Enemy Types

[wolfpak692]

Since I am so new to this, i am wondering how many enemy types my game should have? and how many enemy troop types?  

 

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

You take the problem by the wrong end.


It's never how many types do I need? but what do I need to make my game fun.


You should first think about what environments will your game explore, then what kind of enemies would exist in each given environment.

 

[wolfpak692]

ty for the response... i  am discovering i have made alot of mistakes and I am now going over the beginning tutorials here in the forum so that I will quit making mistakes...

 

[BigToastie]

Don't worry about making mistakes, as long as you learn from them!


One thing I would suggest in terms of creating monsters and troops, create custom skills for them dont just create lots of monsters that use attack and occasionally another spell.


For instance a Rat can have "Scratch" or "Claw" as its alternative to "Attack" etc.


as seeing 50 different monsters using attack gets a bit boring.

 

[Feenick]

How many enemy types you need, either for just a single area or through an entire game, really depends on a few things [the area/game's length, how much of an effort it is to defeat each enemy, how these various enemy types work with each other, and so on], so it's hardly a set in stone deal. Really, as long as it doesn't get boring fighting the same enemy types/formations, you should be fine.


I have to agree with@BigToastie in that differentiating enemies in their attack patterns is a good thing, but I'd go even further: just having a reskinned basic attack with a different name isn't really all that interesting. Give that attack a different element or a different damage formula, or whatever. 50 different monsters should be bringing 50 different things to the table... even if those 50 things may have some degree of overlap.

 

[BigToastie]

@Feenick I did mean modifiying them further (as i do) but if hes new simply copying would do until he got used to custom forumla and elements

 

[wolfpak692]

thank you for the feedback...  

 

[LuLingqi1]

@Feenick and @BigToastie have the right idea, however, I think you need to take a look at your universe as a whole.


For instance, what elements exist?


In my game I have Fire, Earth, Wind, Water, Light, Dark, Venom, Normal-Physical I suppose would be the name-, and I'm toying with a Blood element.


So, that is normally how many enemy types you have.


Numerically, this would mean of one troop, you could have six+ types of it.


There's a lot of numerical values that go into this that all go into the length of your game I suppose. How long do you want your game to be? How big is the landscape, how often does said landscape change?


Does a flaming bat logistically have any belonging in a water-themed dungeon?


If you give me more details on your game, I could help you find a good numeral value to decide on! ^^


~Kyler~

 

[wolfpak692]

had to change this since i forgot to quote the above post...

 

[wolfpak692]

@Feenick and @BigToastie have the right idea, however, I think you need to take a look at your universe as a whole.


For instance, what elements exist?


In my game I have Fire, Earth, Wind, Water, Light, Dark, Venom, Normal-Physical I suppose would be the name-, and I'm toying with a Blood element.


So, that is normally how many enemy types you have.


Numerically, this would mean of one troop, you could have six+ types of it.


There's a lot of numerical values that go into this that all go into the length of your game I suppose. How long do you want your game to be? How big is the landscape, how often does said landscape change?


Does a flaming bat logistically have any belonging in a water-themed dungeon?


If you give me more details on your game, I could help you find a good numeral value to decide on! ^^


~Kyler~

My game is going to be short, about 6 maps total, 1 Dungeon, and 1 evil castle, with about 6 towns/rest area along the way... I figure game playing time of about 2-3hrs... max lvl 15... since this is my first game, i am trying to keep it simple and short... I may go back later after I have learned more and extend it...  I have Desert, Forest, river/lakes as the areas... I am using the stock info and enemies except for the Desert/Desert Dungeon where I am using the Egyptian battlers for that... I figured Slimes, Hornets, Sahagin, Spider, Anubis (Desert Dungeon Boss), priest, scarab, scorpion, and not sure on the final battle that takes place in the evil castle, but will use the demon god/king for this... world maps are 17 x 13 standard size... Elements will be Earth, Fire, Water, Poison...

 

[Kes]

wolfpak692, please avoid double posting, as it is against the forum rules. You can review our forum rules here. Thank you.


Please bear in mind that the discussion here is about mechanics design for games in general (or genres of games) not about detailed feedback/advice on one particular game.  Perhaps the calculations could be carried out via pm between you.


EDIT


Forgot to say - it is not necessary to quote whole posts, and makes scrolling down the page slow.  At most you only needed to quote the last sentence if you thought it vital to identify specifically which bit you were replying to.  However, in this case the normal convention of @username would have been sufficient.  

 

[wolfpak692]

ok, sorry.. thank you for the info

 

[aboynamedearth]

@wolfpak692 Hey man! It's cool to see that you're going at this from a more top-down perspective, which I like to think is a great way to go about designing multiple portions of something!

Something I've been doing is designing each of the areas that you'll be exploring as completely separate entities. I'm using a note-taking program (think One-Note, Evernote, etc). That way I can outline each section of the game and fill it with details without them sort of spilling into each other.

Since you're tackling them one at a time, you could consider how many enemies types might end up being too exhausting. Think about your favorite RPGs - when exploring that first forest area, how many different kinds of enemies were there? If there were a lot, did it make the place seem more populated because of it (even if the encounter rate was low-ish)? Was it more annoying or fun because you had to adapt to different approaches to each fight? Would you have rather seen more of the same enemies because you didn't have enough abilities to adapt to new fight patterns? 


I think you'll find the answers you're looking for through considering these ideas, executing on them in playtesting, and then feeling it out and seeing if that feels good to you.

Hope that is somewhat helpful! I like to think that the only thing I'm good at is keeping things organized and managing data, haha!

 

[wolfpak692]

that info is very helpful... ty... i have been doing an outline of the game, but never thought about doing that for each area... will start doing that...