I guess to use a "large" example (anything else would likely be smaller than this):
One thing I can sort of see working could be having a number that would affect a penalty to your spell damage (I guess we could call it "composure" for now). It could be justified in the game as the idea that spells need concentration to cast well. Normally you'd have composure at 100% and you'd do your normal spell damage. However, if you take damage in any way then you'll take a hit to composure as well as your health, and having composure at less than 100% would temporarily reduce spell damage (maybe 0% would mean you do 75% of your normal damage). If you kill enemies you recover composure.
Perhaps if you used an ammo spell, it would automatically max composure, which could get more use out of the ammo spell and fit with the idea of it as a "bomb" or "panic button".
I guess that would be at the bigger side of things, it probably wouldn't need to be as involved to accomplish the same thing.
Basically it would be something that wouldn't really kill you for ignoring it, but at the same time plays off the idea that gamers tend to like the idea of refining their play in little ways, especially if there's a small benefit to it.
Eh, I'm not sure I really like the idea of losing damage as you take health. If anything like this were to be done, I would rather it be the other way around - a bonus of extra damage if you pick up health drops while already at full health. Rather than losing power when you take damage.
This wouldn't really impact balance, because you would need to be -very- skilled to manage not taking damage long enough to build up a decent combo meter. On the flip side, it would be hard enough to build up a combo meter that it might not be worth implementing, heh.
Thinking about this thread some more, I am inclined toward the concentration model as suggested by Professor Paul1290 and efined by madcow as being an interesting sort of mechanic.
I agree with everything that Misery has said, but there is also one mechanic that is currently in the game which bugs me: and that is the combo system that is currently there. Right now the combo system really punishes things like charge shots, and the combo system is so opaque that probably many of you don't even know it exists. In short, every shot that hits an enemy gets remembered, and then any further shots of that same type do half damage to the enemy. There are some perks that let you reduce this penalty.
It's not a horrible system, but it does set my teeth on edge a little bit (mainly because I'm the one who came up with it and I'm less than thrilled with it). If we did the following, I think it might be potentially better than it currently is:
- No more combo system, aka no more penalty to the current shot if it's the same type as the prior shot that just hit the enemy.
- All player spells drop to .75 of their current power to compensate (if you normally blast an enemy with two shots to kill it, you were doing 1.5 damage instead of 2 damage, for instance; any further shots of the same type, such as with a fusillade, would have been dropping down to approaching 50% effectiveness in the current system).
- Put a visible "Concentration" meter on the screen, down by the health meter. It starts out at zero.
- Ammo drops would add to your concentration AND your ammo when you are already at full health.
- Anytime you take damage from any source, if your concentration > 0 it goes down by 1. If you die, it goes all the way to 0.
- Max concentration would normally be something like 3, with the perks that currently are helping reduce the combo penalty adding concentration points (so I think that would max out at 5 or 6 if you took those perks, can't recall for sure).
- For each 1 concentration that you have, you do 25% extra damage on all your shots.
This trades out a mechanic that is opaque (the combo system) for one that is very visible (right there on the hud). Supporting what Misery was saying in a lot of ways, this would actually help to
encourage the players to be more careful and tactical, since there is an on-hud system right there that is rewarding them for doing that. But like madcow says, this is a bonus and not a penalty -- you're getting rewarded for doing well, not punished for doing averagely.
These all strike me as good refinements on the system we already have, without trying to get gimmicky or majorly overhaul the entire game or something. Which seems very much in line with the Professor's original intents in creating this thread. Thoughts?
