Hello again, Survivors!
Last week, we talked about the direction we're taking with the redesign of the Combat Systems, and how we're keeping the "Design Intent" of the core fun elements but making them more engaging and proactive for players.
Today, I'd like to share how we’re realizing this goal, and some of the outcomes of our testing!
Utilizing "Enemy Sight" through "Surprise" and "Sight Evasion”
As I mentioned in the last post, the first thing we tried was the “Surprise system.” We took the “Out of Sight Attack Bonus” that was previously only available as an effect for some weapons and instead made the base rule “If you attack an enemy from Out of Sight, you deal Double Damage.”
These are also some changes to the rules for enemy sight,
- Enemies that have sounded the Alarm and become "Aware (Red Arrow)" change their field of view to Omnidirectional,
- If you end your turn outside of the enemy's Line of Sight, you will not be attacked during the enemy's turn.
The field of view rule changes are due to feedback that it was too difficult to get out of the way of enemy attacks, with the goal of allowing players to use the field of view system to their advantage.
While many games in this genre have an "Attack Range" and give you a chance to stay out of harm's way, Remore's Infested have a very long movement range, making it very difficult to do this.
While we do provide a means of disabling enemies with "Shield Block", "Barricade", or "Injure/Stun", we decided it would be best to give players a way to use the basic system of "Out of Sight" to their advantage first.
This is the same intention as when we talked about the "Surprise System" earlier, where the "tactic of utilizing a skill or tool" is something that we want to deliver as additional tactical depth after players are comfortable with the basic system.
Our internal evaluation of the “Surprise” and “Out of sight” systems is pretty positive. We decided that 2x damage was too much and reduced the damage bonus to 150%, but the end result is that it still feels tactical, with a "kill as many enemies as you need, grab some supplies, and get out of there fast" feel to it.
However, we still had a deeper issue to handle: "Catching/Caught".
Weighing the Pros and Cons of the "Caught” system.
Up until the Early Access version, "Caught" was a key part of the combat system. It was a way to pose a real threat by making it harder to ignore a swarm of enemies by having them raise an alarm, and it was a key way to increase the value of battlefield maneuvering skills like pushing and pulling that we see as a hallmark of the game.
However, for those not yet familiar with the game, we've found that it often feels like a fairly harsh punishment to have a large number of enemies immediately swarm and grab your allies when you're caught in their Line of Sight, even though it's still your turn. Especially in the case of “Blisters”, depending on where you're caught, the difficulty of getting past them without taking damage can be rough.
Also, in the original Early Access version, when an enemy was facing "Diagonally," they could grab two allies in that direction at the same time. We received a lot of feedback that it was hard to understand "Who" was caught and “Why.”
So, we asked ourselves, "Can we achieve the design intent of “Caught”, which is to intimidate and increase the value of battlefield manipulation skills, in a different way than the seemingly punishing system of “Capture/Caught?”
In fact, in the case of feeling “Intimidation”, the "Sight Evasion" system above makes it easier to create this by simply increasing the number of enemies that appear, even without catching the player.
Traditionally, given the difficulty of escape from capture, we've tried to make sure that our level design doesn't have more than a certain number of enemies that have the ability to catch an ally at once, if possible.
On the other hand, with the concept of Line of Sight evasion, it's now possible to outrun 8-10 enemies in a dangerous spot without taking any damage, as long as you give them room to escape. Of course, once an enemy spot you, they'll continue to track you, so it can be dangerous to simply run away.
We felt that this experience of having a large number of enemies creeping up on you unless you take them all out, was closer to the feel of the board game Zombicide that we were originally inspired by, so in the end, it was closer to what we originally wanted to do.
So now, if we can find a way to address our second goal, "Increase the Value of Battlefield Manipulation Skills," we've concluded that removing the “Catching/Caught” mechanics can lower the barrier to entry, with no loss of both thematic and tactical value.
After some thought, we've decided to go the route we're currently on, which is to base the game on a system that allows you to "Surround" enemies.
Surrounding Encourages Battlefield Manipulation Gameplay
Here's a quick summary of how the new "Surrounding system" we're experimenting with works.
- Enemies with “No Available Tiles to Move to” are “Surrounded.”
- Enemies that are “Surrounded” are dealt Double Damage.
In other words, surrounding an enemy, whether by taking advantage of walls and doors, direct movement of friendly characters, placing barriers, or any other means, gives the player a clear advantage.
With this system in place, combat is guided as follows.
- Tactical Points (TP) are used for battlefield manipulation such as moving, pushing, and pulling to surround the enemy.
- Weapon Points (WP) are best used against enemies when surprised or surrounded to maximize damage.
It was hoped that this aspect of play would help separate the roles of TP/WP and also create a much more tactically diverse set of situations than just “'trying to avoid being Caught.” And, thankfully, we've found that this is exactly the outcome!
Of course, as always, these positive results didn't come so easily - there was a lot of experimentation, including tweaking the surrounding conditions, the foundation of the battlefield manipulation techniques to create the “Surrounded” condition, and also the enemy placement and level design fundamentals, and this prototyping continues today.
However, since this post is already quite long with just what I've said so far, I'll save my experimental attempts to get the Surrounded System working as intended for the next post.
Rethinking all of our designs for accessibility while maintaining the core fun of the game was no small feat, but after a lot of thought and experimentation, we're happy to report that we're able to put “Surprise,” “Sight Avoidance,” and “Surround” on solid new footing.
We'll be back in the next post with more details on our experiments and what game elements will be changing as a result!
As always, thanks for being here with us on this journey!
Until next time.
Thank you,
REMORE