Timeline for How to prevent the "Too awesome to use" syndrome?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
23 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 21, 2013 at 22:09 | comment | added | Anomalous Underdog | This is how they do it in God of War. Your super ability is like a smart bomb that damages all enemies on screen, and staggers them so you have room to breathe. In this regard, they are used as "get out of jail free" cards. For novices who since inadequately skilled, end up being overwhelmed, they can use that super ability to get some breathing space. | |
| May 20, 2013 at 5:51 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by MartinTeeVarga | ||
| May 19, 2013 at 20:24 | history | wiki removed | Jesse Dorsey | ||
| May 17, 2013 at 13:49 | comment | added | Bobson | I definitely like the recharge mechanic. ToME 4 is a roguelike which replaced all consumables with recharge-based items. It's a very outside-the-box thing for a roguelike to do (no more need to horde potions, or wands, or what-have-you), but it works really well. | |
| May 17, 2013 at 9:31 | comment | added | 5argon | Agreed with the idea of rechargeable. If you used an elixir potion you got empty elixir bottle back to refill for a fee later. That would be very natural usage of potion-type items. (It's similar to E-Tank mechanics of Megaman X games if I think about it... Talking about Megaman, the original game has E-Tank that is rare and is one-time use, but I has no hesitation to use it at all.) | |
| May 16, 2013 at 18:17 | comment | added | Attackfarm | The important points from this answer are: Rare one-shots aren't habit forming, players forget what isn't habitual, recharging items can be habitual while still giving players strategic "Save it until you need it" play. The habitual part is key, so changing the idea to something not habitual leads one back to the original problem | |
| May 16, 2013 at 16:41 | comment | added | deworde | My favourite solution to this is similar to recharge, but with a twist. It's a weapon where it hits max power and then holds at that state. It won't start charging again till you use it, so you've got an incentive to use it sooner to restart the charging process. Similarly, with one-use rares, make it possible for it to re-drop only after you've used it. The message to deliver is: sooner you use it, sooner you get it back. | |
| May 16, 2013 at 16:39 | comment | added | deworde | @Andrey Not really, because by the time you realise that the situation has moved from something you can handle with item X to something you can't, you may have moved past the point where item X would have the desired effect. FTL is a good example. You may come up on an enemy where you just need that bit more health than you have to survive. You'd have had that health if you'd used your last def. drone part 2 battles ago. But you were saving it in case an enemy came up that was armed with stronger missiles. Unfortunately, this enemy's armed with Beams... Boom. | |
| May 16, 2013 at 15:19 | comment | added | Andrey Rubshtein | @NicolBolas, surely if you just randomly explode without any warning, it is useless. But if the game is designed in a way that allows you to notice a desperate situation, and have some time to ponder about it, it does work. | |
| May 16, 2013 at 15:13 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @Andrey: I've died enough times from random stuff in FTL to know that's not true at all. Permadeath is hardly a guarantee of someone using rare items in desperate situations, if for no other reason than that a situation may not seem desperate until it's too late. And the fact that, because it's rare, you may not even remember you have it until it's too late. That's why forming that habit is important. | |
| May 16, 2013 at 15:06 | comment | added | Andrey Rubshtein | It is solved quite well in games with permanent death feature, like roguelikes. In these kind of games, when you are afraid to die, you will use these consumables in desperate situations. | |
| May 16, 2013 at 13:34 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @daviewales: The whole point of making it rechargeable is to encourage it's use. And the point of giving it finite charges is to ensure that the user can't use it too often in a given dungeon. It's like a tactical nuke: you use it on stuff that's clearly big enough to be worth using it on. Making it require substantial effort to get simply means that players will use conventional weapons. They won't get into the habit of using this thing, and they won't endure some pointless sidequest just to get a charge for it. | |
| May 16, 2013 at 13:30 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @daviewales: "If you make a super-powered weapon that is rechargeable, but insanely difficult to recharge, then you almost have a one use only weapon, but people will still use it." How is that functionally different from a rare, one-shot item? Both this and a rare, one-shot have limited uses. In both cases, the user knows that the chance to get another one will only happen rarely if ever. And therefore, they're going to wait to use it until they need to. Which will be never because they'll find a way to deal with threats with conventional weapons. | |
| May 16, 2013 at 13:28 | comment | added | Wayne Werner | @daviewales, and then rename the item to "Perilous ... Of DOOM!" | |
| May 16, 2013 at 11:28 | comment | added | daviewales | I like the idea of recharging. If you make a super-powered weapon that is rechargeable, but insanely difficult to recharge, then you almost have a one use only weapon, but people will still use it. Also, whatever you do, don't sell the ammo. Rather, make them craft the ammo from stuff they mine from a perilous mine at the bottom of a perilous cave at the end of a perilous road that can only be reached on the back of a perilous dragon, or something similarly challenging. (or perilous... =P) | |
| May 16, 2013 at 6:35 | comment | added | chris | Oh wow, that was a sad similarity between the beginning of my two comments. I'm not arguing any of the points of your excellent answer. I'm just adding my two cents on "what good does it do to have rare, one-shot items in the game at all? What game design purpose do they serve?" - I personally love when items are either hard to get or only given once and you have bragging rights for having them, whether they could help or not. | |
| May 16, 2013 at 6:28 | comment | added | chris | @NicolBolas, Well of course some have a function. I guess it just makes you feel better to be able to look and see that you didn't use that single awarded Master Ball on anything; you caught all legendaries the hard way and you have the item to show for it (bear with me and pretend trading didn't exist right from gen 1). | |
| May 16, 2013 at 6:24 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @chris: If the point of them is solely to collect them, then don't give them a gameplay function. | |
| May 16, 2013 at 6:05 | comment | added | chris | Well of course the point of having them in the game is for you to feel accomplished when you collect all of the limited items you can :) Not everyone is a perfectionist in that regard, but I do enjoy working toward that sort of thing. | |
| May 16, 2013 at 5:48 | history | edited | Nicol Bolas | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 565 characters in body
|
| May 15, 2013 at 23:53 | comment | added | deft_code | I think "rechargeable or remove" is the best answer. A TL;DR at the top would be appreciated; the answer is a bit long. | |
| May 15, 2013 at 22:26 | comment | added | Attackfarm | I actually think this is a great answer. Regarding playing games, I run into this problem constantly, and regarding designing them, the best question is "Why have them?". There are other methods to achieve the same results (rare but powerful abilities) while avoiding this fundamental problem of "saving it for so long you forget it exists". | |
| May 15, 2013 at 16:42 | history | answered | Nicol Bolas | CC BY-SA 3.0 |