LIGHTNINGLORD2'S PROFILE

author=LockeZ

author=Ratty524
True, but can't you also get let down when you find a character you like for their appearance/design, yet find out their gameplay unsuitable to your playstyle or just obsolete?

Ah, the pain of wanting to make a team of nothing but lolis, but needing a tank. I know it well. But I think getting the player to try playing in ways they wouldn't normally try if they had complete freedom is actually important.

If your gameplay is well crafted, then playing as a weird-ass team with strange synergy will actually be an enjoyable experience and make them feel like they're doing something they wouldn't do in other games. And at the same time, if your writing is well crafted, then playing as a character whom the player isn't initially crazy about will make the player interested in additional layers of the story beyond what they expected. These seem like important ways to draw the player deeper into your game and keep them from getting bored, though you should wait until after they're initially hooked.

Loli Tank:


Anyways, Dungeons & Dragons 4e has a number of ways you can vary your strategy if your party is unbalanced:

(4e roles defined in Spoiler for reference)


Having mostly Strikers and Controllers will make battles more of a DPS race or a kiting exercise, perhaps also big on Crowd Control to avoid letting the opponent getting attacks in, while having many Defenders is mostly about turtling. A Leader-centric party can focus on turtling or buffing a Striker/Controller so hard that they mops up the enemies in seconds. Not having a Defender means that you need to find other ways to migitate the damage from the opponents, while the lack of a Leader mandates a fast, agressive playstyle as you will lose a war of attrition.

author=Ratty524

author=LockeZ
Having characters all be exactly the same in combat is the same as letting the player equip different weapons that are all the same but have different appearances, or like making all the magic spells do the same thing but have different animations. It's... it's just pointless. You already did 95% of the work, you created the graphical assets and incorporated the character into the game. You can't take the one extra step to add actual gameplay?

It's a place where gameplay is expected, so when it's missing, to the player it feels like you consciously deleted it, rather than like you simply didn't add it. Theoretically you might think that it's no different than letting the player choose their hairstyle, but the difference is all about player expectations. The player gets hyped up and then let down; that's not a good thing.

True, but can't you also get let down when you find a character you like for their appearance/design, yet find out their gameplay unsuitable to your playstyle or just obsolete? It's probably one of my biggest peeves of fighting and mmo games, because due to some "meta" I feel like I'm constantly getting punished for playing someone/something that appeals to me.

Not having any gameplay differences is a bigger letdown for me than having an undesirable playstyle on a character I like. Then again, a big factor in how much I like playable characters is their gameplay style. Still, if the character you chose is inferior to the point of not being viable in the slightest and only a tiny fraction of the roster being useful, chances are that the game isn't fun in general.

My own JRPG-oriented game becomes less appealing to me since I feel a strong level of customization would undermine that their skills and stats reflect their personality. I personally feel highly inspired to make a game somewhat like World of Warcraft. It's a nice game with a number of creative ideas, but I'm not fond of anything below level cap being way too easy, the main skill factor being mashing your skills at maximum speed and having to rely on teammates so much (especially so in raids).

How about you make these individual stories like quest chains? You can 'exit' a story at any moment by simply not proceeding with the quest and rejoin at any time by completing it. This lets players put a story on hold if they feel they'd rather do something else for a while before picking up the story again.

I can give you a good example in WoW about archetypes and themes:

Both the Holy and the Discipline specialization of the Priest class fit the same archetype, that of the Healer (Shadow can also heal, but those are the Damage Dealer archetype). Their theme is how they accomplish it - Holy priests rely more on straightforward HP restoration and healing a group, while Discipline Priests throw shields on their allies that have additional HP or reduce damage taken. The former can handle AoE damage better while the latter can protect from burst damage more reliably.