Patreon Weekly #58 - July 13th 2020

Hey Patrons!

Content Poll #7 has finished, with the Gladiator in first place! Here are the full results:
Gladiator: 58% Support
Battlemage: 53% Support
Freerunner: 47% Support
In a future update the Gladiator will be getting priority for some changes or even a full rework! The vote was pretty even across the board on this one, which indicates to me that there’s a decent desire for changes to the other subclasses too (though maybe not the specific changes I mentioned). I may run more subclass design priority polls in the future.

Now, I’ve got more info on Shattered’s new levelling system to share…

What’s going in the Layers?

Firstly, I haven’t yet decided exactly what this system is going to be called, but for the sake of readability let’s use skills for now (hero skills, skill system, skill points, etc.)

Two weeks ago I gave an overview of what I want this system to accomplish and last week I talked about how the system might be structured. So, the obvious next step is talking about some of the more specific details.

When I talked about a skill system, I’ll bet everyone had a slightly different idea of what a skill in Shattered might look like. Just like with the system overall, there are so many different ways that games have implemented skills. Unlike with the system overall though, it’s a lot easier to mix and match here, so we don’t need all skills to rigidly fit in the same category. Let’s go over some examples, although this time I’m going to keep things a bit more rooted in Shattered’s gameplay.

The most obvious type of skill is something with a full blown active effect that’s triggered whenever the player wants. I’m a bit wary of these as the game already has a bunch of player-controlled active effects via items. Adding even more of these kinds of effects threatens to make the game too complicated. That’s not to say they should be avoided entirely though, just used sparingly. In fact, there might be an existing usable item that could tie into this system nicely…

A more subtle but still impactful skill is one with an effect that only activates on a specific trigger. I feel pretty confident that these will make up the bulk of the system, as I’ve had a lot of success with these effects in other parts of Shattered’s design. They enhance the player’s interaction with specific parts of the game without giving the player the complexity burden of activating them directly. Good examples might be more food-based effects, letting the rogue quietly step around sleeping enemies, letting the mage immediately ID wands, or giving the huntress a small chance to find food in tall grass.

Finally, the most simple type of skill is something with a purely passive effect that just manipulates stats. I’m also wary of these because I feel like they often don’t meaningfully contribute to gameplay, which in turn makes them quite boring. In many ways this is the opposite problem of active abilities, which threaten to influence gameplay too much. Just like with actives, that doesn’t mean raw stat boosts are totally out though, their use just has to be justified with a meaningful gameplay impact. Good examples might be giving the rogue more range on his search, or giving the warrior an extra point of strength.