Striking a Balance with Planned Gameplay/Modes

Wicked Feedback
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This is just a quick suggestion about the potential different types of gameplay I’ve been hearing from various Thomas Mahler interviews (survival mode, horde mode, farming, tower defense, etc.). Hearing about all the grand plans for Wicked being a “platform” for multiple game modes/genres has me excited, but a tad worried. I love the idea of variety gameplay as I like playing different kinds of games. I like the idea of having Wicked game modes be competitors to full games in those genres. Examples that Thomas Mahler used were the farming gameplay being deep enough to compete with something like Stardew Valley or a survival mode being a competitor to Rust. And I think you guys are ‘doing it the right way’ by building a real solid foundation of great combat in a beautiful world and many, quality items.

The concern I have is that you end up forcing people to participate in game modes they don’t particularly like and then the game could become more of a chore. I like the idea of game modes being interconnected and having one giving rewards that contribute to another, but I hope you’re making sure to strike a balance between variety gameplay and letting people stick to the gameplay they want. And I assume you are keeping this in mind based off everything I’ve heard and the quality of the game that you already have. Just giving my two cents and not wanting the game to become something like Lost Arc where 90% of the game quickly became chores after the campaign.

Love the game so far and excited for the full release!

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Not gonna’ lie, I’m a little concerned about the comfort update. I don’t really care about decorating my houses, that’s not what interests me about this game, I love NRftW for the tight combat, the great story, the interesting exploration, and the (potential for) build crafting. I use my house as storage and I’m fine with that, the base building isn’t something that grabs my attention; I think I have about two hours played in Stardew Valley because it’s just not my kind of game.

So seconded. If these systems are supplemental, things I can participate in if I choose to, if I want that extra added bonus, that’s fine with me - but I don’t want to be pushed into playing them out of necessity, I don’t want the core part of the game that I enjoy to depend on farming or base building. If they provide supplemental buffs, that’s great! I can take them or leave them! If they’re necessary buffs, or somehow necessary to advance the game, that’s what doesn’t appeal to me so much.

Upvoted.

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I understand the fear of a component being disinteresting, but…

I love wholistic design. I love every system meaningfully feeding in to each other. And even though different systems can have more or less appeal, I think they can still work surprisingly well. For example, I don’t really like fishing. It’s most often literally a waiting game.

Then take stardew valley where I had a fucking 10 minute bossfight with a fish despite how simple the system is. One of the highlights of playing that lol.

And then you have kingdom come deliverance. I love the blacksmithing in that game. It’s thematic, it’s involved, it has a sense of mastery. It’s great. It doesn’t have to be click a button to combine items.

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I hear you all and there’s definitely a reason to be concerned since I don’t think there’s any other game out there yet that handled this properly.

But I think we’ll be able to. And once again, you folks will also have a hand in this - if you feel like you’re too forced to do this or that, you let us know and we’ll tweak it, as always.

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The most important thing for Moon Studios is to find a solution for those game modes so they’re not mandatory for players, allowing everyone to play what they enjoy.

One effective way to achieve this is by balancing the rewards from these modes, ensuring each one provides roughly the same rewards value relative to the time invested. This empowers us players to freely choose what appeals to us.

I doubt every mode will suit every player, but their job is to make as many modes as possible enjoyable, helping retain the existing playerbase and attract new ones.

It’s a tough challenge, but Thomas interviews give me hope. As they’ve said, the game is built on solid combat and a strong foundation, and in my opinion, a good foundation is the most crucial element.

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They could circumvent that by having the option to auto-assign a default decoration template to maximize your comfort with your given furniture.

That way the system is an opt in, you don’t have to micromanage your house if you don’t want to.

For the multiple game modes issue they could just have a reward pool shared across all the game modes, so you can open a menu and choose a reward track and pick and choose your activities to fill that reward track.

As an example, Guild Wars 2 allows you to select from a pool of different activity preferences or to specify a mix to draw a list of activities for your daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal activity list.

It also has in its world PvP format the ability to select your reward track so you progress toward items and materials from a specific activity/content pool while doing any kind of pvp.

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Personally, I’m more concerned about how on earth they plan to deliver all of those modes with the level of quality they’re promising. The phrase “jack of all trades, master of none” exists for a reason. Handling two different modes is usually manageable, but that many? I’ve never seen anyone crazy enough to attempt pulling off something like that, so I’m impatiently waiting to see what they’re going to cook up.

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Dota2 came from a WC3 mod.

And tower defense was basically born there, too.

And fortnite was named that because you built forts to defend. Now it’s a battle royale.

If you understand the design, and have enough mechnics, you’re often just a few tweaks away from completely different genres.

I also think the designers should be more concerned about making sure you want to interact with the whole game rather than hedging their bets and making sure you don’t feel pressured to.

If the modes are shit, there’s an argument to be made that they probably shouldn’t be in the game to begin with lol.

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Sure, but every single one of those products was created by completely different teams over many, many years. I’m not aware of any studio that has delivered a single game packed with multiple truly god-tier modes. It would be insanely difficult, if not outright impossible to create a farming mode as polished as titles that spend their entire development cycle focused on that one genre, while simultaneously building several other major modes, maintaining the core game and its balance, fixing bugs, etc.

Exactly. A game should push players out of their comfort zone rather than locking them into one narrow playstyle. That makes it far more interesting and allows for stronger system interconnectivity.

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Couldn’t have said it better myself.

If you would’ve pitched Tower Defense / MOBA to WC3 players back then, they probably would’ve frowned at it, but… then you tried it and got addicted.

I think for Moon to win big and for players to love us, we have to be a little daring and not be afraid to try a bunch of wild stuff so that you all get some ways to play Wicked that are refreshing, that constantly keep you experiencing new things, that are just all super fun and addictive. And we can do all that because we already have the meat and potatoes, now it’s just about using all this in fun and new ways so that the endgame experience isn’t just going out there and doing more of exactly the same that you’ve already done.

I honestly have utter confidence that we can pull that off since most of that is just work, it’s not like we have to solve some super complicated issues here. And it’s obvious that we’ll be able to deliver more fun this way cause offering a variety of experiences is what the brain needs. And this goes all the way back to Zelda and so on. Think back to even A Link to the Past: After you finished a dungeon, you didn’t immediately have to go into the next dungeon. It was super nice that you then were able to explore the overworld using the new item you just found in the dungeon and could just relax a bit by finding new heart containers or other things… and once you were ready to face a real challenge again, you made your way to the next dungeon.

I see what I’ve pitched there in a similar light. I don’t think players always want that same exact experience, they want an assortment of different experiences to choose from so that if they feel like x, they can do x, but if they instead want to do a little bit of y… go right ahead!

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My concern, as already stated, is that I don’t really find the housing stuff all that fun or addicting, personally. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t do the systems, not at all! I’m all aboard for having more activities for players to choose from! I just don’t want to be penalized if I don’t engage in the systems, that’s all.

I have no doubt you can do a good interior decorating mechanic, but (at least at this moment) it’s not the interior decorating mechanic that draws me into this game; if I have to Fung Shui my apartment in order to beat the BBEG, I can see myself finding that frustrating.

My concern is the degree of necessity, that’s all. I think it’s cool that Moon Studios is trying to sort of spread the love around, to do new and interesting things, but I don’t want to feel forced to engage with those systems if I’m not enjoying them. Like the current rested bonuses to Health and Focus; those bonuses are helpful, but they’re not necessary to advancement, they give players an edge, but they’re not mandatory.

As you say in your comment: It’s about having an assortment of different systems to choose from. I want to have the choice to participate or not participate in those systems, that’s all.

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That’s actually an Issue that I had with elden ring.

Exploring the overworld and doing a boss fight required such completely different mental states that I was often frustrated with not having a grace placed just before every bossfight at the end of random dungeons, because if I was tired I now had to make the assessment of whether I was willing to bang my head against a wall, keep making runbacks to this fogwall, or whip out my strongest summon and start blasting.

If I just had a site of grace, I could come back here when I felt like it, but sometimes I just nuked the boss down immediately and wondered if I just robbed myself of a fight that I otherwise could’ve enjoyed.

I also know this is heresy within the souls community, but a difficult indicator of SOME kind would be kinda nice so I can do content appropriate for my level instead whoopsying my power level too high and again trivializing some of these fights I otherwise might’ve enjoyed.

Never has a game made question whether I “optimized my fun” like elden ring did lol.

Pretty massive tangent, sorry.

More importantly:

I think some new games have shown how very little contextualization can dramatically change how people view/approach/play effectively the same content.

Halls of torment, almost simply by virtue of the quest system, set goals for you to attempt, which forces you to change builds in order to achieve them.

And because of the nature of these games, high scores - a system that’s never motivated me - has made a pretty effective return in megabonk where you now have objective metrics to test your skill (relatively speaking given the genre, lol), builds and strategies, which push you to optimize further.

Currently, though, given the core strengths of moon’s game and studio, using those elements effectively for the longterm is probably going to be some of the most difficult: the level design is what gets the most attention, which the crucible doesn’t capture at all. Creating a generative system that can capture the level design philosophies and make exploring fun, basically requires a formula unrecognizable from the player’s side.

It’s also notoriously difficult, and yet, a structure like nightreign where you’re pressured by time to both rush through combat and navigate the levels effectively, while making sure you open enough chests for upgrades feels like the most natural fit for combining both roguelike elements and the core game as it stands.

But I can only really describe this as a maximum viable product since it’s probably the most expensive fit, as well lol. So I’m curious what kind of longterm modes have been discussed. Especially the ones immediately dismissed.

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There’s no hard line for this, and there’s some weird manipulation you can do which completely changes how players perceive exactly the same system.

WoW changed the phrasing from something like “fatigue penalty” to “rested bonus” and suddenly people accept it.

Then there’s how you set up the friction points.

Currently the system offends me for the most trivial reason. I don’t mind the system demand me thinking about the layout (not yet implemented). But I do take offense to having to sit through the animation every time I want to apply the buff. Getting the benefit from visiting the house should be enough.

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