Some thoughts on game progression

[tarbomb]

I've been meaning to write this post for a while now, but it took some time to flesh out (closing the window with a half-written thread in it didn't help, either. :))

I've been thinking about game progression. What makes this game fun? How does one make the game even more fun? What's the goal of the game?

Essentially, I consider something fun if there's a sense of a) power over my own in-game experience, b) continuous, noticeable improvement, and c) some definite goals.

(a) Power over my own in-game experience means that I can control to some extent how I play. I want to have the feeling of "deciding my own destiny", so to speak. That means my actions have to have some kind of effect on my own future.

(b) Continuous and noticeable improvement means I have to feel as though I'm going somewhere. If I play all day long and there's no improvement, then there's no real motivation to play.

(c) Definite goals means that there has to be something to work for, and it has to be definite, non-arbitrary, and achievable without chance. "Unlocking all the tanks" is a definite goal, is not arbitrary (since there is actually something you get from it), and is achievable on your own power. "Getting all the pulchs" is similarly a definite goal.

So how does the game fare when looked at from this point of view?

The game definitely satisfies (a). I get gridshards, gridshards give me VP and XP, and those determine where the game goes. No complaint there.

(b) is more of a problem. Yes, we have pulchs, but it's a matter of random grinding and is therefore neither continuous nor noticeable. Augments fail on this front as well: they're not noticeable due to the immensely slow rate of progress, and the extreme cost of augments above 4% makes it not really continuous either, unless all you plan to do is raise all the tanks to 4% above base.

As for (c), there definitely are definite goals, but there are too few; the game lacks depth. Once you've unlocked all the tanks and gotten all the pulchs, there's nothing left to do but stay alive. Yes, the exceedingly severe death penalty does make staying where you are a nontrivial task, but it's not terribly exciting (in fact the death penalty prevents you from taking interesting risks for fear of loosing your pulch collection that took you weeks to collect).

(b) is, in my problem, the area with the biggest room for improvement. Right now, the main form of upgrades is in either prisms, which ends after you collect all the top-level prisms, or in augments, which as I said weren't engaging due to diminishing returns. You could, of course, simply increase the power of augments and introduce more prisms, but that would imbalance the game too much, and you'd lose the single battlefront. That means that we would want some form of upgrade that wouldn't create relative imbalance, but would seem noticeable. That means... resonators!

Yes, I'm advocating for a return in some form of resonators. The game has sufficiently changed (in particular connection requirements and the lack of respawning, which means that farming in a resonator-high environment isn't feasible anymore) that bringing back some form of local team upgrades might provide the positive effects of resonators without causing the game-breaking effects of resonators in previous builds. Resonators would provide both goals and continuous improvement - a player would want to expand the amount of territory placed under resonator buffs. Furthermore, resonators encourage team play, since everyone would want to work towards a common goal of maxing out a city and its resonators. There are two approaches: either put local resonators in and leave the uniform difficulty there, or put global resonators and make enemies further from Origin harder (thereby providing some incentive to conquer territory in a roughly circular shape rather than the "tentacles" pattern we see now.

As for goals: I have a few ideas, but nothing definite. Stuff I'm thinking about: a rank system based on kill ratio, kill efficiency (kills per hour when outside a town), city level-ups; achievements for discovering a certain number of cities that could be redeemed for VP; "rescue the town" type minigames (town is under assault by enemy armada - rescue it before it gets de-leveled to 0 for some cool loot!), event bosses that would require lots of cooperation to take down.

Also, I still feel that the death penalty needs to be removed or severely lessened. It's particularly harmful against scouts, which don't get any prisms, and biased towards safe grinding of predictable enemies.

What do you think?

A few more thoughts: on the individual vs. group focus:

Right now the game's pretty biased towards individual play. Your main aspirations are to collect gridshards to boost your VP, and to get better prisms. The lack of collective goals, aside from the rather artificial "150 town level-ups" means that teamwork and cooperation - the major fun of this kind of coop game - is much lessened, since there's no real incentive to group up other than to kill more of the same type of enemy faster. To make an analogy: it's more like farming the godlands in realm than dealing with event bosses or dungeons.

If more goals and paths are introduced, I'd like to see some of them be more team-centric - possibly a minigame with a goal equally satisfying to all teammates, like an extremely hard boss that requires multiple people to take down (somewhat like the armada, but not a pushover) and has real strategic consequences to the map - for instance, capable of de-leveling a town or destroying a road to it.

[rob]

Tarbomb,

This is a very thoughtful post, and I agree with most of it.

While I agree that the death penalty is hard on people who want to have all pulchs all the time, from a combat-effectiveness point of view, you lose only 1.2% effectiveness in each category. I'm also imagining that pulch farming will get a lot easier in groups. I personally am enjoying the current death penalty; as it was before, once you got all the pulchs, the prism game was over. All that said, I hear you, and I wouldn't think that the death penalty has been finalized.

I've been working on terrain recently. You'll see the first part of it in build 35. Eventually I would like terrain to affect gameplay, perhaps by giving various bonuses (+5% range in the crystal steppe, +10% damage in the stellar highlands, etc). You could also collect powerups that only work in certain terrains, or build resonator-like structures that work across a whole region.

I'd also like to distribute enemies in a more interesting fashion than the current uniform randomness. We'll need some more enemies to do that effectively.

Tim and I were talking about some more loot-collecting mechanics the other day -- equippable enhancements with random stats. Perhaps something like this would work for later-game goals. Once some of our current projects are in decent shape, we may take this up.

Rob

[tarbomb]

This is a very thoughtful post, and I agree with most of it.

Thanks.

While I agree that the death penalty is hard on people who want to have all pulchs all the time, from a combat-effectiveness point of view, you lose only 1.2% effectiveness in each category. I'm also imagining that pulch farming will get a lot easier in groups. I personally am enjoying the current death penalty; as it was before, once you got all the pulchs, the prism game was over. All that said, I hear you, and I wouldn't think that the death penalty has been finalized.

A little more insight, based on my experiences playing in the last few days:

I've been playing a little bit more aggressively. The new enemies (I'm looking at you, you evil extraction tower) are a good deal harder than the old supertank and watchtower (both of which are pretty safe if you take your time and be careful), and it's taking its toll - I've died two or three times in the last two days. On average, I get a pulch every 40 minutes to an hour when playing in a two or three person group (~1.5-2 hours solo), so I would have to play for about twenty-four hours (a rough estimate based on the coupon-collector problem) without dying at all in order to get myself back to where I was, and if I do die, I am even less powerful than before. I'm now down to mostly exquisite (17.7) prisms, with a few resplendent and a single auroral one.

The main difference between this and say, RotMG, is that in realm you can vault your stuff in order to bring yourself back quickly when you die. The inability to do this makes death much more brutal, and turns the advancement process from one of positive "testing" (how much loot can you collect quickly? more skill = better character) into one of negative "testing" (how long can you avoid making a single mistake?)

I've been working on terrain recently. You'll see the first part of it in build 35. Eventually I would like terrain to affect gameplay, perhaps by giving various bonuses (+5% range in the crystal steppe, +10% damage in the stellar highlands, etc). You could also collect powerups that only work in certain terrains, or build resonator-like structures that work across a whole region.

Exciting! I'm hoping that these terrain bonuses will more noticeable than just stat changes. Different enemy distributions, abilities that can only be used in some terrains, perhaps different tanks performing differently on different terrains would all be very cool.

I'd also like to distribute enemies in a more interesting fashion than the current uniform randomness. We'll need some more enemies to do that effectively.

Tim and I were talking about some more loot-collecting mechanics the other day -- equippable enhancements with random stats. Perhaps something like this would work for later-game goals. Once some of our current projects are in decent shape, we may take this up.

Looking forward to seeing where the game goes!