If a game's damage values are based on elements (e.g. physical, magic, fire, etc.), one good approach is to have areas themed around those elements The first Dark Souls does this well. The Duke's Archives is the "magic area", the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith are the "fire areas", and Anor Londo is the "lightning area". You're obviously going to expect that enemies in those areas are going to be resistant to the themed element. Even enemies and bosses in the themed "magic area" and "lightning area" are not completely immune to that element; just highly resistant. The exception is the "fire areas" where 4 out of the 5 bosses are fire immune. Thankfully, there is a built-in shortcut that allows you to skip two out of the four bosses, a high-damage summon that can assist you for one of the bosses, and there are mixed fire and physical builds that can deal with the remaining two bosses (e.g. the Black Flame pyromancy)
Killer Instinct does this incredibly well. You have many broken feeling options but they all have multiple counters. There's always more than 1 way around something. Play more KI... lol
I can think of several examples where different builds felt good (the Dark Souls trilogy, Fallout New Vegas, etc.) The one game I can think of where some builds felt objectively bad, while others were good was Lords of the Fallen (2014). Big weapons felt sluggishly slow to wind up and the damage dealt did not feel like the appropriate payoff for sitting through the windup animation, while twin dagger builds felt responsive enough to deal high DPS while allowing you to dodge out the way in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.
slow vs. fast weapons are a pet peeve of mine. When the heavy attack doesn't cause hit stun, the player doesn't have super armor or dodge canceling, so that it's entirely too risky to use slow weapons when the enemy can just smack you in half the time it takes for you to lift up your weapon.
@Game-wisdom That was exactly the issue I had with LOTF (2014): swinging a large weapon felt like I was winding up all the effort in the world... To brush dust off the enemy's shoulder And hyper armour was either limited or non-existent, so getting knocked out of those long windup animations was common
Slay the Spire is always the game that made choices feel the most impactful for me. I feel like D3/D4 has really stale builds, I always feel like things are hand curated to the point that I don't have any room to actually express any agency. Even though D2 has less interesting mechanics it still feels like it has more player expression than D4/D3. What do you think the trick is to make most choices feel impactful in a game? For a roguelike I feel like my current mindset is that you need to have a lot of interlocking synergies as potential, and that should work in theory.
Synergies and ramping are popular options. I'm of the opinion that fewer, but "punchier" choices is better than a lot of small ones: This skill grants you the ability to auto counter all attacks vs. you now have .0000065 chance to dodge an attack. I feel Balatro is going to be remembered for how well it trained people on ramping potential better than a lot of other roguelikes I've played.
the games r really dumb where everything seemed pre-chewed for u and nothing to figure out urself like for example "this frost spell slows the enemy by 20" and "this frost spell does 50% more damage to slowed enemies" - wow i really have no clue if these 2 go well together 🙄
You can see that in a lot of mobile games as well. Here's 300 characters with different skills and team comps, but let's just color code them and matching them gives everyone 50% more stats.
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If a game's damage values are based on elements (e.g. physical, magic, fire, etc.), one good approach is to have areas themed around those elements
The first Dark Souls does this well. The Duke's Archives is the "magic area", the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith are the "fire areas", and Anor Londo is the "lightning area". You're obviously going to expect that enemies in those areas are going to be resistant to the themed element.
Even enemies and bosses in the themed "magic area" and "lightning area" are not completely immune to that element; just highly resistant. The exception is the "fire areas" where 4 out of the 5 bosses are fire immune.
Thankfully, there is a built-in shortcut that allows you to skip two out of the four bosses, a high-damage summon that can assist you for one of the bosses, and there are mixed fire and physical builds that can deal with the remaining two bosses (e.g. the Black Flame pyromancy)
Killer Instinct does this incredibly well. You have many broken feeling options but they all have multiple counters. There's always more than 1 way around something.
Play more KI... lol
I can think of several examples where different builds felt good (the Dark Souls trilogy, Fallout New Vegas, etc.)
The one game I can think of where some builds felt objectively bad, while others were good was Lords of the Fallen (2014). Big weapons felt sluggishly slow to wind up and the damage dealt did not feel like the appropriate payoff for sitting through the windup animation, while twin dagger builds felt responsive enough to deal high DPS while allowing you to dodge out the way in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.
slow vs. fast weapons are a pet peeve of mine. When the heavy attack doesn't cause hit stun, the player doesn't have super armor or dodge canceling, so that it's entirely too risky to use slow weapons when the enemy can just smack you in half the time it takes for you to lift up your weapon.
@Game-wisdom That was exactly the issue I had with LOTF (2014): swinging a large weapon felt like I was winding up all the effort in the world... To brush dust off the enemy's shoulder
And hyper armour was either limited or non-existent, so getting knocked out of those long windup animations was common
Slay the Spire is always the game that made choices feel the most impactful for me.
I feel like D3/D4 has really stale builds, I always feel like things are hand curated to the point that I don't have any room to actually express any agency. Even though D2 has less interesting mechanics it still feels like it has more player expression than D4/D3.
What do you think the trick is to make most choices feel impactful in a game? For a roguelike I feel like my current mindset is that you need to have a lot of interlocking synergies as potential, and that should work in theory.
Synergies and ramping are popular options. I'm of the opinion that fewer, but "punchier" choices is better than a lot of small ones:
This skill grants you the ability to auto counter all attacks vs. you now have .0000065 chance to dodge an attack.
I feel Balatro is going to be remembered for how well it trained people on ramping potential better than a lot of other roguelikes I've played.
the games r really dumb where everything seemed pre-chewed for u and nothing to figure out urself
like for example "this frost spell slows the enemy by 20" and "this frost spell does 50% more damage to slowed enemies" - wow i really have no clue if these 2 go well together 🙄
You can see that in a lot of mobile games as well. Here's 300 characters with different skills and team comps, but let's just color code them and matching them gives everyone 50% more stats.