-sided comeback mechanics in favour of the AI simply because you mastered the abilities and mechanics that come with learning the game. It's bad design to have comeback for no reason other than because the AI is behind. Mario Kart has tons of problems too, particularly with rubberbanding and having horrible item balance relative to your placement. They're overkill in tandem and I fail to see the reason to punish 1st placers so severely. Or better yet, introduce a racing mode where items are properly balanced/simplified and rubberbanding is eliminated.

Diddy Kong Racing really spoiled me because there was actual thought behind the items, and the ability to stack item balloons for more powerful variants. For instance, if you touch one red balloon = a simple missile that takes skill to aim, 2nd red balloon power-up = homing missile, 3rd red balloon power-up = 10 missiles. And these weapons cover tons of elements: blue for boosting, red for projectiles, green for stage hazards, and rainbow for magnetism. Instead of letting the item do the work for you for free, it actually took skill to nail timing and spacing of the item used.

 

[out_of_touch]

Rubberbanding made perfect sense in arcades. Those are long gone. -_-

 

[turbobrick]

I hate it and its dumb. But I also don't really play arcade racing games where this mechanic is usually used.

 

[ichigoww]

It's artificial difficulty
I don't like it

 

[BizzyBum]

It's awful and cheap and needs to die.

If you're skilled at the game you should be rewarded by smoking the AI.

 

[Vargas]

I hate it.

 

[BeaconofTruth]

Depends and while I'm not a fan of it, it isn't the death sentence for a games gameplay necessarily.

It's a way to help the AI stay competitive and keep the pressure on the player. Calling it "artificial difficulty" is mega fucking inane, because one would have to beg the question what wouldn't count as artificial difficulty in a single player game?

That said yeah Mario Kart over does it. Obviously you want to have it set in a way to make sure the player can't coast to the finish half assing it, but there has to be room for the player to skillfully create gaps and create comfortable leads.

Like anything else it's about execution, not necessarily the whole concept.

 

[Rubblatus]

If I wanted to have zero surprises/upsets in my arcade kart racer, I'd stick to Time Trial.

 

[MajesticSoup]

I don't mind it. I always just see AI as pylons between human players.

 

[Siggy-P]

It ruins the entire point. Litteraly, the core concept of racing is destroyed by it.

 

[Jawmuncher]

Rubber Banding is the fucking pits. I enjoyed that easy mode for CTR didn't rely on it.
If you're good enough to make the AI eat your dust, you should be awarded that huge gap.

 

[Meia]

I flat out stopped playing racing games because of it. Remember one experience from an early Burnout game that had popups showing your position and it was literally "Your 20 seconds ahead THEY'RE RIGHT ON YOUR TAIL!".


Never again, don't punish someone for their skill at playing a game. Can't stand Mario Kart for similar reasons(rubber banding + power-up system rewarding bad play).

 

[Zen Hero]

I don't like it. It feels unfair and therefore unpleasant.

I understand the goal to keep the game challenging, but I think it should be possible to design the game in such a way that comeback mechanics are completely above board.

 

[rckvla]

It does make sense when it comes to arcade racer and obviously shouldn't be in realistic or simulation driving games.

 

[Toxi]

I flat out stopped playing racing games because of it. Remember one experience from an early Burnout game that had popups showing your position and it was literally "Your 20 seconds ahead THEY'RE RIGHT ON YOUR TAIL!".

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Burnout 3 has a hilarious example of the AI going so fast it jumped over a boundary and rammed straight into the player, ending a potential WR speed run on the very last lap of the last race.

 

[Huey]

I think it has its place in some arcade racers. The problem is it always falls apart at higher difficulty levels. But there are ways of doing it that are better than others.

 

[Gush]

Don't like it at all.

I'll play games that feature it regardless but I'd always sooner it wasn't present. It's not fun to compete against an advantage that breaks the rules of the game.

 

[Surface]

I hate it , but hey rubber banding causes the penquin in SM64 to fall of track xD

But its very present in NFS 2015 which is still my favorit racing game

 

[krae_man]

There's good rubber banding and bad rubber banding. Screwing up once and having no chance to win a race isn't fun. And having someone knipping at your heels can be fun.

Then there's horrible crap like the rubber banding in Ridge Racer 3DS. If you pass somebody, they are guaranteed to pass you back and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Once I tried to box the top AI racer in and force 3rd through 5th to pass both of us and the game freaked out and stopped me right in my place 200 mph to 0 in a nanosecond and warped the first place AI car 1/3rd of the way down the track.

 

[Lord Vatek]

I think it's fine with items. Less so without them.

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

As many other things, it depends on the game.

A serious racing sim, or a racing game that at least pretends to be serious, would be terrible with rubber-banding AI. It's a game about winning through skill and strategy, and the AI must be good enough to challenge the player fairly, not simply put pressure on them.

In an arcade racer though, where most of the fun is in the getting to the finish line rather than the winning, a rubber-banding AI is great. Nothing is more boring than being so good you always race ahead in solitude, or so bad or unlucky you are stuck in the back with no hope of catching up. When the game has the goal of providing you with fun through the entire race, the AI's goal becomes to put pressure on you - whether it means slowing down so you can catch up, or boosting impossibly to stay on your tail - either way keeping you "in the game", always with the hope for victory and the threat of defeat. It's possible to reduce the required "rubber band strength" by making a game with built-in comeback mechanics - such as Mario Kart - but it's a fundamentally necessary part of the game either way.

 

[Izunavis]

Hate it but understand why it's put in Arcade racers. Even with arcade racers, I feel just increasing the difficulty would be a better replacement imo. I guess you'd lose the random element by doing that though.

 

[MarioW]

As a gamer, I don't mind rubber banding to help make things feel competitive and isn't too strong so as to flip a major advantage back and forth. Last week I played a two player racing game in an arcade with my brother, and it was an amazing great rivalry and experience for every moment that literally came down to the last few seconds.

From the dev side, our studio has made a bunch of racing games, and getting the rubber banding feeling right is quite challenging. Getting it right (and feeling fair) is a lot more involved than just capping the speed of the leader and boosting chasers as you need to take context into account.

 

[Dead Man Typing]

I'd like to see it turned off on higher difficulties but I think it keeps things interesting for the majority of people.

 

[Mitth'raw'nuruodo]

It's awful and bad gamedesign for me in most cases.

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

It sucks just like comeback mechanics in any game. Unless its something like Mario Kart where the whole game is designed around it.

 

[Allan Holdsworth]

I haven't played MK8 yet, but in the Mario Karts where you can do mini-turbos manually (Double Dash, DS; probably 64 but I haven't played that one extensively) you can get a pretty good lead on the CPU regardless of the rubberbanding. If you don't get hit by multiple blue shells, that is.

 

[Pellaidh]

Poll didn't have the real option I wanted to vote for: it always sucks. Not usually, always. I can't think of a single time it wasn't absolutely terrible. Completely ruins any idea of a challenge, since when you win it was because the AI let you, and when you lose it was because you were playing too well. What kind of logic is that?

I can sort of see the logic of having comeback mechanics in multiplayer games (even if I still don't like them), but in singleplayer they make no sense to me.

In terms of alternatives, I really like how the Codemasters F1 series does it. Before a race, you get several stages of practice/qualification with preset times you have to beat for every corner and also the entire track. This lets you practice the track until you're good enough to actually be competitive against the AI, ensuring that you don't just fall way behind and need rubberbanding to catch up. On the other hand, if you consistently get too far ahead, you can always just turn up the difficulty.

 

[Sabretooth]

Rubberbanding is fun until you lose because of it.

 

[Ryuhza]

Rubber Banding is the fucking pits. I enjoyed that easy mode for CTR didn't rely on it.

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CTR doesn't rely on it at all, even at higher difficulties. It has a different method where AI racers have a variety of set race times that they aim for, and they'll get artificial speed boosts to make up for lost time (if they get wiped out, for instance), but they won't go faster just because you the player are overtaking them skillfully. It shares some aspects with rubber-banding, but doesn't punish skillful play. In fact, it encourages skillful play, since it means offensive items serve only as a temporary benefit that will be lost if the player doesn't capitalize--using pure racing ability--on the advantage they've gained.

 

[Jawmuncher]

CTR doesn't rely on it at all, even at higher difficulties. It has a different method where AI racers have a variety of set race times that they aim for, and they'll get artificial speed boosts to make up for lost time (if they get wiped out, for instance), but they won't go faster just because you the player are overtaking them skillfully. It shares some aspects with rubber-banding, but doesn't punish skillful play. In fact, it encourages skillful play, since it means offensive items serve only as a temporary benefit that will be lost if the player doesn't capitalize--using pure racing ability--on the advantage they've gained.

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Now that's cool, I didn't know how the other difficulties were since I only did adventure on easy and then jumped into online.

 

[Rendering...]

Rubber banding is trash and I hate it. One of the greatest joys in racing games is gaining a major lead and then cruising to victory.