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Encounter Design

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vivec

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 20, 2014
Messages
1,149
As I see it, the most important aspects of Encounter design is the quality and the variety of the encounter. There are games like Diablo where the encounter is all about loot and not about what you fight, although that can also take the center stage occasionally. In the other category, there are games like IE series, where you might have to slug through countless trash mobs before getting to the encounter relevant to the plot.

Games that center on the plot should try to have plot specific encounters ('handcrafted') at every turn. It requires attention to detail, thinking of the causality of the placement and the specific abilities the enemies should have to be a commensurate challenge to the player. On the other hand, I can very well imagine the same game having an 'arena'/'dungeon' area which is optional (temple descent in Drakensang 2) where the entire point is enjoying combat.

Generally, the trashiness of the encounters is more suitable to real-time based games as there the encounter is faster and the repetitive combat does not last long. Turn based games are slower; require more input and deliberation and thus can afford to have fewer but harder encounters.

Where does this game fit on the scale? What is the design method for the encounters here?
 

Avonaeon

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 20, 2010
Messages
593
Location
Denmark
Variety in the encounters is something we worry about a lot. You'll mostly be fighting humans (And the occasional animal), and since we're using a skill system, it'll also mostly be humans with the same skills and abilities as you. A lot of the variety definitely comes from the environments, which are all hand crafted. Aside from this there are a few different things we can tweak.
  • We use archetypes to set up enemy types, such as fighter, archer, berserker, etc. They're essentially presets of different stats and skills, which have a huge say in how much damage they deal, take, how much they crit, block and so on. Pretty standard stuff.
  • Then there's their difficulty ranks, of which there are nine. This defines what rank the different skills they have are, so that higher ranked enemies obviously have more abilities to use.
  • On top of that there's equipment which also modify the experience.
  • Objectives might differ from combat to combat, and might change depending on your choices leading up to it.
  • We're introducing cover as a more explicit thing this time, and the ability to crouch behind half-cover.
We're also about to implement some environmental stuff, which apply damage, or status effects when triggered. Hopefully we can get a lot of those in, but we'll see.
Hopefully we can make a gameplay video when combat gets a little more fleshed out, which will showcase some of these things, but it'll probably be a while before we can show it off properly.
 
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vivec

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Joined
Oct 20, 2014
Messages
1,149
That sounds awesome. I always thought of Blackguard encounter design as the step in the right direction for a turn based game. Set pieces make you connect with both the story and the combat at the same time, making you feel connected with the game. Everything else then depends on the quality of writing to make the encounter fit well into the story and characters involved feel 'weighty'.
 

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