I have sections with bold so you can read or skip them to get to the good parts of interest to you.
[Establishing credibility/experience] I’ve been gaming non stop since Pacman in 1980, and when I say nonstop, I mean non stop. [I eat, breathe and live for my next video game session](www.crystalfighter.com/a.html) even old boring Atari2600 I forced myself to push beyond the boredom and practice hours every day I could. Video games are my life’s passion and they use every art form man has known and some man hasn’t discovered yet so they are a very noble pursuit. When someone tells you video game design/coding is for children, they have no clue what they’re talking about. Video game development is harder than business software development and business software development is often vastly harder than rocket science. So hats off to my fellow game designers/coders, you endure disrespect from society while doing something more intellectually demanding than anything but enduring pain, which frankly, we sometimes experience mentally as we languish getting things done. This concludes the preface.
[Not dissing Skyrim/Oblivion for attention] I open with a bit of background because it sounds pretentious to say,”I don’t like a design in one of the most popular games ever known to man.”. In Pittsburgh where I live, there’s always sports fans who will trash talk players and coaches if they slip up just a bit even if they’re a legend like Ben Roethlisberger. There’s a contrarian who will hot take dissing popular things just because it attracts attention. I’m not being a Pittsburgh jag contrarian, and why I established credibility before beginning this long odd odyssey into game design about a journey in space MMO who’s seeks to capture and take hold of players’s live path for a long time and keep with them something that goes on into the sojourn of eternity. Long>Long>Long>Long>Longcat
[Why I was off put by Oblivion monsters getting stronger by players leveling] The classic RPG we were trained since Ultima 1, Final Fantasy 1, Pool of Radiance Boxed sets, Legacy of the Ancients, Act Raiser, you name it, is to grind to win. If things get tough, just level your character, get more equipment, and you can take on the big bosses.
The idea that monsters leveled at a rate along side the player meant the certainty of powering past their strength is not there.
Is it even worth leveling? I play RPGS in part to get powerful and come beat up the monsters who bullied my hero earlier. *“Remember me? I’m not the one you thought you knew back in high school.”***
And what about game design laziness? Are there harder dungeon levels, or did the game designers just make the whole world with the same monsters and it becomes challenging because of number/positioning of them?”*
In the end, I didn’t give these games a chance. I should have seen for myself, but I was involved in my own projects at the time(you know the drill, no time for my stuff, so I have less time for your stuff).
[A joke and one thing I liked about Oblivion’s leveling system] A few years ago, I saw comedic genius in Oblivion tho. My aunt had it on Xbox and I’m there waiting for New Years with nothing to do so I reluctantly start it. I’m not sure if this is true or not, but it seemed if I leveled jump, it counted as powering up the monsters. As a player, I see that I level up a skill by using it and I like that. It reminices of Wasteland and I have an RPG I never published that friends love that uses leveling up skill on use. It’s a surprise grind and players love it. I love it as a player at least.
So I see myself leveling by jumping… So I do the natural thing and start bunny hopping around the world like The Flying Wallendas. I think,”Man how high can I jump? I wonder if it gets ridiculous like Asheron’s Call 1 and I can jump over mountains.” I started getting stoked about my jump leveling. And again, I’m not sure if this happened or I just thought it happened, but by leveling jump, I feel like the monsters started curb stomping me and killing me faster. At first I thought it was unfair, then I realized I was hopping around the game like The Easter Bunny and decided I deserved to get wacked for it and laughed and started a new character.
[Why I think my hand was forced to monsters getting stronger along side players] Why do I think I must use this system to some degree? Now you must know my game’s backstory.
My game is an open ended space trading game like Elite Dangerous.
Space is boring. And I mean really really boring. Unless you spice it with aliens and anomalies and other weird stuff, it’s just rocks, gas and waiting to get to more rocks and gas.
I added random events to unborify space. Some aliens attack. Some trade. Some just shoot the breeze. Some offer quests like mail delivery… But some random events are actually… The core story missions. I found it a good idea to put core story missions and quests in random events, instead of on a static location in a million star galaxy… For the odds of finding a quest giver in a million stars with many planets with many meters of exploration… Well you have a better chance of finding a needle in a haystack in that one King’s Quest game. I say this story line/quest progression INSIDE random events happening every 30-120seconds is one of the core things that leads me to my hand being forced.
So your random events happen anywhere in space, outer space, aeronebula, aquanebula, populated zones, desolate zones,asteroid fields, orbits of planets, different star ages, doesn’t matter where you’re at, you get events. Now events will be biased on where you’re at. You will get attacked by more space whales or sharks with laser beams on their heads in aquanebula. There’s more chance for herbs to be harvested in aeronebula where there’s plants growing in space. Newer stars are larger more mineral rich for drops like Master of Orion did. Older Stars have more native civilization encounters. The events happen everywhere, but where you’re at determines the rolls.
I have some linear progression towards tougher zones and tougher enemies, but lets design as if I didn’t: I’d fall into the trap of having to gauge my player’s power for the encounter, right? I think my hand was forced but maybe not.
[Discussion on how to go about implementing monsters getting stronger along side players or not at all] My game is soft perma death so you’ll be in the starter zone from time to time after your gigundous fleet got destroyed as it failed to conquer the galaxy and crush it under your will by a bunch of yahoo resistance fighters who teamed up. Jerks. Why can’t people just let people rule galaxies with a tyrannical grip in peace?
Players can start the game with quite the more power than your average level 1.
So lets examine ways of making things challenging with enemies:
1) Power them up like Oblivion, but not oppressive, so the player’s rate of power out strips the enemy so you feel progression… Yet as you get higher level, random chance opens the bell curve of difficulty so you might face overwhelming odds to avoid or overcome… Aka level 1 you’re 1v1 ships… Level 30, your fleet of 40 ships might smoke a lot of encounters 40v1 or 40v20… But the bell curve may open up to face 100 ships + a few capital ships in which case you gotta book it or be very tactical in your orders to your fleet to take the interceptors safely before deciding how to bombard the capital ships. So actually that seems like a conclusion I’m satisfied with just thinking on it… Low level is more predicable,but higher level opens up the bell curve of unpredictability in both ways… And you can still have bully monsters go,”OH NO! NOT YOU! Forget everything I said to you when you were weak. I mean, didn’t mean to call you weak. Pleaaasse don’t shoot me!” because their rate of powering up is less along side a low bell curve roll.
2) Another way to make things challenging with enemies is just have the bell curve and NO powering up of low level monsters. NO Oblivion/Skyrim, just an ever increasing roll table accessible by your player’s level and fleet power. I still don’t like it because it is hackneyed that they can get more exotic encounters by level/number of ships alone… So maybe I want it so you have things like Magic/Item find in diablo2, but are encounter finds…. Like a rock that attracts a certain alien, or maybe artifacts to peer deeper into the abyss and it peers back at you(harder encounters), hmm, actually its nice to talk about that, I like that. I don’t like hackneyed stuff,”OH I HAVE 50 ships in my fleet, now I can encounter Cerebrus to get fire elemental drops!” I like my fantasy magic worlds where anything can happen to make sense, dammit. Ok, so I’m settling on some “encounter find” items,which is awesome since its one more thing too aspire to. Always want to give players to aspire to(rule #1 of very long epic games, look at Archmages in Bard’s Tale1, Rings of Jordan in D2, Jedis in Starwars Galaxy, Level max in mmos, housing in mmos, let players know what they want to achieve earlier, and make em chase it, they like this.) Encounter find items, that’s a solid conclusion + Bell curved encounters based on level (natural find trouble.. Heck find trouble could be a skill). Good game design session. I hope some of you guys have something to add.
[Super conclusion:satisfaction]
Just talking through the game design, I settled on a few solutions.
1) Encounter Find: Items/skills/talents that help you get better or worse encounters depending on type of encounter find it is. Find Trouble, Find Trades, Find Quests, etc,or Find all. Find Trouble might not always be a curse as we know where there is big trouble, sometimes there is big l3vvt.
2) If using Oblivion mobs level up with player level, only scale it slightly so the player feels progression.
3) The Bell Curve is the key… Low level players need the ropes and consistency. High level players love freaky unexpected things happening in space they have to deal with. As players level, have more rare things start to be possible.
My game will have classic linearly increasing difficulty power zones as you head towards the Galactic Core. Each concentric ring of the sphere gets harder. There are radiation zones so you can’t warp right to the middle, and there are only certain paths to get into the next zone so you have to find them… They’re normally embargoed with a big fleet demanding tribute or will just blast you,so you gotta pay, blow up the boss fight as a sign you’re ready or sneak past. If you sneak past it’s tricky though because if you get laden with loot, you’ll fly slower and might not be able to get your loot home to secure in a stash.
I think those three concepts, combined with some classic linear power zones this is satisfactory. I wrote this for conversation though. Anyone else have an idea for a game about acquiring a huge fleet in space, and how to make challenges that would just get blasted by your 100 ships as you laugh or they die too fast for you to notice?
Thank you, and I’m glad to be a part of /r/gamedesign. I find the moderators here know what they’re doing and have great respect for the art which is uncommon so hats off guys, you do respect the indie, unlike lip service other places give.
,GoodNewsJim
