Game Mechanics Question about feature unlocks in a game.

Psycho_666

Member
Hey.
So I'm working on a strategy game. Here's an idea I have.

Remember back in the day, Caesar 3? It gave you a choice before each mission, do you want to play a military mission, where you have to take care of different legions and have battles and stuff, or peaceful missions, where you focus on management and culture and prosperity and so on.
So my idea is, do you think it will be a good idea if I try and tweak the AI and game mechanics, so this happens automatically? Bear with me here...
You will have your tutorial missions, and then you will have standard missions. The game hi e you the option to play military or diplomacy. If you play more diplomatically oriented with time more features will unlock for diplomacy and culture. And if you go for more military oriented play stile, you will unlock better units and what not.
The positive side of this is, that I can just tweak the AI so it will not crush you with high end units while you build libraries, and on the other side doesn't aggressively educate peasants while you rush it's capital city. One map, just different style of play. Also that will kinda balance the AI according to the player's skill and give everyone kinda different and unique experience according to what they have unlocked on each tree.
The negative side is, the players won't even be able to play the high end of the opposite gameplay style. You would have to replay the game to unlock all military extras if you are deep into culture and diplomacy already. That's kinda something like a moral choice system and I'm not entirely sure I want to implement moral choice system in the game...
I can just let the player unlock all the features, but I kinda don't want to do that either. I want to make something like specialization in the game.

Any ideas?
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Lots of modern AAA games let you unlock everything in a single run because they don't expect players to ever replay them, so any content they haven't experienced was wasted money. This also leads to things like secret levels being bad (or not existing in the first place), which is a decline that's been going on for ages. Heck, one of the points Undertale tries to make with its genocide ending is that you're not supposed to try to milk a game of all its content just because you need to see it all.

There's a really good graph of this I saw in some GDC talk a while go, couldn't be bothered to find the real one so here's the MS paint version:
upload_2019-11-25_22-30-53.png

Basically, the more linear your game is, the more you can actually put the content in a line instead of spreading it out and risk the player missing most of it. Or in other words,if you want them to experience more content, you either need to have more content to spread everywhere, or put it on a path they must follow.

So ask yourself, do you WANT them to experience everything [in a single playthrough?]. If you do, pick a way to make it happen. If you don't, well, you don't really have a problem with your current method.

Also worth mentioning is systemic games with features like NPCs fighting anything that provokes them, wooden objects catching fire, water conducting electricity etc... games like those could have "more infinite content" because some interactions are so rare you might not even realize they're there, but the rules has been there all along implicitly. If the AI can do fun stuff with the diplomacy / combat system, your game could have effects like that so that players will want to mess around with every system to see what fun interactions they can trigger (what if you sell tons of books with secret propaganda to your enemies and their peasant class revolts and joins you? What if you intentionally construct crappy roads on territory you know you'll lose, so the enemy supply lines get cut off when you make a counterattack during the next winter?)
 

Psycho_666

Member
Lots of modern AAA games let you unlock everything in a single run because they don't expect players to ever replay them, so any content they haven't experienced was wasted money. This also leads to things like secret levels being bad (or not existing in the first place), which is a decline that's been going on for ages. Heck, one of the points Undertale tries to make with its genocide ending is that you're not supposed to try to milk a game of all its content just because you need to see it all.

There's a really good graph of this I saw in some GDC talk a while go, couldn't be bothered to find the real one so here's the MS paint version:
View attachment 27766

Basically, the more linear your game is, the more you can actually put the content in a line instead of spreading it out and risk the player missing most of it. Or in other words,if you want them to experience more content, you either need to have more content to spread everywhere, or put it on a path they must follow.

So ask yourself, do you WANT them to experience everything [in a single playthrough?]. If you do, pick a way to make it happen. If you don't, well, you don't really have a problem with your current method.

Also worth mentioning is systemic games with features like NPCs fighting anything that provokes them, wooden objects catching fire, water conducting electricity etc... games like those could have "more infinite content" because some interactions are so rare you might not even realize they're there, but the rules has been there all along implicitly. If the AI can do fun stuff with the diplomacy / combat system, your game could have effects like that so that players will want to mess around with every system to see what fun interactions they can trigger (what if you sell tons of books with secret propaganda to your enemies and their peasant class revolts and joins you? What if you intentionally construct crappy roads on territory you know you'll lose, so the enemy supply lines get cut off when you make a counterattack during the next winter?)
Thank you for your answer...
Here's the thing - I'm a complete solo dev and I'm not entirely sure I can afford to split the content since I am making it all alone. However what I can do is unlock content.
I don't want the player to be missing out, so I will be giving clear indication as to what is unlocked how...
But I'm curious, should I even do that? I mean my basic idea is high end warpath to lock away culture or diplomacy paths. I can leave everything unlockable, but then the player can get super powerful and unlock everything. Unlocking everything in one go means no replayability. So I think I will balance it in the way that makes it impossible to unlock everything on one go.
I will do skirmish maps where you can do everything... That will show the possibility of the gameplay. The story mode will be more of a ... well ... Story...

I don't know if I'm making any sense. I am just confused as to what to do...
 
Just a thought: maybe every player doesn't need to see everything. If player A wants to be the diplomat and player B wants to be the general, they should each be valid choices with meaningful gameplay attached. If player A never unlocks nuclear warheads and player B never uses the branching dialogue system for negotiating peace treaties, does it really matter as long as each player got an experience that they enjoyed? Sure, there are completionists out there who will want to unlock everything (and I'm in no way saying that shouldn't be an option), but a lot of people will just play the way that feels best to them. There are plenty of games that I've replayed in pretty much the same way I played them the first time, even if I started that second playthrough with the intent of seeing everything I missed the first time. Am I glad that there are non-stealth options, or questlines for morally "evil" characters? Sure. Do I feel like I've had a lesser experience by not playing a game that way? Not at all. I got an experience that was unique to me, whether I checked all the boxes or not. I didn't need to see everything. I saw something that other people didn't. That's one advantage games have over other media: we can all go into the same thing and come out the other end with completely different stories.

As to your specific case, you could include some sort of "Scenario" mode that forces players to build a military, or spread their culture across the globe, or maintain an uneasy peace for as long as possible, just to get a feel for what each playstyle has to offer.
 

Psycho_666

Member
If player A wants to be the diplomat and player B wants to be the general, they should each be valid choices with meaningful gameplay attached.
Yes, that is the idea, but I will give them clear signs there is a military path. Its not just a books and theatres and philosophy.
I can't really make extra content without bloating development time. What I can do is tweak the AI to respond to the player's play stile. There will still be more military oriented missions, but you won't have the heavily armoured cavalry against your light archers.
Its gonna be like Fable - you have the basics of every play stile and more you play one better you get at it so at the end you can specialize.
Thank you for your time.
 
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