Login

u/bladeofwiz

r/gamedesign r/gamedev r/roguelites
▲ 9 r/roguelites

Do you prefer games where you choose your weapon at the start, or games where you find your real weapon during the run

I’ve been thinking about how weapon randomness affects the overall feel of an action roguelike.

Take Hades for example: you choose from six weapons at the start of a run, and once you pick one, part of your build direction is already decided. Even if the rest of the run is random, you still begin with a weapon you’re comfortable with.

In the game we’re designing, the structure is different. You start with a relatively weak weapon, and you’re expected to find stronger ones during the run. The weapon pool is fairly large, and players may have to choose between things like a weapon room or a boon/buff room.

On paper, that sounds exciting because it makes each run feel more dynamic and unpredictable.

But I’m worried that it could also become frustrating.

In an action roguelike, weapon feel matters a lot. If a player never finds a weapon that really fits their playstyle, the run might stop feeling random in a fun way and start feeling bad to play on a basic level.

So I wanted to ask:

Do you prefer games where you choose your weapon at the start, or games where you find your real weapon during the run

Hades

u/bladeofwiz — 3 days ago
▲ 13 r/roguelites

Dev here, everyone who playtests keeps gravitating to fire+lightning, is fusion overtuned or am i overthinking it?

I work on this and honestly the fusion combos are the part im least sure about balance-wise.

First gif is the fire build stacking burn, second one is lightning chaining through packs.

Every playtest people gravitate to these two hard, and i cant tell if thats a red flag or just what fusion is supposed to feel like.

Would genuinely take the feedback.......

u/bladeofwiz — 2 months ago
▲ 0 r/gamedesign

Some observations regarding the action vs projectile primitive designs for combat, and how these make sense more so in roguelike formats than in arpg's

Design postmortem: dual-protagonist + AI co-op combat (the backstory before the framework below)

Note: we're a game design team from China and English isn't our first language, so we ran this writeup through AI to translate it. We want to apologize for that, and for any clunky or awkward phrasing it may have introduced. We figured it was better to get these ideas out for discussion than to stay silent because of the language barrier, so please bear with us. We also want to say upfront that this genre has so many brilliant designers and games we've learned a ton from, most of them from outside China - Supergiant and Greg Kasavin with Hades, Motion Twin with Dead Cells, Edmund McMillen with The Binding of Isaac, Derek Yu with Spelunky, Mega Crit with Slay the Spire, Hopoo Games with Risk of Rain. We're standing on the shoulders of their work here, not claiming to have figured any of this out first. This is a postmortem we put together after testing at February's Next Fest, summarizing the pitfalls we hit designing the dual-protagonist combat in our game, based on player feedback. Discussion very welcome.

Problems we ran into designing the core gameplay

The cat / dual-protagonist problem

  • The cat felt out of place, and that broke immersion for a lot of players.

The AI co-op core gameplay problem

  • AI behavior is genuinely hard to get right, and the AI's combat role is hard to pin down.
  • It only really served players who like "summoner" style classes, which narrowed our audience.
  • Making AI co-op the core is basically carving a brand new path, and that comes with a very high teaching cost.

What we think

  • Our current synergy-attack core loop, built on a double-tap + skill-chain flow, honestly has a pretty high barrier to entry.
  • Fighting alongside the AI is the single most core trait of our game. Our depth and our unique fun live right here.
  • The key realization: core players don't dislike deep core gameplay, but the barrier to entry absolutely has to come down.

Chat logs with core players showed two extremes

  • Players who didn't get it just bounced, or needed it explained and still didn't feel the deeper fun.
  • Players who did get it dug in on their own, and you could see real enthusiasm and discussion around build crafting.

Why such an obvious gap between the best and worst experience?

  • The core players who got in mostly liked our build design. They thought the builds around the knight and the cat were solid, and moving from the small loop into the mid loop was no problem for them.
  • The ones who couldn't get in didn't question whether the cat made sense (core players don't really care about the concept). They only reported trouble understanding the core gameplay, and without that understanding they had no direction for builds, so they never reached the mid loop.
  • We'd kept assuming our onboarding for the core gameplay wasn't good enough. The real issue is that the synergy-attack gameplay itself just has a high barrier to entry.

Where exactly is the barrier in synergy attacks?

  • A skill flow chain: one full synergy attack runs in order, skill A -> skill B -> skill C.
  • Double-tapping the same key: same button, pressed twice. The timing and choice of those two presses decide the effect of the whole skill chain.
  • The cat's state and the relative position of the two characters change the result: where the cat is, what state it's in.

But are there action roguelikes with this kind of design? Yes

  • Star Realm Warriors (星界战士): press Y to cast, skills come in groups of 4, cycling A -> B -> C -> D. Players build this skill flow within a run so the previous skill's effect links into the next one. That's very close to our idea: use a skill-chain approach to create coordination between the knight and the cat.

EN translation: a spell-equip / enchantment screen from a Noita-like. The "Gravity" spell (fires an explosive orb at nearby enemies) has enchantment affixes attached directly to it - on successful cast, generate 3 ice shards / 1 snowflake; on hitting a target, apply 1 stack of Freeze and a 10% chance to restore 1 mana. The point: enchantment affixes attach onto the skill itself.

  • Lone Lamb Chronicles (孤羊战纪): cast with LT/RT, and skills can extend into chains, up to 3 per group. Players also build the flow within a run to give combos depth while cutting down inputs. Build follow-up action skills under one active skill and you can chain combos easily with one-button taps.
  • So really, once core players get it, the barrier is also what creates the build depth. Anyone with relevant genre experience can pick it up.
  • Freely mixing and matching skill chains creates new gameplay ideas. Managing the cat's state and relative position, plus the abilities you pick up in a run, makes one skill link into the next, so you dance across the battlefield while pushing higher damage and effects.

But that core gameplay also filters your audience, no way around it

  • Star Realm Warriors sales: ~200k copies, 94.7% positive.
  • And even Star Realm Warriors and Lone Lamb Chronicles offer player-selectable combat styles in other parts of the game.
  • Star Realm Warriors: multiple characters, 4 playable in the full version. Beyond skills, each character's offense splits into a basic attack plus a character-specific move, and that's mainly where they differentiate the feel. The 4 roles are assassin, fist fighter, gunner, gem summoner.
  • Lone Lamb Chronicles: multiple weapons, 4 in the EA version, each with only basic attack, jump attack, and dash-attack derivations. A plain sword (fast, dash attack cancels the three-hit combo recovery); two "lazy" weapons that are basically plain swords leaning on lightning / fire / crit; a greatsword (very slow, charge-attack based, scales with crit).
  • This part matters a lot. It's essentially what directly opens up the gap in play experience.

What we keep coming back to

  • Game feel and content richness.

EN translation (bilibili comment, why The Binding of Isaac is a "god-tier" roguelike): Beyond the item count and combos, its depth is huge. The wildest example is TM Trainer (item 45), based on a Pokemon glitch meme - its effect turns every item into a glitched item, and each glitched item's effect is randomly stitched together from bits of code, completely absurd. The current fixed-seed speedrun record starts as Eden holding item 45 and just generates a trophy outright. Top reply: "the best-designed item in roguelike history."

  • Item count, and the synergy combos between items, produce effects you wouldn't imagine.

EN translation (bilibili comment reviewing an action roguelike, compared to Hades): satisfying hit feedback, careful step-by-step map exploration, a just-right random curse system, parries and last-second dodges, excellent feel. It leans less on randomness and more on you getting stronger - by mid-game you can clear the first two bosses hitless. Downside: everything's spent on the action system, so story and randomness are thin. Best playtime is Hades-like, a few dozen hours; any longer and the repetition spikes.

  • A unique experience with a core that's solid enough gets very high acceptance from core players (and core players have a high turnover rate, they'll try every game in the genre).

EN translation (bilibili comment agreeing with a roguelike tier list): "In college I played S-tier Enter the Gungeon and Crypt of the NecroDancer almost every night. A-tier Hades I dropped once I'd cleared with every weapon. Warm Snow basically tops out around 20 hours (I played 22). I never open Lost Castle solo unless it's co-op. After Enter the Gungeon I can't be bothered with Tunche. Children of Morta felt like just waiting on skill cooldowns." Uploader replied: "Right? Pretty accurate."

  • Each weapon and each class needs a big enough design difference.

EN translation (scoring criteria from a roguelike review video): 1) Gameplay, weight 1.0; 2) Replayability, weight 0.75; 3) Art, weight 0.5; 4) Story, weight 0.25 (story also covers the game's sense of immersion).

EN translation (subtitle): "I've found that these two aspects, art and story,"

EN translation (subtitle, continued): "...are honestly something most roguelike players basically don't care about."

EN translation (bilibili comment, a randomness-first fan criticizing Dead Cells): "What I want from roguelikes is rich randomness, with action secondary, so I don't rate Dead Cells highly - it's still too action-focused. After all the hype and rec lists, it fell way short for me. I played three hours, kept running maps, and saw maybe ten items total. Lost patience fast."

What even is a roguelike?

  • controlled randomness
  • limited resources
  • irreversible choices

What makes a good roguelike?

  • synergy
  • game balance
  • difficulty: if it's too easy and you can win with whatever you pick, it gets boring fast
  • item balance: the moment one optimal solution shows up, it also gets boring fast

Ultimate goal: every run feels different. It's why the god-tier roguelikes are "100 hours just to get started" and people easily put 1000 hours in without getting bored.

Traditional roguelikes get there through a rich variety of items, rooms, and enemies.

Hades pioneered adding meta-progression to reduce frustration, and used multiple weapons outside the run to enrich long-term playability, widening the build dimension. But at the same time, strategy degradation can turn it into a "mahjong waiting-for-the-tile" experience.

How we plan to iterate the core gameplay

  • Define the problem: fix the fact that our current core gameplay has too high an understanding barrier for our target users, which stops the small loop from even getting going.
  • Define the goal: keep the 1+1>2 experience, lower the barrier.
  • Inherit Hades' smooth, satisfying, easy-to-pick-up core combat (even mashing buttons feels good).
  • Clarify the knight's and the cat's roles so they map more closely to players' traditional "action + skills" mental model.
  • In skill design, lower the control barrier the AI introduces, and make sure casting a skill pays off on its own.
  • Keep the depth of the two characters' states and relative positioning as the mid loop that carries the original build fun.

I've been developing a top-down action roguelite for quite some time, and i find myself coming back to the same vague question repeatedly. What is the real difference between an "action" and a "projectile" when we treat them as building blocks for game Design rather than purely as art assets? This is written primarily to help solidify things in my own mind. I thought that many of you from gamedev community might be able to poke holes in this reasoning or tell me that i am over thinking things. Be warned, this is very lengthy.

Core loop (simplified)

One level = One unit. Randomized components of the level layout. Movement on a 2D plane. two types of attack mechanisms (actions and projectiles). Use any available items in the room to defend yourself against incoming attacks, or use evasion techniques. Survive enough rounds in a room before clearing the room. Collect rewards for clearing rooms, and proceed to the next room. This is the basic skeleton. All additional features added on top of that are simply decorations.

Actions vs projectiles

Early on, i couldn't seem to grasp this difference properly. If you consider both actions and projectiles as merely "a hit box which deals damage", the entire combat Design becomes mushy, and you can no longer assess the balance of your Design. Therefore, i separated them completely.

Action

  • its form consists of start-up frames -> active (damage) frames -> recovery frames. The hit box only exists during the active frames.
  • the hit box will always have a certain range, and it will strike anything within that range.
  • it is tied to you. As long as you move during the active frames of the action, the hit-box will follow your movements.
  • functional elements stack on top of each other: movement while performing an action (e.g., lunge distance; slide-cancel; speed modifiers for movement); impact on your own condition (e.g., charge-type actions which grant hyperarmor/hit immunity); bonus payoff based upon the enemy's condition when connecting with an action (e.g., stun duration; stagger generation; knock-back; status flipping); and impact upon your next action (e.g., combination routes; cancellations).

Projectile

  • the form of a projectile is: spawn -> life cycle -> collision -> destruction.
  • most often, it isn't bound to an action. If it isn't bound to an action, you usually place restrictions on it via ammo limits or cooldown timers, otherwise range-based attacks will simply outclass your melee options and players will rarely swing their melee option.
  • an example of a projectile being bound to an action: bow (draw frame -> release frame -> recovery frames).
  • an example of a projectile not bound to an action: ballista/cross-bow configuration (no draw frame; has fire interval cd; limited ammo; requires reload action upon depletion).
  • the projectile abstraction can accomplish a great deal. You control the path of the projectile throughout its lifespan, and the collision of the projectile may generate effects. In theory, a projectile can perform anything a melee hitbox can. However, i deliberately did not equip a projectile with all capabilities that a melee hitbox can possess, because if projectiles could perform all functions of melee hitboxes without restriction, melee strategies would rapidly become obsolete. When designing a projectile with strong capability(s), you always ask yourself: "what is the limiting factor?"

Diablo/PoE have already explored all of this, so why roguelike?

Arpg's are designed around accumulation. Players spend their time and stamina mapping and farming, and that translates directly into increasing build potential. The enjoyable aspect of arpg's is validating accumulation. You spent time grinding; you became stronger; the reward was earned.

Roguelike reverses the source of enjoyment. Players react to challenges they never prepared for, due to the randomness of their decisions being reversible and limited. With permadeath combined with scarce resources, every build decision made by the player represents a live risk/reward proposition, and once those decisions are made, they cannot be changed. Thus, when your read ultimately pays off, it provides a much greater satisfaction, because it was your call under pressure instead of a number you farmed up to. A well-designed roguelike operates off your brain and that's where the action + projectile system provides value. Greater skill ceiling; greatly increased replay value per each system you build. Even though neither the action/projectile systems are new to us, it generates more bang-for-the-buck in a roguelike format compared to an arpg grind.

Note: this is why i believe that "action vs bullet hell" is a false dichotomy. Take hades. There are melee weapons and bows, however, essentially every boss encounter in the game involves reading through bullet-hell style attack patterns which must be dodged. Actions and projectiles are not two distinct genres; they are two primitive constructs which operate within the same fight.

Synergy - high

What truly makes a build shine is Synergy - where a combo multiplies your power way beyond what any One component can do alone. From a structural standpoint, it's very straightforward. It is nothing but input and output around One effect. A creates an effect...then B triggers off of a's effects to create another new effect. A is the input....B is the output.

Effect tag variety - high chance of success building chains

The more tags for different types of effects each card possesses - the more hooks each card will have to connect to something else - the better chances you'll have to build actual chains instead of just single cards. Specific example many people here will know: slay the spire. Second wind+ exhausts all your non-attack cards and gives block based on number of cards exhausted. Feel no pain gives block each time a card is exhausted. Body slam+ damages equal to current block amount. Three separate cards - fine on their own...together it is an engine.

Well anyway that's the framework i've been working from. Honestly curious whether or not other developers think the hard split between actions and projectiles holds up at scale - or if the system falls apart once you are working with ~40+ weapons. My flip-flop rule has always been the "don't let projectiles do everything melee can" rule. Some days it feels like that is the only thing keeping melee relevant - other days it feels like i am necessitating nerfs on fun for purity reasons. How strictly do you guys adhere to that line?

reddit.com
u/bladeofwiz — 2 months ago
▲ 0 r/gamedev

Some observations regarding the action vs projectile primitive designs for combat, and how these make sense more so in roguelike formats than in arpg's

Design postmortem: dual-protagonist + AI co-op combat (the backstory before the framework below)

Note: we're a game design team from China and English isn't our first language, so we ran this writeup through AI to translate it. We want to apologize for that, and for any clunky or awkward phrasing it may have introduced. We figured it was better to get these ideas out for discussion than to stay silent because of the language barrier, so please bear with us. We also want to say upfront that this genre has so many brilliant designers and games we've learned a ton from, most of them from outside China - Supergiant and Greg Kasavin with Hades, Motion Twin with Dead Cells, Edmund McMillen with The Binding of Isaac, Derek Yu with Spelunky, Mega Crit with Slay the Spire, Hopoo Games with Risk of Rain. We're standing on the shoulders of their work here, not claiming to have figured any of this out first. This is a postmortem we put together after testing at February's Next Fest, summarizing the pitfalls we hit designing the dual-protagonist combat in our game, based on player feedback. Discussion very welcome.

Problems we ran into designing the core gameplay

The cat / dual-protagonist problem

  • The cat felt out of place, and that broke immersion for a lot of players.

The AI co-op core gameplay problem

  • AI behavior is genuinely hard to get right, and the AI's combat role is hard to pin down.
  • It only really served players who like "summoner" style classes, which narrowed our audience.
  • Making AI co-op the core is basically carving a brand new path, and that comes with a very high teaching cost.

What we think

  • Our current synergy-attack core loop, built on a double-tap + skill-chain flow, honestly has a pretty high barrier to entry.
  • Fighting alongside the AI is the single most core trait of our game. Our depth and our unique fun live right here.
  • The key realization: core players don't dislike deep core gameplay, but the barrier to entry absolutely has to come down.

Chat logs with core players showed two extremes

  • Players who didn't get it just bounced, or needed it explained and still didn't feel the deeper fun.
  • Players who did get it dug in on their own, and you could see real enthusiasm and discussion around build crafting.

Why such an obvious gap between the best and worst experience?

  • The core players who got in mostly liked our build design. They thought the builds around the knight and the cat were solid, and moving from the small loop into the mid loop was no problem for them.
  • The ones who couldn't get in didn't question whether the cat made sense (core players don't really care about the concept). They only reported trouble understanding the core gameplay, and without that understanding they had no direction for builds, so they never reached the mid loop.
  • We'd kept assuming our onboarding for the core gameplay wasn't good enough. The real issue is that the synergy-attack gameplay itself just has a high barrier to entry.

Where exactly is the barrier in synergy attacks?

  • A skill flow chain: one full synergy attack runs in order, skill A -> skill B -> skill C.
  • Double-tapping the same key: same button, pressed twice. The timing and choice of those two presses decide the effect of the whole skill chain.
  • The cat's state and the relative position of the two characters change the result: where the cat is, what state it's in.

But are there action roguelikes with this kind of design? Yes

  • Star Realm Warriors (星界战士): press Y to cast, skills come in groups of 4, cycling A -> B -> C -> D. Players build this skill flow within a run so the previous skill's effect links into the next one. That's very close to our idea: use a skill-chain approach to create coordination between the knight and the cat.

EN translation: a spell-equip / enchantment screen from a Noita-like. The "Gravity" spell (fires an explosive orb at nearby enemies) has enchantment affixes attached directly to it - on successful cast, generate 3 ice shards / 1 snowflake; on hitting a target, apply 1 stack of Freeze and a 10% chance to restore 1 mana. The point: enchantment affixes attach onto the skill itself.

  • Lone Lamb Chronicles (孤羊战纪): cast with LT/RT, and skills can extend into chains, up to 3 per group. Players also build the flow within a run to give combos depth while cutting down inputs. Build follow-up action skills under one active skill and you can chain combos easily with one-button taps.
  • So really, once core players get it, the barrier is also what creates the build depth. Anyone with relevant genre experience can pick it up.
  • Freely mixing and matching skill chains creates new gameplay ideas. Managing the cat's state and relative position, plus the abilities you pick up in a run, makes one skill link into the next, so you dance across the battlefield while pushing higher damage and effects.

But that core gameplay also filters your audience, no way around it

  • Star Realm Warriors sales: ~200k copies, 94.7% positive.
  • And even Star Realm Warriors and Lone Lamb Chronicles offer player-selectable combat styles in other parts of the game.
  • Star Realm Warriors: multiple characters, 4 playable in the full version. Beyond skills, each character's offense splits into a basic attack plus a character-specific move, and that's mainly where they differentiate the feel. The 4 roles are assassin, fist fighter, gunner, gem summoner.
  • Lone Lamb Chronicles: multiple weapons, 4 in the EA version, each with only basic attack, jump attack, and dash-attack derivations. A plain sword (fast, dash attack cancels the three-hit combo recovery); two "lazy" weapons that are basically plain swords leaning on lightning / fire / crit; a greatsword (very slow, charge-attack based, scales with crit).
  • This part matters a lot. It's essentially what directly opens up the gap in play experience.

What we keep coming back to

  • Game feel and content richness.

EN translation (bilibili comment, why The Binding of Isaac is a "god-tier" roguelike): Beyond the item count and combos, its depth is huge. The wildest example is TM Trainer (item 45), based on a Pokemon glitch meme - its effect turns every item into a glitched item, and each glitched item's effect is randomly stitched together from bits of code, completely absurd. The current fixed-seed speedrun record starts as Eden holding item 45 and just generates a trophy outright. Top reply: "the best-designed item in roguelike history."

  • Item count, and the synergy combos between items, produce effects you wouldn't imagine.

EN translation (bilibili comment reviewing an action roguelike, compared to Hades): satisfying hit feedback, careful step-by-step map exploration, a just-right random curse system, parries and last-second dodges, excellent feel. It leans less on randomness and more on you getting stronger - by mid-game you can clear the first two bosses hitless. Downside: everything's spent on the action system, so story and randomness are thin. Best playtime is Hades-like, a few dozen hours; any longer and the repetition spikes.

  • A unique experience with a core that's solid enough gets very high acceptance from core players (and core players have a high turnover rate, they'll try every game in the genre).

EN translation (bilibili comment agreeing with a roguelike tier list): "In college I played S-tier Enter the Gungeon and Crypt of the NecroDancer almost every night. A-tier Hades I dropped once I'd cleared with every weapon. Warm Snow basically tops out around 20 hours (I played 22). I never open Lost Castle solo unless it's co-op. After Enter the Gungeon I can't be bothered with Tunche. Children of Morta felt like just waiting on skill cooldowns." Uploader replied: "Right? Pretty accurate."

  • Each weapon and each class needs a big enough design difference.

EN translation (scoring criteria from a roguelike review video): 1) Gameplay, weight 1.0; 2) Replayability, weight 0.75; 3) Art, weight 0.5; 4) Story, weight 0.25 (story also covers the game's sense of immersion).

EN translation (subtitle): "I've found that these two aspects, art and story,"

EN translation (subtitle, continued): "...are honestly something most roguelike players basically don't care about."

EN translation (bilibili comment, a randomness-first fan criticizing Dead Cells): "What I want from roguelikes is rich randomness, with action secondary, so I don't rate Dead Cells highly - it's still too action-focused. After all the hype and rec lists, it fell way short for me. I played three hours, kept running maps, and saw maybe ten items total. Lost patience fast."

What even is a roguelike?

  • controlled randomness
  • limited resources
  • irreversible choices

What makes a good roguelike?

  • synergy
  • game balance
  • difficulty: if it's too easy and you can win with whatever you pick, it gets boring fast
  • item balance: the moment one optimal solution shows up, it also gets boring fast

Ultimate goal: every run feels different. It's why the god-tier roguelikes are "100 hours just to get started" and people easily put 1000 hours in without getting bored.

Traditional roguelikes get there through a rich variety of items, rooms, and enemies.

Hades pioneered adding meta-progression to reduce frustration, and used multiple weapons outside the run to enrich long-term playability, widening the build dimension. But at the same time, strategy degradation can turn it into a "mahjong waiting-for-the-tile" experience.

How we plan to iterate the core gameplay

  • Define the problem: fix the fact that our current core gameplay has too high an understanding barrier for our target users, which stops the small loop from even getting going.
  • Define the goal: keep the 1+1>2 experience, lower the barrier.
  • Inherit Hades' smooth, satisfying, easy-to-pick-up core combat (even mashing buttons feels good).
  • Clarify the knight's and the cat's roles so they map more closely to players' traditional "action + skills" mental model.
  • In skill design, lower the control barrier the AI introduces, and make sure casting a skill pays off on its own.
  • Keep the depth of the two characters' states and relative positioning as the mid loop that carries the original build fun.

I've been developing a top-down action roguelite for quite some time, and i find myself coming back to the same vague question repeatedly. What is the real difference between an "action" and a "projectile" when we treat them as building blocks for game Design rather than purely as art assets? This is written primarily to help solidify things in my own mind. I thought that many of you from gamedev community might be able to poke holes in this reasoning or tell me that i am over thinking things. Be warned, this is very lengthy.

Core loop (simplified)

One level = One unit. Randomized components of the level layout. Movement on a 2D plane. two types of attack mechanisms (actions and projectiles). Use any available items in the room to defend yourself against incoming attacks, or use evasion techniques. Survive enough rounds in a room before clearing the room. Collect rewards for clearing rooms, and proceed to the next room. This is the basic skeleton. All additional features added on top of that are simply decorations.

Actions vs projectiles

Early on, i couldn't seem to grasp this difference properly. If you consider both actions and projectiles as merely "a hit box which deals damage", the entire combat Design becomes mushy, and you can no longer assess the balance of your Design. Therefore, i separated them completely.

Action

  • its form consists of start-up frames -> active (damage) frames -> recovery frames. The hit box only exists during the active frames.
  • the hit box will always have a certain range, and it will strike anything within that range.
  • it is tied to you. As long as you move during the active frames of the action, the hit-box will follow your movements.
  • functional elements stack on top of each other: movement while performing an action (e.g., lunge distance; slide-cancel; speed modifiers for movement); impact on your own condition (e.g., charge-type actions which grant hyperarmor/hit immunity); bonus payoff based upon the enemy's condition when connecting with an action (e.g., stun duration; stagger generation; knock-back; status flipping); and impact upon your next action (e.g., combination routes; cancellations).

Projectile

  • the form of a projectile is: spawn -> life cycle -> collision -> destruction.
  • most often, it isn't bound to an action. If it isn't bound to an action, you usually place restrictions on it via ammo limits or cooldown timers, otherwise range-based attacks will simply outclass your melee options and players will rarely swing their melee option.
  • an example of a projectile being bound to an action: bow (draw frame -> release frame -> recovery frames).
  • an example of a projectile not bound to an action: ballista/cross-bow configuration (no draw frame; has fire interval cd; limited ammo; requires reload action upon depletion).
  • the projectile abstraction can accomplish a great deal. You control the path of the projectile throughout its lifespan, and the collision of the projectile may generate effects. In theory, a projectile can perform anything a melee hitbox can. However, i deliberately did not equip a projectile with all capabilities that a melee hitbox can possess, because if projectiles could perform all functions of melee hitboxes without restriction, melee strategies would rapidly become obsolete. When designing a projectile with strong capability(s), you always ask yourself: "what is the limiting factor?"

Diablo/PoE have already explored all of this, so why roguelike?

Arpg's are designed around accumulation. Players spend their time and stamina mapping and farming, and that translates directly into increasing build potential. The enjoyable aspect of arpg's is validating accumulation. You spent time grinding; you became stronger; the reward was earned.

Roguelike reverses the source of enjoyment. Players react to challenges they never prepared for, due to the randomness of their decisions being reversible and limited. With permadeath combined with scarce resources, every build decision made by the player represents a live risk/reward proposition, and once those decisions are made, they cannot be changed. Thus, when your read ultimately pays off, it provides a much greater satisfaction, because it was your call under pressure instead of a number you farmed up to. A well-designed roguelike operates off your brain and that's where the action + projectile system provides value. Greater skill ceiling; greatly increased replay value per each system you build. Even though neither the action/projectile systems are new to us, it generates more bang-for-the-buck in a roguelike format compared to an arpg grind.

Note: this is why i believe that "action vs bullet hell" is a false dichotomy. Take hades. There are melee weapons and bows, however, essentially every boss encounter in the game involves reading through bullet-hell style attack patterns which must be dodged. Actions and projectiles are not two distinct genres; they are two primitive constructs which operate within the same fight.

Synergy - high

What truly makes a build shine is Synergy - where a combo multiplies your power way beyond what any One component can do alone. From a structural standpoint, it's very straightforward. It is nothing but input and output around One effect. A creates an effect...then B triggers off of a's effects to create another new effect. A is the input....B is the output.

Effect tag variety - high chance of success building chains

The more tags for different types of effects each card possesses - the more hooks each card will have to connect to something else - the better chances you'll have to build actual chains instead of just single cards. Specific example many people here will know: slay the spire. Second wind+ exhausts all your non-attack cards and gives block based on number of cards exhausted. Feel no pain gives block each time a card is exhausted. Body slam+ damages equal to current block amount. Three separate cards - fine on their own...together it is an engine.

Well anyway that's the framework i've been working from. Honestly curious whether or not other developers think the hard split between actions and projectiles holds up at scale - or if the system falls apart once you are working with ~40+ weapons. My flip-flop rule has always been the "don't let projectiles do everything melee can" rule. Some days it feels like that is the only thing keeping melee relevant - other days it feels like i am necessitating nerfs on fun for purity reasons. How strictly do you guys adhere to that line?

reddit.com
u/bladeofwiz — 2 months ago