Arcen Games
General Category => A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 => AVWW Brainstorming => Topic started by: x4000 on November 28, 2011, 04:55:29 pm
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Sparked by:
Inventory
The less inventory I have in the field (to a point), the more creative I need to be in selecting what I bring with me. You've already touched on this with the spell ammo concept. But an important part of making inventory selection interesting is to make the costs interesting.
For example, if I can carry an equal number of 10 types of items and they each solve a different problem, I'll carry an amount of each type proportionate to how often I encounter those problems. If there are 30 item types each of which solves three problems, I now am burning solutions to two other problems each time I use an item.
Further, if I had extremely limited in carrying capacity for any item I haven't increased my max capacity, things become more complicated and interesting. Each player is now making decisions based on what he is capable of carrying. Somewhat similar to the limitation of starting ship types in AI Wars. Implicit here is you can never max all your item types capacity. I actually would say to a degree, item types would be similar to ship types in AI Wars, with certain core items being like the triangle ships.
So... how about it? If we went a bit more toward the survival-horror direction in terms of limited abilities inventory, that could be interesting. We already have the concepts of different kinds of inventories, so this wouldn't affect ammo inventory (which is already planned to be separate) or commodities inventory (which is already separate, too). Just thinking here about the main ability bar and the inventory that's related to that.
Right now you can store up to 10 abilities per ability bar, which you can then cycle through. You can have up to I believe 10 ability bars, which thus lets you have access to up to 100 overall slots. That's really handy in some respects, but it also makes you a walking armory. What if we changed the design like this:
1. Instead of 10 slots per ability bar, there would be 14.
2. You can only open your extended inventory at a special armory type building (or whatever similar thing) in settlements or other special locations. When you are actually out and fighting, you're limited to just those 14 abilities and that's it.
3. With the planned changes to health and mana, healing/mana-restoration spells and potions could be a thing of the past anyhow, meaning that you're using those 14 slots for mobility, lighting, defense, and offense only -- which seems like a pretty fair mix to me.
It's a really radical change in a lot of ways, so I thought this deserved its own thread. It seems like it could be a really interesting thing. Thoughts?
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Limited inventory games is not something I am very fond of. It was very refreshing to have an "unlimited" inventory system for once.
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As much as I enjoy such systems, I don't think it's a good fit for AVWW. Since the player can freely warp back and forth between chunks, it would just add a few steps to switching your load out. So I don't think this change would work without reworking the teleport system. I do not recommend doing that, for the record.
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At the risk of offending others, i would say that i like the idea of a limited inventory.
As for quick teleports back to settlements?
Well... just a personal thought, but yes it is tedious to travel out and spend a long time coming back. But to be honest, it feels more 'real'.
And what if i run out of food in the wilderness on the way back? I guess i am saying that having to contend with the environment and not just the monsters i think would be interesting as well.
Just my two cents,
-Teal
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At the risk of offending others, i would say that i like the idea of a limited inventory.
As for quick teleports back to settlements?
Well... just a personal thought, but yes it is tedious to travel out and spend a long time coming back. But to be honest, it feels more 'real'.
And what if i run out of food in the wilderness on the way back? I guess i am saying that having to contend with the environment and not just the monsters i think would be interesting as well.
Just my two cents,
-Teal
While not being able to warp back would be more "real", it would also be more boring. Dreadfully boring, in fact.
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While not being able to warp back would be more "real", it would also be more boring. Dreadfully boring, in fact.
I can confirm that from my own experience with this game in earlier states, actually. Feeling "less real" with the warp system as it currently stands is something that bugs me, but I've not thought of or seen any other model that meets all the criteria for actually retaining fun gameplay without boring stretches of repetition, so less real is the unfortunate side effect.
In terms of the warp system kind of putting the kibosh on the limited inventory idea, that's a really good point. Probably the inventory system really does need to stay quasi-unlimited the way it currently is, and the strategic options just need to be built around that premise (which they already have been, so far). Sometimes it's good to do a sanity check on this sort of thing, though, especially after the game has really evolved a long way.
Much as the idea of a finite inventory in the field attracts me in some ways, I don't think it would be a workable thing for this game. Link is always a walking armory by the end of Zelda games, too, and that works out quite well. Or any of the Final Fantasy titles, etc. Having a lot of strategic options at any given time, ala FF games, can actually really open a lot of interesting doors. The main problem in this context is that in an action game you have significantly less time to choose between your options. So in one sense, your inventory during a boss fight IS finite, unless you find a corner to hide in and switch ability bars or rearrange things there.
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I agree that warping back to redo inventory slots makes that particular aspect a bit weak, and I'd worry about hitting enemies that had random resists that I couldn't bust with the 4 spells on my quickbar (or whatever) but I also do like some concept of limitations.
The quickslot bar already feels a bit like equipment slots in most games, and I don't think that's a bad thing. If anything I would reduce the hot slots (perhaps severely if health mana pots/scrolls are gone) and make mobility spells be required to be in a hotslot to be used. Could still switch things out on the fly, but would limit what the player could do at any one given time. If I only had 4-5 slots, picking my spells and if I want a shield or a double jump or a dash, or a scroll spell/ light/ trap/ whatever could be a lot more interesting (perhaps scrolls useable anywhere in inventory to make light spells less annoying). Especially if combos come into play and if I need to mix and match on a very limited bar, choosing those bonuses for combos vs having utility . . .just thinking aloud now.
But AVWW already has some built in systems to reduce the feeling of having everything at once - namely spell tiers--and once more spells are fleshed out the time to gather mats vs out leveling what you craft will likely mean focusing on several spells/spell lines down the road . . or so I'd imagine.
Ultimately I do think that locking the player down a bit more will be good long term, needing to decide between mobility and ranged DPS or shield spells and melee . . .that sort of thing feels interesting. Maybe crests will do it, or balancing in gem availability vs crafting recipes, or maybe the limited hotslot idea. But I suppose the idea of having different playstyles and choosing to do one or two things well is a lot more appealing than doing all things at once.
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I think limited inventory would work really well with another idea. I know you didn't like the idea of timed turns, though I think that still has potential. How about making it such that every time you enter a settlement, a turn advances? From a narrative perspective, going back to a settlement is equivalent to resting between expeditions. You're welcomed home, you get to sleep and catch up with the NPCs, and time passes.
You get to make all strategic decisions during this visit (ie. no turn is lost), and every outing becomes an expedition where you have to consider what to take with you. You then have to consider (given limited inventory): What do I take with me for this expedition? What am I planning on doing out there? What do I really need to do before the next turn?
I think this connects the action and strategy elements in a really good way.
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Problem is, that breaks down completely when you go to multiplayer; players need to be able to individually leave and enter settlements at will. Not only that, but a server needs to be able to stay up and running whether or not people are doing anything productive in it, much as an FPS server does. This is part of why there absolutely cannot be any automatic passage of strategic time, aside from the fact that it puts an onus on players to play the strategic part of the game when they might prefer to do more adventuring, or vice-versa.
The separate strategic and action parts (where you can do each for as long as you want independently of the other without ill consequences in the neglected side), but where the strategic and action side enrich one another if you choose to play both of them, is one of my and Keith's core design goals for the game. I really don't think there's any way that auto-incrementing strategic turns would ever fit with that, or with multiplayer. Part of the reason for no auto-incrementing turns is that this isn't an RTS game, it's a TBS game. Having time pressure to do something before something else happens is absolutely counter to where I'd want to take this.
You're right that making it so that only having it auto-increment when you go back to settlements would handle most of those complaints, except multiplayer would be badly broken by that, but even in solo play that would lead to some undesirable consequences. Having to avoid town when you're low on supplies or just need to craft something new, because there's something bad that will happen when the turn auto-increments, creates a really unpleasant situation and I think that would be extremely common. Especially once there are multiple settlements, or other things of that nature.
It's not that I don't think that could be a good game, but the decision to add time pressure to the game is something rather major that would affect all other aspects of the game, and it's really counter to the general feel we're going for.
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To make the limited inventory work, you'd really need to use a system something like the Unlocking Chunk Warps I also mention in that post. As long as there is a series of chunks (maybe 3-5) that a player needs to complete with one load-out of inventory and warping back to town requires him to restart that chunk, then it could work.
To simplify, you could even make it in most areas you have full access to your inventory, but in "locked" areas you get only the first few rows and the rest is grayed out. You never actually need to get back to town, just outside the locked chunks and you are free to drag whatever you need down into those first few rows of personal inventory.
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It could be that the locked inventory thing isn't a global condition, but rather something local to some specific areas. Basically that inventory continues to work as now, but when you go into some special kinds of zones it would lock your inventory to just your current bar and would also prevent you from warping in or out. That could be an interesting variant on the standard game mechanics, and something that only shows up in some optional sections of certain regions, presumably leading to some special challenges and rewards.
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The quickslot bar already feels a bit like equipment slots in most games, and I don't think that's a bad thing. If anything I would reduce the hot slots (perhaps severely if health mana pots/scrolls are gone) and make mobility spells be required to be in a hotslot to be used. Could still switch things out on the fly, but would limit what the player could do at any one given time. If I only had 4-5 slots, picking my spells and if I want a shield or a double jump or a dash, or a scroll spell/ light/ trap/ whatever could be a lot more interesting (perhaps scrolls useable anywhere in inventory to make light spells less annoying).
I think this might actually make some sense . Even tho you can you switch up your inventory with no penalty --- tho this could be disallowed except when you're in the new-room invincibility state, or when there's an enemy on screen --- I find I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about my quickslot bar. It probably could be shorter now, and that would make this feel more like an issue.
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Personally I'd prefer a less free format approach to equipping types of spell - a slot for defensive stuff, a slot for mobility stuff, a slot for your main attack, a slot for your secondary, etc., etc. - and allow unlocks of greater capacity, ability to switch to different sets for specific slot groups only... that sort of thing.
A less MMO style, and more hack-n-slash / action RPG style, approach as it were.
But I presently get the impression I'm in the minority there!
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You are not the only one. Limitations and restrictions done carefully can enhance a system. A fully free-form system isn't really as open as it appears since some combinations aren't viable generally viable. I don't know if spell type slots is needed, but it isn't a bad idea. Reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics in a way.
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Problem is, that breaks down completely when you go to multiplayer;
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The separate strategic and action parts (where you can do each for as long as you want independently of the other without ill consequences in the neglected side), but where the strategic and action side enrich one another if you choose to play both of them, is one of my and Keith's core design goals for the game. I really don't think there's any way that auto-incrementing strategic turns would ever fit with that, or with multiplayer. Part of the reason for no auto-incrementing turns is that this isn't an RTS game, it's a TBS game. Having time pressure to do something before something else happens is absolutely counter to where I'd want to take this.
You're right that making it so that only having it auto-increment when you go back to settlements would handle most of those complaints, except multiplayer would be badly broken by that, but even in solo play that would lead to some undesirable consequences. Having to avoid town when you're low on supplies or just need to craft something new, because there's something bad that will happen when the turn auto-increments, creates a really unpleasant situation and I think that would be extremely common.
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I hear what you're saying. My issue is that I don't see (in the current iteration) much synergy between the action and strategy parts. I think that a blend of genres needs to be justified in the sense that it needs to be more than the sum of its parts. Otherwise, separate the blend into 2 games where each could be better on its own. For example, the turn-based strategy in the game isn't really turn based. In a turn based game, the turns are your minimal time unit. So when a monster is next to a town, you better have some strategy to deal with that in the turn based realm because there's nothing else. The tension builds up over turns for that very reason. But in the current version, when a monster approaches the town, you have infinite chances outside of the turn-based space to eliminate said monster. Reacting to said monster is equivalent to a chore.
I really like the connection you made between exploration and the turn based game, since that connects the 2 parts in a way that enriches both: if I want to explore further, I need to move ahead in the turn-based game. The turn-based game gets a reason for you to play it (finish turns) and face the consequences of playing it (monsters, attacks, resource usage etc) and the action part gets new, interesting challenges as a result. However, if there's no feedback ie. if there's nothing within the action realm that will cause the turn-based game to advance, then all the turn-based game is doing is setting up static situations for the action parts to deal with. Within the action part, you can try as many times as you want to defeat the challenges set up in the turn-based part. The turn-based part then loses all tension, and the action part becomes a repeated loop.
I think it makes a lot of sense that going to craft stuff or heal fully will start a new turn. You're getting something you need, so there's a cost involved in terms of time. You can think of it as making the turn-based game more realtime, or alternatively, as putting the action into the turn-based realm. Each 'turn' then involves an expedition out into the world. More importantly, it makes the turn-based game relevant and intertwined with the choices of the player. Rather than seeing it as unpleasant, I see it as creating choices.
I think the critical point here is that it shouldn't be unpleasant because once the turn-based game becomes relevant, you're not going to try to fight a bunch of approaching monsters when they're right next to the town. That's something you'd never do in a turn based game because you'd know that you're not leaving yourself enough strategic depth to deal with the monsters in case you lose. It is something that's currently done in the game though, because the strategy isn't very relevant. What you'd do instead is go out there and try to nip it in the bud as early as you can (or as is reasonable) knowing that you need to leave yourself room to go back to town and heal perhaps several times, which could take a couple of turns.
I'm not sure what the plans for multiplayer are, but there are probably ways to translate this dynamic into multiplayer. For example, you could make it such that a turn advances every X visits to the towns, where X is the number of players. Alternatively, you could have it be such that if one player visits the town, all other players can have a chance to access the town's resources via that one player. It simplifies the alternative, which is one player taking gems from other players, then going to a town to craft it for them, and finally delivering the results to those players. Instead, each player gets a direct instant link to spell crafting.
BTW another idea (in general) is to enable you to visit each town once per turn. This creates a big incentive to find more towns.
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I don't like the idea of this inventory system, it seems like something that would be neat at first but would get annoying and feel too constrictive after the novelty has worn off. On the other hand I wouldn't mind something being done to the current inventory, I wish there was a way I could leave items at home and not have to bring everything along with me.
I can confirm that from my own experience with this game in earlier states, actually. Feeling "less real" with the warp system as it currently stands is something that bugs me, but I've not thought of or seen any other model that meets all the criteria for actually retaining fun gameplay without boring stretches of repetition, so less real is the unfortunate side effect.
I have a radical idea (in which case this thread is perfect :P)
How about increasing the amount of currently playable/controllable characters from just one to maybe three or five. So it would be sort of like a team (task force whatever you want to call it) This way you could remove the warp potion and have an option to set a particular character to "head home". They'll pathfind their way to exit the tile (or alternatively just vanish and reappear at the closest settlement after a certain period of time has passed) and then move from tile to tile until they reach the designated(or closest) settlement. In the mean time you can switch to another of your team and take care of another mission. You'll get a message when you're other character has arrived home at a settlement. This way you're jumping between missions (so it's like the "meanwhile" in a story) while you still get the concept of spending time heading home.
To be honest, I always wondered what it would be like to control more people at once in AVWW. That way it would seem more like there is a group of people doing scouts/discovering the world rather than one sole hero. It seems more natural to have a sort of task force.
I feel in my head that this would work....but I'm not typing it out that well. :S
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I don't know if you'd even consider it, but would a topic on other warp mechanics be useful? I think the current completely open warp ability, while it makes things very convenient, makes it hard to provide any cross-chunk challenges. Since you have a forum for brainstorming stuff it might be helpful. I did notice free ability to warp anywhere at any time isn't in the immutable design goals :) . And it seems a few people have some thoughts on warping that might make sense to consolidate into a single thread.
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Re: the monster stuff not really being turn-based yet, that's quite true, but mainly because we haven't started implementing macro-game combat yet. That's a pretty cool and pretty involved thing the way Keith has it planned, and we've not talked about it yet just in case something doesn't work out there, but it actually adds a whole extra genre into the mix if we can pull that off (and no, it's not tower defense). Right now the wandering monsters are just water-down tiny foes that you can easily defeat alone and on-foot. That was never the plan for long-term monsters that are more directly related to the overlord and such. You'll be seeing some monster bands that veritably feel like an army, and dealing with those yourself in adventure-mode would be night impossible.
Having to figure out how to deal with them in the strategic side so that you can get past whatever they are blocking in the adventure mode has been a goal for us from the start. And being able to use your NPCs, in the macro game, to "soften up" an overlord keep that is vastly more powerful than the current versions currently are, is another similar thing. Send in the army, bash up their army, then send in the lone hero to kill the leader. Etc. Like I keep saying, right now what you're seeing with the strategic parts of the game is something like 10% of what we have planned for even 1.0.
The exploration side of things for the macrogame is the one part that is really fully fleshed out, I'd say; and you're right, that really ties across in both sides much better than the rest because of that.
In terms of the monsters advancing toward your town, you're right you'd never go fight them on foot if they were too strong, but by the same token those monsters wouldn't even exist or be advancing on you in the first place if you weren't playing the strategic side of the game. And if you just hate strategy games and want to spend hours overleveling them by 20 levels... well, that certainly is another way to play, right? Not a particularly fun or rewarding way, but there's no reason that shouldn't be valid. And if someone has "uber skills" and wants to try to level an army with their one dude, well, that's an interesting challenge that I guess they ought to be allowed to try their hand at a few times, too.
It is true, of course, that with AI War one of the things that is really compelling is that any action you take isn't something that is cost-free. Since the AI reinforces over time and aggresses against you periodically, if you're spending a lot of time overpowering the AI piece by piece, that's just letting the AI build up somewhere else. And obviously that's a key mechanic to AI War. With AVWW... at core this is meant to be a more relaxed game than that.
The above all said, Keith sent me an email this morning talking about some ways he was thinking your ideas, or something very similar, could work in multiplayer or solo as an optional thing that players can toggle on kind of like the difficulty toggle settings. The key features of his ideas were: 1) it's an optional thing that hardcore strategy fans can turn on (ideally to some reward, or else just for the extra interest/challenge), and 2) it still doesn't cause things to happen invisibly behind you when you're out adventuring, it just forces you to stop adventuring and take a strategic turn when you've reached the end of your counter. There were a couple of specific variants he'd suggested based on your comments, and I'll make another brainstorming thread where that can be discussed separately.
That whole thing really is against the core design of the game, but then again so is any hardcore platforming component, and I want to have those as an optional thing you can do in this world, too. Lots of things can be done, from all sorts of genres, that conflict with the core design of the game -- so long as they are optional. In this specific case it will be difficult to make it optional and yet still meaningful as a way to play, but I think it can be done. Minor factions and such in AI War are all optional, of course, but they are really a lot of the spice of that game. I guess I'm coming around to seeing this -- essentially -- variant of the core game being kind of like an AI Modifier or a Minor Faction, just not something you select in a central lobby.
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With AVWW... at core this is meant to be a more relaxed game than that.
It seems like a real contradiction to describe a game that involves trying to survive in a strange dangerous world where time and space has been ripped apart as a "relaxed game". That's totally not the perception I was building of this game...
I suppose you mean in regards to AI War, AVWW is a relaxed game? I haven't played AI War (well actually I tried the demo but couldn't really get into it...I'll try again though) but I'm guessing it's pretty ruthless in terms of the AI harassing you?
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I have a radical idea (in which case this thread is perfect :P)
That actually is really interesting. But I made it it's own thread: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9528.0.html :)
I don't know if you'd even consider it, but would a topic on other warp mechanics be useful?
Boom: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9527.0.html :)
With AVWW... at core this is meant to be a more relaxed game than that.
It seems like a real contradiction to describe a game that involves trying to survive in a strange dangerous world where time and space has been ripped apart as a "relaxed game". That's totally not the perception I was building of this game...
I suppose you mean in regards to AI War, AVWW is a relaxed game? I haven't played AI War (well actually I tried the demo but couldn't really get into it...I'll try again though) but I'm guessing it's pretty ruthless in terms of the AI harassing you?
Perhaps "relaxed" is the wrong choice of words. I guess I feel like AVWW should be relaxed in the same sense that Silent Hill, Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Civilization, or most FPS games are. In those games, nothing happens without your instigating it (in solo play). Even if the world is horrific and stressful, or a warzone, you can hang out in some area and nothing really happens except some predictable scripted events or maybe a few smaller enemies walking by.
Not to say that there aren't more harried parts that are more kill-or-be-killed, but that's very different from a game where you lose the ability to control the tempo if you don't act. The auto-scrolling stages in Mario games are a good example of a less-relaxed gameplay style, actually. If you just stand there, you will be pushed off a cliff or squashed on an obstacle, so you have to keep moving at least at the minimum pace the game dictates. In AI War, or really any RTS game, if you just sit there doing not much of anything then the enemies are still using that time to actually build up and come for you, so you can't afford to waste time just sitting there thinking, or playing around with the units, unless you pause the game.
So it's really not a question of relaxed or not, it's a question of who sets the tempo: the player or the game itself. In AVWW, the idea is that overall you set the tempo as you play, with some exceptions. Even Mario has the occasional forced-scrolling segment, of course; and even in a relaxed game like Minecraft, the day/night cycle is out of your control and the night is a lot more dangerous until you learn the basics. But overall in Minecraft, I'd still say that you set the tempo, as if you choose to spend your whole session exploring, building, or mining, it doesn't matter: you can mix and match or specialize in one activity as much as you want. Also with Mario, those forced-scrolling stages are usually somewhat optional, so that if you really hate them there is some mechanic where you can skip them (all the way back to Smb3, even).
So that's all I meant.
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It seems to me some of the survival feel of a game could come from the early part of a world and taper off. So at the start you have a bunch of "quests" you need to do to survive (no time limit, and no limit on how many people you can lose doing them). Things like finding food, clearing monsters, etc. This would give the new player more structure to their early explorations.
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This thread is kind of old, but i couldn't find a better place to mention it. I found some screenshots of the early alpha builds and noticed it was in a zelda top down like perspective.
If the engine is still lingering around somewhere it might be cool if that could be used for the village. What this would give us is the ability to arrange the bonus buildings (maybe the other buildings if you want to go that deep) . Maybe give proximity bonuses to how you arrange the buildings, etc. it would add a lot of depth to the city building aspect of the game. Maybe put some micro biomes in there (muddy ground, grassy field, hills, etc) as well.
The negative (positive?) side would be that the actraiser comparisons would be complete.