Assessment of the game system

As promised a while ago, here is a first assessment of the gameplay (what has been currently built, as well as what is planned) against one checklist provided by Raph Koster in his book A Theory of Fun:

This isn't an algorithm for fun, but it's a useful tool for checking for the absence of fun[...]. Simply check each system against this list:
Do you have to prepare before taking on the challenge?

With the current version, it's a no. However, character building will provide the player with multiple choices to do before taking on a fight:

• Level up in a way that fits her overall strategy. In other words, learn the new skills (or upgrade existing ones) that she will be able to use best in combat.
  
• Choose among all the moves that are available the most suited ones. The choice can be made either on personal preferences, or because the player knows the opponent's playstyle, and adapts accordingly.
  

Can you prepare in different ways and still succeed?

From what is said above, that is obviously a goal :) Playtest will tell me if that's really the case though.

Does the environment in which the challenge takes place affect the challenge?

It depends on what you mean by environment. If you define it by "all the factors that live independently from the player", then it includes your opponent. Given the nature of the game, and her being a human, your opponent will definitely affect the challenge.

Are there solid rules defined for the challenge you undertake?

Yes.

Can the rule set support multiple types of challenges?

That's difficult to answer. Given that the challenge changes with each opponent (or at least it should), I would say yes. Moreover, the rules will have to be compliant to support a team vs. team confrontation.

Can the player bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? At high levels of difficulty, does the player have to bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge?

The abilities a player need seem to be several fold:

• Strategy to decide how to level your character up. Levelling up will (hopefully) include tough trade-offs to do, and having a strategy and being consistent with it will be crucial.
  
• Tactical skills in order to decide how to prepare and lead a fight. Even though the tactical aspect is still limited in the current version, it will evolve with additional moves being available.
  
• Intuition, or Yomi, during the battle to execute the above tactics.
  
• In team matches, team play will definitely play a preponderant role.
  

Is there skill involved in using an ability? (If not, is this a fundamental "move" in the game, like moving one checked piece?)

No skill to use the ability (contrary to games like Street Fighter). The skill will rather be on when to use a given ability.

Are there multiple success states to overcoming the challenge? (In other words, success should not have a single guaranteed result.)

It being a "death match", there is for now only one success state. Either you win, or you lose. I have ideas to tweak that a little, but it is only vague ideas for now, and I don't think it will really affect how the player feels about how she'd done in the fight.

Do advanced players get no benefit from tackling easy challenges?

After a match, the players gain both experience points and ranking points. And both of these will be computed according to the difference between the players, so that an advanced player will have close to nothing to gain by beating a weaker player.

Does failing at the challenge at the very least make you have to try again?

Hum... I don't really see the implications of this one, so I'm not sure I'm really answering the question. Like in sports or in fighting games, a lose or a win is only a step towards mastery. So whatever the outcome of the fight is, an ambitious player will have to try again.

If your answer to any of the above questions is "no", then the game system is probably worth readdressing.

As said in introduction, this is not a guarantee that the game will be fun. At the very least, it avoids the pitfalls raised by Raph Koster.
Now there is some work to make it fun :)

C'est parti !

I'm now officially dedicating my working time to building The Five Orbs. I have decided to take one year off my current job to give it a real try.

Besides all the planning I need to do to give myself a clearer mid-term vision, that means I will have more time to post on this blog. From now on, I'll try to post something at least on a weekly basis, and hopefully more often, especially in the first weeks (I have quite a few draft posts waiting to be published).

And since this blog is about game development, I'll try and categorize the posts with two main labels: game design for everything related to, well, game design (the majority of the posts until now); and dev for all the technical aspects of the game development.

And now... on to work!

Discussing balance

A nice article discussing balance I found on Sirlin.net (the ones that have designed the Yomi fighting card game) :

What's in the pipe - The meta game

The fighting system is the core experience of The Five Orbs. However, it will get enriched by a few other aspects:

Character progression

Learning new skills will allow your characters two main things: new skills, and new spells. Spells are only an idea for now, and I have not put much thought into them yet. The core idea behind the new skills is that the player will have to choose only a handful of skills to use in combat among the whole set of aptitudes they will have unlocked.

Multiplayer

This is yet to be developed. I'm thinking for now of three main aspects: apprenticeship, teams and guilds. Each level has its own characteristics.

The apprenticeship is useful to form a bond between a newcomer and an experienced player, and help the newcomer integrate the world more rapidly.

Teams are the "fighting unit". People on the same team strive to develop common strategies and work on their play to achieve results together.

And guilds are vaster groups of people. They share higher-level goals and objectives ; I found out that guilds are most effective if they have a physical representation of some sort in the universe, which is not possible for now in The Five Orbs. I have a couple of ideas to make guilds worth it though, but I'll go to them in a future post.