Poll of the Day > Game design opinion

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hi everyone, I have a question on whether or not you think this is a good idea:

I am working on a game where the player has 5 slots exclusively for weapons. As it stands, there are only 5 weapons you can potentially get (each has their uses, it's not as bad as it might sound).

However I was thinking I could make it so that each new game started picked 5 of a larger pool of weaponry (say, 10-15) and those would be the 5 the player could potentially find instead.

The good point would be variety and replayability. The bad point would be RNG reliance. Of course I'd make it so that you could win using any weapon, so that someone's playthrough wasn't gimped to hell or an OP walk in the park.

This is a platformer Metroidvania, but the weapons are not used to advance to other areas so that would not be a factor.

Thoughts?
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Provided the weapons are reasonably balanced, I could see it working. That is going to limit your game's potential for speedrunning, though (you'll never get them all perfectly balanced, so certain configurations will end up being better for speedruns), which is a big deal for some metroidvania fans.
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Give them the option that if they complete the game once, then they can choose to either pick five weapons that they have unlocked or play with random weapons so they can unlock more to pick from.
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Foppe posted...

Give them the option that if they complete the game once, then they can choose to either pick five weapons that they have unlocked or play with random weapons so they can unlock more to pick from.

That would fix the potential speedrunning issue, while also adding some degree of meta-progression to encourage replaying beyond simple random differences. Good idea. Just make sure it's weighted toward new ones so people don't have to play through the game a dozen times to unlock the last one.
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adjl posted...

Foppe posted...

Give them the option that if they complete the game once, then they can choose to either pick five weapons that they have unlocked or play with random weapons so they can unlock more to pick from.

That would fix the potential speedrunning issue, while also adding some degree of meta-progression to encourage replaying beyond simple random differences. Good idea. Just make sure it's weighted toward new ones so people don't have to play through the game a dozen times to unlock the last one.

That's a great idea I didn't consider, thanks!
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It depends on what type of game it is. It'd work in a rogue-like or if the game is very short (around an hour or two at most). That way a player isn't committed to the weapons especially if they don't like the weapons.

If the game is longer and you want to have more weapons with limited weapon slots, I'd go with being able to switch at save points or in between levels or something.
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Exploit combinatorics.

Let's say you have a sword, gun, chainsaw, whip, and hand grenade as your weapons.
Now, toss in the classic elements of fire, water, air, earth, and void (or heart).

This gives us 25 possibilities, but set it up in such a way that each weapon appears once, and each element appears once.
You may get the fire chainsaw and ice grenade, etc. in one run, but then the fire whip and stone grenade in another.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Exploit combinatorics.

Let's say you have a sword, gun, chainsaw, whip, and hand grenade as your weapons.
Now, toss in the classic elements of fire, water, air, earth, and void (or heart).

This gives us 25 possibilities, but set it up in such a way that each weapon appears once, and each element appears once.
You may get the fire chainsaw and ice grenade, etc. in one run, but then the fire whip and stone grenade in another.

It's funny you say that because there is a magic wand which can be charged with different abilities that you can only hold one of at a time. Example one allows the projectiles to go through walls and another turns them into fireballs.

Thanks again everyone, I have lots of crap to go and do now haha!
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