Scryer
01-22-2010, 11:10 AM
Well, I'm not done letting the ideas flow from my mind, or my reasoned thoughts go to waste on these awesome developers.
1.
What constitutes a skill, ability, and busy work? First, I would like to believe that the skills and abilities that you give every single class is part of one of the most core mechanics in the game - how the player absolutely interacts with the environment in the game. How the character class moves through the game, and how it can overcome any-foe using a combination of those skills and abilities.
2.
What is busy work? Busy work is usual tedious objectives that player has to do in order to progress or gain some type of nominal value. Busy work is also something that is too hard or confusing to the player. So busy work has a few different definitions depending on what aspect of the game you are talking about. What's most important to understand though, is to reduce all manner of busy work.
3.
So lets get into a reasoned discussion about what the human mind can handle and what busy work means to it. Busy work to the human mind means 2 things - either it is overly-tedious, or overly-confusing. The human brain can not process 10 things happening at once, let alone 8 or 7. These numbers may seem arbitrary, but if you can find a game that forces you to do more then 3 or more things at once it becomes very hard very confusing very quickly.
4.
So, how do we reduce this work load on the brain you might ask? By simplifying where something might otherwise be unnecessary and unneeded. However, don't get me wrong, simplification does not mean "boring and repetitive." It means taking the game from a high-level of concept and putting it in prospective so that any player can join in and easily understand the way the game works and how to play it.
5.
So how do we make the learning curve easy for the average player? We introduce abilities and spells slowly at first. Maybe you get your first attack spell, maybe your second spell is a tiny bit more situational, and your third spell a situational passive, and your fourth skill another active ability. Whoa! I've named 4 skills already! There's nothing wrong with having 4 skills on your hot bar, actually, I think you should have 8 or more skills and abilities on your hot bar and 2 on your mouse, at least 3 that are situational, and 3 that are active and 1 self-buffed passive that you can switch to on your mouse if you so desire using tab.
6.
Now wait, let me first put these "Skills and Abilities" into prospective. I'm not ever implying that the player should ever "have" to use all of the abilities, in fact, I believe that in any 1 encounter the player shouldn't have to use more then 4 of the abilities at any given encounter! Does that sound counter-intuitive? Well, maybe, however you can not forget the brains mental capacities. A brain has a hard time doing 4 things at once already, but if you give 2 creatures 1 different ability each the player can use his / her skills and strategic knowledge to counter those abilities!
7.
However the learning curve needs to be very simple - The player should never be forced to think too much at the start of the game because he / she is just learning to play it, let them enjoy their super fast kills and get levels so that they can develop their skills. Remember you are developing for a large audience not just veterans of your game! I doubt I even had to say that! ^_^
8.
So, Even in the most difficult areas of the game, a player during any 1 encounter should be able to use 4 skills, maybe some (buff potions or buff scrolls) to take down the enemy. What skills should exist to the player? At least 1 ability to escape from near death if they can accomplish doing so. By that I mean that they might have a good chance to escape, but might not be able to, this is for the veteran player that can be more strategic if the encounter is too overwhelming. The player should have at least 3-4 useful active skills to use during any encounter but should not be forced to use more then 2 of those active skills. All active skills should be fun for any encounter. Any combo of skills should be allowed to destroy an enemy, but this is were situational skills come in.
9.
Situational skills should be the bane of all enemies, if an enemy has an ability, the player should be able to either counter that ability or find a way to survive the attack. The player can do this with situational abilities. A player should not be forced to use more then 2 situational abilities at any given moment. one situational ability every 15 - 45 seconds is okay during normal play, with more advanced levels the player should not be forced to use more then 2 situational abilities and the player should not ever have to use them at the same time, they should always be within 30-50 seconds of each other maybe a little sooner then later. This will help foster great game-play interactions with the NPC targets. Also the player should know when it is important to use a situational ability. Either through experience or obvious skill description.
10.
I've already explained why having too many skills at once is a bad thing and creates a tedious and confusing environment, so now I'll go over passive skills. Passive skills should never feel like you are wasting points, in fact, passive skills should be mostly active in that they trigger another effect that is beneficial for the player. Passive skills should never reach an input skill point value of higher then 5. Why must they not go higher then 5? 5 is the maximum number of skill points that a player can spend without feeling like the ability is pointless to get further - obviously if the skill had big gains per point you would think to add more skill points into the passive, however passives are inherently not fun to spend points on and do not give the player options like active and situational skills. Let it be noted that, character development is fun, and passives do not show this element of game-play. Finally, passives should also be activated by enemy interaction or simply always active.
11.
I might say that active skills should go no higher then 10-15 skill point levels, this is because it gets very tedious leveling up skill points especially when you have a ton of skills to pick from. You might want to block each tier of skills until the player has put at least 5 points into any upper tier before branching further down in a tree. I will discuss skill trees in another post.
12.
All skills should scale! you heard me, nothing should be worthless! What do I mean by scale? I'm talking about the skill's ability to deal damage or protect the player, these skills should all scale based on armor, and based on weapon damage and other modifiers. Why should damage scale especially? The player should be able to take his first skill to the end of the game and that skill should still be effective. "Killing Skills" is a major waste of development time and effort, why should you make a skill that the player will stop using once they get to hard mode?
13.
The point is that you would be wasting your time right now and our time if you developed skills that only lasted the first 30 levels. Every skill should hold a place in the players heart and be useful anytime during game-play. It is simply bad use of development resources to create a skill that will only be useful to the player 1% of the time during their leveling career. Remember this game should be fun and enjoyable, make every skill valuable. A Skill should be something that the player should enjoy having and can use to slay any foe. Remember a game should be fun too, it doesn't have to be this constant climbing skill elevator, that wastes your time as a developer and it isn't fun.
14.
I'm not saying the player should be invincible, in fact I'm saying the opposite, the player should have skills and abilities that allow them to survive an attack and allow them to take down any common foe especially in any difficulty! Player skill is what will effect the player's ability to survive, not some monster that does 5 bajillion damage! Creatures should do respectable damage but not slay any player in 3 or even 6 hits! The player should be able to survive an attack if they are skillful at higher difficulties. At lower difficulties it should be the same thing except not quite as hard, but it should still get harder as you get further and further into the game, non-the-less. Not "die in one hit" harder but harder in terms of the # of skills you use. Dying in 1 hit or 2 hits is never a fun game-play mechanics or situation to be in. You just need a strategy to overcome your foes sometimes and that is much more fun.
15.
What have we learned? Humans don't like tedious pointless mechanics that don't need to be in the game, Humans can't process more the 5+ things going on at once, and wasting resources by making skills that only last 10-30 or whatever character levels are pointless to design and waste valuable development resources and time.
- We also learned that you can give the player buff potions, buff scrolls, health potions (and in the thread below) Health orbs to make the game much more fun and interesting to play.
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75
I hope you found this reading to be both profound and interesting.
1.
What constitutes a skill, ability, and busy work? First, I would like to believe that the skills and abilities that you give every single class is part of one of the most core mechanics in the game - how the player absolutely interacts with the environment in the game. How the character class moves through the game, and how it can overcome any-foe using a combination of those skills and abilities.
2.
What is busy work? Busy work is usual tedious objectives that player has to do in order to progress or gain some type of nominal value. Busy work is also something that is too hard or confusing to the player. So busy work has a few different definitions depending on what aspect of the game you are talking about. What's most important to understand though, is to reduce all manner of busy work.
3.
So lets get into a reasoned discussion about what the human mind can handle and what busy work means to it. Busy work to the human mind means 2 things - either it is overly-tedious, or overly-confusing. The human brain can not process 10 things happening at once, let alone 8 or 7. These numbers may seem arbitrary, but if you can find a game that forces you to do more then 3 or more things at once it becomes very hard very confusing very quickly.
4.
So, how do we reduce this work load on the brain you might ask? By simplifying where something might otherwise be unnecessary and unneeded. However, don't get me wrong, simplification does not mean "boring and repetitive." It means taking the game from a high-level of concept and putting it in prospective so that any player can join in and easily understand the way the game works and how to play it.
5.
So how do we make the learning curve easy for the average player? We introduce abilities and spells slowly at first. Maybe you get your first attack spell, maybe your second spell is a tiny bit more situational, and your third spell a situational passive, and your fourth skill another active ability. Whoa! I've named 4 skills already! There's nothing wrong with having 4 skills on your hot bar, actually, I think you should have 8 or more skills and abilities on your hot bar and 2 on your mouse, at least 3 that are situational, and 3 that are active and 1 self-buffed passive that you can switch to on your mouse if you so desire using tab.
6.
Now wait, let me first put these "Skills and Abilities" into prospective. I'm not ever implying that the player should ever "have" to use all of the abilities, in fact, I believe that in any 1 encounter the player shouldn't have to use more then 4 of the abilities at any given encounter! Does that sound counter-intuitive? Well, maybe, however you can not forget the brains mental capacities. A brain has a hard time doing 4 things at once already, but if you give 2 creatures 1 different ability each the player can use his / her skills and strategic knowledge to counter those abilities!
7.
However the learning curve needs to be very simple - The player should never be forced to think too much at the start of the game because he / she is just learning to play it, let them enjoy their super fast kills and get levels so that they can develop their skills. Remember you are developing for a large audience not just veterans of your game! I doubt I even had to say that! ^_^
8.
So, Even in the most difficult areas of the game, a player during any 1 encounter should be able to use 4 skills, maybe some (buff potions or buff scrolls) to take down the enemy. What skills should exist to the player? At least 1 ability to escape from near death if they can accomplish doing so. By that I mean that they might have a good chance to escape, but might not be able to, this is for the veteran player that can be more strategic if the encounter is too overwhelming. The player should have at least 3-4 useful active skills to use during any encounter but should not be forced to use more then 2 of those active skills. All active skills should be fun for any encounter. Any combo of skills should be allowed to destroy an enemy, but this is were situational skills come in.
9.
Situational skills should be the bane of all enemies, if an enemy has an ability, the player should be able to either counter that ability or find a way to survive the attack. The player can do this with situational abilities. A player should not be forced to use more then 2 situational abilities at any given moment. one situational ability every 15 - 45 seconds is okay during normal play, with more advanced levels the player should not be forced to use more then 2 situational abilities and the player should not ever have to use them at the same time, they should always be within 30-50 seconds of each other maybe a little sooner then later. This will help foster great game-play interactions with the NPC targets. Also the player should know when it is important to use a situational ability. Either through experience or obvious skill description.
10.
I've already explained why having too many skills at once is a bad thing and creates a tedious and confusing environment, so now I'll go over passive skills. Passive skills should never feel like you are wasting points, in fact, passive skills should be mostly active in that they trigger another effect that is beneficial for the player. Passive skills should never reach an input skill point value of higher then 5. Why must they not go higher then 5? 5 is the maximum number of skill points that a player can spend without feeling like the ability is pointless to get further - obviously if the skill had big gains per point you would think to add more skill points into the passive, however passives are inherently not fun to spend points on and do not give the player options like active and situational skills. Let it be noted that, character development is fun, and passives do not show this element of game-play. Finally, passives should also be activated by enemy interaction or simply always active.
11.
I might say that active skills should go no higher then 10-15 skill point levels, this is because it gets very tedious leveling up skill points especially when you have a ton of skills to pick from. You might want to block each tier of skills until the player has put at least 5 points into any upper tier before branching further down in a tree. I will discuss skill trees in another post.
12.
All skills should scale! you heard me, nothing should be worthless! What do I mean by scale? I'm talking about the skill's ability to deal damage or protect the player, these skills should all scale based on armor, and based on weapon damage and other modifiers. Why should damage scale especially? The player should be able to take his first skill to the end of the game and that skill should still be effective. "Killing Skills" is a major waste of development time and effort, why should you make a skill that the player will stop using once they get to hard mode?
13.
The point is that you would be wasting your time right now and our time if you developed skills that only lasted the first 30 levels. Every skill should hold a place in the players heart and be useful anytime during game-play. It is simply bad use of development resources to create a skill that will only be useful to the player 1% of the time during their leveling career. Remember this game should be fun and enjoyable, make every skill valuable. A Skill should be something that the player should enjoy having and can use to slay any foe. Remember a game should be fun too, it doesn't have to be this constant climbing skill elevator, that wastes your time as a developer and it isn't fun.
14.
I'm not saying the player should be invincible, in fact I'm saying the opposite, the player should have skills and abilities that allow them to survive an attack and allow them to take down any common foe especially in any difficulty! Player skill is what will effect the player's ability to survive, not some monster that does 5 bajillion damage! Creatures should do respectable damage but not slay any player in 3 or even 6 hits! The player should be able to survive an attack if they are skillful at higher difficulties. At lower difficulties it should be the same thing except not quite as hard, but it should still get harder as you get further and further into the game, non-the-less. Not "die in one hit" harder but harder in terms of the # of skills you use. Dying in 1 hit or 2 hits is never a fun game-play mechanics or situation to be in. You just need a strategy to overcome your foes sometimes and that is much more fun.
15.
What have we learned? Humans don't like tedious pointless mechanics that don't need to be in the game, Humans can't process more the 5+ things going on at once, and wasting resources by making skills that only last 10-30 or whatever character levels are pointless to design and waste valuable development resources and time.
- We also learned that you can give the player buff potions, buff scrolls, health potions (and in the thread below) Health orbs to make the game much more fun and interesting to play.
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75
I hope you found this reading to be both profound and interesting.