Four Tips to Make Your Murder & Loot Game Painfully Addicting!
Making a truly addictive brain-trap needs a little Art with your Science.
At some point in the last several decades of video games, everything became a role-playing game.
Turns out, if your game design is a little lacking, all you need to do is spackle on a bit of "Make bars fill up to make numbers get bigger to make bars fill up." It's the magic sauce that covers up so many sins.
Nobody could write Asteroids now. Players would say, "I shot 500 asteroids. Should that give me 500 asteroid bucks I can use to buy asteroid-seeking missiles?" And the designer would say, "Yeah, it should. Now it does." And honestly, I'd probably spend a lot of time playing that game.
Alas, the "Bar fills up, Number goes up" loop is so satisfying and addictive that it tends to make designers forget that there's more than that to making a good game.
The Deceptively Tricky Art of RPGs
I've noticed something over the decades. Designers think making an RPG is easier than it is.
I've played so many games where the designer just made this gameplay loop:
1. Player does some rote, repetitive action.
2. Numbers go up!
3. Repeat forever.
And they expect this to work as a game. And it doesn't. It's bland oatmeal. It needs some spice, but the people making the game didn't provide it.
There is an art to this genre, something I can say since I have achieved mild success working in it. I think, when making an RPG, there are four qualities it should strive to have.
If one of these qualities is missing, you are limiting the game's addictiveness. You can still get by if you're writing a shorter single-player game.
However, if you're writing an ARPG or looter shooter like Diablo 4 and your business model depends on a dedicated core of 1000 hour addict players? You'd better have all four, or you're in the Danger Zone.
1. Variety of Encounters
The player is hopefully spending a lot of time out in the field, trashing bozos and collecting loot. That's the loop. Move. Kill. Loot. Repeat.
The move part is always boring, and looting should always be fun. The trick is making sure the fighting part is engaging. Which means it has to have variety. If too many of the battles feel the same, there is no excitement. No suspense. No way to feel powerful. Just a flat line of endless beige.
To generate suspense and engagement, there needs to be some granuarity to the experience. Highs and lows. Easy suddenly turning to hard. You can't let the player run on autopilot for too long, or they'll start thinking of better things to do. A player should always be alert and know that something unexpected can happen.
There are a MILLION ways to do this. Unexpected hordes. Minibosses. Multiple minibosses. A few creatures with unique and deadly attacks. Restrictive terrain. This is a chance for designers to have fun.
Note that, if your encounters are meant to have interesting variety, it has to be clear to the player that the variety happened. If your special encounter happens and the player just burns through it without noticing, something has gone wrong.
Diablo 4 has a really nasty miniboss called the Butcher who can rarely show up at any time, terrifies everyone, and drops good loot. I humbly suggest adding to that game about 10000 more encounters like this. Something wild should happen at least once an hour. (Unless actually fighting a boss fight. Or, heck with it, maybe even then!)
Your game doesn't have to be constantly exciting to be good. But if it is never exciting? Nobody is going to put in the long hours.
2. Variety of Choices
You will always get tired of playing your character eventually. When your awesome attacks are dull and rote, there's no more power or unpredictability. That's why it has to be easy for the player to switch to a new experience.
The player's character should have a wide variety of abilities, all of them fun and impactful. Retraining your character should be affordable, so that you can easily experiment with different builds. If a player cares enough to do this experimenting, reward their interest! Never forget, making difficult, impactful choices is always compelling.
Suppose a character has five abilities to choose from, and one of them is really good. A standard-issue, tight-assed, buzzkill modern game designer will nerf the strong one. No! Buff the weak ones! Remember, you want people to feel powerful! If people like using one ability, make the others that fun.
And if an ability is a bit too strong and the players like it lot? Keep it in! It doesn't matter! It's just a video game!
3. Good Dopamine Rewards
There are two reasons to play these games: The surge of triumph and fake power that comes from beating a tough boss or encounter. And the dopamine hits from improving your character.
Time is the currency you spent to get power, and you are aiming for customers who have nothing but time to burn.
However, if you are making a game you want players to play for a long time, there is a limit to how many upgrades you can give. You need to save some power for the future. That's why you have to achieve the trick of making the small, incremental upgrades exciting.
When you get rewards, it should feel like a slot machine. Think about using a slot machine. You press the button. The wheels spin and the ding-ding-ding happens. And you know you're probably going to lose. But you're still gripped, because you know there's a small chance of something great happening.
That's how to structure giving loot. Don't give a Diablo 4-style constant drip of trash and tedious sorting through junk. Only have a few moments where the player can get an improvement. But have those moments be clear and suspenseful. Then have that improvement, when it finally appears, be substantial. The player has to FEEL it.
4. The Power Fantasy
This is a fantasy. Why does a player expend hundreds of precious hours of life to get lost in your fantasy? Because it, in some way, feels rewarding.
My games are short and story-heavy. I can give the player rewards in the role-playing and the story. A thousand hours of looter shooter game can't rely on story, so the player must be made to feel good with the game mechanics. Which means the action and the loot. These have to be, at some point, exciting. You know. Fun.
Think about the player at the end of a session. What about your game made the player feel good? What makes the player walk away from the computer feeling like he or she has had a satisfying experience? How often did those high points happen, and what unnecessary elements blunted or diluted their effect?
You need to be able to answer these questions.
This Is Where the Art Is
Video games are machines for manipulating human brains. When I write a game, I am trying to use my limited skills and set of tools to make an engine that will create emotional responses in the brain of some human I will never meet.
The main reason designers put RPG elements in games is that it's easy. "Bar goes up. Number goes up. Dopamine flows." Anyone can do that. Never forget you can use that loop to make popular games where the player doesn't even do anything.
(Progress Quest is one of the most revelatory and influential "games" ever made.)
But filling bars is an empty activity. Most players will get tired of it quick. That is where the Art comes in. That is when I tap into my sense of mischief, playfulness, and barely restrained sadism. When I start putting some game in the game.
So think about games. Forget about filling bars. What makes you smile? What makes you scared or gets your heart racing? Think back to games you played a long time ago. What incidents from way back when do you still remember?
When you come up with a design idea that makes you smile or giggle a little, you're on the right track.
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I remember "playing" progress quest for a few weeks when it first came out. I was moderately engaged, but I think it showed that I'm not this genre's audience. I think D2 and Torchlight 1 were the last two ARPGs that I finished.
For me, the one benchmark of a good game is one that is still fun to play with all cheats enabled. I think the best way to think about it is that a player running around in god mode should be able to fail, even if they can't die.