Placing a strategic focus on player position

[Mephs]

I'm brainstorming ideas for a fantasy based top-down shooter. Currently I'm looking at a system which encourages the player to move around the level strategically. I would like the player to have to regularly consider the efectiveness of their current location and decide whether it is best to move to another location or stay put. The position of the opponent(s) should also affect the player's decision.

In order to facilitate such strategic thinking, the player needs a strategic incentive to change (or stay at) their location. Given the fantasy theme, I felt that an appropriate incentive would be mana for spells, which will form the majority of players actions.

In order to have mana spread around the map in a believable manner, I will incorporate the idea of mana crystals. Crystals will grow around the map that produce mana. Crystals will vary in size, with larger crystals able to sustain heavier mana usage and smaller crystals able to sustain short term mana production.

Once depleted, crystals will regenerate over time and return to full mana producing strength. This will ensure that the player has to keep to a dyanmic strategy.

There will be a number of schools of magic, each represented by a colour. Players will be able to select a set of spells from any of the schools of magic. For every school of magic of which the player posesses a spell, the players radius of influence is reduced. The radius of influence determines how close to a mana crystal a player must be to start channeling mana. In this manner, a player specialising in a single school of magic will find it easier to acquire mana, but a player specializing in multiple schools of magic will have a lower chance of obtaining mana over a single school opponent, but as a tradeoff, they gain more flexibility in their set of spells.

Mana comes in one pure colour which can be used universally to power spells from any of the schools of magic, there is no concept of coloured mana.

This is the system as far as I have developed it. I think it works quite nicely in theory, but I do have some concerns, hence this post. I believe that it currently encourages players to roam the entire map, ever onwards in order to obtain mana as fast as possible. I'm not sure there is ever much incentive to stay in the same place. The choices are too obvious, if a mana crystal is not providing enough mana, the player simply moves to the nearest, largest mana crystal in sight. There is little risk involved in the process and no cause for the player to ever doubt their strategy.

Of course, the player will have to take the opponents actions into account, which adds some risk element, but I wonder if this system of mana crystals can be improved to offer even more strategy?

Would anyone have any suggestions!!?

As a start, I'm thinking that if players hold the mouse cursor over a crystal, they are putting their focus on it. They are unable to act offensively or defensively whilst doing so becuase they aren't able to move the mouse cursor from the crystal without interrupting the focus, so we could reward the player for taking the risk of inaction, by increasing the regeneration rate of crystals. In this manner, players can decide to stay put despite other reserves of mana if they are willing to risk a small period of inaction (5-10 seconds or so).

That's the kind of idea I'm hoping people might suggest, if you have any more, please suggest away!!

Many thanks,

Steve

[woo]

I think you're on the right track. Having various kinds of power ups also add depth (no, I don't need that one - ooh, I've gotta get that one).

But I'm going to stop and say - I think what you need to do is just try it and find out what's fun about it. Prototype it with blue squares and red circles or whatever and just play it out to see how it works. Then when you're happy with it, tag that version in source control. Have someone else play it. See if you can tweak it a bit more. When your happy, tag it and then try version 2 where you really change things up. See what you like about version 2 and what you don't like. Iterate some more. Get feedback from other people. Keep it in version control and combine ideas until you've captured what's really fun about your game. Then add the sugar coating and polish to make it visually appealing.

It certainly sounds good, but until you play it, it's hard to say what works well together and what doesn't. I hope this helps.
-Andrew Douglas
http://theoreticalgames.com

[TeeGee]

I think that the crystals/mana idea you have is pretty good. Don't over complicate it - it seems playable as it is. Instead you should think of other, secondary ways of encouraging the player to consider his position.

Above-mentioned power ups are great idea here. Other things could be related to some area effects.
It's fantasy right? Then make some healing spring, a node that makes your spells more powerful, or a place full of crystals, but with ocassional lava eruptions. you get the idea.

And consider other more mundane things. Advantage of heigh, camouflage in a forest, extra protecion inside a building. Maybe make one place more attractive than other to make players compete for it in a king of the hill way. Castle with healing well and big supply of crystals anyone?

In fact I would recommend you to get Magic&Mayhem copy or even demo (relatively old retail game, might be hard to find part one is essentially better). If I get your idea right then it's a very similiar game and positioning is a very important aspect there. It includes everything - powerups, mana nodes, safe places under some ceiling (protects from meteros/lightnings), places that give cover, but are flamable by spells (forest) and whole set of terrain control spells.
It's a good example and lots of fun too.

Hope that helps...

[Mephs]

I've spent a lot of time thinking and rehashing this idea actually. As Woo suggests, I have begun work on prototyping the idea. I've decided to give Flash/Actionscript a try and I've been amazed how much I've put together and learnt after just two days. I already have a 640x480 grassy field that is randomly populated with crystals of varying colours. The player is also able to move towads a mouse cursor. It shouldn't be too long before I am able to properly test the ideas... much quicker than if I'd have tried to integrate it directly into my current C++ engine.

Anyway, basically I think I have a better, more elegant idea that keeps the idea a little easier to understand but still achieves the desired effect. I do think that the idea as it stood was a little overly complex and unintuitive, while not quite providing the effect I had hoped for. Basically, starting from scratch with the idea, mana crystals are distributed about the field of play. Each mana crystal spawns mana of a set colour. Mana crystals change the colour of mana they produce over time. Smaller crystals are less stable and change colour more frequently, while larger crystals take much longer to change.

Players have tiered access to spells dependant upon their mastery level. If a player specializes in multiple schools, the spells they get access to decrease in power. A player specializing in a single colour will have access to all spells of that colour, where a player specializing in 2 schools will have the top tier of spells of both colours unavailable. A player specializing in 3 schools will have another tier removed and so on.

Finally, taking the focus mechanic and bringing it up-to-date. A player will have to choose the colour they are using to focus the crystal. If the focus colour matches the targetted crystal colour, the focus will delay an impending mana colour change for a short period. If the colour of the focus does not match the crystal colour, the crystal will start producing the desired mana colour at a much reduced rate. This will allow players to access a desired colour of mana anywhere they desire, at the cost of a reduced rate of production.

Using this system, all the player has to worry about is adapting to the changing colour of mana crystals over time, and it will be pretty straightforward that smaller crystals are less reliable for mana in the long-term, but can be relied on to provide a path to a larger crystal. Focusing on any given crystal will provide a mechanism to be able to ignore positional impact for the short term. That will be all the player needs to think about, but it gives us an allowance for complex strategies from a simple system.

I love the ideas about height, camouflage, flamable trees and covering terrain. I'd have to think about how to work this into the game, as I intend it to be more of a proper shooter than an RTS style game, so height for example may be difficult to work into the game as it will be reaction based rather than statistic based.

Healing wells sound interesting too, that would certainly provide another incentive to move regardless of what the current mana situation is. Maybe I could tie this system in with the spell system and have the map cast its own spells in some areas. We could have a swamp zone for example with a high number of mana crystals that randomly infects players with a disease based spell, representing the player being bitten by disease carrying insects. It's a good example of risk and reward.

Anyhoo, thanks for the ideas, I've also spotted your game Teegee, I might have to give that a go too, it looks interesting :)

Thanks for the responses,

Steve

[TeeGee]

You seem already full of ideas to make the desired effect ;).

However I strongly recommend to not complicate the core mechanics too much. It's generally better to add more optional depth than to make the basis of the game to hard to get. I know what I'm saying - just look at my game's topic and read about the problems people have with grapsing the mechanics ;).

And two more recommendations (if you want the game to be more shooter-like) of nice examples showing a good implementation of the positioning issues.

Rakion and GuildWars.

Rakion is a free MMORPG/martial arts/deathmatch game in fantasy setting. It shows how fps-style positioning and level design can be implemented in a fantasy game.

GuildWars is a big MMO - it has some free-to-play periods, but I guess that you can also view some gameplay videos. The positioning is the most important matter of the PvP gameplay there (without adding too many extra terrain effects). It's that the players need to move to achieve their goals, they need to move to dodge attack, to seek cover, to prevent the enmy form moving etc.

Oh and one more thing - implementing terrain/height features is even easier in the shooter game. You don't have to make it affect the player's stats - if it blocks your view/shooting, then it's already a strong effect.

And BTW - seems that I will like your game ;). I'm a sucker for magic themed projects.

[Mephs]

I've actualy played Guildwars, I have a level 20 Ranger/Monk :) I do like the game, though as I remember from the last time I played, position was somewhat important, but not quite to the extent I'm hoping for.

I haven't tried Rakion though, so it might be worth looking into.

I think the idea may sound complicated in theory, but in practise I think it could be made very easy to understand, you just have to be careful how you present the mechanics to the player.

For example, as the player can choose multiple colours of magic, we can simplify the presentation of this to the player. Rather than giving them an option screen with the ability to pick colours of magic they know nothing about, we could simply have the player start with a base colour, perhaps pure mana that acts as a general introduction to the game.

We only present the player with options to specialize in additional colours once they have grasped the basic mechanics. The player just needs to know what to expect and not be expected to make an uninformed choice.

When we then present them with the option to try multiple schools of magic, we can show them what spells they will have access to before they commit to the decision. I think the game would also need a way for player to feel that the decisions they make are correct. If we don't give them anything to base their decisions on, they may feel that are limiting their potential through uninformed choices. Perhaps we could give players a testing ground where they can practise their skills before commiting to them.

All this should be done with a minimum number of information screens, nobod wants to trawl through a tonne of information, or even multiple pages with less information. I think a minimalist motto is the key. At least I think that's how I will proceed with things.

That's definitely something to think on though.

Oh, and I've given your game a try, I enjoy it. I would certainly have a few ideas of changes to make to streamline it if you were interested, but you've already gotten further than I have so full credit to you!

Cheers,

Steve

[TeeGee]

Yeah - your idea is pretty clear and seems simple enough. My statement to not complicate things too much was more of general nature - nothing specifically related to any of the ideas you've wrote. I actually really like the whole thing.

From your profession in GW (and fact that you've mentioned your level) I can tell that you were a PvP newbie ;). I was pretty hooked up in the PvP aspect of the game (was a leader of GvG oriented guild) and I remember that positioning was really a key in high-level PvP play. Bah... those times... This game is definetly a life-eater...

And if you have any suggestions regarding my game, then I'll be more than glad to hear them. Just post them in the game's topic, PM or mail me at teegee at getmagi.com. I probably won't implement big changes now (premiere is too close), but I'll definetly keep them in mind for future updates.

One more thing - you've got me pretty interested in your project. If you will need a playtester at some stage of the development - just give me a shout.