Game Meta by Arionthe

[kamap]

You want a diablo 2 clone it seems. With some things from other (A)RPG games thrown in.
Neat idea but I think it is a bit reaching and not really possible for Eternium to go that way.

[Arionthe]

You want a diablo 2 clone it seems. With some things from other (A)RPG games thrown in.
Neat idea but I think it is a bit reaching and not really possible for Eternium to go that way.

I just finished up most of the mechanics yesterday. You can check it out again to see where I'm going with it.

What Eternium does well is the control scheme that translates naturally to a mobile environment. The core mechanics though, suffer from a couple of deficiencies which limits the depth the game can get. It's always the highest goal for a game developer to have a game that's easy to get into it and difficult to master. Before I belabor the point, here are the thematic goals a mobile ARPG should strive for.

Theme 1: The feel and the experience of fighting trash mob and fighting bosses should be disparate. Against trash mob, the player should feel omnipotent whereas against the boss, it should feel like dancing on the edge of a knife.

Eterninum unfortunately fails on this score. Trial mobs can be far more impossible than the boss. This is in part due to simplified game meta that offers only 1 solution. If all you have is the hammer (glass canon), then everything looks like a nail. The danger Eternium offers is purely 1HKO, and the difficulty it presents is purely DPS check.

Solution should be: Trash mobs feel like waves crashing against a cliff. Looks like unrelenting pressure but in reality, just good scenery. Consider the concept of Armor Breach in my post. The idea behind is that, trash mobs are difficult until you cross that line where all of a sudden, they are vastly easier to deal with. If trash mobs can't breach your armor, massive damage reduction makes their attacks feel like needle pricks. At the same time, bosses have a far easier time to breach one's armor; thus, the difficulty curve isn't linear. There is actually value in stacking armor beyond certain point. Fighting trash mobs should be about procs, general awesomeness of one's acquired stats/gear. There should be relatively little thoughts given as the challenge should not come from them (they can be the feather that breaks a camel's back, but never the brick that can do it on their own).

Against bosses, the fight should take entirely different flavor. Positioning, skills, interrupts, rock scissors paper kind of a deal. One has to actively avoid boss specials but NOT just by moving.
Categories:
Interrupts: player skills that can interrupt boss special, being stunning, silencing, mana draining. Another drawback of the current Eternium's AR system is that the game can't afford to give players unlimited interrupts because players will just stack enough AR/alacrity to perm silence everything (SS in an old patch, triple silence sisters etc). However if there is no AR, and put a mana pool restriction on skill casting, now there is a natural limiting factor on the interrupts a player can perform. Now an entirely new approach is possible without being overwhelming.

Damage Immunity/Mitigation: Boss is casting rain of swords, it's too late to interrupt since some trash mobs got in your way. Now what? If the boss special is ranged physical attacks, throw up a cyclone armor. Why because it offers 100% ranged attack immunity for a precious few seconds. If the boss special is immolation, throw up a skill that doubles/triples one's Arcane resis and a HoT (heal over time) and quaff potions. If the boss special is stunning, cast some kind of mental buff that resists against that... if the boss special is world ending Armageddon, how about a total damage resis casted from your necklace that you won from a huge tournament.

The point should always be have many boss skills so the boss fights are interesting. Even more important, have many player counters to each type of boss skill so that the fights are like rock/scissors/paper. Strategic back and forth.

Theme 2: Give players time to actually execute strategic moves during a boss fight. Boss fights should be slower paced and not a contest of frantic button smashing (where pc will always come out on top). It's more fun to see the pre-planned strategies actually work out. Let 50% of the fight actually happen before the player enters the arena.

This requires depth and complexity. Skill chain/combo is a requirement to pull this off. Letting players design their own chain of attacks greatly expand the intricacies of the player strategy. I think this is absolutely THE KILLER IDEA in my post. 3 gestures opens up a world of possibilities. Not to mention the side benefit of greatly narrowing pc/mobile gap. Think if 1 gesture every 7-8 secs is all that's required, how much of an advantage pc button smash can be? Slow down the attacks, slow down the pace in general, give players full agency in how their various skills can be combined to achieve whatever the player can dream of. Let the game be a canvas... see what masterpieces can come from all that.

[Arionthe]

How to accomplish rock scissors and paper in a mobile ARPG. Turns out fleshing out a complete class is too much work. So I'm giving up on that. Instead, I will illustrate with some examples on how to make skills feel different and most importantly give differentiated outcome when facing a variety of enemies.

Physical Based Damage

There are three primary ways to build a tank, an absorber of physical punishment. They are:

Raw HP (HP): more HP, more punishment one can take.

Damage Reduction/Mitigation (DR): High Armor that reduces damage, % based blocking and parrying actually also fall into this category as well as flat damage reduction passives and what not.

Damage Avoidance (DA): Dodging attacks, making the incoming attacks miss. Being incorporeal thus affording some innate % to miss incoming physical attacks. Anything that renders an incoming attack irrelevant. Full damage immunity also falls into this category.

A defensive monster can combine two of those traits. But for one to have all three might just be a bridge too far.

Let's consider a full on tank character who has sacrificed offense to build an impregnable wall of tanking prowess: full investment into HP and DR. Normally these roadblockers just absorbs everything one can throw at them and keeps laughing at your impotence.

Let's also consider a powerful mage that has pumped mana shield (some kind of damage absorbing shield) to some insane level, granting the mage the equivalent of a planet's worth of HP . That can also take a physical damage dealer ages to hack through.

The current Eternium meta offers very little in the way of breaching such defense (DW SW perhaps the lone exception). It's just pumping more attacks/skills. There is no skill in choosing which skill to use since they all work exactly the same against any kind of defense (no differentiated outcome).

Now let's consider a skill called Crushing Blow.

This skill has the same skill damage % blah blah like any other damage skill. In fact its stats aren't any more spectacular than any other damage skill.

For example: Filler Damage Skill/Quick Strike: Two quick strikes for 150% damage each.

Crushing Blow: One massive strike for 250% damage.

On the surface, Quick Strike actually does more damage per skill than Crushing Blow: 150% * 2 = 300% vs 250%.

But Crushing Blow has this particular attribute: Strength Check.

Strength Check: If the attacker's STR is > than defender's STR, a damage multiplier of (Attacker STR / Defender STR) ^ 2 is applied to Crushing Blow damage. If attacker STR < Defender STR, Crushing Blow damage is halved.

Boom Shaka La ka.

The formerly impenetrable Full HP Tank now feels like made of paper. The greater the STR difference, more massive Crushing Blow becomes. It makes logical sense too. Overpowering brute strength overwhelms the noodle arms hidden in those massive plate armors.

Same thing for that weakling mage, that mana shield feels just a tad more pea sized when Strength takes center stage.

However try Crushing Blow on Margoth, will have the Big Red Demon (or any other high STR target) laughing in your face.

This is differentiated outcome. Making skill selection a tad more skillful.



Let's now consider a ghost with its innate 50% displacement attribute (all incoming physical attacks auto miss 50% of the time).

Consider a skill attribute called True Strike (like Strength Check). It comes in %. What it does is that the stated % of raw physical damage is considered to be aimed true and thus not affected by any source of DR and DA. You have rock, I have paper.

Skills with special attributes should do lower damage than those that don't. But they should also shine extra bright for those special situations that call for them. This makes the skill choices an impactful tactical decision. You want more skills at the top of the LB? Try these on for size.

That is the principle behind differentiated skills and outcomes. Build variety comes from having a range of build effectiveness against a range of enemies. One build shouldn't be tops against all enemy types, having that trade off is what makes the game deeper and more engaging.

Red (Developer) Adrian (Developer)

[Wolf86PL]

Ariontheyyou Sir are a romantic

[Arionthe]

Ariontheyyou Sir are a romantic

Is that euphemism for being a homer simpson?

Hopefully... yes there is that word again... the greatest evil that plagues this world... hope... some nuggets of my ideas will be picked up and slowly work into the game.

Few of us, unfortunately, articulate what we find compelling in a game. Such is the life for a cynical optimist.

[Arionthe]

In the last post I described ways to differentiate physical damage. One more comment on that. Ranged physical dmg dealer like BH shouldn't hit as hard as melee physical dealer on a per hit basis. However ranged char should have skills that help them breach the target's defenses. For example armor piercing rounds that reduces target's armor rating for 5s (not refreshed with additional hits) 20% per hit stackable to 80% etc. Similar in concept to the igniter buff, breach target defenses, make them take more certain type of dmg.


For the arcane users, perhaps most enemy types should have an elemental weakness as well as elemental strength. These work on top of the general arcane defense. This will also give arcane users that differentiated damage model so lobbing fireballs at fire elementals shouldn't really work as well as frost novas etc.

[Arionthe]

Warrior Gear Set for a differentiated gameplay under current meta.

Barbarian's Heirlooms

2set bonus: Power of the Ancients: Barbarians can channel power of their ancestors, increasing the damage of every blow they inflict.

4set bonus: Relentless Rage of the Ancients: Barbarians can keep fighting despite grievous wounds.

6set bonus: Indomitable Might of the Ancients: Barbarians are most dangerous when they are hurt. Closer to death, deadlier they become.

below is just my suggestion for the actual stats.
PoA: +500 Power
RRoA: DR equal to 1- life left %. This means 50% DR at 50% life, 60%DR at 40% life, 90% DR at 10% life!
IMoA: PoA modified by 3*(1/ life left %). This modifier is 3 * (1/ 0.5) = 6 at 50% life. Which means +3000 Power. At 40% life, 3*2.5=7.5 or +3750 Power. At 10% life, 3*10 = 30 or +15000 Power.

A good set is all about both risk and reward. To really maximize the power of this set, one has to live on the edge. This completely upends the current meta, making stacking defensive stats meaningful as the best will want to live in that 10-20% life zone constantly. This also makes some of the currently underused skills appealing again. Cleave for additional DR, WW usable with higher DR. The set can be used by both SW and DW, introducing more variety.

[Arionthe]

Warrior skills have vastly different potential which leads to a few cookie cutter builds. Currently there is a limited number of sets that seem to work well with a few skills while doing little to buff up the neglected skills. Everyone enjoys collecting more gear so why not democratize set gears (many more sets) with each focusing on making one particular offensive skill endgame worthy. That way we will all have our desired build diversity. If one set/combo is deemed OP, surgical adjustments can be made to just that set while leaving the rest untouched. Making future balancing easier to achieve and giving the playerbase far more differentiated experiences leading to greatly increased replayability.

Here is an example of making Leap, yes, Leap, a worthy endgame skill with the tailor made Cliff Diver set.

Weapon Set: Shadow Dancer's Instruments of Cruelty

Shadow Dancer's Talwar: After Leap, a Shadow Leap is performed automatically targeting the lowest HP target in the area.

Shadow Leap: a single target attack deals 7000% weapon damage and causes bleed damage equal to the critical strike chance, Always crits (basically single target version of snipe). During the animation/frames, player has 75% DR and immune to stun (like Devastate).
Graphics: A shadowy dimensional door opens behind the target and player strikes the target in a backstab motion. Or done cheaply, copy/paste some frames of the devastate animation.

Shadow Dancer's Kilij: Everytime Shadow Leap kills a target, Leap's cool down is reduced by 3seconds and Shadow Bloodlust counter is increased by 1.
Shadow Bloodlust: a damage buff that's Shadow Leap specific. 10% more Shadow Leap damage, stackable to 50. Lasts 15secs and refreshed by each Shadow Leap kill.

Set Bonus: If Shadow Leap kills a target, another Shadow Leap is automatically performed

Cliff Diver Set
Set2 Bonus: Using Leap automatically grants the player the benefits of Battle Rage (WL 2 bonus basically)
Set4 Bonus: Shadow Bloodlust duration is increased to 90seconds instead of 15. (basically make the buff usable against endgame boss).
Set6 Bonus: Shadow Leap can also trigger another Shadow Leap based on critical strike chance

[DavidTheDavid (Producer)]

Have you checked out the forum? Dedicated players have made some great threads to help you maximize your characters. Check out Arionthe's Game Meta thread here: https://t.co/hlKxADC5ZJ

— Eternium (@EterniumGame) February 1, 2020

[Nhat]

David, this is a suggestion for things to could be added to the game, they are not in the game right now... Posting the above may end up confusing new players...

[DavidTheDavid (Producer)]

Ya, I realized that not longer after I tweeted it. I decided to just leave it.

[Arionthe]

DavidTheDavid (Producer) Appreciate the shoutout. All my suggestions are aimed at making this game better. However I do recognize that not everyone share my POV on what makes a better mobile ARPG.

This post I will talk a little bit about the gesture based control scheme and why its unique trade offs should offer guidance to on the kind of mobile experience it excels in providing.

Gesture based control scheme

Pro: precise directional control, natural/immersive
Con: can't match button based scheme in terms of input cadence (precisely why PC keyboarders have a massive advantage here)

Since the input cadence is limited, the game design should focus on making each gesture count. This means two things.

1. Not everything needs to be gesture based.
Since each gesture is valuable in terms of its cost (the time to gesture, blocking of the battlefield view, failure rate of unrecognized gestures), they should be limited to the most important game tasks. Categorize game tasks/actions into two groups. Those that can be automated and those that absolutely need to be gesture based. Try to make the automated group as large as possible and minimize the gesture must group.

For example, potion/apple. These two are prime examples of automation ready. What skill is it demonstrating that a player knows to quaff a potion when their health is dangerously low? It's really just common sense. The item usage already comes with cooldown. This eliminates the possibility of immortal player when they stack potions/apples. So why not just have a game adjustment bar for apple/potion usage. When player HP falls below x% and while not incapacitated (stun, confused, some other negative state), apple/potion is automatically triggered. There is really no reason to assign gesture to this game function.

Minion skills occupy three separate gestures. Honestly there is only two minion skill worth using, vortex and charge. I don't really even see them as gesture worthy but others may differ.

2. A single gesture should perform significant game function/actions
Any good ARPG should give the sense of a frantic battlefield. If all I get for a single gesture is a skill trigger, that's rather poor return on the investment (cost of performing a gesture). Expand what a single gesture can do. I think a great solution is to have customizable skill combo that is triggered by a single gesture. This offers the potential of great strategic depth and makes pre battle planning a possibility.

Example: I want to vortex a group of mobs together followed by charge and then BR and then shield block. I can assigne a single gesture for all of that.

Or, I want to charge, devastate and then followed by two shockwaves. Why not.

Even better if the skills within a combo can be separate with some movement instructions such as charge, go north west 2 spaces (however space is defined), followed by another skill etc. All the possibilities this offers will make one's head spin.

With the above two, gesture based control scheme can shine, retaining its positional and immersive advantage while minimizing the input cadence disadvantage compared to the button based scheme.

Adrian (Developer) , Red (Developer)

In short, embrace what makes Eternium unique and double down on its advantages to make it a truly standout product from the increasingly crowded mobile ARPG.

[DavidTheDavid (Producer)]

Discussion is good. Players add fresh perspectives and can help a great deal. It's one of the cool things about game development nowadays.

[Arionthe]

Here is a possible User Interface to implement what I described as Gesture based skill combo.

Perhaps calling it skill combo is too limiting... how about Attack Pattern, cue star trek scenes of Capt. Patrick Picard calling for Attack Pattern Bravo blah blah.

Normal Attacks:

Normal Attack Pattern 1 (Numeric bolded 1 should suffice), Small space divider, A queue like bar with the height of a normal skill icon and length of about 5 icons wide, small space divider, a pool of the current available normal attack icons. For warrior there are three icons representing cleave, frenzy, and RS.

Same for Normal Attack Pattern 2.

To construct a normal attack pattern, drag and drop a normal attack icon into the queue. Once the icon is in place, one can tab it to increase its count, think a small numeric number on the north east corner of the normal attack icon in the queue. The count goes up to 10 and then drops back to 1. Since there are space for 5 icons, one can sequence the normal attacks however they want. Want 5 frenzy followed by 10 RS? Put the frenzy icon in the queue first and tab it until the count goes to 5. Put the RS icon in the queue next and tab it until the count goes to 10. Now when the player trigger normal attack 1, they will perform 5 frenzy at the current target followed by 10 RS and then repeat the pattern.

Very simple to understand and manipulate.

Skills

Skill Attack Pattern 1 (Roman Numeral 1 bolded). Similar setup to the normal attack pattern. Small space divider, a queue that is 5 skill icons width long, small space divider, an area for a collection of skill icons available.

Just like the steps to construct a normal attack pattern, you drop the first skill you want to queue up, tap it to increase its increment (for skills with charges), and drop in any additional skills you want to queue up next, upto 5 different choices. You can do things like charge, devastate, sw (2). You can also do charge, BR, WW... I would suggest that make minion skill also available for queuing this way as part of the skill attack pattern. Vortex is a nice opening move for many skill combos.

Now this setup probably calls for the implementation of some kind of skill resource system (mana?) beyond just cool down. As this system allows a far more complex skill combination on the battlefield. Instead of just carrying 3 skills to the battlefield, you can potentially carry 15.

For skill cool down purposes, the skill attack pattern becomes trigger able as soon as the first skill in queue has finished the cool down. In fact the cool down clock for the skill pattern is the cool down clock for the skill attack pattern. However there needs to be a secondary ready indication. For example a black border around the skill attack pattern icon becomes gold/flaming once all skills in the queue has finished cool down. So skill pattern can be triggered but if later skills in the queue isn't ready, the pattern simply stops midway.

Anyway the UI and the gaming logic behind the attack patterns are quite straightforward in my layman's estimation. Anyone want to chime in if this suggested overhaul on the normal attacks/skill triggers isn't a vast improvement over the current situation?

[Arionthe]

Here is my take on a skill system and interaction with the game world at large.

Setting:
Present day earth or near future.
Event:
Portals started to appear on Earth, leading to dream like scapes filled with monsters and other unimaginables.

This gives generic save the world vibe while giving the maximum flexibility in terms of designing monsters and encounters. Each portal can lead to wholly different mini settings and monster families/tribes. Here is an opportunity to take advantage of well known fables and tales.. giving the game instant depth that new IP generally lacks and hard to construct.

Portal System
A portal leads to a game map. Exiting the game map is achieved via death or destruction of the "source". Sometimes a boundary appears near the source where one can pass the boundary and enter a higher dimensional world. Think of it as normal difficulty, heroic difficulty etc.

Example Portal
The Abominable Snowfield.
Setting: snow covered forest/field.
Inhabitants: The abominable snowman/big foot, The abominable shaman.
Abominable snowman: large, bipedal creatures covered in white fur with glowing red eyes. It has two skills: 1: Azure Touch, 2: Endurance
Abominable shaman: small, skinny creature that is usually accompanied by two or more snowmen. It also has two skills: 1. Healing Bell, 2: Blessing.

Skills come in 5 tiers, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and diamond. Lower tier skills can be upgraded to higher tier of the same skill with significant improvements. 10 levels between tiers where only effectiveness increases incrementally. Tier jump can drastically alter the way skill works.

Azure Touch: a small azure aura envelopes the point of touch, pushing back the target a small distance.
Bronze: can only cover hand/feet
Silver: can affect martial weapon such as sword/club, granting attacks a pushback attribute
Gold: can affect ranged weapon such as bullets/arrows for its duration
Platinum: can push back targets that are two size larger than the user and cause % skill disruption
Diamond: no one has upgraded the skill to this level yet.

When a monster is killed, there is a chance a monster core/crystal/globe/whatever is dropped. This drop can be absorbed by the player to gain the skill. The skill upgrade happens by absorbing the same monster drop over and over again. If player has the bronze tier skill. It is initially bronze lv0. It takes 10 more bronze monster drops of the same skill to level it to silver lv0. silver takes 100 bronze monster drops to upgrade to gold, or 10 silver monster drops. It takes 1000 bronze drops from gold to platinum or 100 silver or 10 gold. etc

The idea is if a monster is a pain in the neck, now you can take that monster's skill as your own and make your own skill/combo out of it.

Constellation:
At player creation, one chooses what constellation they want. This is broadly similar to the class idea. Each constellation will have a maximum number of skill slots like stars in a constellation. Once all the slots are filled, no new skills can be absorbed unless a skill is scrubbed from the constellation by using gem purchase "elixir of memory loss".

The constellation itself plays a role in the skill absorption. For example a constellation that looks like a bow and arrow will have affinity towards ranged skills while one looks like burning flame will have an easy time absorption fire based skills. Yes skill absorption isn't 100%. In fact the % is rather low so picking the right constellation to the build one wants to have is important.

Finally once the constellation is fully lit, this enables the ultimate skill. Usually some kind of transformation that grants the player secs of whoopassness non parallel. The strength of that ultimate will also be tied to the overall quality of the skills making up the constellation (so yes get everything to diamond).

more to follow

[Arionthe]

I'm actually going to try to make a proper effort at this. So the updates will be slow and hopefully methodical. Each post will focus on one aspect of the game world. Tentatively one post a week until I can properly describe this game world.

Game World Global Setting

This is a world filled with surprises, mind-bending abilities, superheroes and portals to unknown dimensions.

The existence of these portals demarcate this world from the Earth we are all so familiar with. Beyond those glimmering portals lie worlds that come straight from our worst nightmares, worlds inhabited with monsters and creatures of every shape and form.... Unfortunately most of them aren't friendly to us earthlings.

Throughout our long human history, we have been beset with internal strife, now we add external, existential threat to the list. Extra-dimensional beings that see us as little more than snacks and playthings.

Just when our gods seemed to have finally deserted us, a new hope flickers into existence. Along with the opening of those countless portals world over, an extra-dimensional force also seeps through. This inexplicable power, we later named it stellar force, changed us. Our bodies transformed into something else entirely... it changed our lives.

With the emergence of the first wave of force wielders, we no longer defend ourselves with just guns and bombs, we now have another way.

However, only a small % of us can ever become force wielders. Most of us are the same as before. Through experience, 16 is the age when the latent force first make itself known to the future force wielders.

On everyone's 16th birthday, the fate chooses its champions....

For those that have been tapped to save the world, your local Force Academies await.



Game Tutorial
Basically our heroes are the 1st year students at the local Force Academies. Some basic tutorial scenarios will lead the player through some of the basics of the game mechanics.

Next post: Constellation

[Arionthe]

Click click click… someone furiously typing away in front of a computer. Suddenly, the head slumps and hits the keyboard with a loud “thump”. The body lies limp for a few moments. Slowly a finger twitches.

“Who am I”, “where am I”, “why I’m here”.
(game now lets you choose a gender, below assumes male).

“hold on a second, I’m not a 16year old kid! What am I doing in this body? What happened to me?”
(This is the typical reincarnating consciousness into a different body as a way to travel to an alternative universe. I think player feels more invested if it provides a setting/background where the player’s mind is instilled into the game avatar’s body. Why play someone else’s heroic tales when those tales could really be about the players themselves.)

After a few minutes of confusion, you slowly settles into the realization that you are not in Kansas anymore. (one can take localization a step further here, below assumes American).

Looking out of the window of this nondescript room, you see rows of prefab housing. A lower middle income neighborhood, you thought to yourself. (commune for Russia? Highrise for Korea?)

Looking back at the computer screen, you reflexively hits your forehead, did I reborn into a young Homer Simpson?!
(now the game lets the player enter their name, assume Chris here, damn many Chrises in MCU)

“I declare to this world that now comes the Age of Chris! Force Academy Glenwood Middle School beware! I will be the new kingpin. I claim dips on cheerleaders and your lunch money. If anyone has a problem with this, meet me in the back behind the school track. I will teach you how to properly bow to your new leader….”

Those blinking words stare back blankly at you. What a dumbass?! Is he retarded? What makes him think he will run roughshod over a school of force gifted kids? Thank god this email hasn’t been blasted to the school mailing list.
…..
Wait what is this?
I don’t recall this being mentioned anywhere on the news! Is this retard actually special?!

(game now show the player a screen describing force abilities/categories Normal force users don’t have exact control over their abilities and can only get rough idea how powerful their abilities are. The player has precise control and this makes the player special. World saving heroes must have something unique right?).

Guess the actual description of the skilltrees, constellations will come next week.