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NikkyD
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How many choices should a player be given?

If you remember the old Fallout 1 + 2 games, there you could select where to shoot/hit the enemy. But of all the choices, only chest or head made sense. Chest to maximize hit probability or, if a hit was almost certain, head for maximum damage. But one could also choose limbs etc.

In other games you can often attack with a standard attack or a variety of special attacks. Most of the time only one or two of them make sense.

I, as a programmer, always analyse a game for best strategy and "bang for the buck" so i naturally don't want to implement useless or silly choices in a game. But if i break it down to what really matters, i could write a bot that plays most games for me as many games are that simple.

Let's assume it is NOT possible to have several choices of equal value. How many choices should i present to a player with one or two being effective and several others being "duds" ?!

If i exaggerate this issue then you could make Fallout 1 a game where you move your character and click an enemy and thats it, best hit location is determined by the game as it mostly is obvious. But that removes the "i have options" feeling, i assume.

I am really somewhat lost with this.

NikkyD
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