Kacper Szymczak - Turn based tactical design fundamentals
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ก.ค. 2024
- Kacper Szymczak
Artificer
As I work on my 3rd Turn-Based Tactical game, I’m sharing my insights into how fundamental design choices affect the gameplay, and sprinkle it with a couple of specific hints how to solve some of the more common design problems.
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Really enjoyed Showgunners. Imagine my surprise to find out this vid's lecturer is it's designer. Thank you for this talk.
Was a wonderful lesson for game developers. Depply appreciate it!
I've been wanting to create a tactial game for years. Damn this talk has awesome advice!
why? are you a game developer?
@@TuristaArcsi I'm wanting to be one. Don't understand what's the point of the question.
This is a well put together presentation with very good information for game deisgners!
Very informative presentation!
Where the heck was this talk all of my life!?! This information is pure gold!
More like fool's gold.
I would love to find a tutorial on how valkyrie Chronicle was made.
Some of the principles describe make sense but many are not applied by the games the speaker mentioned as examples to study. He should in those case specifically address why it caused problems to those games or why it was acceptable.
Totally agree.
He's taking a cookie-cutter approach to tactical game design, which is a fallacy based on his personal perspective and/or preferences, in my humble opinion. You are totally correct, many of the games he references go against the design philosophies that he describes in this lecture.
A huge chunk of extremely important tactical turn based golden base rules.
More preference than "golden rules," in my humble opinion. Many of the games he refers to break several of these "golden rules."
I'll never understand the insistence on making comeback mechanics "secret", be it as a player, game dev, or tabletop GM. I think the TTRPG advice on fudging applies to video games as well: if you're not comfortable with the odds or the result of a roll, to the point of secretly changing your own rules, it highlights that you made a mistake and shouldn't have let that roll happen in the first place.
An explicit bonus per downed units to offset the snowball into failure is great! Why not apply it to the general difficulty adjustment? When I've tried it, I found that (given the right presentation) having your characters grow stronger from being backed into a corner, or the game acknowledging your mastery and upping the difficulty, gets a positive reaction on a both visceral and imagined-narrative level. Not to mention it ups the skill ceiling.
Maybe I just make stuff for a very different audience but I believe we need to stop sleeping on that sorta stuff.
Because people like the idea of turning a situation around through their action. If you tell them that actually no the game cheated in your favor. Then peole are thinking on a meta level. Like in Rimworld for example. Yeah the storyteller wont give me a raid right now because someone got downed. I get a good event now because someone died.
This you can use to your advantege then. Exploiting something.
Now I dont like this either. But thats the Problem of perma death in games. Again people like the idea of perma death but end up save scumming. Why? because of the snowballing effect.
And here a good game designer is needed how to solve this problem.
I really wanted an answer on the D&D question, as professional GM!
Wish this had more views. This was really informative.,
It was very opinionated.
BG3 is a really good example of how not to do turn based combat and why big battles can not always be fixed with a timeline. Having to wait for 10+ enemies to take their turn, whilst bugging out and not doing anything at all for several seconds is not fun gameplay.
Nice analysis. Although you have missed two other forms of time scheduling.
Super interesting! I didnt even consider the point on elevation.
I totally disagree with him on the point of elevation and verticality. This factor can drive innovative and fun game mechanics. Many excellent tactical games have effectively implemented verticality into their game play.
@@dahanster5578They just implement this for the destroying and fall damage mechanic. I agree with him on this. Its clunky and annyoing..
Can you explain a bit more what you mean by 2 AP systems? Like no action should cost more than 2AP?
I think he means move (1AP) then attack (1AP). Rather than a many AP system that might go: Move 3 squares (3AP), reload (2AP), shoot (5AP) then you end your turn having wasted the remaining 2AP cause there's nothing left to spend it on.
Myślę że raczej jest odwrotnie
It seems the presenter has never played Tactics Orge, Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Mario VS Rabbids (which he references), amongst many other square-grid tactical games with nature based arenas. Several of his fundamental design philosophies aren't fundamental in the least and are simply preferential design choices. What might not work for one game may very well work excellently in another. So many people in this comment section are taking his recommendations as the tactical game design gospel when it simply isn't. Do your own research on tactical game design, compare and contrast the information you gather, and implement what works for your game. Playtesting and player feedback is key, especially over this single resource.
Gamers are consumers who cannot think on this meta level. Why they enjoy things or why they dislike things.
He thought about this stuff why something is good why something is bad why things are in the games and what they achive. There is no research here no information gathering. Its called thinking.
I agree with him on a lot of things. But he does not show or discuss solutions to this. Its a just so statment.
Also his Game Showgunners got praised. And highly positve reviews on steam. considered a "little gem". So he cant be so wrong. He is not only a "Know-it-all" big mouth talker. He also delivers.
I think this is very nice of Kacper to mention the shortcomings of RNG. This is probably the biggest wrong turn in game design a developer can make. It is probably fine for games like diablo, where the game is fundamentally a dice-roller, a gambling game about drawing items. but whenever you introduce any type of chance, all sorts of weird things start to happen, it comes from math, chance is a very peculiar area, and also you just make a lazy choice of not thinking through the events and relationships between them. randomnes is just a fools replacement word for unknown variables and factors. If you want to reward yr players for creativity, just ditch randomness totally or SIGNIFICANTLY, and replace it with secrecy, mystery, fog, obstruction of data, think through factors and relationships between events... I think that might require a little more time with a notebook, but it might be legendary. Chess are legendary, what is random there? choosing color? :)
I think you have a very narrow perspective on RNG in game design. It has its appropriate place and function. I recommend you watch Game Maker's Toolkit's video entitled, "The Two Types of Random in Game Design."
Yeah I couldn't play XCOM and similar games because of RNG, it was extremely frustrating to have everything in place and all of a sudden I miss three times with 80%+ odds, meanwhile the enemy not missing anything, all of a sudden I have a dead squad member, I have to waste another turn killing the enemies, another turn healing and reorganizing, and I'm not reaching the objective in time... Snowball effect is bad.
Battle Brothers is another example of bad design in my opinion, almost everything has around 40 to 60% chance to hit, so the same battle can either go horribly wrong or its a breeze. Its all good if the consequences for going horribly wrong weren't so game breaking...
This is just a problem of XCOM adapting the spirit of OSR TTRPG rules without the consideration of OSR combat model being deadly and generally a last resort fail state.
In OSR, characters are expendable and fragile. You and enemies alike are encouraged to run when you are at risk of death; you don't just duke it out mindlessly until you die. Sneaking past enemies is just as valid if not preferable to combat.