Introduction + Brief Overview

Gun Soccer is a game where players use guns to shoot balls into goals, like rocket league but without cars. The device that players play our game on is a controller, and we are a multiplayer game as well. After completing our Alpha prototype, our group conducted several playtesting sessions with the help of the course’s organization, we performed many iterations on the prototype to enhance our gameplay.

In the following pages, we will present to you the report of 3 playtesting sessions that we’ve managed to conduct. Within each session, we will showcase first the demographic, then the summary and analysis of feedback, as well as the resulting updates we implemented in the game.

The most important findings that we’ve received throughout the playtesting sessions can be summarized into the following bullet points:

• The ability to aim at the wanted target strongly tied into how playable/enjoyable our prototype was perceived. The ease of controlling was the first thing that was noticed when unattainable, but the most “taken for granted” when it worked well.
  • The sensitivity of the controllers impacted the ability to aim, thus we opted for a dynamic sensitivity that was adjusted according to distance from ball.
  • A “target lock” was also implemented to further aid the player to aim.
• The ability to freely move around the map was also crucial to good gameplay. To obtain so, we fine-tuned our player’s movement speed with the playtester’s feedback every iteration.
• When the player couldn’t know where the ball was off-screen, this led to a great deal of time during the gameplay spent looking around to find the ball, which damaged the gaming experience.

Going into playtesting

Main objectives + set up

These were the main objectives that we had beforehand which we wanted to make sure were delivered by our game to our playtesters.

• The enjoyment that our game could bring (was it fun for the players to play)
• The ease of controls using a controller to play the game
• If the general mechanisms of the game were easy to understand
  • The objective was to score into goal
  • The moves that the player could perform was moving, jumping and shooting
• If the player had control over what they wanted to do.
  • The ability to aim
  • The ability to move around the map
• UI, Music, Art

Xbox controllers were used for in-person playtests, while the online playtesters used their own devices, which included ps4 controllers. During the playtest, we had one person conduct the test and others observe and took notes of their behaviours. We also asked for the playtester’s feedback through our survey before and after the session.

About the report

Within the reports, we will use red font to highlight issues of the highest priority.

Playtesting Reports by Session

Playtest March 6th, 2-4 pm Game Design Club

The version of the game tested: The original game that we’ve submitted before Alpha.

Description of playtesters: We had ~6 game-design enthusiasts or first-year computer science students that playtested our game and completed the survey. Within these playtesters, 80% of them responded with a rating of 1 or 2 out of 5 on their comfortability with a controller, this can be seen in Figure 1.1 below. 

Figure 1.1 Feedback of playtesters’ comfortability with controllers

Summary of feedback: 

The feedback that was given by the playtesters can be mainly summarized into the following points:

1. About game mechanics
   1. Difficulty aiming with controllers
   2. Slow player movement speed compared to the speed of the ball. A player also suggested that “maybe a dash or sprint would be good.”
   3. Difficult tracking the location of the ball when the ball is offscreen. People kept asking “wait where did the ball go”
2. About UI
   1. Latency in the weapon selection menu
   2. The confirmation indicator (blue to green circle)during weapon selection was not noticed by players
   3. There wasn’t any indicator on the two screens for the player to know which team

(red/blue) they belonged to

1. The scores of the two teams were too far apart from each other for the player to see at once

Analysis of feedback:

• The frequent complaint of not being able to aim easily could be due to our high sensitivity on the controller joystick at first. Thus we iterated and changed the sensitivity during the test as we went. Looking at the demographic of the playtesters (Figure 1.1), the players’ unfamiliarity with controllers can also play an effect on the difficulty of aiming in the game.
• For player movement, the reason the players are asking for the ability to sprint is due to them wanting to move faster. We can modify the normal movement speed of the players to be faster to suit our gameplay. 
• As for the UI issues that we’ve received, we will eliminate the confusion brought to players by updating our design.

Resulting updates:

1. Aiming controllers changed: 
   1. Made sensitivity lower.
2. Bumped up player movement speed instead of adding the ability to dash
3. Fixed latency in the weapon selection menu (UI user experience greatly lowers the first impressions of the user of the game)
4. Added scoreboard in the middle, and borders around player screens to indicate which team they are on. The changes are seen in Figure 1.2 and Figure 1.3 below

Figure 1.2: Interface before update      Figure 1.3: Interface after update

Playtest March 7th, 2-4 pm Professor, TA and classmates

The version of the game tested: Alpha with only updated player movement speed and sensitivity; 

Description of playtesters: The playtesters for this session were mainly classmates, the professor and the TA who are more informed on the game design processes and principles. They also were ~40% more experienced in terms of the number of years in gameplay and comfortability with controllers compared to that of the first playtesting session. 

 Summary of feedback:

• Movement speed improvement: 

Since we’ve iterated the movement speed during the last playtest, we found that for the next playtest we had an improvement in the players’ opinions on navigation within the game. This can be seen in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1: Averages of player’s responses to navigation for different playtests

• About game mechanics

The intuitive trigger button is not the trigger button. One of our playtesters (Professor Steve cough cough) said:” It’s funny how the trigger on the control is not the actual trigger”

• Hard to aim 

Different users mentioned different things feeling “off” as some mentioned weird perspectives and bullet trajectories.

A playtester suggested that we base the aiming sensitivity on the closeness of the ball.

Figure 2.2: Averages of players’ responses to aiming

• “Where did the ball go?” was also still frequently asked when the ball was hit offscreen. 

 Analysis of feedback:

1. Solving the hard-to-aim problem
   1. NOT changing weapons to hit-scan due to bullet trajectory (weird physics is fun and core of gun soccer, can’t change that)
      1. Those that were complaining about perspective/weird bullet trajectory at the end were complaining because they didn’t know why it felt hard to aim in the game.
   2. Sensitivity is a “personal” liking, those more familiar with the game/ppl can get used to it if played longer, but we should indeed accommodate 
   3. Thus, we needed to somehow help the players aim without taking away the fun physics of gun soccer.
2. Players not being able to know where the ball is at all times hinders their ability to focus on the fun part (shooting the ball) in gun soccer. Thus, solving this was crucial and we needed to communicate to the player where the ball is at all times so they feel in control when playing gun soccer.

 Resulting updates to the game:

1. Remapping the shoot button to the actual trigger button on the controller, and also added a controller UI for the reference of players instead of relying on the test conductor’s explanation. 

1. Added target locking to deal with hard-to-aim issues of players

We concluded that this addition won’t break the game since our bullets were not implemented via hit-scan.

1. Added distance-based sensitivity
   1. Shorter distance from ball =  high sense, further = low sense
2. Added ball indicator when the ball is off-screen

Before and after adding a ball indicator arrow that appears when ball is offscreen (pink circle)

Playtest March 16th, 11:05-11:30 am Ubisoft Guests

The version of the game tested: Alpha updated 2.0 (with all updates mentioned from March 6 and 7th playtest, and also implemented visual effects).

Description of playtesters: Our game was played by industry guests from Ubisoft, thus it can be assumed that they have a lot of knowledge about game development, along with an abundance of game critique experience.

Summary of feedback:

• Need tuning for weapons
  • One of our playtesters expressed concerns on the balancing of different types of weapons: “High knockback at the ball seems very overpowered; one seemed to be able to shoot the ball and pray.”
• More on aiming
  • Two guests pointed out it was a little annoying and could be tricky to track the ball when entirely on top, since there was a limit for looking up
  • When using “target lock”, the camera turning to the ball may be too fast, causing disorientation
• Hard-to-aim issue resolved
  • Not noticing a difficult to aim
  • Used locking mechanism, but since no prediction + no hit-scan weapons, won’t break the game (won’t be too op)
• Sound
  • Want more sound feedback for ball bouncing around
  • Also more positive feedback for scoring
• Assets
  • Player gun models (so the player knows what gun they are using when in-game)

Analysis of feedback:

1. Positive feedback of adjusted iteration in aiming sensitivity + aiming in general (with target lock implemented) meant that our effort in aiding players to aim seemed to help eliminate the feeling of being out of control/frustrated during gameplay. One of our guests said: “I didn’t really notice any problems with aiming(sensitivity), that probably means your changes are good.”
2. Visual elements are important, such that:
   1. Using Assets + Sounds to enhance the feedback to players
   2. The camera movement when target locking could cause disorientation
3. Tuning on weapons and making gun stats clear for the player could be helpful
   1. To tune our guns such that they are balanced and offer comparable winning strategies, we have the following two considerations:
      1. Movement speed aids shotgun/short-range players
      2. High knockback sniper is limited by bullet reload rate 
   2. And with a well-designed balanced gun selection, we will also be able to encourage our players to discover different strategies to win, which adds replay value to the game as well.

Resulting updates to the game:

1. Added player gun models

1. Adding all sounds as indicators
   1. To give more feedback to players, enforcing correct and encouraging behaviour
   2. Added different gun shooting sounds to further help the player gauge the weapon that is being used
2. Fixed aiming up angle constraint
3. Tuning/balancing of weapons by fine-tuning their fire rate, knockback force and reload speed.