Spicing up RPS
Different things happen depending on which option you win with — this is where the unequal and unclear payoffs come in.
Having different payoffs gives players reasons to choose one move over another. At a different scale, this is what happens in every strategy game. Early rush in an RTS can be effective if pulled properly against an unprepared opponent (the $10-rock Sirlin refers to), so most experienced players will know to prepare against it (and play the appropriate version of Paper).
The objective here is really to provide the players with clear different alternatives. Ideally, each option would be quite different from the other ones (think about early rush / full economy / mix of them), in such a way that it makes it difficult to calculate (or predict) which option will be the best choice.
The issue with the current game is that the payoffs are too clear. Throws and attacks are equivalent, and give charges. The block also gives charges, which can - at least for now - be easily converted into damage, and compared to attacks and blocks. The only real differenciation for now comes from the -1 speed the opponent gets if they are blocked.
To address this, I am contemplating giving "roles" to each of the three actions. A short analysis on roles can be found on this article on Halo 3:
Roles need to have actual functional differences. Rock-paper-scissors is not actually good design, as the 3 roles are completely identical. The depth in any multiplayer game comes from the roles and their interactions
This agrees with what I've been feeling lately. Part of the apparent randomness comes from the fact that Attack and Throw have the same role, each one being simply a counter to another move. And even Block is not that different, since it allows the player to chain attacks afterwards.
I have not given that enough thought yet (I am currently busy building a basic implementation of the current version of the game; more on that later on this week), but what I'm thinking about is:
- Attack stays as is, i.e. a means to directly inflict damage to the opponent
- Block roles will be geared towards "powering-up"; this is in a way similar to what it is today, but I'll need to emphasize more the power-up side, and possibly decrease the potential damage you can inflict with a throw (for now, you can combo as easily after a throw as you do after an attack)
- Finally, the Throw will have to be the most heavily impacted. It will become something more like "special ability", "magic", or something of the like. In this category, you could have things like "until you are hit, your attacks do double damage".
The critical step will be to keep this Rock-Paper-Scissors relationship, since this is what balances all the moves. With the projected outline, it is easy to imagine a game where you can always block and never suffer any major damage. This is why the "magic" category should provide ways to prevent this.
This is all a bit blurry for now, and needs to be given some more thought. I'll let it simmer while I finish the first coding part of the project, and will probably come back to it during the week.
See you soon :)
"until you are hit, your attacks do double damage" sounds like a power-up to me ...
ReplyDeleteI don't get what difference you make between waht you plan for blocking and throwing effects.
Indeed, I wasn't clear. Basically, I want the three types of move to represent the Attack, the Defense and (what I call) Magic.
ReplyDeleteAttack will be focused on dealing damage.
Block will have a dual purpose. The first one is to provide a wide area of defensive moves, to counter the attacks. The second one will be to provide B charges, that will be necessary to cast most powerful moves (you can think of it as your main mana bar for instance), or at least that will be necessary to cast them in their strongest form. This is what I meant by power-up.
Magic here will include all kind of unusual effects, like the one given on example. I will first try and represent them in a way similar to attacks, but with weaker damage / speed, and additional effects. They will replace the current Throw to add another (hopefully) interesting choice in the equation.
Here's what I have in mind for now, but it will likely change quite a lot when I start prototyping it.