As I'm once again deploying some fairly substantial systemic changes to Virtue's Heaven, I'm reminded how difficult for me it is, to gauge:
-if a system I built is actually going to work as intended, when the person playing the game isn't me.
-if said system is somewhat balanced
Both are kind of connected, because a system that only provides marginal benefits will likely be ignored, whereas one that is too powerful might end up feeling much more monotonous than it actually is.
If I had actual resources, I would give this game to some playtesters and actually collect some information on how it's being used, and any other kind of feedback I might get.
Having no resources, all I can do is make educated guesses.
In general, if I had to choose, if I want a system to be too powerful, or too weak, I'll definitely lean more towards the former, because then there's a much higher chance, that players actually notice and engage with it.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to push players towards specific playstyles, without using overly hostile level design, and so it's always very frustrating, when I learn that this intricate reward machine I built is just not used.
Even if a system is too powerful and ends up trivializing your game, you can still create a certain degree of variety within in, by doing what you can to give players several ways to break your game, instead of just one.
If you're making games and are in a similar situation, how do you deal with this? I'm really curious, because I feel there might still be a better way than best guesses and aimless flailing.
P.S.: I haven't even mentioned the headache that is teaching players how to properly engage and explore your game's systems, which obviously also determines how much players will actually engage with them...
So just a few minutes ago, I had the creeping feeling that what I'm currently building is potentially going to create some very weird, niche glitches and problems further down the line, just because of the number of interconnected parts (in combination with fiddling around on a eight year old codebase) and I have to admit, that actually I would be kind of okay with that?
Overall I think first and foremost the important part is that players actually want to engage with whatever systems you have in your game. All the complexity won't do you any good, if players just ignore it.
However, a system having some hidden, game breaking skill combinations, usually leads to some cool things, right?
I keep coming back to the Job System in Final Fantasy 5 where basically players can pick from a menu of absolutely broken Job combinations and how the devs knew how broken some of their jobs were and decided to keep them the way they were.
Now what FF5 also had going for it, is the rest of the game, that actually helped facilitate this degree of variation and I'm not sure that I'll hit that part. But I do think that, I have the foundation for something fun here.
Now all I have to do is draw the rest of the Owl, right?
Edit: Don't want to add another post to this, but as I was wrapping things up for today, I found a combination of abilities that, when you set yourself up correctly, make you invincible for long stretches of time AND increase your damage.
You could say that this is bad and I should change it, but this is actually what I was going for when I set up this loop of different energy meters that feed into each other.
Might take some time tomorrow, or later this week and do a properly explained post, because it's all a bit ridiculous.
