been playing just tons of heroes of the storm recently like the filthy casual i am :v its pretty cool, been playing a lot of thrall and kerrigan lately, if any of you also play you should shoot me a pm with your bnet handle or something so we can hang out sometime
i also got back into terraria when that new patch came out... i spawned in a snow biome and made a pretty sweet base
thats only like a third of it but its the most interesting part, part of it is still only half finished and part of it is just a bunch of cookie cutter apartments i had to hammer out real quick because i ran out of places for npcs to stay
i always play on softcore. i tried a medium game once and ended up having to completely restart because
1. i died and all my stuff fell in the lava 2. my spawn point was in a place where it was basically impossible for me to get back to base with just the starting equipment
i was basically stuck, it felt really bad. it wasnt really all that interesting under the best of circumstances either imo, just meant i had to keep a spare set of equipment in the base and do a bunch of extra busywork every time i died
my fave thing in Terraria was the time i tried to make the whole world into my base by building a huge ass tree farm, getting ridiculous amounts of wood and covering everything with the wood background
i like to try and keep my world pretty so if i need a large amount of wood or sand or ice or whatevrt to build my sweet fort i will literally make a new, empty world, go chop down every tree/dig up a ton of sand/whatever and then delete the world, just so i dont have to deforest half my own world or dig huge pits in it or anything
i'm the type of player who actually builds trash cans to contain all the dirt and stone blocks i've picked up in the course of digging my way to hell and through various parts of the world.
A boss where damage dealt to it is or damage dealt by it is based on how low a certain stat is across your entire party.
Say you're fighting Cheribados from Dungeon Crawl. He hates fastness and likes slowness, so he deals tons of damage to everyone before him in the turn order (i.e. Slouch), forcing you to stack up on armor and abilities that reduce agility in order to stand a chance against him. But throughout the battle, he keeps reducing his own speed, so you have to also have high enough damage-per-turn to beat him before he gets too slow
Now to do it for the other gods of Dungeon Crawl
-Dithmenos: Starts off with 6 shadow NPCs, which can increase up to 12. Has a chance of making a new shadow whenever you deal damage to him, and his evasion goes up depending on how many shadows are on the field. Shadows are immune to everything except standard shadow weaknesses (fire/light/etc.), but any use of said weaknesses has a chance to blind everyone on your team because, frig, you're going from pitch darkness to blinding light. All always-hit attacks have a chance to miss against him.
-Elyvion: Does not attack, but has as many seraphs as you have PCs, and they do attack. All healing items and moves will actually heal her instead of you. Has a move that heals half of the target's missing HP and cures most debuffs. She'll use it on her seraphs as soon as they fall under 70% health, but out of kindness, she'll use it on your PCs if they're under 20% health. Unless they've dealt a killing blow to one of her seraphs, in which case they can suck it. Besides that, she'll focus on debuffing attack, accuracy and magic attack and buffing defensive skills, essentially trying to force you to retreat.
-Ashenzari: Relatively weak attacks, but absurdly high accuracy. Reacts to attacks and the turn order, in keeping with his all-knowing seer persona. If most of your PCs are faster than him, he's likely to use an equivalent to Mirror Coat or Counter. If most of your PCs are slower, he'll use equivalents to Detect or Protect. Caveat is that he can only block/reflect one element/damage type at a time, so you gotta keep your moves varied. He also has a move that temporarily locks some of a character's moves, in keeping with his obsession with bondage (heyo), and it locks more moves the less health he has.
-Okawaru and Trog: They fight together because, let's be honest, they're both kind of boring gods. Trog attacks spellcasters first and using spells shortens the recharge rate for his berserk ability. Okawaru attacks warriors first, and strong attacks shorten the recharge time for his heroism/finesse abilities. They can each use their abilities on each other, and will summon additional enemies when either of them hit 50% HP
-Sif Muna and Vehumet: Man, joined them together and they're actually more boring than Default and Berserk up there. Between them, they have access to every spell in the game. Vehemut's the damage dealer while Sif focuses more on buffs and summoning creatures. Boom, done. Moving on...
-Nemelex Xobeh: This one's a fun one. NX can't be attacked. Instead, 5-8 decks of cards are on the field. Attacking a deck draws a card which has an effect. Attacking a deck of war, for example, can draw an arrow card which deals damage to NX. And all decks have a chance to contain cards that backfire horribly on the user and increase in power by the number of cards drawn that turn (which will keep players from using 'deal damage to everything' attacks willy nilly). NX draws from two decks a turn. First one is one of the available decks, booby card and all. The second is his personal deck of punishments, which can have a few more...deleterious effects to your party
-Xom: He can use all abilities in the game at random with random targets. Also, your PCs are forced to use abilities at random. Not a fun boss. Nobody should be fighting Xom. Nobody should be interacting with Xom. He's annoying, yo.
-The Shining One: Has a Halo effect that reduces evasion and makes him immune to dark powers, summons heavenly allies and is basically a pain in the butt. The one weakness he has is that he's painstakingly chivalric, and won't attack a PC that's stunned/paralyzed/petrified or otherwise incapacitated. And if he does do it by accident, his halo disappears for a while and his angels stop attacking for a few turns. So the trick is to use taunt effects to ensure that he'll attack someone, and then stun them while he's still slotted to attack
-Zin: Throws out buffs and debuffs like they're on sale. Most notable aspect is his use of Sanctuary, which punishes all your attacks while he heals and buffs himself. Trick is to force him into berserk while Sanctuary's active, which stuns him for a bit.
-Ru: A 5-stage boss. Starts out as a purely physical boss with no abilities (presumably, you have to force him into physical form; you know how that guy hates not being ethereal). Each time he's defeated, he sacrifices a bit of his connection to reality to get back up again. This debuffs his attack and magical defense, but greatly buffs his physical defense and magic attack, along with unlocking new abilities.
-Beogh: Being the god of all orcs, he's more of a flunky boss than a boss proper. He's protected by 5 squads of 20 regular orcs 5 orc sorcerers and 1 orc high priest (for reference's sake, if you're fighting literal gods, you could probably take four squads under normal circumstances with relatively little difficulty). Beogh buffs his followers and occasionally smites you. Whenever a squad goes down, he summons another one.
-Jiyva: Similar to Beogh, except he only starts out with a few high-level slimes and every time he gets hit, he spawns out more. Basically an even stronger royal jelly, which is basically the perfect Jiyva boss fight already.
-Kiku and Yred: Because pairing gods together works so well. Kiku summons minions and casts Torment (cuts health in half) whenever her health falls below one of various health checkpoints. Yred deals necrotic damage and, whenever his health falls below a checkpoint, he auto-kills a character with less than 50% health and revives them as an enemy, forcing you to re-kill them before you can revive them. The trick is figuring out at what health the triggers occur.
-Lugonu: Because you're fighting in the Abyss, they have a tendency to flee from battle and respawn somewhere else. The lower their health, the farther they go.
Okay, we're getting pretty boring here. Maybe we should stop for a bit.
i'm the type of player who actually builds trash cans to contain all the dirt and stone blocks i've picked up in the course of digging my way to hell and through various parts of the world.
From my experience with RPG Maker, I'm pretty sure half of them would be pains in the butt to actually set up. NX particularly would probably take a good week of solid work.
But this is the land of theory and not of practice.
Those definitely seem like interesting boss designs.
I was thinking of something that didn't have a formal single-file turn order, so some of those don't apply, but on the other hand, I'm thinking of using a battle system with movement, so that also opens up some other possibilities.
One possibility I'm actually thinking of now is to have the final boss come in multiple final phases, each of which takes on some properties (indicated symbolically) of the various other bosses that have come before it -- a "final exam boss" sort of thing. I don't have any specific ideas regarding this yet, but...
As for a certain other boss, Arael, I originally envisioned fighting the boss by ascending the inside of a tower, and the boss is the ceiling itself, the floor is a damaging floor, and the boss and the floor constantly rise. And the boss keeps flinging you back to somewhere near the bottom whenever you score a melee hit, and melee deals the most damage. Or something like that.
A simpler version of this is just a boss that moves you away whenever you're within range, and learns how much range you have based on what moves you use to hit it, forcing you to use weak (and/or expensive?) infinite-range or whole-field magic...or get clever with movement. (Maybe teleporters could be a thing that you could build?)
One major thing is, I don't want the bosses to fall into the trap of "hoist by their own petard". Bosses -- especially very serious antagonists -- really ought to have patched up potential vulnerabilities by doing, like, "I'm not going to let you get the drop on me by my doing this one stupid super move".
The last category would be my designs for Zin and the Shining One, right? It kind of works for the latter, since he's basically the paladin god and following him is all about being obtusely polite in combat. Was the only way I could think to make him not boring.
If we're factoring in movement, then that opens up some variation for Lugonu. Their powers are based around space manipulation, so that last boss you described would be a pretty good match for them. You might also want to look up blink effects in roguelikes, which cover most forms of RPG teleportation
A boss where damage dealt to it is or damage dealt by it is based on how low a certain stat is across your entire party.
Say you're fighting Cheribados from Dungeon Crawl. He hates fastness and likes slowness, so he deals tons of damage to everyone before him in the turn order (i.e. Slouch), forcing you to stack up on armor and abilities that reduce agility in order to stand a chance against him. But throughout the battle, he keeps reducing his own speed, so you have to also have high enough damage-per-turn to beat him before he gets too slow
Now to do it for the other gods of Dungeon Crawl
[TEXT GOES HERE.]
Okay, we're getting pretty boring here. Maybe we should stop for a bit.
Gobaz (or whatever the greed god's name is) would probably be another genre shifter, with two stages. He starts out completely invulnerable, with average offensive power. Each turn, he opens up a shop menu, and you can pay him to become vulnerabe to some of your attacks. Second stage, he effectively 'spends' the money he got from you to get a series of increasingly overpowered moves.
DCSS Emergent gameplay story time: found a Nemelex altar on floor 1, converted. On Floor 2 I ran into Sigmund and drew like five cards from the first deck I'd earned, eventually pulled a card that turned him into a Giant Mite, and killed him easily.
alternatively, what mechanics would you suggest that fit the following criteria: 1. seemingly impossble on first try (with conventional jrpg battling tactics) 2. has a reasonably straightforward mechanic(s) that serves as its "trick(s)" 3. remains difficult even if you know the trick(s) 4. remains interesting even if you know the trick(s)
Boss applies an elemental overcharge to each of your allies, which both inflicts damage over time and increases resistance to that element. The boss telegraphs who will be hit by strong elemental attacks. Throughout the fight, you have to use a Cover mechanic ala FF4 to body-block the target with the party member overcharged with the same element.
Alternatively, boss is more powerful if more party members are alive, but frequently Doom-timers people.
I've beat 3 bosses in Demon's Souls now. It's really fun. It's kind of like playing Dark Souls again for the first time, since I have no idea what I'm doing or how upgrade paths work.
I've beat 3 bosses in Demon's Souls now. It's really fun. It's kind of like playing Dark Souls again for the first time, since I have no idea what I'm doing or how upgrade paths work.
People like to point out those systems like they're "difficulty" but really they're just convoluted.
I've beat 3 bosses in Demon's Souls now. It's really fun. It's kind of like playing Dark Souls again for the first time, since I have no idea what I'm doing or how upgrade paths work.
People like to point out those systems like they're "difficulty" but really they're just convoluted.
Pretty much. I do like the world tendency idea though.
The difference between console and PC gaming is that UIs in PC games are universally shitgarbage while console game UIs have to account for controllers having less buttons and as such have to be well designed.
All of those are relatively typical of computer RPGs. They're all overcrowded, dense, messy, and confusing, making them needlessly inaccessible in a way that serves no purpose. The only game with a weird esoteric UI where was kinda justified that I can think of is Dark Souls, where it's supposed to feel gloomy and unwelcoming, and even that game was a bit too user-unfriendly.
Okay, don't criticize PC interfaces and then pick examples where the user expanded every single component simultaneously. The whole point of half of those interfaces is that you can reveal data as needed. To an extent, there is no wrong way to use a customizable interface -- but to another extent, yes, there is definitely a wrong way to use a customizable interface.
And definitely don't use user-created custom raid mods as examples. My Interface Usability prof used that same WoW picture as an example of what to never do, and didn't believe the class when three raid healers present told her that was a) several user-created addons running at once that you had to go out of your way to download, b) only relevant to very high-level play, and c) actually quite useful to a raid healer who really does have to discern and prioritize most of the data presented there at a moment's notice right down to the different text colors. We commented that the player overstuffed the bars with some redundant buttons, and he should have hidden the blessing timer in combat like most of us did, but for the most part about 3/4 of that screen was completely functional and necessary to keep the party alive.
PC interfaces can click anywhere on the screen at a moment's notice, including the HUD. Controllers have to use buttons that are typically locked to maps of physical objects if they have any connection to the HUD at all. It's not free license to do the kind of pointless clutter that shitwaffle pay-to-win MMOs do, but as both a developer and a player you do have to be able to determine what constitutes useful information and HUD controls, and that your capacity to interact with data is completely different.
Interfaces should, in most cases, be unobtrusive and intuitive. My experience with computer RPGs has been that the interfaces are unintuitive to the game's great detriment (Torchlight 2 is barely playable for me because of it)
I mean, this isn't as much of a problem for people who are used to the genre but inaccessibility IS a flaw.
Interfaces should, in most cases, be unobtrusive and intuitive. My experience with computer RPGs has been that the interfaces are unintuitive to the game's great detriment (Torchlight 2 is barely playable for me because of it)
I mean, this isn't as much of a problem for people who are used to the genre but inaccessibility IS a flaw.
Torchlight 2?
That game's interface is incredibly simple. You have a row of hotkeys you can map to anything and the health/mana orbs (which it stole from Diablo but not without good reason), that's it.
I've beat 3 bosses in Demon's Souls now. It's really fun. It's kind of like playing Dark Souls again for the first time, since I have no idea what I'm doing or how upgrade paths work.
I didn't bother learning much about upgrade paths in Demon's Souls.
Honestly I didn't think the upgrade system was decent until Dark Souls 2 where it allowed for customization but didn't require flow charts,
Also Demon's Souls is the most unpolished of the souls games, but it also has some of the best atmosphere in the series.
Even a relatively simple example isn't particularly intuitive. Not for me at least.
Pause buttons exist for a reason- the mechanics of regular play (at least in action RPGs) have a very different effect on player mindset than the mechanics of tweaking gear and such, hence the need to give a clear separation between the two. Plus, the menus assume complete familiarity with the game's workings right from the get go which is obviously overwhelming on someone new to the game/genre.
I've beat 3 bosses in Demon's Souls now. It's really fun. It's kind of like playing Dark Souls again for the first time, since I have no idea what I'm doing or how upgrade paths work.
I didn't bother learning much about upgrade paths in Demon's Souls.
Honestly I didn't think the upgrade system was decent until Dark Souls 2 where it allowed for customization but didn't require flow charts,
Also Demon's Souls is the most unpolished of the souls games, but it also has some of the best atmosphere in the series.
Bloodbornes wasn't bad either, if it weren't for scarcity of materials.
To an extent. They should be minimally obtrusive insofar as the goal you're trying to accomplish permits. Interfaces don't exist in a vacuum; they're there to do stuff.
I didn't find much wrong with the Torchlight 2 interface, save that it copied WoW a bit too shamelessly. Data presentation was easily collapsible, separated into tabs that made sense, and it wasn't difficult to find an explanation of components you didn't happen to pick up immediately. Ability to safely explore the interface and learn by poking around is one of the key pillars of UI design, and genres like Torchlight tend to be targeted at the kind of gamers who instinctively do that.
Hell, if you want to talk about unobtrusive, literally everything in WoW is hideable. If you really want, you can hotkey everything you'll need for the next few levels and go around blindly moonfiring everything in sight.
Comments
its pretty cool, been playing a lot of thrall and kerrigan lately, if any of you also play you should shoot me a pm with your bnet handle or something so we can hang out sometime
i also got back into terraria when that new patch came out... i spawned in a snow biome and made a pretty sweet base
thats only like a third of it but its the most interesting part, part of it is still only half finished and part of it is just a bunch of cookie cutter apartments i had to hammer out real quick because i ran out of places for npcs to stay
my base is usually pretty utilitarian
i take a long time to make progress in this game
in part because i spend so many hours building the most wicked shit i possibly can
...when did my tastes become so specific?
...when did my tastes become so specific?
1. i died and all my stuff fell in the lava
2. my spawn point was in a place where it was basically impossible for me to get back to base with just the starting equipment
i was basically stuck, it felt really bad. it wasnt really all that interesting under the best of circumstances either imo, just meant i had to keep a spare set of equipment in the base and do a bunch of extra busywork every time i died
this is the kind of person that i am
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
I was thinking of something that didn't have a formal single-file turn order, so some of those don't apply, but on the other hand, I'm thinking of using a battle system with movement, so that also opens up some other possibilities.
One possibility I'm actually thinking of now is to have the final boss come in multiple final phases, each of which takes on some properties (indicated symbolically) of the various other bosses that have come before it -- a "final exam boss" sort of thing. I don't have any specific ideas regarding this yet, but...
As for a certain other boss, Arael, I originally envisioned fighting the boss by ascending the inside of a tower, and the boss is the ceiling itself, the floor is a damaging floor, and the boss and the floor constantly rise. And the boss keeps flinging you back to somewhere near the bottom whenever you score a melee hit, and melee deals the most damage. Or something like that.
A simpler version of this is just a boss that moves you away whenever you're within range, and learns how much range you have based on what moves you use to hit it, forcing you to use weak (and/or expensive?) infinite-range or whole-field magic...or get clever with movement. (Maybe teleporters could be a thing that you could build?)
One major thing is, I don't want the bosses to fall into the trap of "hoist by their own petard". Bosses -- especially very serious antagonists -- really ought to have patched up potential vulnerabilities by doing, like, "I'm not going to let you get the drop on me by my doing this one stupid super move".
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
If we're factoring in movement, then that opens up some variation for Lugonu. Their powers are based around space manipulation, so that last boss you described would be a pretty good match for them. You might also want to look up blink effects in roguelikes, which cover most forms of RPG teleportation
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Either one is pretty awesome. I'm just trying to be specific
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2522/4148597057_784664b68b.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/Morrowind-Interface.png
http://i.imgur.com/NNbRsJ4.jpg
http://www.virtualmatt.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/wow_raid_interface.jpg
All of those are relatively typical of computer RPGs. They're all overcrowded, dense, messy, and confusing, making them needlessly inaccessible in a way that serves no purpose. The only game with a weird esoteric UI where was kinda justified that I can think of is Dark Souls, where it's supposed to feel gloomy and unwelcoming, and even that game was a bit too user-unfriendly.
I mean, this isn't as much of a problem for people who are used to the genre but inaccessibility IS a flaw.
Even a relatively simple example isn't particularly intuitive. Not for me at least.
Pause buttons exist for a reason- the mechanics of regular play (at least in action RPGs) have a very different effect on player mindset than the mechanics of tweaking gear and such, hence the need to give a clear separation between the two. Plus, the menus assume complete familiarity with the game's workings right from the get go which is obviously overwhelming on someone new to the game/genre.