View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0018080 | Starward Rogue | GUI | Dec 23, 2015 3:56 pm | Jan 6, 2016 8:36 pm | |
| Reporter | Bluddy | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | closed | Resolution | won't fix | ||
| Product Version | 0.207 | ||||
| Summary | 0018080: Remove health display on minor enemies | ||||
| Description | One of the clever yet unintuitive things games like Nuclear Throne and Isaac do, is taking away the health bar from minor enemies. Why is this a good idea? Having a health bar means that I don't have to pay attention to what I'm fighting. Whatever it is, I just whittle it down. Not having one means I have to learn which enemies have more HP and are therefore more dangerous. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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It's because it helps give the player an idea as to how much damage they are doing with various combinations of weapons/items/whatever. One problem that games like Isaac have, which drive me absolutely up the wall and which I think Chris had mentioned too, is that it gives the player hardly ANY information at all. This doesnt increase the game's difficulty in my opinion; it merely creates annoying tedium. This goes for every game that does this. But Isaac in particular went REALLY far with the "not telling the player a thing" idea. Much as I love the game, well... as I said, I find it very annoying. The difficulty in this game shouldnt be about memorizing enemy stats. Attack patterns, sure, but stats, no. Instead, when it comes to that, the difficulty should be about the choices you make. What items do you take, what items do you NOT take? Stuff like that. The HP bar just gives the player that much more info. And besides, with the enemy patterns being as complicated as they already are, there's plenty about each enemy to learn as it is. I would suggest simply having the option to turn it off, but leave it there by default, as I think it's definitely a very useful element, but I can see why some might not want it there. |
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No! Not another option! Here's my rationale: think about the enemies in Isaac or Nuclear Throne. You observe them and get an impression right away. They have *personality*, even before they do anything. Their animation has personality too. And then you observe their attack pattern, and their amount of health. The ships in this game don't have much personality. They look fairly generic for the most part. You could interchange one for another and not notice the difference. Other than size, you wouldn't guess what a certain enemy does or how strong they are. Having a health bar is one of those things that removes player observation even more. I don't have to pay attention to the hp of the enemy, or how many shots will kill it. It's just a number. I want to force the player to pay attention to the enemies -- to each and every one, and this is one tool to do it with. But honestly, the biggest problem is that very little personality comes across in the ship designs. At least to me -- I'm open to other opinions. |
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Enemy "personality", though, has nothing at all to do with the actual gameplay mechanics. The point of the HP bar is simply to make it easier for players to tell how much damage they're doing, without having to spend a million years experimenting/guessing... neither of which are fun, and both of which are slow to do. And neither of which ADD anything to the challenge of the game. As for the enemies having personality or not, I dont think they can be compared to Isaac or Nuclear Throne. Keep in mind: Those games had VERY long development times. And there's 2 other things about them: For Isaac, enemy sprites are re-used VERY OFTEN, being remade into very slightly different versions. And in Nuclear Throne, a common complaint is that there's actually not enough enemy variety (and there isnt, not NEARLY enough) as the total enemy count is actually very low... despite two years of development time. And even for all the personality, the actual attack patterns of most enemies in both games are actually extremely simplistic; mechanically, there's not much to any of them. The sort of art/animations you're thinking of simply take WAY too long to pull off, I think. Granted, I'm not an artist, but that's the impression Iv'e always gotten from watching developers work on their games over time. One way or another, THIS game is stuck with a very short development time. I wish it were longer, but it isnt. There's no avoiding the effects that the shortness of it will have. All in all I still think the HP thing is useful. These games, they drive me bloody crazy when I can never tell HOW MUCH damage my various attacks are doing; I get frustrated and end up ignoring alot of things simply because I dont want to deal with it. I doubt I'm the only one. But again, this is why just having the option is a good idea. More options never actually hurt anything; they just make it so that more players are happy with what the game provides them. |
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I hear what you're saying, you heard what I'm saying. A few small counter-points to consider: 1. Perhaps the attack patterns in those games are simple to allow room for the effects of upgrades. If the patterns were too demanding, they'd corner the design into specific parameters, and it would be hard to give the player upgrades/downgrades. For example, I suggested that the mech's range should start lower, to give room for possible range upgrades. You replied (correctly, I think) that the boss battles were designed with the player having a certain minimum range in mind. 2. The flipside of having more options is that the vision and experience gets diluted. Options are good, but I think they should be strongly restricted. 3. Not a counter-point per se, but I realize that there's a very short development time, and I'm trying to point out the things that could most help the game succeed as I see it, given the amount of time left. My current feeling is that other than the patterns, which you're doing a good job on, and which make the game stand out, the general feel of this title so far is 'competent, but a little generic'. Given how crowded this genre has become, and how good (and particularly *stylish*) the competition is, it'll be tough to translate this feeling into word of mouth IMO without extra cool stuff or style. That's also why I'm pushing the idea of big explosions, explosions tearing through the ship's hull etc. I know this criticism may be tough to hear, but better from me than from buyers after release. |
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Quick responses: 1. This one is a bit debatable... to me it seems more of a style choice, as the mechanics go. In shmup terms it's the difference between a traditional one like Gradius (slower, not that many bullets, some challenge created by actual level structure, and so on) and bullet-hell games (total chaos, all challenge created by the bullets themselves and the alignment of enemies on screen, no walls or structures whatsoever to the stages themselves). Isaac was heavily inspired, originally, by the first Zelda game; which had slow, methodical combat; enemies used simplistic yet still fundamentally different attacks. Isaac for the most part also has this, very much so; it's not super fast paced like NT (which works very, very well for it really). Even if they went with faster + more bullets, the design style they use for the items and such could still work just fine and produce all sorts of crazy synergies. Some things would just function differently. Wheras NT just hands you some guns and then drowns you in rats and birds and exploding snipers. 2. Eh, I mostly am just used to having alot of options in Arcen's games; it's one of the things that is so attractive about them, I think. Everybody gets the experience tailored to them. But then I also tend to get REALLY bothered if a game of any sort is missing even one thing I think should be there (with many games out there, this is control-options related), so that's where that comes from. 3. Oh yes, you have a good point here. This one has been on my mind, but I've not really brought it up... this being because I havent the foggiest clue as to what to suggest and I figured I"m probably not the best source of feedback on this one. My thoughts are that the game is very fun so far and has been coming along great, but there does need to be SOMETHING to help it stand out. Like how Bionic Dues had it's city mission-structure mechanic that was both very important and seperate from the actual combat missions. Added a big layer of strategy to the whole thing. Arcen's games tend to have that extra "layer" of something to them. If that makes sense. To a point I think that some similarity in genres (hell, Nuclear Throne is basically Robotron with more than one gun/character... not that this is a problem, mind you...) is totally unavoidable, but I agree, to some degree there is a bit of a same-y nature to some aspects of this right now. Despite that I dont find there to be anything bad about any of it; no elements that I dislike so far at all. I'd be interested to hear what Chris's thoughts on that matter might be. Though that might be something for more of a direct conversation or even on the forums, rather than on Mantis here. |
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I feel like I'm not making progress against enemies unless I see a little health bar. Plus I never know the names of enemies without that, either. At the time that this was written, a TON of the enemy art was not in place yet, and many enemies literally used the same sprites, so of course they seemed interchangeable -- they literally were the same sprite already. We have 2 weeks of development time left at this point, and then minor polish and tweaks after that, so doing high-time-intensity stuff with low payback isn't something I can afford to do. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 23, 2015 3:56 pm | Bluddy | New Issue | |
| Dec 23, 2015 4:29 pm | Misery | Note Added: 0043923 | |
| Dec 23, 2015 6:34 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0043932 | |
| Dec 23, 2015 6:51 pm | Misery | Note Added: 0043933 | |
| Dec 23, 2015 7:04 pm | Bluddy | Note Added: 0043934 | |
| Dec 23, 2015 7:04 pm | Bluddy | Note Edited: 0043934 | |
| Dec 23, 2015 7:31 pm | Misery | Note Added: 0043935 | |
| Jan 6, 2016 8:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0043991 | |
| Jan 6, 2016 8:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| Jan 6, 2016 8:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Jan 6, 2016 8:36 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => won't fix |
