Great post! I think that advantage/disadvantage packages are cool but very difficult to balance. Fallout did a great job of this, but even it didn't get every combination right. Also, these only work if your system is very clear to the player. If you cannot tell how severe a disadvantage is, you'll probably just avoid it completely.
Also, I personally dislike lots of tiny advantages. Often, these are so small that you cannot even tell a difference during gameplay. This invalidates level ups. For example, take a look at Path of Exile. There are a lot of nodes that do super minor things (e.g., +10% spell damage). As a result, you don't notice any difference after unlocking such a node. Sure, the bonuses stack up and over time do make a difference, but the individual effect is so small that it's not rewarding.
However, some nodes in Path of Exile have a great and immediately noticeable effect. For example, the Blood Magic node completely eliminates your mana and instead powers your spells via your health. Unlocking these kinds of nodes feels great and truly rewarding. Sadly, you only get to do that every ten levels or so.
I think a system where a lot of minor nodes are eliminated and instead the remaining nodes are made more powerful would be more enjoyable.
I always want to love the final fantasy games, but they give you a seemingly deep combat system with tons of elements and status effects, and then they make the status effects worthless against every single boss (the only enemies who might be tough enough to be worth using them on).
Instead, each boss is POSSIBLY susceptible (at a very small rate of success) to a single status effect--and that one isn't obvious. The only way to find out is to cast each status effect, many times, on each boss--and there's no reason to do that because you can just kill them faster than that with damage.
A large, complex system that is utterly pointless. Octopath Traveler's combat system, however, was outstanding for a turnbased JRPG style game. Stories were pretty bland though :-/
I liked how Metaphor Refantazio handled this. You could pay the town informant for an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of a given dungeon and it's boss
Boss fights are often one of the worst implemented parts of video games.
They tend to be huge piles of hit points that invalidate large swathes of game mechanics.
Well implemented, they can be a fun puzzle to solve. Poorly implemented, they can frustrate me and cause me to walk away from a game.
Since we’re beating up on D4, I’ll toss endgame Lillith’s one shot kill attack (as in you either evade it or you are guaranteed to die) as terrible boss design.
I remember the elemental lord fight in 4 being fun as I correctly guessed when he would transform into a new elemental first try for all 4. But yes, I dont think I have played a FF-style game where the status effects made sense to ever use.
Action vs. Turn Based? Honestly, I think it balances out. While Action RPGs give you all these extra timey levers to pull, they make all the lever pulling have one ability cooldown or reaction time’s worth of impact. Incremental impacts aren’t nearly as evident when you get no time to absorb them. A combat log and a quantum measured in rounds or turns rather than instants or frames makes smaller changes more noticeable and digestible.
Resistances? Yeah. After too much (modern) WoW, I absolutely have to appreciate them. That said, the overdose can be so insanely breaking, I can see why some developers shy away from it. And… yeah, honestly, I think “elements are decorative/ceremonial” is an awful, but still better place to be in than any instance of “lol, all your attacks are 100% useless.” If players are guaranteed to have access to a reasonable way to hurt their enemies, immunities aren’t game breaking. If, however, you’re going to do something like make a sequence where only one attack type can hurt something, and it’s not unthinkable that a player’s character(s) won’t have that attack type with them? … don’t do that.
Disadvantages? Trade offs aren’t unreasonable, but will definitely have an over sized impact on player perception. More elaborate disadvantages are the same, but also come with the same impact to the developer as anything “elaborate” – the weirder it is, the harder it is to make it work. Might be worth it, but you’re really swinging for the fences, and doing that with a weird penalty is going about it in the most challenge mode of ways.
Little Bonuses? Again, I think in a turn base setting where things are better paced to highlight smaller gains, you’re going to get more bang for your buck. Action games can make progression so imperceptible it can be piles of equipment before you feel like you’ve gained any sort of real power – worse when they “dynamically scale” which really makes a mockery out of the whole notion. Leveling up then seeing everything else immediately level up with you, including the things you just leveled up on, turns the whole concept of leveling and progression into a Sisyphean farce.
More or Fewer Turns? This is where the “padding” of action games goes from a dulling haze to legitimate protection. Yes, getting stunned in an action game for a few seconds is infuriating and dangerous, but the same opportunity to really see and absorb how a turn-based game unfolds has the same magnifying effect. It turns a loud fart in a cafeteria into a loud fart directly into a megaphone. In a turn based game, the action economy is so insanely important that any time anything goes wrong (or right) the impact is unmatched.
Action vs. Turn Based? Honestly, I think it balances out. While Action RPGs give you all these extra timey levers to pull, they make all the lever pulling have one ability cooldown or reaction time’s worth of impact. Incremental impacts aren’t nearly as evident when you get no time to absorb them. A combat log and a quantum measured in rounds or turns rather than instants or frames makes smaller changes more noticeable and digestible.
Resistances? Yeah. After too much (modern) WoW, I absolutely have to appreciate them. That said, the overdose can be so insanely breaking, I can see why some developers shy away from it. And… yeah, honestly, I think “elements are decorative/ceremonial” is an awful, but still better place to be in than any instance of “lol, all your attacks are 100% useless.” If players are guaranteed to have access to a reasonable way to hurt their enemies, immunities aren’t game breaking. If, however, you’re going to do something like make a sequence where only one attack type can hurt something, and it’s not unthinkable that a player’s character(s) won’t have that attack type with them? … don’t do that.
Disadvantages? Trade offs aren’t unreasonable, but will definitely have an over sized impact on player perception. More elaborate disadvantages are the same, but also come with the same impact to the developer as anything “elaborate” – the weirder it is, the harder it is to make it work. Might be worth it, but you’re really swinging for the fences, and doing that with a weird penalty is going about it in the most challenge mode of ways.
Little Bonuses? Again, I think in a turn base setting where things are better paced to highlight smaller gains, you’re going to get more bang for your buck. Action games can make progression so imperceptible it can be piles of equipment before you feel like you’ve gained any sort of real power – worse when they “dynamically scale” which really makes a mockery out of the whole notion. Leveling up then seeing everything else immediately level up with you, including the things you just leveled up on, turns the whole concept of leveling and progression into a Sisyphean farce.
More or Fewer Turns? This is where the “padding” of action games goes from a dulling haze to legitimate protection. Yes, getting stunned in an action game for a few seconds is infuriating and dangerous, but the same opportunity to really see and absorb how a turn-based game unfold has the same magnifying effect. It turns a loud fart in a cafeteria into a loud fart directly into a megaphone. In a turn based game, the action economy is so insanely important that any time anything goes wrong (or right) the impact is unmatched.
Action vs. Turn Based? Honestly, I think it balances out. While Action RPGs give you all these extra timey levers to pull, they make all the lever pulling have one ability cooldown or reaction time’s worth of impact. Incremental impacts aren’t nearly as evident when you get no time to absorb them. A combat log and a quantum measured in rounds or turns rather than instants or frames makes smaller changes more noticeable and digestible.
Resistances? Yeah. After too much (modern) WoW, I absolutely have to appreciate them. That said, the overdose can be so insanely breaking, I can see why some developers shy away from it. And… yeah, honestly, I think “elements are decorative/ceremonial” is an awful, but still better place to be in than any instance of “lol, all your attacks are 100% useless.” If players are guaranteed to have access to a reasonable way to hurt their enemies, immunities aren’t game breaking. If, however, you’re going to do something like make a sequence where only one attack type can hurt something, and it’s not unthinkable that a player’s character(s) won’t have that attack type with them? … don’t do that.
Disadvantages? Trade offs aren’t unreasonable, but will definitely have an over sized impact on player perception. More elaborate disadvantages are the same, but also come with the same impact to the developer as anything “elaborate” – the weirder it is, the harder it is to make it work. Might be worth it, but you’re really swinging for the fences, and doing that with a weird penalty is going about it in the most challenge mode of ways.
Little Bonuses? Again, I think in a turn base setting where things are better paced to highlight smaller gains, you’re going to get more bang for your buck. Action games can make progression so imperceptible it can be piles of equipment before you feel like you’ve gained any sort of real power – worse when they “dynamically scale” which really makes a mockery out of the whole notion. Leveling up then seeing everything else immediately level up with you, including the things you just leveled up on, turns the whole concept of leveling and progression into a Sisyphean farce.
More or Fewer Turns? This is where the “padding” of action games goes from a dulling haze to legitimate protection. Yes, getting stunned in an action game for a few seconds is infuriating and dangerous, but the same opportunity to really see and absorb how a turn-based game unfold has the same magnifying effect. It turns a loud fart in a cafeteria into a loud fart directly into a megaphone. In a turn based game, the action economy is so insanely important that any time anything goes wrong (or right) the impact is unmatched.
Those D4 stats, wow they made the game way more complicated.
"You have up to a 100% chance" There is no way it works how that is actually worded.
Have you played Slice and Dice?
It is not really the same genre at all, but then Slay the Spire is also a completely different genre. I feel like it makes fights and enemies very interesting and different. No idea if you can extrapolate any of its ideas into a top down RPG.
The weird random bonuses on equipment is what drove me away from Divinity: Original Sin 1 AND 2.
They combined my two most hated equipment designs: level set equipment ala Diablo’s common/uncommon/rare drops (it’s way better when every once in a while you figure out a way to beat a dragon at level 2 and now your cleric has a sweet flail) and a slew of dull, random bonuses on found loot (should I keep my cloth helmet with +1 protection vs water damage or swap it out for a jute helmet that gives +1 to 1H blunt accuracy and +2 to stealth? Answer: it doesn’t matter).
I know other people don’t care, but it just feels so listless to me that it ruins otherwise great games.
In the instance of Diablo 4, I think people definitely did care. The whole point of the game is to sell the getting loot loop, and so much of getting loop is trying to find items with bonuses that matter at all.
At least with Borderlands the item descriptions are short so if you find an item that's a banger you can immediately tell.
Great post! I think that advantage/disadvantage packages are cool but very difficult to balance. Fallout did a great job of this, but even it didn't get every combination right. Also, these only work if your system is very clear to the player. If you cannot tell how severe a disadvantage is, you'll probably just avoid it completely.
Also, I personally dislike lots of tiny advantages. Often, these are so small that you cannot even tell a difference during gameplay. This invalidates level ups. For example, take a look at Path of Exile. There are a lot of nodes that do super minor things (e.g., +10% spell damage). As a result, you don't notice any difference after unlocking such a node. Sure, the bonuses stack up and over time do make a difference, but the individual effect is so small that it's not rewarding.
However, some nodes in Path of Exile have a great and immediately noticeable effect. For example, the Blood Magic node completely eliminates your mana and instead powers your spells via your health. Unlocking these kinds of nodes feels great and truly rewarding. Sadly, you only get to do that every ten levels or so.
I think a system where a lot of minor nodes are eliminated and instead the remaining nodes are made more powerful would be more enjoyable.
Sometimes in path of exile id wait a few levels to plug in skill points in order to be sure to feel them.
I always want to love the final fantasy games, but they give you a seemingly deep combat system with tons of elements and status effects, and then they make the status effects worthless against every single boss (the only enemies who might be tough enough to be worth using them on).
Instead, each boss is POSSIBLY susceptible (at a very small rate of success) to a single status effect--and that one isn't obvious. The only way to find out is to cast each status effect, many times, on each boss--and there's no reason to do that because you can just kill them faster than that with damage.
A large, complex system that is utterly pointless. Octopath Traveler's combat system, however, was outstanding for a turnbased JRPG style game. Stories were pretty bland though :-/
I liked how Metaphor Refantazio handled this. You could pay the town informant for an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of a given dungeon and it's boss
Boss fights are often one of the worst implemented parts of video games.
They tend to be huge piles of hit points that invalidate large swathes of game mechanics.
Well implemented, they can be a fun puzzle to solve. Poorly implemented, they can frustrate me and cause me to walk away from a game.
Since we’re beating up on D4, I’ll toss endgame Lillith’s one shot kill attack (as in you either evade it or you are guaranteed to die) as terrible boss design.
I remember the elemental lord fight in 4 being fun as I correctly guessed when he would transform into a new elemental first try for all 4. But yes, I dont think I have played a FF-style game where the status effects made sense to ever use.
Yes, elemental weaknesses/resists were generally useful in the FF games. Statuses not so much.
Game Design is a wide and complex practice which doesn't get covered as much as possible. Your words are invaluable
Action vs. Turn Based? Honestly, I think it balances out. While Action RPGs give you all these extra timey levers to pull, they make all the lever pulling have one ability cooldown or reaction time’s worth of impact. Incremental impacts aren’t nearly as evident when you get no time to absorb them. A combat log and a quantum measured in rounds or turns rather than instants or frames makes smaller changes more noticeable and digestible.
Resistances? Yeah. After too much (modern) WoW, I absolutely have to appreciate them. That said, the overdose can be so insanely breaking, I can see why some developers shy away from it. And… yeah, honestly, I think “elements are decorative/ceremonial” is an awful, but still better place to be in than any instance of “lol, all your attacks are 100% useless.” If players are guaranteed to have access to a reasonable way to hurt their enemies, immunities aren’t game breaking. If, however, you’re going to do something like make a sequence where only one attack type can hurt something, and it’s not unthinkable that a player’s character(s) won’t have that attack type with them? … don’t do that.
Disadvantages? Trade offs aren’t unreasonable, but will definitely have an over sized impact on player perception. More elaborate disadvantages are the same, but also come with the same impact to the developer as anything “elaborate” – the weirder it is, the harder it is to make it work. Might be worth it, but you’re really swinging for the fences, and doing that with a weird penalty is going about it in the most challenge mode of ways.
Little Bonuses? Again, I think in a turn base setting where things are better paced to highlight smaller gains, you’re going to get more bang for your buck. Action games can make progression so imperceptible it can be piles of equipment before you feel like you’ve gained any sort of real power – worse when they “dynamically scale” which really makes a mockery out of the whole notion. Leveling up then seeing everything else immediately level up with you, including the things you just leveled up on, turns the whole concept of leveling and progression into a Sisyphean farce.
More or Fewer Turns? This is where the “padding” of action games goes from a dulling haze to legitimate protection. Yes, getting stunned in an action game for a few seconds is infuriating and dangerous, but the same opportunity to really see and absorb how a turn-based game unfolds has the same magnifying effect. It turns a loud fart in a cafeteria into a loud fart directly into a megaphone. In a turn based game, the action economy is so insanely important that any time anything goes wrong (or right) the impact is unmatched.
Action vs. Turn Based? Honestly, I think it balances out. While Action RPGs give you all these extra timey levers to pull, they make all the lever pulling have one ability cooldown or reaction time’s worth of impact. Incremental impacts aren’t nearly as evident when you get no time to absorb them. A combat log and a quantum measured in rounds or turns rather than instants or frames makes smaller changes more noticeable and digestible.
Resistances? Yeah. After too much (modern) WoW, I absolutely have to appreciate them. That said, the overdose can be so insanely breaking, I can see why some developers shy away from it. And… yeah, honestly, I think “elements are decorative/ceremonial” is an awful, but still better place to be in than any instance of “lol, all your attacks are 100% useless.” If players are guaranteed to have access to a reasonable way to hurt their enemies, immunities aren’t game breaking. If, however, you’re going to do something like make a sequence where only one attack type can hurt something, and it’s not unthinkable that a player’s character(s) won’t have that attack type with them? … don’t do that.
Disadvantages? Trade offs aren’t unreasonable, but will definitely have an over sized impact on player perception. More elaborate disadvantages are the same, but also come with the same impact to the developer as anything “elaborate” – the weirder it is, the harder it is to make it work. Might be worth it, but you’re really swinging for the fences, and doing that with a weird penalty is going about it in the most challenge mode of ways.
Little Bonuses? Again, I think in a turn base setting where things are better paced to highlight smaller gains, you’re going to get more bang for your buck. Action games can make progression so imperceptible it can be piles of equipment before you feel like you’ve gained any sort of real power – worse when they “dynamically scale” which really makes a mockery out of the whole notion. Leveling up then seeing everything else immediately level up with you, including the things you just leveled up on, turns the whole concept of leveling and progression into a Sisyphean farce.
More or Fewer Turns? This is where the “padding” of action games goes from a dulling haze to legitimate protection. Yes, getting stunned in an action game for a few seconds is infuriating and dangerous, but the same opportunity to really see and absorb how a turn-based game unfold has the same magnifying effect. It turns a loud fart in a cafeteria into a loud fart directly into a megaphone. In a turn based game, the action economy is so insanely important that any time anything goes wrong (or right) the impact is unmatched.
Action vs. Turn Based? Honestly, I think it balances out. While Action RPGs give you all these extra timey levers to pull, they make all the lever pulling have one ability cooldown or reaction time’s worth of impact. Incremental impacts aren’t nearly as evident when you get no time to absorb them. A combat log and a quantum measured in rounds or turns rather than instants or frames makes smaller changes more noticeable and digestible.
Resistances? Yeah. After too much (modern) WoW, I absolutely have to appreciate them. That said, the overdose can be so insanely breaking, I can see why some developers shy away from it. And… yeah, honestly, I think “elements are decorative/ceremonial” is an awful, but still better place to be in than any instance of “lol, all your attacks are 100% useless.” If players are guaranteed to have access to a reasonable way to hurt their enemies, immunities aren’t game breaking. If, however, you’re going to do something like make a sequence where only one attack type can hurt something, and it’s not unthinkable that a player’s character(s) won’t have that attack type with them? … don’t do that.
Disadvantages? Trade offs aren’t unreasonable, but will definitely have an over sized impact on player perception. More elaborate disadvantages are the same, but also come with the same impact to the developer as anything “elaborate” – the weirder it is, the harder it is to make it work. Might be worth it, but you’re really swinging for the fences, and doing that with a weird penalty is going about it in the most challenge mode of ways.
Little Bonuses? Again, I think in a turn base setting where things are better paced to highlight smaller gains, you’re going to get more bang for your buck. Action games can make progression so imperceptible it can be piles of equipment before you feel like you’ve gained any sort of real power – worse when they “dynamically scale” which really makes a mockery out of the whole notion. Leveling up then seeing everything else immediately level up with you, including the things you just leveled up on, turns the whole concept of leveling and progression into a Sisyphean farce.
More or Fewer Turns? This is where the “padding” of action games goes from a dulling haze to legitimate protection. Yes, getting stunned in an action game for a few seconds is infuriating and dangerous, but the same opportunity to really see and absorb how a turn-based game unfold has the same magnifying effect. It turns a loud fart in a cafeteria into a loud fart directly into a megaphone. In a turn based game, the action economy is so insanely important that any time anything goes wrong (or right) the impact is unmatched.
Those D4 stats, wow they made the game way more complicated.
"You have up to a 100% chance" There is no way it works how that is actually worded.
Have you played Slice and Dice?
It is not really the same genre at all, but then Slay the Spire is also a completely different genre. I feel like it makes fights and enemies very interesting and different. No idea if you can extrapolate any of its ideas into a top down RPG.
The weird random bonuses on equipment is what drove me away from Divinity: Original Sin 1 AND 2.
They combined my two most hated equipment designs: level set equipment ala Diablo’s common/uncommon/rare drops (it’s way better when every once in a while you figure out a way to beat a dragon at level 2 and now your cleric has a sweet flail) and a slew of dull, random bonuses on found loot (should I keep my cloth helmet with +1 protection vs water damage or swap it out for a jute helmet that gives +1 to 1H blunt accuracy and +2 to stealth? Answer: it doesn’t matter).
I know other people don’t care, but it just feels so listless to me that it ruins otherwise great games.
In the instance of Diablo 4, I think people definitely did care. The whole point of the game is to sell the getting loot loop, and so much of getting loop is trying to find items with bonuses that matter at all.
At least with Borderlands the item descriptions are short so if you find an item that's a banger you can immediately tell.