Game Version 2: Iteration Notes
When looking back at the feedback from the first version, a number of design barriers were noticed to be hindering people fun:
- The player is in control, not the game. Because of this, players don't need each other, thus leading to anti-social behavior.
- The difference in the gap of power between players was very big, this made the assistance of weaker players next to insignificant to the stronger ones, causing players to separate based on their power.
- Having to share limited resources was annoying since every player wanted to be able to have as many upgrade options as possible.
I will be trying the following solutions to make the next iteration:
Taking control away from the players
Taking control away from players, and giving some of it to the game would mean that players would start considering more ways to increase their chance of surviving. Naturally, working with other players would improve their chances.
There are several ways to do this, some methods would be:
- Adding a maximum turn limit for each player so they must use their turns wisely.
- Increasing the difficulty to add more danger for each encounter.
- Making players ask for help before seeing the enemy they're about to encounter, rather than after, making it risky to progress alone unless confident that you can beat any enemy in the zone.
I will focus on the last two points for this iteration, the increased danger should motivate players to want to work together to avoid a bigger risk of dying and to make use of the synergy gained from working in group: (Efficient sharing of damage, and less turns needed to defeat each enemy.)
Reducing the gap of power between players
In several MMORPGs the great gap of power between player exists to force players to reach the levels that the designer wants them to reach before progressing further.
The problem with having a smaller gap of power is that through skillful play, players might be able to complete content which is meant to be done much later.
Likewise, less skilled players will not be able to power through difficult content by simply gaining a few more levels, and the power gap would not be so big between them and the weaker enemies.
This might be a price worth paying in order to improve people fun, however in my game, skill is hardly a factor so it should cause no issues of the sort.
I will try a simple change in order to reduce the gap of power: Players will start several times stronger but may still gain the same amount of power from purchased items as they would in version 1.
In other words if I were to put a range on the player power levels of version 1 and version 2, it would be something like:
ver. 1) Power ranging from 1 to 10 across the game. (player becomes 10 times stronger)
ver. 2) Power ranging from 10 to 19 across the game. (player becomes twice as strong)
Obviously, enemies will have to become stronger as well, otherwise player would find no resistance from fighting them whatsoever.
Dealing with shared limited resources
Sharing limited resources with other players would typically be an issue in an MMORPG. Some players may never be of any use to others on their same team or faction, while others may even end up becoming their competition later on. Knowing this, helping other players progress at the expense of your own progress would be the last thing one would want to do.
In this game's case I could simply increase the number of items to make them not feel limited.
Rule Change
Encounter cards will no longer be shuffled back into the zone deck after an encounter is completed.
If the boss of the zone has yet to be defeated, the player who receives the last attack before the enemy is defeated, will keep the card until said player returns to town.
While this is not an improvement for people fun, it is a small rule change that should give players a more meaningful choice to risk going forward or lose the progress they've made thus far towards finding the boss.
