Mercifully map generation was\u00a0wrapped up on Monday.\u00a0Rest of the week has been spent on the many small tasks that need to be done. Bug fixes, implementing new gimmick areas, polish, etc. The most time consuming piece has been designing new PVP classes. In the process I realized that the main reason that class design is so time consuming right now is because so many parts of the battle system are still hazy. It ranges from small things like the fact that there aren’t any standardized status effects, which makes systems for removing them vague or the fact that there aren’t any limits to buffs so having too many different unchecked big buff status effects could end in players killing the final boss in one swing, to big things like the fact that the equipment system has long been scheduled for massive change ups. Now isn’t the time to go over that stuff with a comb, though. Need to find out how the new map system stacks up first.<\/p>\n
It’s easy to get dismayed\u00a0that all the design work is pointless when so much is in flux, but ultimately most of this is just details. The only\u00a0system expansion I see happening from here on is perhaps having\u00a0more\u00a0defense\/attack types than 3, and increasing the damage bonus for hitting a weak type. Even in this weird flux state you can learn a lot about how this stuff plays.<\/p>\n
The key theme for this batch of classes was to emphasize interaction with other players, much like how the co-op classes emphasized playing a role\u00a0in a team. I lumped classes into two broad alignments, “Good” and “Evil”. Good classes are capable of helping other nearby players. Evil classes profit\u00a0off of hurting other nearby players. In both cases sometimes these things are triggered by the player, but are often just automated systems.\u00a0The idea being that evil characters want to follow their opponents, while good characters want to avoid being followed by\u00a0opponents. Additionally, evil characters are a pain to group with while good characters provide a boon to their group. I have hesitant\u00a0feelings towards\u00a0the division (ie, evil arguably\u00a0has bigger benefits when following a good character), but\u00a0I’m guessing the problems will manifest themselves quite quickly during testing. I do want to leverage the\u00a0core theme of building every class around player interaction though. Previous versions never fully tapped into it, and\u00a0a multiplayer game really needs to build itself around those interactions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mercifully map generation was\u00a0wrapped up on Monday.\u00a0Rest of the week has been spent on the many small tasks that need to be done. Bug fixes, implementing new gimmick areas, polish, etc. The most time consuming piece has been designing new PVP classes. In the process I realized that the main reason that class design is… Continue reading March 1st, 2015<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":500,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions\/500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}