Post by Damian on Mar 31, 2015 14:19:03 GMT 10
Make sure you're comfortable and you have a beverage and/or snack for this one. It's a long read.
You may have heard me talk about a problem with the current game mechanics where players were not really enjoying combat. Most test players were content to stand back and shoot fireballs from a distance and let their undead minions do the heavy lifting in combat. Even myself. While getting your undead minions involved in combat is what the game is all about, the player's direct involvement is reduced as their army becomes larger.
That makes combat pretty boring and it only gets more boring as your skills increase and allow you to reanimate more undead.
What we needed is a game mechanic that encourages/rewards the player for being directly involved in combat so they consistently take part and are engaged. Scott suggested an ingenious idea. Well i thought it was ingenious.
It's called Blood Sacrifice and this is how it works.
When the player attacks an enemy and lands a successful hit the player is awarded Blood Points. These blood points fill up a new UI element Blood Bar as you rain blows down on your enemies. When the Blood Bar is full you can either unleash a powerful combo attack OR use a blood magic skill e.g Life Leech, Mana Leech, summon a Champion, etc.
In this way the player is rewarded with each blow.
This is promising, but already we can see a balancing issue. If all enemies award the same amount of blood per hit then the player quite quickly will work out that 5 rapid hits on any enemy class will enable Blood Sacrifice skills. That's too predictable and gives the player slightly too much power. We're getting back to a boring combat experience.
Again Scott had a great idea and it even makes sense when you think about it. If you strike a peasant who is very much alive he/she is likely to bleed quite a lot. If you strike a skeleton that has neither skin, flesh or in fact blood, then you're likely to very little blood at all. So we balance the amount of blood that can be gained from an enemy class based on life status (Alive/Undead) with the difficulty of the character class.
Now the player can employ a strategy knowing that difficult enemies that are alive grant a faster path to Blood Skills
Let's take that a step further and say that the Blood Bar slowly decreases over time when you are not landing blows. This creates a sense of urgency and deters the player from playing defensively or evasively if they want to make the best use of their blood letting.
This is exciting now. Let's take the Blood Sacrifice mechanic even further.
I have been working on a melee game system since some test players expressed a strong desire to chop things. We have added 3 weapon types that the player can freely switch between. Short range melee (sickle), medium range melee (scythe) and the long range weapon (staff).
Each weapon type has advantages and disadvantages so that there is no such thing as superior weapon that invalidates the other 2 weapon types
As you can see it pays to fight at close range to get the maximum benefit of blood collected, but each weapon type has different speed and damage ratings create unique value.
There is still a lot of testing and tuning to be done, but it already makes combat more engaging and it requires more thought and strategy than casually lobbing fire balls in the general direction of an enemy.
You may have heard me talk about a problem with the current game mechanics where players were not really enjoying combat. Most test players were content to stand back and shoot fireballs from a distance and let their undead minions do the heavy lifting in combat. Even myself. While getting your undead minions involved in combat is what the game is all about, the player's direct involvement is reduced as their army becomes larger.
That makes combat pretty boring and it only gets more boring as your skills increase and allow you to reanimate more undead.
What we needed is a game mechanic that encourages/rewards the player for being directly involved in combat so they consistently take part and are engaged. Scott suggested an ingenious idea. Well i thought it was ingenious.
It's called Blood Sacrifice and this is how it works.
When the player attacks an enemy and lands a successful hit the player is awarded Blood Points. These blood points fill up a new UI element Blood Bar as you rain blows down on your enemies. When the Blood Bar is full you can either unleash a powerful combo attack OR use a blood magic skill e.g Life Leech, Mana Leech, summon a Champion, etc.
In this way the player is rewarded with each blow.
This is promising, but already we can see a balancing issue. If all enemies award the same amount of blood per hit then the player quite quickly will work out that 5 rapid hits on any enemy class will enable Blood Sacrifice skills. That's too predictable and gives the player slightly too much power. We're getting back to a boring combat experience.
Again Scott had a great idea and it even makes sense when you think about it. If you strike a peasant who is very much alive he/she is likely to bleed quite a lot. If you strike a skeleton that has neither skin, flesh or in fact blood, then you're likely to very little blood at all. So we balance the amount of blood that can be gained from an enemy class based on life status (Alive/Undead) with the difficulty of the character class.
Now the player can employ a strategy knowing that difficult enemies that are alive grant a faster path to Blood Skills
Let's take that a step further and say that the Blood Bar slowly decreases over time when you are not landing blows. This creates a sense of urgency and deters the player from playing defensively or evasively if they want to make the best use of their blood letting.
This is exciting now. Let's take the Blood Sacrifice mechanic even further.
I have been working on a melee game system since some test players expressed a strong desire to chop things. We have added 3 weapon types that the player can freely switch between. Short range melee (sickle), medium range melee (scythe) and the long range weapon (staff).
Each weapon type has advantages and disadvantages so that there is no such thing as superior weapon that invalidates the other 2 weapon types
Weapon | Type | Range | Attack Speed | Damage | Blood Gained |
Sickle | Melee | Close | Fast | Medium | 100% |
Scythe | Melee | Medium | Medium | High | 70% |
Staff | Projectile | Long | Slow | Medium | 30% |
- Sickle: Close Range, Fast Attack Speed, Low Damage, 100% blood drained
- Scythe: Medium Range, Medium Attack speed, Medium Damage, 70% blood drained
- Staff: Long range, Slow Attack Speed, Medium Damage, 30% blood drained
As you can see it pays to fight at close range to get the maximum benefit of blood collected, but each weapon type has different speed and damage ratings create unique value.
There is still a lot of testing and tuning to be done, but it already makes combat more engaging and it requires more thought and strategy than casually lobbing fire balls in the general direction of an enemy.