Tolerance for character attributes in FPS game?

Jacob Hendricks · 2013-05-02T10:15:58

I have been designing a FPS game for fun in spare time that I want to really emphasize tactics and strategy over twitch FPS skill. The game would have a big strategic emphasis as well as tactical in terms of travel and logistics. There would be no classes in the game. What a player can do is determined by what they are carrying with them. An example would be, a player cannot remove a bolt unless they have a wrench (crude and not really relevant, but gets the idea across I think). In real life combat, a soldier experiences a plethora of things that simply do not happen (most of the time) in a video game. For instance, fearing for your life and this fear affecting your combat performance. A player may experience fear, but it is no where on the same level as what a real soldier in real combat would experience. I want to try and simulate these sort of things in the character and translate this into having an affect on the battlefield. The only way I can think of is to have character attributes such as you would find in an RPG. I would also take into account a characters strength and endurance, which would affect how much and for how long they can carry gear. I would also have psychological attributes like mental fortitude or courage that would determine how they react to things like coming under heavy fire or seeing a lot of their squad get gunned down. If a player, for example, is taking heavy fire I want their character's performance to suffer from it in a psychological sense. I would apply a modifier to their actions such as shooting or reloading to represent the psychological stress of fear or what have you. Or have a modifier if the player witnesses a lot of friendlies being killed. It would also go the other way, if the battle is going well the player would receive slight bonuses either to performance or to their attributes which would allow them to deal with the negatives better. None of it would take control away from the player, it would simply modify their performance in various ways. The player would still be aiming the weapon and what not, there wouldn't be any RNG that is solely determining hits or misses, but these would be affecting things like handling recoil, reload speed, would make aiming shaky, make the player able to run faster for longer (adrenaline rush caused by extreme fear of death). My question is, do you think this sort of thing would be tolerated, assuming the overall experience is well handled on the design end?

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Azaral May 01, 2013 04:26 PM

9 comments, last by Chosker 11 years ago

Chosker

601

May 02, 2013 10:15 AM

besides the matter of taking control away from the player I want to emphasize more into what Prinz Eugn is saying.

you mention your characters reacting in a negative way based on negative situations (becoming frightened when under heavy fire), and reacting in a positive way on positive situations (battle is going well). to me this sounds like you're giving the winning team an extra advantage just because they're winning, and punishing the losing team making it even harder for them.

from what I've played in competitive games that use this sort of game mechanic (see: Heroes of Newerth / DOTA), the result can be a match that builds up in a fair way give and take, until one player makes a good move, gets his team to lay a successful ambush or gets a lucky streak, or until one player makes a small mistake and dies. after that the match unbalances itself and from that moment on its pretty much over because it becomes more and more an uphill battle for the losing team.

and the more competitive the game is, the more slight this 'good move' or 'error' needs to be to cause the decisive inbalance.

of course there's a lot of comebacks but they require the losing team to perform MUCH better than the winning team.

Chosker - Developer of Elium - Prison Escape

Tolerance for character attributes in FPS game?

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Tolerance for character attributes in FPS game?

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