Design pillars

Design pillars

Consider the following "design pillars" to be the foundational aspects of the game vision, that can be thought of as lenses through which to scrutinise any ideas for the game.

Provides a framework around which ideas can be fit into the game in a more harmonious and purposeful way, rather than just adding an idea "because it seems cool", even if it doesn't address a particular issue or enhance an existing feature.

Mechanics should be designed such that they support one or more of these pillars.

These pillars are organised around high-level concepts (an abstract idea that related pillars can be grouped under) and their respective low-level pillars (specific, concrete and actionable pillars that can be used to justify features).

Any text throughout this wiki that is formatted (Like this) means that it is referring to one of these pillars. For example, a design note followed by (Exploration) means that it is intended to support the "Exploration" pillar.

The Tribe

Address the lack of games in the multiplayer browser gaming space with a focus on meaningful co-op play. Almost everything seems to be arcade style PvP focused, with only minor or superficial teamwork elements.

Roleplaying with emphasis on frequent iterations of class archetypes/builds, especially ones that a player might not otherwise have considered trying, due the tendency for players to default to what they are used to from other games of a genre.

Get players to explore more perspectives of their team than what they might used to, and be better able to empathise with the benefits and constraints of players in other roles, and develop a more holistic understanding of what good teamwork looks like within the context of the game.

Pillars

• Reciprocity
  • Prompt players to communicate and propose cooperation between each other. "What do you need?"
  • Prompt appreciation between players and remembrance of kind acts. "Thanks!", "I found these gems while I was exploring if you want them"
  • Drive recognition of the player among the group. "Timmy expanded the farm area", "Janie is best at making magic gear".
• Specialisation
  • Sacrifice independence for power.
  • Division of labour; Gain efficiency in something, but lack something else, become more dependent on other players, but also offer something new to the group.
• Dependency
  • You depend on other players, so don't piss them off.
  • Other players depend on you too, so they better not piss you off either.
• Purpose
  • Your purpose in the game world, and to other players. "We need you to upgrade our swords", "Can someone enchant this for me pls?"

The Great Unknown

Expanding the roguelike concept to the game world itself. A procedurally generated world, where each generation has a clearly defined end-goal, and different set of challenges. Players aim to complete each world generation to trigger a new generation, as a form of personal progression.

Each world generation should feel like it's own campaign in an RPG.

Lean into how the most chaotic, stressful, and exciting part of many survival/crafting games (Minecraft, ARK, Rust) is often the very early-game experience right at the start, capturing that feeling of being thrown into a hostile environment and having to quickly cobble together some basic survival infrastructure from whatever resources are available, while there is still a genuine threat posed to the player from the game world.

Often in these kinds of survival games, when the player reaches the point that they have firmly established themselves and set up a reliable and consistent income of resources, such as having built a large, well equipped and easily defended base, have a stockpile of rare resources saved up, and a farm to quickly, easily and safely generate any resource they may need more of, and have reached the end tier gear, then the threat of the game largely subsides and those games often enter a boring limbo state when there are no further challenges of meaningful threat to the player, and any loses to the player from any remaining threats can be recovered from relatively easily using the player's existing infrastructure. i.e. they can rebuild very easily, so losing items through character death loses impact.

The regeneration of the game world and wiping of existing characters when the objective is accomplished, is a means of putting players in that more exciting early-game state more frequently, and discouraging players from optimising the fun out of the game.

Pillars

• Replayability
  • Give players a blank canvas to establish themselves on, potentially with varied structures on every world generation to find and make use of.
  • What they build their characters towards should be influenced by a set of constraints to work around (current team composition, available resources, environmental threats).
• Exploration
  • Make players have to adapt their strategies around a given starting state that is less than ideal, and make decisions based on incomplete information, as every world generation (and the specific challenges therein) is different, so a reliable meta cannot be easily established/the game cannot be easily "solved".
  • Every map generation is unique, so nobody knows where the optimal places to do anything are, what the layout of the map is like, what environmental challenges they will have to deal with, and where certain valuable resources are.
  • Encourage players to explore the unknown world and gather more information to make better decisions based on.
• Embrace change
  • Less emphasis on being a long-term progression character-building sim, due to the impermanence of the characters and world instance itself.
  • Characters should have some feeling of being organically progressed, built to fit the team's immediate needs as they evolve, instead of being carefully planned and optimised to maximise efficiency.

Accessibility

Even within gaming, online multiplayer RPGs are relatively niche, with a high barrier to entry, and an expectation that potential players will want to spend hundreds, or thousands, of hours playing to make tangible progress and to remain relevant.

Pillars

• Pick up and play
  • Don't assume any previous knowledge of a system or mechanic from some other game.
  • Treat every player as someone who is new to games in general. Don't expect anyone to be a seasoned gamer.
  • Make it easy for non-gamer friends & family to play with an existing player.
  • Respect each player's free time. Allow a meaningful play session to take place within a reasonable time window.
  • Allow the game to be easily understood and interacted with by a wide range of players, of different languages, and using different devices.
• K.I.S.S.
  • Keep it simple, stupid.
  • Don't assume that everyone will be able to pick up every concept for a mechanic that we may think to add.
  • Give players who have a low level of mechanical skill, or who just aren't that interested in moment-to-moment gameplay, a way to easily just chat or roleplay and enjoy the other player's company while adventuring, while not feeling like a burden.
  • Provide optional depth and complexity for those that want it, but keep it op-in (highly specialised classes).
• Tactics over twitch
  • Reward strategising with other players to deal with encounters, over individual micro ability.
  • Allow players with less trained reaction times/less experience in games to still be of use and not feel worse than other players, or that they are a burden to the team.