Uhhhhhh, that’s complicated. Technically grinding has whatever depth the base game has, just players intentionally repeat one part that they know they can beat.

The problem of grinding is more one of human psychology. We try to find the fastest lowest effort way of getting the results we want, even if it makes us bored.

I’d say the solution is to minimize or prevent grinding, force the player to move between content in order to improve. Otherwise they’ll stake out the one place with the highest EXP return and closest to whatever respawns the monsters. This can be done by having monsters refuse to drop EXP after being killed a certain number of times, forcing you to move on, by adding points of no return, by making encounters not respawn, etc.

Alternative solutions would be to speed grinding up by offering choices in how to grind. Actually, TWEWY is a great example here. TWEWY’s random encounters are opt-in, so you never get encounters by accident and you don’t need to go running around in a field until one pops up on you. The cool thing about them is also that you can chain the encounters for bigger rewards, so you can chain up to like 10 battles in a row, which you need to beat without healing.

So the idea is, allow players who want to grind to get access to battles instantly, and give them the option of facing something super hard to get a ton of EXP in one go.

People want to get to the end result, you might as well give it to them quick, but don’t give it to them for free or you’re writing them a blank check to wreck the game balance.

As for actual ways to vary grinding, you can have things like EV training in pokemon, which was trivialized in later games with good reason in my opinion. In Tales of Symphonia, every character has a Technical vs Strike meter that changes based on their equipped EX-Skills through combat, and grants access to different moves.

What elements of fighting games do you think could work in shooters?

Okay, I have a lot of these ideas actually.

For one, the round structure. You could have a 1v1 fight with life refills for both players when one of them dies. Reset the match. I think Quake Live had a mode that worked like this actually.

Supers are an obvious one that Overwatch implemented (the ults both charge up over time and as you deal damage or healing to other players).

A more nuanced idea is having projectiles that disappear if one player is hit. Not only does this actually appear in some fighting games, but it would help FPS games emulate the rock/paper/scissors nature of fighting games. Currently FPS games are all about trading hits and trying to hit your opponent more consistently with a higher DPS weapon from a position of advantage. You kill your opponent if you can DPS more efficiently rather than necessarily counter their actions. A big part of the reason the same doesn’t happen in fighting games is the way hitstun interrupts attacks during startup. So imagine faster/slower shots, shorter/longer ranges, shot startup time, blocking, reasons to not shoot constantly.

Bigger projectiles, shooting large swaths of projectiles, and having them move slower. The idea here is space control, denying space to your opponent by laying down the fire. Slow projectiles are a big deal in fighting games because you can operate alongside them. They can serve this same role on FPS games. They need to be bigger because FPS characters have a wider space to move across. Having a wave of projectiles, grouped together like a larger projectile, could avoid the problem of the whole thing fizzling on touching a wall. The projectiles in one shot could be programmed to all disappear when hitting a player, and individually disappear on hitting environment geometry.

Using more buttons on the mouse. Currently FPS games get attack variety in by separating out the attacks among a bunch of weapons that the player switches between. This is slow, this is clumsy. Unless mapped efficiently, across relatively few keys, players can’t switch weapons very efficiently without sacrificing access to the movement keys for a few seconds. Basically, make less weapons, give them more diverse functions, map them to more buttons on the mouse. A gaming mouse has like 5 buttons on it. That’s plenty. 2 is too few. You might lose some people due to not owning a gaming mouse, but you can double bind those functions to the keyboard. On that note, the number of keys used should probably be reduced. You can get more functionalities out of the mouse buttons by having charge functions and tap versus press functions too.

Juggle Combos. These can get really dynamic in some fighting games. They can work off projectiles exclusively with some characters.

Projectile variety. Fighting games have amazing projectile variety. There’s no FPS projectile as versatile as Link’s Bombs in Melee in any FPS game. Part of it is also the way the 2d space constrains movement and keeps it clear what’s going on

You’ve talked about how to design a horror game but it doesn’t seem like you like horror games. How would you design a horror game that YOU would play as in, what the gameplay be like (actiony, stealth, puzzle, etc.)

I’d aim for somewhere between action and stealth. A lot of horror games use puzzles as filler between the horror bits, but they don’t put a lot of effort into the puzzles, and I don’t think puzzle solving meshes well with horror. You essentially need an excuse to wander a large area, and puzzles can be used to that end by ferrying pieces back and forth, but that means people can’t see the whole puzzle at once, and it delays a lot of the feedback of getting stuff right or wrong which by itself would be irritating, and it gets compounded by the spook factor, so I don’t think it’s totally the best idea.

The trouble with horror is that you need a lot of not-horror to make it work, or people condition themselves and become desensitized.

Maybe the Queen Vanessa levels from A Hat In Time might be a good angle to work from.

Basically you’re set up with a bunch of essentially chores to do, then it makes a loud noise and HOLYSHITOHGODGETAWAYFROMME. You could get the enemy to come in on cycles, patrol around, you have hints it’s getting near, so you gotta hurry up while you have time. Then something that increases your risk factor, or something that requires you to take certain risks, something that alters the enemy’s scheduling a little to shake things up. Imagine that when the enemy is directly in your room, you can’t just hide the whole time, you NEED to move because it will eventually check your hiding spot. So imagine it’s like playing Perfection combined with Operation (the board games), you have this time limit you’re working against but you’re also really tense from trying to not screw up.

Couple that with a bit more potentially risky but seemingly empty traversal, a bit more randomness, a few more enemy types that have different behaviors, sections where you can’t always perceive the enemy, or know whether there is an enemy or not, and it could work.

How would you design a game with stealth elements from the Thief series, mixed with the parkour system with all of it’s advanced techniques found in Mirror’s Edge?

Interesting idea. I wasn’t sure how this could work at first, but I think I might have an idea based on an older concept I thought up, of a stealth game based on speed. The idea is that as you go faster, you’re less visible/audible, so stealth is about trying to keep up speed and not let it drop. Keep on moving, don’t get tripped up.

Mirror’s edge has a system that supports this, a lot of the game is about avoiding getting tripped up. Many things like climbing up ledges or over fences have varying standards of success. Do it higher and more smoothly and make less noise, and go faster. This could also be applied to fall damage. Landing without a heavy fall is optimal, rolling is less optimal, then two levels of fall damage that make less and more noise. More perfect sideboosting could create less noise too.

A basic thought is, how do you inform the player that they’re being loud or quiet? One idea is that loud sounds can be lower pitched and more bassy where the quiet sounds can be higher pitched, softer in tone, and less bassy, so players can clearly distinguish them, yet still receive auditory feedback.

It would make sense to have footstep sounds change radius at different speed thresholds, so that things like wallboosts and the like can temporarily push you over the normal speed threshold, making you quieter until you slow down. It would also make sense to add a sound for hitting a wall at high speeds.

There should be a more mundane stealth system based on going slow on top of this, because it’s hard to go fast without knowing the level layouts. So you have the high level, gottagofast stealth, then the low level stuff. The low level could function more like thief, the high level more like mirror’s edge. Throw leaning on Q and E, move use onto F. Implement the fancy lighting system. Add a blackjack that can disable guards who don’t detect you.

The hard part is the level designs, the enemy AI. To make something suited for this would be difficult. You need to design around the fact that the player doesn’t know where stuff is in advance. How do you plan guard patrol paths that players zip by without getting a chance to study them for flaws? You could give players wallhack vision like everything does these days, show guard vision cones too. Whatever.

The levels probably make more sense being linear than open if speed is the focus, but you gotta provide a lot of paths to get around guards, otherwise the game doesn’t really make sense. I dunno what the final product would look like, would require a lot of thought to put together, maybe research into similar games, if any exist.

How would you design a game with stealth elements from the Thief series, mixed with the parkour system with all of it’s advanced techniques found in Mirror’s Edge?

Interesting idea. I wasn’t sure how this could work at first, but I think I might have an idea based on an older concept I thought up, of a stealth game based on speed. The idea is that as you go faster, you’re less visible/audible, so stealth is about trying to keep up speed and not let it drop. Keep on moving, don’t get tripped up.

Mirror’s edge has a system that supports this, a lot of the game is about avoiding getting tripped up. Many things like climbing up ledges or over fences have varying standards of success. Do it higher and more smoothly and make less noise, and go faster. This could also be applied to fall damage. Landing without a heavy fall is optimal, rolling is less optimal, then two levels of fall damage that make less and more noise. More perfect sideboosting could create less noise too.

A basic thought is, how do you inform the player that they’re being loud or quiet? One idea is that loud sounds can be lower pitched and more bassy where the quiet sounds can be higher pitched, softer in tone, and less bassy, so players can clearly distinguish them, yet still receive auditory feedback.

It would make sense to have footstep sounds change radius at different speed thresholds, so that things like wallboosts and the like can temporarily push you over the normal speed threshold, making you quieter until you slow down. It would also make sense to add a sound for hitting a wall at high speeds.

There should be a more mundane stealth system based on going slow on top of this, because it’s hard to go fast without knowing the level layouts. So you have the high level, gottagofast stealth, then the low level stuff. The low level could function more like thief, the high level more like mirror’s edge. Throw leaning on Q and E, move use onto F. Implement the fancy lighting system. Add a blackjack that can disable guards who don’t detect you.

The hard part is the level designs, the enemy AI. To make something suited for this would be difficult. You need to design around the fact that the player doesn’t know where stuff is in advance. How do you plan guard patrol paths that players zip by without getting a chance to study them for flaws? You could give players wallhack vision like everything does these days, show guard vision cones too. Whatever.

The levels probably make more sense being linear than open if speed is the focus, but you gotta provide a lot of paths to get around guards, otherwise the game doesn’t really make sense. I dunno what the final product would look like, would require a lot of thought to put together, maybe research into similar games, if any exist.

How would you design activities which emphasize team work in Coop games? Most team events in games are kind of boring (Usually it’s stuff like hold button to help partner open door or move block, partner does something while you defend him, or something else)

Compared to the questions you asked leading up to this one (how would I make multiplayer games deeper?), this one is a lot better.

In my mind, it’s a matter of giving the characters’ various tools more applications that can potentially help a team mate. Team recoveries in Smash Bros are built on the simple principle that hitting someone in the air always restores their airdodge and Up B (unless they’re Yoshi or ROB). Some Up Bs like ganondorf’s and falcons naturally reset if they grab someone, so they lend themselves to team recoveries.

Overwatch naturally has a bunch of team-work things too. It’s a matter of creating synergy between moves, and not having those moves on the same character. Skullgirls has a similar principle. You’ll never find a character with both a shoryuken and a good horizontal projectile.

Some basic uses for team mates are healing each other, reviving each other, buffing each other, getting enemies off one another (left 4 dead), holding enemies in place for friends to annihilate, opening paths for one another (tower of power, mei’s bridges), trading resources with one another, pushing each other around, sharing information

Perhaps some things can have special arbitrary bonuses if you do them on top of what a team mate does, or special effects for actions performed in synchronicity.

Of course creating the potential for team work is not the same thing as emphasizing it, or forcing people to work together, but if you do that then you probably end up with situations like you described.

L4D forces team work by having it so special infected can do really quick specials on the survivors that instantly disable them, which they can only be saved from by another survivor. If you die, you can only be pulled out of a closet by a team mate, you can only be revived by a team mate, you guys can all pass healing supplies and guns around.

And as usual, depth is about making sure everything has a niche, multiple uses, variable outcomes, and synergy with other elements.

Okay, what function do morality/character alignment systems perform?

They usually control:
1. What powers the characters can get/have
2. What choices the player is capable of making
3. Other characters/enemies reactions to the player
4. What ending you get
http://www.giantbomb.com/moral-decisions/3015-93/

One common drawback is they’re frequently a sliding scale from good to evil, with more powerful benefits as you’re further down one end of the scale, at which point it’s worth asking why they don’t just lock you into one choice at the beginning of the game since they clearly don’t want you to switch mid-way or mix and match. Mass Effect lets you mix and match at any time, sometimes to the other one’s exclusion though, and if you weren’t building up points for one from early into the game, you’ll get locked out of choices later on.

Morality systems differ a lot in impact across various games. Shadow the Hedgehog has a complete branching tree of levels that are traveled based on morality, with a good, bad, and sometimes neutral objective in every level. Dishonored has the levels change based on “chaos” level, with a net additive effect across levels. Some SMT games like Strange Journey have a synergy effect between demons if they have the same alignment. Undertale has practically a whole different campaign for genocide versus pacifist (weak example compared to the others, I know). Demon’s souls has character and world tendency.

So what type of system would I make? I don’t really know. It’s not the type of thing I’d include in the first place honestly. I’d probably make up hokey alignments like the ones on the alignment chart below that a friend of mine (clarencemage) made up for fighting game players. I lean towards a dishonored type system, except I’d have different outcomes for good and bad that made levels more interesting as suited to that playstyle, rather than one just making the game flat easier. Like have different enemies appear. That and if I went with a system that was just one sliding scale of good to bad, I’d have neutral with unique things showing up in the middle, or some type of special reward for players who mix it up and end up neutral, or who swing all the way from one alignment to the other. I also really like the shadow the hedgehog approach, it’s just cool.

Maybe I’d go full D&D and have a grid of 9 alignments. Have power upgrade trees for each of them, when you get enough points to shift alignments, you lose your greater powers, then regain the ones appropriate to that alignment after a while.

What would assign alignment? Miscellaneous grindable actions (like every open world game)? Specific exclusive objectives (shadow the hedgehog and Undertale)? Sidequests? I really have no idea.

If I REALLY cared, I’d probably think about real world morality long and hard and try to come up with something that reflected that.