Counterintuitive to the current clear speed meta: Slow the Game Back Down
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An action ARPG should be an action game first and an RPG second.
Why? First off, assuming loot and XP come from killing enemies, then killing enemies fastest provides best loot and XP per unit time. Which is winning. Simple and obvious. The meta will always be a clear speed meta, the only question is how far the game will let build designers go on the whole speed thing. But I think that's what you guys are getting at: how fast will the game let us go? I feel the answer to that should be skill-based. I mean piloting skill here, not theorycrafting skill. If you have the reaction time and APM of a top-tier StarCraft player, I think you should be able to get away with glass and rush through content. If you don't, then I think you should be forced to build more tanky. The way a developer designs that into a game is telegraphing risk-punishment (similar to risk-reward). At the high-risk low-punish end we have telegraphs you'd need to be a Bullet Hell God to avoid, but do so little damage that only the most frail characters are seriously threatened. At the low-risk high-punish end we have telegraphs which are so long and obvious you'd need to almost fall asleep at your keyboard to not avoid them, but turn your character into paste even if you've built yourself to be ridiculously tanky (this way tank players don't fall asleep at their keyboards). And plenty of monster attacks in the middle ground between these two extremes. Basically, choosing the right build would be about knowing your own limitations and choosing a build which is as clearspeed as possible given those limitations, maximizing your loot and XP per hour while keeping you on your toes in combat. All this well-built telegraphing stuff... that's what I mean by action game first, RPG second. What kills players these days isn't a telegraphing challenge they fail to meet. It's a combination of affixes - on a map or monster or both - that they failed to avoid. The game is now balanced around the hardest mods and map tiers, making it possible to tackle them simultaneously... but not making it optimal to do so. Instead, players speed-farm easy content at little to no risk and at a much higher pace. Using map affixes as a risk-reward lever is bad business, because ultimately it's a lever players control and will only use to their maximal advantage - test on Difficulty Levels 0, 3 and 5, determine which yields the highest loot per hour, play that level exclusively. I don't think map affixes should be used primarily as a difficulty adjuster, I think build choice should - particularly on the defense vs offense axis, with high defense being easier but slower; map affixes should be used as a variety inducer. Map affixes should be about making endgame content non-repetitive, first and foremost, to extend the endgame. Lastly, I don't mean to indicate that glass high-clearspeed builds must be ranged or that safe builds must be melee. If anything, the opposite makes more design sense; you can introduce telegraphs against melee which don't even exist for ranged. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Aug 17, 2016, 7:22:34 PM
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" Yes.. just all my yes's. "It's all clearer now
And I hear her now And I'm nearer to The Salvation Code" |
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Edited that post sightly. Hopefully still has all your yeses. :)
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
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" Probably, will read it later when I get back. You put what I was trying to get at much more succinctly :P "It's all clearer now
And I hear her now And I'm nearer to The Salvation Code" |
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" you're implying that in an action game killing as efficiently as possible is the main point. but, that is NOT a true generalization. plenty of action games out there where it isn't true |
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"That isn't what I'm implying. I very explicitly stated the conditions under which killing efficiently as possible is the main point; in a more sane world I probably wouldn't have felt the need for such a qualifying clause, and in hindsight it still failed to deter ridiculous inferences. Edit: is there a language barrier at play here? I said an ARPG should be an action game first. Not that an action game should have RPG elements; not that all RPGs should be ARPGs; etc When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Aug 17, 2016, 10:50:00 PM
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" what I mean, is an 'action game first' quip. I thought this was the statement that you justified with these conditions. my point was simply that action games (not action rpg gmes) dont necessarily mean killing efficiently or even killing a lot. or even killing ;) |
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"I dont know, Im an american and I think you are too. maybe Im missing the point completely, but my impression is that youre saying under x and y (your conditions), arpgs are based on efficiency, and thus they should be action games first. without actually qualifying what it means to be an action game. whereas my response is, being an action game doesnt really say anything. an action game where there is slow pace, not much killing or very inefficient killing, and actually not a lot of action, can still, strangely enough, be considered an action game. lets put it this way- its already hard to pin down what an RPG is (personally I tend to think its ROLE PLAYING but that would render a ton of rpgs on the market as NOT rpgs because youre either not playing a role or youre railed into playing ONE specific role), pinning down what an action game is truly an interesting debate. yeah, its not a big deal at all- you can ignore my nitpicking if you wish ;) |
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" But you did like the game back couple of years ago, right ? Would you still not like it if it went back to the same kind of pace ? Still fast-paced, but much less brainless. SSF is not and will never be a standard for balance, it is not for people entitled to getting more without trading.
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Most slow paced action games are horrible.
There are games that are real time but tactical. We call those more in like with tactical games more then anything. For example, I would never call the ArmA series an action game, even though it's a FPS. CoD on the other hand? For sure. |
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