I may be grilling you a little too hard.
Grilling me? You've yet to ask a single question about the system at all. You've really only passed judgement on it. If you'd like to ask questions, I'm more than willing to answer them, but you haven't yet at all. Unless you're using some form of the word "grilling" that I'm not aware of. I mean, you haven't lit me on fire to cook me either... so... *shrugs*
When you believe something is true, you want everyone else to believe it's true.
Some people are like that. I can see you are, anyway. I just prefer people understand my point of view. Whether they agree with it or not doesn't necessarily matter. Hence the "agree to disagree". I've been around long enough to know that my "design philosophies" aren't the "end all, be all", nor are anyone else's. Every aspect of game design has flaws, including all the currently "accepted" game design decisions by "so called experts". As mentioned before, game design is a treadmill/moving target. Basic tenants never really change, but all the details do.
A lot of experts have said many things that contradict your philosophies. I am apt to believe the experts. However I'm also okay with experimentation. However, I firmly believe you must deeply understand the work you are trying to subvert. Otherwise, you're just riding on luck.
Which experts? Which philosophies? You're welcome to believe anyone you like, but I prefer some citation. Do these experts have degrees? Which degrees? Do they have experience in designing video games? If so, which games?
I'm more inclined to believe people who have "succeeded". Like say... I'd be more apt to believe Joseph Staten on how you write deep and enriched lore than someone with no experience in the field. I'd be more inclined to believe Michal Madej when he espouses the virtues of specific game design tenants than some guy on YouTube like we have with "Extra Credits" or shows like it.
Even then, I may be apt to disagree with them anyway.
We have, for want of a better term, "professional game designers" here on this website. Some have published over a dozen games. I listen when they give advice because they've been there, done that, they've got experience. However, that doesn't mean I'll agree with everything they say. Sometimes, I find flaws in their arguments as well and point them out.
There is no "perfect design philosophy" after all. There is no, "If you do everything exactly like this, you will make a fun game, that game will also sell". If there was, we'd be producing Video Games on an assembly line instead of trying to hand-craft them with large teams of specialists.
As for art. I am of a similar mindset. I do not believe art, design and writing are fully subjective. There are tried and true methods and structure that you must adhere to and understand. Yes, thre is valid elitism and pride. However, there's malleability. There is a lot of room for subversion and exploration at any given phase. But the only way you can subvert is to understand and acknowledge what you're subverting as the established norm.
I'm of the mindset that liking something is fully subjective. I just think there are objective measurements for "art". At least, that's my opinion. However, I don't really consider video games or movies as "art". Mostly because if you put up the picture of the Mona Lisa in front of nearly anyone, they immediately recognize what it is and who made it. But, if you put up a still shot of a movie... the only people who are going to know what it is from are the few who saw the movie, and even fewer than that will even know the people who made it. They might recognize the actors, but in 80 years, they won't know who they are. The same is true of video games.
I believe "art" has a certain amount of longevity. But, that's me being an elitist snob when it comes to art.
As for the "established norm"? Eh... I'm not even really sure what you're talking about. I'm really only doing two things in my entire project that nobody else has ever done before. 1. A story that actually branches and changes depending on your decisions (namely, your story is entirely different), which is a pain the butt to implement, but is absolutely amazingly fun to write. And 2. Divorcing Stats from Level Ups. Giving the player stats only through quest completion and giving the player map features from leveling up.
Everything else? Done before. Heck, negative stats on equipment has been around for a long time. Even 5th Edition D&D has negative stats on equipment. I mean, it's pretty ubiquitous. You're free to disagree with it, sure, but it's not "subverting the established norm" in the least.
That aside, I am still positive that your decision to use negative numbers in your weapons was an arbitrary decision, with no design philosophy to back it. It inherently goes against good design.
Display your proof other than you just don't like it. It'll be much easier to convince me if you come at me with evidence and arguments instead of conjecture and personal opinions.
I mean, you're free to have your opinion and all, but it looks to me like you're trying to convince me to change a major aspect of my game. So, if that's the case, I'm going to ask you to begin backing up your statements with proof and examples. If you don't have any... then you just have an opinion without substantiation (in other words, it's not actually your opinion, it's someone else's that you're parroting).
Taking something away, which is what negative values explicitly do in the eyes of a player, is meant as a deterrent. It is conditioning. That is the whole point of a penalty.
Prove it. Citation needed. Every time you've said this, it has sounded like this: "I don't like negative values on my weapons so don't put negative values on weapons because I think it's bad design". At which point I throw my hands in the air and go, "Obviously my game isn't designed for a player like you. You're not the demographic I'm shooting for.".
You need to cite some games that have done what I'm doing and failed as a result of it. You need to cite some actual studies on it. I mean, if you'd like to try to cite psychology and "people don't like negatives", I'll just cite the economy in any given game or any given version of reality. People are willing to give up something that is incredibly valuable for something they perceive of equal value. Trading money for goods. In fact, such spending actually makes people happy, so... Not sure what a psychology/sociology textbook says about that. I mean, I took a year of both in High School, but that's been a while.
My design operates on that principle. Of trading something you don't perceive as valuable for something you perceive as valuable. You are, in essence, spending one stat (or multiple stats) in order to obtain other stats that you want. Honestly, that's how the system works every time I've ever seen it implemented. You are trading something you don't care that much about for something you care a lot about.
Not a lot of players out there, in my experience, that would look at a weapon with a negative on it and go, "Nope, I don't want to equip that at all, it's got negative points on it, I need all my stats as high as possible". It just doesn't really happen. You can see this in action by just looking through "Trait" systems that many games have. The most notable examples are Fallout 1, Fallout 2, Fallout New Vegas, and Wasteland 2.
But from what I can tell of your design, you are not trying to deter someone from using a weapon. Unless you are trying to have the player change weapons to create strategy. But even then, that still doesn't justify negative values on weapons.
*sigh* You're going to make me bust out my entire combat system, aren't you? I'm going to eventually have to post all the interlocking pieces in a single place and how it all works together, aren't I? I really don't want to have to do that as it has nothing to do with the topic of "weapon design" and "how to balance weapons". I'll give you the basic rundown.
1. It's a low stat game. Characters start with anywhere from 10 to 20 HP. Most of their stats fall between 5 and 15 points.
2. Stats in my game are gained in two ways. The first is by completing a Quest and being given an item to use on any character to raise a stat by a set amount. The second is by equipping weapons/armors/accessories/relics.
3. I use three stats to "attack" with. Enemies use these three, so do all the player characters. "Attack" for physical type attacks. "Speed" for quick physical type attacks. "Magic" for magical type attacks. a.atk, a.agi, a.mat. I use three stats to defend against these. "Defense" against Attack, "Reflex" against Speed, and "Magic Defense" against Magic. Weapons raise and lower some of these where it makes sense. Armor raise and lower them some too, where it makes sense within the lore of my game.
4. On top of this, there are several "Elements" which can raise and lower damage as well. Strength, Speed, Magic. Slash, Bash, Pierce. Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Ice, Lightning. Life, Death, Nature. Silver, Lead. These can affect how weapons perform, how skills perform, or how characters perform.
5. I'm using simplistic damage formulas to make balancing easy. Most are simple add/subtract affairs. A few use multiplication instead. No division is used. At least, not yet. I'm still creating monsters and their skills.
6. Not all stats are valuable to all characters. Without magic spells that use the "Magic" stat, it's pointless. Without skills that use the "Attack" or "Speed" stat, they're fairly pointless. Defensive stats can be useful across the board, but that's up to the player to decide what they care about and what they don't. Especially since stats can be buffed during combat.
With that in mind, my negative values on weapons are a means of doing several things. 1. Balancing combat. 2. Providing specializations to characters. 3. Making the player choose how they want to play or what stats are important to them. 4. Providing a level of "experienced" play to players who want it.
It isn't necessary for a player to swap different weapon types at all. In fact, I anticipate that they won't. I anticipate that players will see the options available, make a decision as to the kind of weapons they'd like to use (and the kind of build they want) and they will stick with it until the end of the game. The only thing I anticipate players "changing every so often" is armor sets. But, that's neither here nor there.
And if you were to adjust the numbers on your weapons to be positives, you can adjust the rest of the numbers in your game accordingly. So there's no point in bringing up that it makes it harder to balance, because it doesn't.
I like that you assume things based on your own personal opinion. "Oh yeah, it'll totally be easy to just change the balance by doing it my way. It's not like you spent months play-testing and designing things. It's not like it took you a lot of time to fine tune anything. You totally just picked your numbers arbitrarily! Now go fix them, because I demand you do so!"
That being said... I'll explain something important to you. My game is designed in such a way that every single stat point is valuable. It took a while to get that design to work out. Especially as stats reached higher points and I got to "end game". It isn't as simple as you think it is. It isn't, "Oh, having 7 is the same as having 8". In the early game, that one point can be the difference between killing an enemy in 4 turns or in killing them in 3. In the late game, that one point is mitigated more, but it begins to be put into multiplication formulas where it matters. Especially when variance comes into play.
There is a difference between "Oh, combat is meant to be players just mashing "Attack" all day long" and "players can do that, but it's only going to be successful against low stat creatures, or areas where you have no other option". I spent some time including "nuance" in my combat. If my players are "mashing attack", then I've done my job wrong and I go back and rebalance.
I also have to point out again that there is no reason to have a player consider a penalty when they don't have to. If the number was 0 or a positive, it wouldn't even be considered at all by the player, further cementing that negatives in weapons are an arbitrary and pointless design.
Will you please stop citing your personal opinion as fact? You see it as "arbitrary" because you don't like it. You see it as "pointless" because you don't like it. Both are a symptom of you thinking that only a specific set of rules are "correct" and anything that deviates from those rules is just wrong and can't ever work.
As such, I've also explained in detail the point of negatives and why they're important. Something I guess you glossed over or didn't read, since you didn't even offer a counter argument. So, I'll direct you back to my previous post on the subject.
If you don't want to read my posts, then don't. And don't reply to them. But, if you want to have a serious discussion, I suggest you actually
read what I've written and respond where it seems appropriate. I also ask that you try to back up your points of view instead of arbitrarily determining that you've got the only correct way of thinking about things.
It just adds to the number of decisions they're making throughout play.
That's the point...
The player should be making quick decisions on mercurial things, like gear
I don't agree. I don't like players hitting "Optimize" and not thinking about things. Because unless there's a downside to something with higher stats, that is all they will do. They will hit "Optimize" and not care at all what weapon/armor is equipped.
I prefer games where the player makes a decision and that decision impacts their gameplay. I don't prefer games where players turn off their brains at all. I prefer engagement. If a player in my game is hitting "Optimize" at all, I've done my job wrong.
and longer decisions on impactful things, like narrative, optimal strategy, and stat placement.
Weapons and armor are "stat placement". Funny to me how you split the two as if they're different things. They aren't. They're part of the same "Progression System", yet you decided arbitrarily that they should be split up. Weapons/Armor add stats to your character, same as leveling up, same as distributing stats personally by hand. You'll have to explain to me how adding a bulk set of stats to a character is meant to be "super easy so you don't think about it" while adding a small amount of stats to a character is "a longer and more impactful decision". From my viewpoint, you're doing it backwards. Especially when most systems don't give you anything more than 10 stat points to distribute a level while most equipment in those games gives you upwards of 50+ points. I think a system like that is basically telling you that what you allocate your stat points into isn't anywhere near as important as what your character has equipped.
Also, you can only employ "optimal strategy" if you start outside of combat. With your stats/equipment. With your consumables as well. After all, you can't employ a strategy that uses the Infinity +1 Sword if you uh... don't have an Infinity +1 Sword in the entire game. You can't create a strategy where the Mage bashes someone in the face with a staff like a Freight Train... unless that Mage has the equipment and stats to back that up.
"Optimal Strategy" is something the player decides on, based on the resources they have available.
If your crossbow and sword do the same damage at the end of the day, deciding between them is arbitrary. If one does more damage, then why take the other? And if they're meant to offer counter-strategy, they need more substance than what you have.
Andddddddd, if you'd been reading my posts, you see that they do offer counter-strategy and do have substance. Your problem is that you've decided they don't and it doesn't matter what I say, nothing I offer as proof will convince you. In essence, at this point you really only care about making me change my game for your sake.
You're not even offering constructive feedback. Which, to be honest, I'd be pretty happy with getting. If you need an example of "constructive feedback" you could see my first post in the topic. It gives that to the OP based on their own weapon system.
Your feedback has been, "do it this other way instead, because of nebulous reasons of psychology and no proof". I mean, I have no idea what to do with that. You're essentially just ordering me to change my game to cater to you. Maybe my game just isn't the kind you want to play? I mean, I don't know what you want from me at this point.
You aren't even offering counter-examples that prove what you're saying. You've yet to even mention a single game that employs the same "negative stats" that I do and show how that game failed.
I mean... seriously. What do you want me to do with the ambiguous information with obvious faults in it? Do it your way anyway and try to resolve the different set of faults in it? Change the vision of my game to make it in line with yours?
What's the goal here? It's obviously not to offer a counter-point as you aren't offering any. It's not to point out flaws in the design, as you haven't done that either.
I am legitimately confused.
I'm certainly down for weapons being an impactful decision, such as in Fire Emblem. But I do not see that in your design.
No, you're not. You already stated, less than a sentence ago, that making a decision on a weapon should be quick and easy. An "impactful decision" isn't "quick and easy". It's anything but. Please don't contradict yourself. It makes you much harder to follow.
Honestly, I just don't see the purpose of designing your weapons with negative values.
Even after I explained it to you? Twice? Three times? How can I explain it to you in a way that you understand what I'm doing and why? Or... is it that you just don't want to understand?
I can understand if you just disagree with it and would never do it. That's one thing. But, to just not understand the principles behind it? I don't know what to tell you.
Tell me what information you need in order to understand my point of view and I'll provide it. I don't know what else to do to help you see my point of view.
Also, bursting at the seems with decisions is not a good design decision. For so many reasons. I could site a half-dozen experts that express clearly that offering too many choices for the player is bad.
Prove that it's not. Show me some games that had a lot of decisions and how those games failed. I'll name some that didn't. Pick any game in the Elder Scrolls Series. Pick a game in the Mass Effect original trilogy. Pick a game in the Fallout Franchise. The list of games where lots of choices worked is... well... pretty staggering. Pick an MMO with gear choices... Rune choices... Stat distributions... The list is pretty enormous.
And no, I'm not saying "all choice is bad." Just be tactical with your use of choice for the player.
...Here you are contradicting yourself again. "Too many decisions for the player to make is bad" and then right after that, "I'm not saying all choice is bad, just be tactical with your use of choice for the player".
Which is it? Can "too many choices" be good in your mind if they're tactical uses of choice created by the dev? To me, that seems to be what you're saying.
If that's the case, then just assume that all my choices for the player to make are "tactical uses of choice". Things will go faster that way.
There's many ways to structure and limit choice to most effectively express the design of a game. Experts could tell you in a far more clear fashion than I how to do it.
As a player. That is, a video game player. Someone with 26 years of gaming under his belt. I can tell you the one hard and fast rule about "player choice". The thing that is true everywhere in every game you play. If you are required to make a choice, that choice
MUST matter. No "But thou must!" choices. No, "this choice doesn't really impact anything". No, "I'm giving you the illusion that your choice actually mattered". The rule on choices, to not irritate and annoy the player is, "When you ask me to make a decision, that decision is always impactful". If the decision has no impact or very little impact, it may as well not exist. If that choice doesn't change something for the player, it is a wasted choice.
I don't know what your "experts" tell you, but I doubt they've got 26 years of playing video games nearly every single day under their belt as experience.
See, the advantage to being an Indie dev, especially on this website... Is the vast majority of us here know what we like and dislike in video games. We've got game playing experience. We play games for fun, you see. It is only after we had decided to try to make our own games that we've gone back to all of our own favorite games and tried to understand why they worked. Why they provided us such fun. And, even further, what we didn't like about them and why we didn't like it.
The vast majority of the "experts" I've seen on game design are people who haven't really played games "for fun". They play games as a means to, "find a way to mass produce them to sell to the widest audience possible and make the largest amount of money possible". "Fun" is the last thing on their minds.
In fact, some of these "experts" are likely the reason why so many games have "casualized". Namely, turned into Call of Duty clones. Yeah, even our RPGs are turning into Call of Duty clones. It's insane. I've even seen a lot of the "so called experts" give really terrible games some pretty good reviews. Mass Effect Andromeda is great! It's got fantastic gameplay! Yeah, that right there immediately disqualifies them as an "expert" since they've just proven they have no idea what they're talking about and don't have enough experience playing games to realize that everything that game does... well... other games have done it better... and they did it 10 years ago.
You're welcome to trust your "experts", but I just don't. Not with the state of the current video game industry. Maybe 10 years ago, I'd have trusted them. Today? I'd like to see their credentials. I'd like to see a list of every video game they've ever played. I'd like to see a list of every game they've worked on and created.
So, if you don't mind, I'd rather here
your take on providing a decision to a player. Because, frankly, if you don't know how to do it and are referring other people to "experts"... Then, all you're doing is parroting information that you, yourself, don't understand.
It would be like you trying to tell an icecream vendor how to make his icecream taste better because you heard one time that some expert in freezing icecream thinks it should be kept at -38 instead of at -30. It becomes second hand information with no context. I mean, if you can't prove it's better, is that information really valuable at all? If you can't explain how and why, is it really all that useful?
Honestly the more choice you give for combat, the more of a nightmare it becomes to balance too. You'll waste resources designing things that no one uses because it ends up having little impact to the optimal strategy. So keep that in mind.
This assumes I've designed only a single method of "optimal strategy". I have not. The "optimal strategy" is up for the player to decide. This is why I allow them to choose their weapons, choose their armors, choose how their skills level up, choose their stat distributions, choose their accessories, choose their relics, etcetera. It is meticulously designed. Combat does not simply revolve around stats. I've created very few "suboptimal" builds and for places in the game where a player might use those, they are given warnings. They are given a tutorial. "The wolves around here are really fast, if you don't have good enough reflexes, they're going to surround you and kill you easily". A hint to ditch heavy armor that lowers "Reflex" and to don armor that gives them more in that particular stat to avoid taking a lot of damage.
You also assume that every weapon can be used by every character. Even though I've pointed out only the instances where a character/class gets a weapon "exclusively", I haven't pointed out the "limited" amount of overall weapons they might get. Frankly, because I don't think there was a point to giving that information out. But, here, I'll outline that for you.
Soldier gets 4 weapons on that list.
Witch gets 5 weapons on that list.
Magic Knight gets 4 weapons on that list.
Paladin gets 5 weapons on that list.
Thief gets 3 weapons on that list.
Pirate gets 3 weapons on that list.
Cleric gets 4 weapons on that list.
Ranger gets 5 weapons on that list.
Necromancer gets 4 weapons on that list.
Not everyone can use everything. This is to maintain balance in the combat system, to maintain Lore within the game itself, and to provide a reasonable amount of choices and builds for a player to make.
That being said, I expect the players to find every "optimal strategy" I've designed in the game... and show me a few more that I hadn't considered.
It isn't, "this is the only way to kill an enemy in one hit". It is, "here's the toolbox for killing enemies in one hit, figure out the method that works for you".
I don't believe in handing out the Infinity +1 Sword to my players. I believe in handing out a toolbox to my players that allows them to build their own Infinity +1 Sword.
As for designing things nobody uses... That happens in every single game. Name a game you played where you used absolutely everything it equally to everything else. I can't. You can't. Nobody can. Players will use things different. I never saw a point to the "Secret Bases" in Pokmon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/OR/AS. But, they exist anyway. I never used them. Not once. Never used "Super Training!" either.
The point is that there's a difference between design telling every single player that something is worthless so nobody uses it... and design telling some players that something might be pretty valuable if used correctly.
After replying to this post, is has become pretty apparent to me that this really isn't about "Game Design" at all. Your arguments are more for just trying to get me to change my game to the way you want it to play. Your arguments are just for trying to convince me you're right and that I'm wrong, undeniably. Much of it reads like you want my game to play in a way that you would have fun with it, with no regards to any other kind of play for any other player.
As such, we'd likely accomplish more if we just "agree to disagree" here and get back on topic about Weapon Balance.
