Summary & Reflection on the Battle System of Action Games ("External Variables of Combat")

Author: Handsome De Silver Wing

https://zhwanlon.com/b/691999854

【Foreword】I went to an internship a while ago, and I thought that my understanding of the combat system was insufficient, so it took a long time to write the rest of the part. By the way, I folded a nail and although I said that I went to an internship, I only had a few months of development experience (even an internship can't be called development experience), so this article is all for the sake of pictures, hoping to throw bricks and lead to jade.

In (above), we talked about the "Action Game Classification", "Combat Experience", and "Design of the Battle Process (Battle Cycle)" (you can turn to the Zhihu article I posted earlier), and this article will continue to discuss the "External Variables of Battle" section that was not discussed.

The full text of this article is about 1.1w words, it takes a certain amount of time to read, and viewers who want to save time can directly watch the stream-saving version:

The introduction of "external variables" in battles can enrich the combat experience, and generally speaking, external variables are as follows:

• Combat resources
• Different victory conditions
• Different modes of interaction
• Buff和DeBuff
• New ways to play

The meaning of external variables or how to change them is as follows:

• Combat Resources: There are three types of combat resources, "one-time resources", "reward resources" and "recurring resources", and their functions are (1) Limit the number of times a player can perform a certain behavior. When the blood vial is used as a one-time resource, the significance is to give the player more experience changes: (2) a refreshing experience that brings stress release, consumes resources to give players an advantage, restricts behavior, provides a gameplay of resource allocation and resource rotation (3) controls player behavior through resources, and allows players to repeat the most interesting behaviors. Before adding what kind of battle resources, figure out what part of the most interesting battle cycle in your game is, how our new battle resources can decorate this battle cycle, or what kind of new battle cycle can be brought."
• Different Victory Conditions: Designed to "change" the "Stand→ Attack→ Defense/Dodge "Cycle", or "Change Offensive Strategy".
• Different interaction modes: The core of the design is to "change the interactive device itself", "change the interaction mode of the same interactive device", and "provide new ways to interact with the game world"
• Buff and DeBuff: The meaning is to enrich the game world, provide certain short-term goals, and allow players to experience other gameplay, and the key to design is "whether it can be coupled with other mechanics"
• New gameplay: The core of the design is "whether the experience brought by the new gameplay is appropriate to connect with the original gameplay experience"

External variables of the battle:

The introduction of "external variables" in battles can bring more challenges and more ways to interact with the combat system, thereby enriching the diversity of battles and bringing a different experience to the entire combat cycle of the game. Common external rules are the following:

• Combat resources. For example, energy bar, rage bar, etc
• Different victory conditions. For example, a wolf's struggling stance, a ninjasaur's severed limbs, Ren Dou's flying, etc
• Different modes of interaction. For example, the Otherworldly Chain, Regene's way of operating, etc
• Buff和DeBuff。 比如烧伤、中毒等
• New ways to play. For example, in the Sea of Stars, after defeating the final boss, there will be a part of flying a plane, and the dragon game in MHR

1. Combat resources

Combat resources are used to modify the combat cycle, and the composition of the combat cycle is as mentioned in (above), consisting of "Return→ Attack→ Defense/Dodge" and "Hit → Escape". Then, we can classify combat resources according to how involved they are in the battle cycle.

Personally, I would like to divide combat resources into three categories, namely:

• A "one-time resource" that does not participate in the battle cycle at all
• "Reward-based resources" that rarely participate in the battle cycle
• "Recirculating Resources" that are fully (deeply) involved in the battle cycle

Thereinto:

• "One-time resources" refer to resources that can be used as one-time consumables in battles and can no longer be used after they are consumed.
• "Reward-based resources" refer to resources that can be used as a reward for players to accumulate certain behaviors and rarely participate in the battle loop.
• "Recirculating resources" refer to resources that affect the player's battle cycle and can be accumulated and consumed according to the player's behavior, and the accumulation speed is relatively fast.

Next, let's talk about how these three combat resources work in an entire combat cycle.

1.1 One-Time Resources

Let's start with disposable resources. Since there is a limit to the number of times it can be used in combat, it means that the designers don't actually want the player to use this resource all the time (unless the number is limited, but the number of times it can be used is very large, such as many turn-based games, which is another matter), in other words, the infinite existence of this resource spoils the fun of the game, so its use is limited and cannot be restored.

As mentioned in (above), the player will ruin his own gaming experience, even if it is not so fun to repeat the optimal solution, but if it is simple and easy to use, he will use it. In non-GaaS games, the ultimate goal of the designer's design is to give the player fun in most cases. Using the above two premises, we can conclude that when a player uses a one-time resource, it is equivalent to being in a state of relative optimal solution.

So the question is, why does this resource that makes the game more boring exist in the game?

To answer this question, we need to make two points clear:

(1) The player will only get bored when he repeats the (partial) optimal solution "infinitely". In other words, when the number of uses is limited, the player will not get bored when rereading the optimal solution, and may even feel happy because he can "steal chickens".

(2) Since it is the optimal solution with a limit on the number of times, in a sense, if the player exhausts this resource at the beginning to attack the enemy, it is equivalent to the enemy subtracting the number of times the resource is used * the amount of HP caused by the damage caused when the resource is used at the beginning, which is equivalent to giving the player a means to improve the error tolerance rate that can be controlled by himself.

The common "one-off" resources in the market are roughly as follows:

• General-purpose one-time resources. For example, the golden lollipop in "Bayonetta 2 and 3", the paper man in "Wolf", etc
• Offensive one-time resource. For example, the lollipop that restores magic in "Bayonetta 2 and 3", the fire paper in "Bloodborne", etc
• Defensive, one-time resources. For example, the blood vials that can be found in "Black Souls" and various other games

Since the role of this resource has already been explained, and it is also interoperable among the above three types of use, it is not necessary to take out each type separately and talk about it again as above.

Seeing this, some readers may have a question, why from the above types, this kind of resource does not seem to be connected with other mechanisms to form an "elegant" mechanism?

Not really. The first is that this resource itself is a kind of resource that "won't be used many times" and "used to reduce fault tolerance", even if it really doesn't couple with other mechanisms, it's not a big deal;secondly, this mechanism doesn't have to be unrelated to others, take "Wolf" as an example, the ninja mobile axe in the wolf is a one-time resource, which can play the role of high hard and straight accumulation + high hegemony, at this time, the player can use it to interrupt the enemy's attack and get the reward for continuing the offensive phase.

The famous speedrunner "Feather" inserts the trap axe piercing into the attack to achieve the effect of attacking all the time

※ Regarding the blood vial, I will discuss it separately here. As a one-time resource, although it also has the effect of reducing fault tolerance and (partial) optimal solution (most of the time deducting blood and drinking blood vials is a relative optimal solution), but it is slightly different from other mechanisms in reducing fault tolerance, because if you really just want to reduce fault tolerance, then it would be good to directly increase the player's HP, even if it is optional, wouldn't it be OK to give the player an option to adjust the maximum HP?

This involves the A in MDA (Game Mechanics → Player Behavior → Player Experience), which is the change in the player experience. The essence of game design is to design the experience, the designer does not directly change the blood vial into an increase in the player's HP, which can produce two aspects of experience changes: one is the experience that allows players to "make decisions" and "choose", when the player's HP decreases, they need to consider whether I should go out of the war to drink blood medicine at this time, or whether I can be greedy to drink blood medicine in the current state of Lihui, which adds an extra dimension to the player's thinking layer and enriches the player's combat experience; For something valuable to the player, the change of its state can bring experience", we assume that the player's HP is X, and a vial of blood can restore N's HP, there are a total of M vials of blood, and the damage caused by the enemy in a single time is Y, we can easily see that the player's HP is x and HP is X+N*M, and the marginal benefit of the two when they are damaged Y is not the same, and it is obviously greater when the HP is X. Even if you take into account that the blood vial recovery is not equivalent to the blood vial with n vials returning m, and you need to multiply it by a certain parameter, the result is the same, the marginal benefit is greater when the blood volume is x. In other words, the design of the blood vial can bring about a "state change" and bring a richer experience. (Actually, it's easy to understand, just imagine that although there are a lot of blood vials in "Black Souls", but they are beaten to residual blood, the experience at this time must be very tense)

1.2 Reward-based resources

Let's start with reward-based resources. Starting from the mechanism, the rotation of reward-type resources is that players continue to attack to accumulate resources, and then players consume resources to release powerful skills. From this, we can conclude that the purpose of the mechanic is to "encourage the player to attack, and then reward the player with powerful skills". But when we look at what is directly related to the player, i.e., the player experience, we find that the design is valid on M→D, but it is not clear whether the A caused by D is a good experience. In other words, the key is what kind of reward will bring a good experience? Just imagine, in "Nier Machine Age", adding similar reward-type resources and corresponding rewards, fighting monsters and hitting can make a big move, will this add more fun to the game? Yes, but not much. But let's take a look at other games with this kind of resources, such as "Bayonetta 2" and "From Stardust", the former Sister Bei's torture attack will be very cool, and the key is that the pressure accumulated by fighting monsters is released with the feedback of audio-visual touch at the moment of torture attack, and the latter's coolness comes from the pressure release of the shaft and the contrast between the damage of the shaft and the damage of the ultimate.

The amount of boss HP before using the ultimate in "From Stardust".

The amount of boss HP after using the ultimate in "From Stardust".

In other words, the key to the above experience design is "the accumulation and release of stress" and "the audio-visual and tactile performance during release". The release of stress is closely related to performance, or it can be triggered by powerful, powerful audio-visual haptic feedback (such as the brilliant performance of "Crashing Iron") or it can be triggered in other ways that can make the player feel more immersed (such as the continuous QTE of "Sister Bei"'s torture attack). The remaining problem is the build-up of pressure, which is to make it challenging for the player to attack. So this challenge, mentioned in (above), can be active or passive. In the end, when it comes to the design, it is presented as "players can increase the gauge by using different combos in a row, and powerful skills can be released when the meter is full", "players can accumulate the gauge when they attack continuously, but the attack meter is cleared to 0, and the gauge can release powerful skills when the gauge is full", or when the difficulty of the game itself is already high, "attack to get the gauge, and when the gauge is full, you can release powerful skills".

However, if the purpose of the "bonus resources" in the game is not to create the aforementioned "refreshing experience of accumulation of stress and then release", but simply to give the player an advantage, then the methods mentioned above do not necessarily need to be used (of course, it is definitely best to use them, after all, the process of fighting monsters and accumulating resources will inevitably bring a certain amount of pressure accumulation, and releasing them at this time can create an additional good experience, which is definitely the icing on the cake).

At present, the methods of using rewarded resources to create advantages in games on the market are roughly as follows:

• Create an advantage on the offensive end. For example, Spartan Fury in God of War 4
• Create an advantage on the defensive end. For example, the Light Apocalypse of Final Fantasy Origin (Explosion)

Either way, the way to create an advantage is as simple as enhancing that aspect of the game, or getting the player into the advantage wheel (which is usually an offensive one). And the specific design to use still needs to be considered according to the needs of the game. It can be to keep the fun going, to increase the player's tolerance, or to balance it. In many cases, there is no good or bad design, but the purpose of the design is different.

1.3 Recyclable resources

Recycling-based resources. According to our initial definition, "recirculating resources" are resources that affect the player's combat cycle and can fully (deeply) participate in the combat cycle. In other words, this resource is closely related to one or even every action in the combat cycle, and affects the use of that action, or increases that resource when used in a certain behavior, or decreases it when used in another behavior.

From the point of view of M (game mechanics), an action that consumes resources can be inferred that it is designed to limit the use of that behavior, and an action that can restore resources and combine with resource-consuming behaviors, we speculate that it is designed to encourage players to regenerate resources and combine them with resource-consuming behaviors to form a loop.

From a D (player behavior) point of view, of course, this has to be explained in the context of the specific game, so let's first categorize it.

The common "circular resources" in the market are roughly as follows:

• A recycling-type resource that acts on the vertical end. For example, running in "Black Souls" requires energy
• A circulating resource that acts on the offensive end. For example, in "Nioh", attacking requires energy, etc
• A circulating resource that acts on the defense/evasion side. For example, in "A Wolf", the block will rise to the shelf
• A circulating resource that acts on the detached end of the attack. For example, Nero's ghost hands and ghost man grooves in "Devil May Cry".
• At the same time, it acts on the above-mentioned multi-terminal recycling-type resources. For example, the momentum bar of "Wolong" and so on

Let's talk about the conclusion in advance, the significance of recirculating resources from the D perspective is that 1) it has a limiting effect on behavior 2. it provides a way to allocate resources and rotate resources 3

About 1. When a combat resource is only used at one latitude, its role is nothing more than to impose certain restrictions on the player's behavior, requiring the player to think about when to use this resource, rather than using it indefinitely. This is very understandable, so I won't repeat it.

About 2. Unlike (1), when the resource scope is extended to multiple ends, i.e. the 5th type above, its meaning is different.

In terms of resource rotation, various commonly used behaviors will consume resources, and there are behaviors that can restore resources, so naturally, the resource consumption-replenishment cycle will become the norm, and it will also occupy an important position in the combat cycle, that is, this kind of resource rotation will become one of the core gameplay mechanisms. Then the significance of resource rotation is obvious when circulating resources provide resource rotation - providing the core gameplay mechanism of "resource rotation". At present, the best game on the market that makes resource rotation is "Nioh". Take "Nioh" as an example, the battle cycle in Nioh is roughly like this: the martial arts suppression of the → of Lihui→ the remnant of the heart and the suppression of the martial arts, → of the martial arts, in which the resource cycle of the martial arts →and the remnants of the heart is the main premise for the establishment of this combat cycle, that is to say, the resource cycle of "Nioh" creates the battle cycle of "Nioh". At the same time, because of the importance of resource circulation, the game also creates additional gameplay mechanics on the resource circulation side - circulation, broken heart martial arts (such as the combination of the sword, the knife can be closed faster when the broken heart is broken), the broken heart cancels the backswing, and the time accuracy challenge of the perfect broken heart.

However, another game in the ninja group, "Wo Long" (I'm "Wo Long" Kuroko (bushi)), he also has a resource cycle of "attacking back momentum→ defense/martial arts/heavy attack consumption momentum", why is "Wo Long" not as fun as "Nioh"?

Monster Hunter Rise's wind-winding skill

The above two questions just illustrate that "the resource cycle is not necessarily fun, the key is the battle cycle established with the resource cycle as the core, and the links in the battle cycle itself, which are the key to fun". "Wo Long" is different from "Nioh", martial arts and heavy attacks do not have a sense of mastery and manipulation derived from them, nor do they have a certain challenge like the second stage of the naginata scythe three thousand winds, and its resource-consuming links are destined to be less fun than "Nioh"; 's piling is not to say that he has been pressing a button, but there are button changes, and he needs to change his moves according to the different actions of the character, so he is not as interesting as "MHR" in terms of recovering resources.

Yes, having said all this, resource rotation itself is not necessarily fun, and his biggest significance is "whether the battle cycle and combat links brought by resource rotation are fun".

And the allocation of resources is mentioned in the video of the main "Traveler IX" of station B:

"Strategy is the plan for resource allocation"

When a resource needs to be distributed among multiple resource-consuming behaviors, a strategy is formed, and the player needs to decide how many resources to allocate to each behavior.

In combat, the most common actions performed by the player are generally on the offensive side and the defensive/evasive end, so naturally when both actions require resources, it is natural that short-term strategies can be formed more often for the player to make decisions. That's why, most of the games on the market today have "energy bars", and their energy bars are consumed by performing offensive and defensive/evasive behaviors.

Take Black Souls as an example, in Black Souls, players need to run fast, attack, and defend/dodge all need energy. Let's assume a situation where the player catches the backswing of the enemy's attack and flattens the enemy a few times, expending a lot of energy. At this point, the player has two choices, one is to continue the attack, betting that the enemy will be back for a while and will not attack, and the other is to choose not to continue the attack, leaving the remaining energy to roll over for the next possible attack. In this case, because the energy is used for attack and evasion/defense, the player needs to decide on the allocation of resources to the two behaviors in a short period of time, so as to take the corresponding behavior, which provides the player with a little decision-making experience in combat.

The joy of decision-making is to "overcome challenges and find the optimal solution for the moment". For the above situation, the optimal solution may be clearer - after all, "Black Souls" is more difficult, and the benefit of two more hits is definitely not as high as losing a little blood, but if it is another situation, such as the boss residual blood, the player is also in the wind, how will you make decisions at this time -

The main "pan" of station up was so excited that he went crazy when he finally killed the orphan of Cos (crossed out

About 3. It also has a sense that when the player runs out of combat resources, they can only leave the battle and wait for the resources to be restored or perform actions that restore the resources (such as Nioh's Heart). For the former, leaving the battle is equivalent to resetting the combat state of the player and the enemy, so that both sides return to the state of repatriation, to play a game, which is very advantageous for those games that are very interesting to revert to (such as the soul system), this kind of resource design is equivalent to allowing the player to unconsciously repeat the fun part of the game; 。 Also, because of the rotation loop that consumes → restores, it is possible to make it interesting to write on this level (like Nioh), and it can also be used as a reward to perform more advantageous actions without this article.

To sum up, the significance of the existence of circulating resources is that: 1) it restricts behavior, 2. It provides a way to allocate resources and rotate resources, and 3. Control player behavior through resources, so that players can repeat the most interesting behaviors

Here's a quick summary of "Combat Resources":

There are three types of combat resources: "one-time resources", "reward resources", and "recycled resources". The functions of the three are:

• "One-time resource": Limit the number of times a player can perform a certain action, and when the blood vial is used as a one-time resource, the meaning is to give the player more experience changes
• "Rewarding Resources": A refreshing experience that brings stress release, and consumes resources to give players an advantage
• "Recurring Resources": Limit behaviors, provide resource allocation and resource rotation gameplay, and control player behavior through resources, allowing players to repeat the most interesting behaviors

The key to the design of "Battle Resources" is to figure out what part of the most interesting battle cycle in your game is before adding what kind of battle resources you want to add, how our newly added battle resources can decorate this battle cycle, or what kind of new battle cycle can be brought.

2. Different conditions for victory

The impact of victory conditions on the player's experience, aside from some artistic packaging (such as the wolf turning an empty health bar into a full fight bar), is more about changing the player's goal in battle and the way to achieve it, and through these two ways, the player's battle mode and behavior in battle are changed. Its specific manifestations are as follows.

Taking specific games as an example, the different victory conditions brought about by the current games on the market are:

• Can change the victory conditions of the "Return→Attack→Defend/Dodge" cycle. For example, the execution of a wolf after the bars are full
• Victory conditions that can change offensive strategy. For example, the severed limbs of the ninja dragon, and Ren Dou's fall out of the field are considered kills

Either way, its effect is to change the traditional mode of combat and create a new mode to bring players a new experience.

2.1 Can change the victory conditions of the "Return→Attack→Defend/Dodge" cycle

Personally, I think that in many cases, the essence of the combat objectives that have been changed to the art packaging is to package a new set of combat loops to prevent this set of loops from appearing very inconsistent on the "experience side". For example, the stance bar that a wolf will recover over time, and the stance bar that can block the opposite side, are not suitable for decorating him with the aesthetic packaging of "HP".

Therefore, the summary of "changing the battle cycle" is not about "what to change the goal to", but "what kind of battle loop to change".

By changing the combat cycle of "Stand-→ Attack→ Defense/Dodge", adding, deleting, and changing one or several of the links can allow players to adopt different logical behaviors to produce different experiences.

The battle cycle of "Wolf", by changing the victory conditions, the player needs to fill the stance bar where the enemy will drop over time, and this logic omits the "stand-up" link, so that the game combat has always switched between attack and defense/dodge, speeding up the intensity of the game.

In Naruto Mobile, although the battle victory conditions have not changed, he has also changed the battle cycle of "Returning → Attack→ Defending/Dodging". In Naruto, the player does not have a "Defend/Dodge" option, instead there is a "Take" session that consumes "Beans". In the game, players need to consider when the enemy will be injured when attacking, and they also need to consider whether there will be danger after this attack when they are injured, which makes his battle cycle become "stand back → attack → body", which increases the degree of game and at the same time makes the game more intense and exciting because there is no defense link.

"Naruto Mobile" and the body resource "Bean"

In fact, basically, the experience of the combat cycle after the change is somewhat predictable.

In (above), we have mentioned that "the higher the frequency of attack and defense transitions, the higher the intensity of the confrontation", while the vertical return is "to make the waiting experience continuous, to create a game experience", and defense/dodge can make the game more passive, creating an interactive experience and creating more time precision challenges, etc.

So, let's take a look at the experience of the changed combat cycle:

• Removed the "Attack→Defend/Dodge" cycle of "Standback", and the experience will be biased towards more intense combat encounters
• Remove the "Defend/Dodge" cycle of "Stand Back → Attack", and the experience will be more game-oriented
• If you remove the "Defense/Dodge" cycle of "→Attack", you may experience a more passive reaction and deal with the enemy's moves

The key to predicting the experience of the combat cycle after the change is what kind of experience will be brought by the removed links, the experience of the existing links themselves, and whether there will be additional chemistry between the existing links to create new experiences.

2.2 Ability to change the victory conditions of an offensive strategy

The part of changing the combat cycle is to change the logic and behavior of the player throughout the battle process, while changing the offensive strategy is only to change the logic of the player's behavior when "attacking".

In order to change the logic of attacking, we first had to figure out why the player was attacking. The purpose of the player's "attack" is nothing more than to defeat the enemy, so at this time, we can change the way the player attacks by changing the "means" to achieve the goal, or directly changing the "end itself".

That said, there are two ways to change the player's offensive strategy:

• Change the process of defeating the enemy. For example, in Ninja Dragon, the way to kill an enemy is not to empty the HP, but to execute → severed limbs
• Change the purpose of the offensive, or the way the enemy loses. For example, Ren Douzhong regarded falling out of the field as a failure

About changing the course of defeating the enemy. This is not about changing the way you attack when attacking, such as changing weapons, melee to ranged to melee, etc., but we are talking about changing the "process of enemy defeat". In normal games, the way to defeat an enemy is to empty his HP. In "Ninja Dragon", because the enemy and the player character are very strong, the player's direct attack is very risky, and the game provides long-range means, and the use of the traditional way of emptying the HP will cause the player to use the "safest" way to fight all the time. The game cleverly changes the way to defeat enemies to "Severed Kill and Kill", and gives different "Severed Chance Chance" for different moves, so that the player's behavior changes to using a high Severed Chance move, then executing the severed enemy, and then repeating the cycle.

In addition, when there are multiple ways to win in battle, such as the most common HP-Block/Imbalance dual settlement resource, it provides players with more combat options in battle. This is because different resource increases require different ways of fighting - emptying health is through attack, while blocking/imbalance can be through blocking, empty-handed attacks, or hitting obstacles (God of War 4 and 5).

About changing the purpose of the attack, the way the enemy loses. This may look a lot like the "change the process of defeating the enemy" mentioned above, but the difference between them is that the change process is to create new rules based on the original, while changing the target is to naturally derive a new set of offensive rules directly from the new target. Compare the traditional fighting game with "Ren Dou", one of the offensive purposes is to "empty the enemy's health bar", and the other is to "shoot down the enemy", then the core combat rules derived from the former are "hit and make the enemy lose blood", and the latter is "make the enemy fly far away or below", therefore, Ren Dou's moves have "meteorite", there are pure flying skills (Mario's water gun), and there are also skills for the enemy to return to the field, these skills and rules are all composed of "shoot down the enemy" This core goal is naturally derived, and there is no need to spend too much effort on innovation or micro-innovation. In terms of today's popular concept, the new gameplay created in this way is a kind of "emergent" gameplay.

3. Different interaction modes

There are many factors that affect the experience, such as visual performance, sound effects, interaction patterns, etc. Regarding the interaction mode, when the player plays the game, there are two interaction objects:

• Man and machine
• People and objects in the game world, i.e. enemies

Then, from these two points, we can change their interaction mode separately.

About man and machine. Stack a nail first.,Because I'm not learning UX to learn interaction.,Even related knowledge can be said to have been completely untouched.,So here I can only talk about my humble opinion.,Just for the sake of a picture.,Don't take any responsibility.

3.1 Change the mode of interaction between man and machine

The human-computer interaction method originates from the fact that "the human inputs through the physical device, and then the machine performs the action based on the input, and then the human gets the feedback through the output device". From this process, the only thing that cannot be changed is "the machine performs the operation according to the input", and the links of "input through the physical device" and "feedback through the output device" can be changed. The former, changing the input mode of physical input, can be like "Chains of the World" to control the camera with the right stick to operate Rekien, or like "Zelda: Sword of the Sky" somatosensory input, or the most intuitive to play with VR. In addition,In addition to the change of input equipment,Different interaction modes with the same device can also bring new experiences,Take "Bayonetta 2" and "Bayonetta 3" to compare,"Sister Bei 3" There are many types of weapons,But whether it's me or a few friends who asked (the statistics around me are not reliable,It's good to have a picture here.,Based on the reader's own experience),I feel that the weapons are almost the same.。 But in "Sister Bei 2", the experience of pistols and knives is very different, and I personally think the reason for this is that their moves are different. Yes, different ways of interacting with the same device will also bring different experiences.

The interaction of players as they play the game as mentioned in The Art of Game Design

In The Legend of Zelda: Sword of Heaven HD, attacks require the swing of the joycon controller

3.2 Changing the interaction patterns of people and objects in the game world, i.e. enemies

The key to the latter is "what kind of feedback" is obtained through the physical device. Generally speaking, the most intuitive feedback we get from the game is visual feedback, so here we can change it to auditory or tactile (controller vibration) feedback, to design some invisible monsters, which can only obtain information through auditory execution - of course, such a design must be difficult, requires a certain amount of development costs, and there is no market verification, which is why such monsters are rarely seen in mainstream ACT/ARPG on the market now.

About people and objects in the game world, that is, enemies. This interaction mode is relatively easy to change, new weapon use methods, new characters (basically equivalent to new weapons), new combat systems, new enemies, can create new interaction modes and new experiences, so I won't repeat it here.

四、Buff和Debuff

Let's start with an introduction. Mechanics such as "Buff and DeBuff" such as burn and frostbite are often seen in various turn-based RPGs. For turn-based battles, whether it is to give this DeBuff to the enemy or to eliminate this DeBuff for our side, it is necessary to consume "turns", which are action resources that integrate "attack, defense, and recovery", and "strategy is the way to infer future events and then decide the current resource allocation based on the inference", so for turn-based games, this mechanism creates strategy, and because of "turns" , which has a great impact on the value of the player when making decisions, creating an experience with a large range of variation.

Unlike turn-based games, "Buffs and DeBuffs" that give enemies such as burns and frostbite in real-time games do not require the allocation of such important resources as "turns", and they have a limited impact on the creation experience. As a DeBuff for enemies rather than something that resides in the battle cycle, except for certain times as a necessary condition for defeating the boss (i.e., a boss must be on the anomaly to pass, in which case the "combat state" becomes a combat objective, and at this point it returns to the "change the offensive purpose" mentioned above) ABOVE), HIS INFLUENCE ON THE GAME IS MORE INCLINED TO VISUAL PERFORMANCE (HOW HANDSOME IS THE SWORD WITH FIRE ENCHANTMENT) AND THE CREATION OF SHORT-TERM GOALS (TO BUFF THE ENEMY ABNORMALLY), WHILE ALSO HAVING A CERTAIN VISUAL ADVANTAGE TO ACCUMULATE A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE. Focusing on the game as a whole rather than individual battles, it can also enrich the player's exploration rewards, expand the world view, and enrich the breadth of battles and problem-solving methods.

And if it's to remove your DeBuff, if you just do something to remove the DeBuff, it's really not very useful except that it doesn't make aesthetic sense (of course, aesthetics are important, but we're talking about how to make this mechanic better) - it doesn't affect player behavior (it's so small that it's negligible in long battles), it doesn't create strategy, it doesn't create experiences, and it doesn't create more state space. Yes, that's right, what about you, the previous cold drink and hot drink setting of "Monster Hunt"!Like cold and hot drinks, bubble state (walking and slipping one), fire, etc., although it looks interesting, but it's only fun to watch, and this mechanic is not strung together with others in other ways, then it is very fragmented in the game in battle.

To make removing DeBuffs more meaningful, it's essentially about making the mechanic less discrete and more coupled with other mechanics to create more states, more playability, and more different experiences. MHR does a good job of this, he turns some of the DeBuff into a kind of combat resource with both risk and reward into the battle (dragon disease), and through this resource to affect the player's combat cycle (if you want to turn negative into positive, you need to attack wildly), or it is a blessing in disguise skill (ailment plus attack), or after the insect is separated, the ghost fire left in place can make the monster fall to the ground. Each of these methods combines the debuff or debuff removal with other mechanics in the game to create more gameplay possibilities.

In addition, "restraint relationships" such as "heavy armor and weak blunt hits" can be regarded as a "permanent buff or DeBuff" in a broad sense. The shift in restraint caused by switching weapons in battle is more about allowing players to switch to different weapons and genres to play, and "semi-forced" to encourage players to play new things - such as the enemy status bar in God of War 5 that can only be broken with certain weapons.

A shield-like bar in God of War 5 that can only be broken with a spear

5. New ways to play

Originally, I didn't really have anything to say about this part, and it seems that there is nothing to intersperse with other gameplay (such as non-combat gameplay) in the combat phase, and there is no doubt that it can bring about a change in experience.

However, after thinking about it, something was wrong, and it seemed that something was wrong. I've always had a question about whether it's good to have a game as long as the experience changes, or if you need to think about the "articulation of the experience", but now that I think about it, the latter is the right thing to do.

As for why you say that, you can imagine a scene in DOOM where you are slaying demons, and then suddenly switch to a Huarong Dao decryption gameplay, so that although the experience has changed, you can think about it with your feet. It's not just a question of the intensity of the experience, it's also a question of the inappropriate articulation between the two experiences. In "From Stardust", when exploring in the spaceship, you sometimes encounter the link of pushing the box, and the experience intensity of this link is similar, but I still think it is strange when I play, and the problem is in the experience connection. For a positive example, in the "Bayonetta" series, sometimes you will encounter the gameplay of riding a motorcycle and flying an airplane, but he feels very good, this is because although the gameplay is switched, there is a transition process in the middle, such as CG animation and the like, which is much better than switching directly.

Therefore, in summary, the core of adding new gameplay in the process of combat is "whether the experience brought by the new gameplay is appropriate to connect with the original gameplay experience". However, what kind of experience connection is appropriate and appropriate, you may have to accumulate it yourself in daily life, other games, and entertainment works.

About the "Depth of the Combat System"... This article is too long, so I won't add it, so I'll write it when I understand it more later

References in this article include, but are not limited to:

Summary & Reflections on the Framework of Action Game Combat System (Part I)

In 2021, this is still the best deck-building game - Killing the Spire Card Design Analysis (1) (In 2021, this is still the best deck-building game - Killing the Spire Card Design Analysis (1) _ Killing the Spire (bilibili.com))

Game Design 04_Tips for Doubling the Fun of the Game [Chinese Subtitles] (Game Design 04_Tips for Doubling the Fun of the Game [Chinese Subtitles]_Bilibili _bilibili)

Book "Experience Engine: A Panoramic Quest for Game Design"