Original post by deathtojohnny For example: In my Mega Man game, there are streaks. Streaks are how many enemies you can hit without getting hurt. Streaks increase your rate of getting a Super, so you'll get a small advantage over the upcoming enemies and you can maintain your streak even longer. Having long streaks doesn't only help your bragging rights, but also it gives you a high score which is awarded to you at the end of the stage. Dying in a stage, your streak won't be as high anymore, and you lose a chance to make a killing in points. And unlike other games where a high score means nothing, the game unlocks something after you reach a certain high score.
Sounds like you have an excellent system there. If it were me, I would probably want to increase the player's potential power or ability with streaking, but it sounds like you have a lot of motivation in there for scoring, so it might be all the same. It helps to have a game that wouldn't be a highly motivated target for reloading. RPGs are extremely bad about making players want to use reloads.
There's a lot more to it, too, I just hate to ramble on, but I do love designing games so much-- :)
Anywho, yeah, Reloading games SUCK. That's why I don't like playing games with instant save/loading. Makes it too easy. There has to be some repercussion for dying, but nothing severe that makes losing suck so much that you want to jump out of window.
For example: Playing a game where you must stop from being hit for 5 minutes or more... I mean, come on, leave some margin for error! We're human!!
Or those games like Ghosts and Ghouls, where you only have two hits before you die, but you have twenty things flying, full speed, at one time.
=============================================MEGA MAN EVOLUTIONMy first project was re-designing a dead franchise. Copy/paste the link below into your address bar for a video sample of the gameplay.http://thedelusionaldreamers.com/video/mmevid.html
Okay, here's a consideration for a solution. Feel free to criticize or poke holes, because that's what I need.
The player has a state titled something similar to "cognizance". The value can range from 10 to 100, and represents how much experience the player earns. If cognizance is 30, the player earns 30% of all experience granted, while the other 70% of it goes into filling cognizance. That means cognizance will fill up very fast at the beginning, and very slow near the end. If cognizance is 100, then the player simply earns all experience granted. When the player loses all health, cognizance is halved. The rate that cognizance fills up is pretty important, and not exactly known yet. But I'm guessing it would become nearly full half-way through a moderate length mission.
That's it. Pretty simple. One important factor that needs mentioned is that the experience will be fed in point by point. In other words, earning 50,000 experience with a cognizance of 10 would grant you more than 10% of 50,000. 1 point would go into the mix, then another, then another, each time filling cognizance up to increase the percentage. Depending on how fast cognizance fills up, it could end up being as much as 95% of the 50,000 being earned.
Edit:
I forgot to mention some other details. In addition to the cognizance setup, there would also be the random chance penalties. These happen because the player doesn't recover as fast as normal. The chance of them happening will be very low, but high enough to actually happen once in a while. One would be a holding cell in the current building. Another might be a GTA-like trip to the hospital. Another would be locked into police cell. None of them will take away anything from the player. In the case of situations like hospitals and police, the player will lose their items, but be able to recover them on the way out. Like I said, the chance of them happening will be very small. Just high enough to be a constant threat.
Original post by c-RowWould you get rid of special weapons or power-ups in your game because they favour better players since they know how to obtain them?
I'm not sure how this relates, but I'll just answer with a no and hope that you'll let me know later. Better players will do better in my game. I'm not trying to change that. Just in case it isn't obvious, I support the need to punish failure. It absolutely must happen to present a challenge.
I just tried to find a good comparison to the "skilled player accumulates more sand over the time" problem. Special weapons and power-ups postpone the player's eventual death just like more sand will.
Original post by Kest The player has a state titled something similar to "cognizance". The value can range from 10 to 100, and represents how much experience the player earns. If cognizance is 30, the player earns 30% of all experience granted, while the other 70% of it goes into filling cognizance. That means cognizance will fill up very fast at the beginning, and very slow near the end. If cognizance is 100, then the player simply earns all experience granted. When the player loses all health, cognizance is halved. The rate that cognizance fills up is pretty important, and not exactly known yet. But I'm guessing it would become nearly full half-way through a moderate length mission.
I'm not sure about this. It depends a lot on what you are using the experience for.
If experience is similar to that as in RPGs, then it'd be improving the stats and abilities of the player character, making the game easier. So if you're better at playing the game, you get more experience making the game even easier. Conversely if you're having troubles playing the game it gets harder.
However, if experience is instead used as some sort of measure of rating the character's ability, say for example to unlock new missions of harder difficulty, then this could have potential to be a good gameplay mechanic.
Original post by Trapper Zoid If experience is similar to that as in RPGs, then it'd be improving the stats and abilities of the player character, making the game easier. So if you're better at playing the game, you get more experience making the game even easier. Conversely if you're having troubles playing the game it gets harder.
Experience is used to improve the character's stats and abilities, but not earning experience doesn't make the game get harder. Obtaining it just gives the player more room to roam, and opens the potential to earn better rewards. There will always be tougher and weaker challenges, regardless of how much or how fast experience is earned. The player chooses what they want to oppose based on their own ability. The game never measures that for them.
Quote:
However, if experience is instead used as some sort of measure of rating the character's ability, say for example to unlock new missions of harder difficulty, then this could have potential to be a good gameplay mechanic.
The concept is similar to unlocking new missions. But the missions are actually never locked. They're just very dangerous, and not as profitable for a less skillful character. That's not to say there won't be missions where reputation will be needed to get them, but reputation isn't linked to experience or death. Employers won't care if you die on the job as long as you get it done without problems [smile]
I appreciate the honest opinion. Don't hold back, I need to find flaws.
In the situation of an single player RPG, what if on death, you are teleported back to town or some safe zone all fixed up, and you lose experience. Maybe if there are timers in the game you can cost the player ingame time too. Loss of experience (though only to the start of his level, not back to the last level) would mean nothing got harder, yet he has lost something. it also reinforces the players need to practice by keeping him at his current level longer.
Im not sure but I think its not such an immediate and harsh effect to be worth reloading the game for, even if you lost more experience than you gained since the last save but before the death.
Original post by c-Row Would you get rid of special weapons or power-ups in your game because they favour better players since they know how to obtain them?
I'm not sure how this relates, but I'll just answer with a no and hope that you'll let me know later. Better players will do better in my game. I'm not trying to change that. Just in case it isn't obvious, I support the need to punish failure. It absolutely must happen to present a challenge.
I just tried to find a good comparison to the "skilled player accumulates more sand over the time" problem. Special weapons and power-ups postpone the player's eventual death just like more sand will.
I really don't think it is a problem. And I think viewing it as a problem is counter productive. We need to stop looking at players who do better as more skilled, and start looking at them as players who try harder with more effort. Trying harder shouldn't earn a bigger challenge. It should earn rewards. It won't hurt these players to get nice weapons or more future security to let them relax a little. They've earned future ease by trying harder in the past.
Still, in a game where the player is free to choose the challenges they face, granting more power actually does nothing to make the game easier. It just makes their current level of challenge easier, and gives them the potential to reach a little higher.
