Every feature should serve with Purpose, focus and be-smart

Discussion in 'Crafting & Gathering' started by ngavarta, Apr 10, 2021.

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  1. ngavarta

    ngavarta Avatar

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    Have anyone played "Valheim" before?

    I know I know, it's a Minecraft-like game, but hey I learned a lot from that game and I think SoTA can beneficial from that.

    To summarize there are 3 keywords that bring out the following topic I'm gonna bring out - purpose, focus, be-smart.

    Purpose:
    - What Valhiem (V in short) did right over SoTA (S in short) is, it makes every item, feature, the mechanism in the game serve with a purpose(s), and as a result, not that it "removes boring" but "promotes the addiction" of gameplay.
    - gathering: to make armor, weapons to defend yourself in the wild wild world, and it's not a nice-to-have; but it's a must, else you won't survive another day.
    - housing: shelter from monsters, and progressively need to update when level grows and monsters' level grows
    - NPCs/ NPC building: even meeting an NPC, housing is rare (rare things are appreciated), but they all come down to purpose. Merchants are there to sell you things (probable things you can't get by loot), housing are there for you to scavenge or to monopoly (also to demo what you can build).
    - world objects: almost everything you can interact with, there's not much of a decoration tree, rock, bird, ship, building, town, mine that serve no purpose.

    Focus:
    - Rather be feature-less with rich gameplay, than "full" feature (wanna-be's) with poor gameplay.
    - Focus on gameplay, engaging player, make things purposeful (can't stress enough) than being too ambitious and doing non of these things good or even work.

    Be-smart:
    - Why we need to be-smart when doing implementation, design? because feature(s) are unlimited, resources are.
    - Valheim definitely might not be as content-rich as SoTA in a lot of way, but it doesn't feel like it, it's prettier than Minecraft at least.
    - It's pixelated in a good way, and being smart (design) on a lot of area, to make things interesting enough to engage/ please player(s), not to please developer(s) or project manager(s).
    - make monsters voice authentic each (consistent, not mute sometimes), making them recognizable, not just yell/ bark/ the way they walk/ dragged/ crawl
    - make monster spawn from somewhere (physical spawner), not just spawn from no way (from the air? not good from a simulation point of view). e.g.: skeletons crawl out from crypts or tombs (that also making tombs and crypt with purpose, not just decorations)

    Suggestions:
    - PROS:
    - S have a lot of houses, mines and building alikes, but V do not have that much varients, why is it not FEEL EMPTY ... it is a valid question to ask why?
    - SoTA has a lot of monsters, NPCs, where after 5 - 10 hrs game play in V, I don't see only 4-5 types of monsters and none NPCs, but it still feels like a lifeful world, again why? Less is more ... ?
    - gathering (wood chopping, fishing, mining ... etc) are fun, make the experience more engaging
    - e.g.: wood chopping might get you actually kill or at least badly hurt
    - e.g.: make the process more manual rather than "auto", e.g.: don't use "progress bar", there's no progress bar in actual wood chopping, only windows application have a progress bar, GOD DON'T DRAW STRAIGHT LINES
    - we have ships, carts, air balloons, let us drive them; teleporters are teleporters, vehicles are vehicles ... don't mix them
    - food must be there for a very critical reason, not just buffer, some element the game must have for survival

    - CONS:
    - housing is good to have premade things made for players, but since this is a sandbox game, be liberty, give the player back their freedom, more chance to craft items from basic shapes (like Lego if you will)
    - we don't need a listing for inventory, I don't care how you going to do it, listing is for window application, web application, this is a game
    - use simple GUI, HUD, this is not your worksheet program, we don't need macro or combination of keys, or single key mapping for different command, for God sake make it simple, as simple as a retard can play, players are not rocket science researchers
    - monsters are too predictable, and they have no sense of surprise, I'm talking about spawners, make more gigantic creatures, monsters with attitude (slower vs faster, active vs passive, etc etc) whose will actually chase you, have better AIs.
    - make it open world, or as if open world, I don't care how
    - don't go into another scene to fight overworld monsters, fight them on the world, if it's small to do that, enlarge it (refer Diablo 2 really), let's be honest overworld experience just sucks, it's neither JRPG nor D&D RPG.
    - put more simulation in the game, the game needs them, open sandbox game is all about real-world simulations. Not even our buildings have physics in them, players can basically walk thru NPCs and that's wrong, the player falls, hurt and they don't bleed that's wrong ...
    - make player crawl back from hometown, to collect their drops when they die (then you have a purpose of home), some times inconvenient is also an ingredient of addiction
    - make player pay tax if they accessing bank from another town than their hometown
    - add more stuff for the sense of survival
    - make arrow sniping affected by physics (wind), wind, auto fire is fine, but manual aim at least

    Okay, these are just recommendations, I'm really hoping SoTA can be better, think of it, some of these are what makes what Ultima used to be great. Why ditch success formula right?!

    Again, make the game great, retain players, polish later.
     
    Last edited: Apr 11, 2021
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  2. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    Interesting....... ;)
     
  3. Ysold

    Ysold Avatar

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    I don't think I would be playing the kind of game @ngavarta is describing.
    But then, tastes differ!
     
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