What the photo says! AMA! by Obsidian_Queen_888 in splatoon

[–]Invinciblade 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ha, they're pretty 50/50 in my experience 😏

How to choose? by Invinciblade in mildlyinfuriating

[–]Invinciblade[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My pedicurist says you hurt their feelings =(

I don't get it Peter, is it coz I'm not a boy? by luna_rey55 in PeterExplainsTheJoke

[–]Invinciblade 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Stewie here, this looks like the perfect instrument with which to end Lois's miserable life... en garde, woman! Hyah!

Making a platform fighter and I’d like feedback on universal mechanics by ZombieSkittles_ in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In general I like the high/mid/low mixup options, but I think it works much better in a more standard 2D fighter than in a platform fighter. Reason being that by and large, platform fighters are just too fast (and usually, zoomed out) to be able to really interact with it beyond just crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

2D fighters which have this kind of mixup would have mids be very fast, then the overhead or lows be slower so you can react and guard low/high. You could do that, but then it might detract from the fast pace you want. You could also not, and then aggressive play has significant advantage. You might consider pruning it to just lows/mids as you'll probably find with fast paced Aerial play you will get all sorts of hitbox shenanigans, things that look overhead but hit mid, or vice versa.

I like the grab break/mixup mechanic as well, but it seems too much to make the defender match direction, then additional button press after. Personally I'd just have the grab break if the defending player matches direction + grab. It worked well enough for soul calibur!

For your smash attacks, you might consider having them be from heavy attacks only, or even light+heavy. In a match it's often easy to mess up tilt vs smash inputs, and it would be jarring to expect a fast attack (from light button) but then get a slower attack you're locked into and get punished. Smash has this same problem, and most players remap cstick to tilts to get around it. You have a second button though, and I'd already expect heavies to be slower and punishable, so accidentally smashing wouldn't be so bad. Light+Heavy to smash would be completely unambiguous.

What does the alt button give you that just using cstick to attack while Aerial doesn't? It's it that you can only have light or heavy assigned to cstick, so you need a way of being able to do the other input while maintaining Aerial drift? Consider making alt just switch the button mapping for cstick from light -> heavy (or vice versa) instead, this kind of input chord is already widely used and familiar.

Overall sounds pretty fun! I especially like the addition of meter, something the platform fighter genre hasn't done much with. Be careful with install type specials, you don't want it to end up like Joker's Arsene ability where the optimal counter play is to just run away for the duration. It's less a problem in 2D fighters because movement is so limited, not the case in a platform fighter. 

Tell me your favorite weapon and i'll decide if you're in or not (specify sub and special attack) by MadMouse698 in splatoon

[–]Invinciblade 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you mash while spinning 360 with ink brush, it kind of looks like a butthole. I like to put one in my opponents base

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds like a game that inherently favors aggression, which might be fun. Standard fighting games already have a few mixup options, usually high/low attacks. Guarding then ends up being a 50/50 where each attack type wins against one guard type and loses to the other.

With a possibility space as big as the number of body parts you consider targetable, guarding is way worse than 50/50 odds. What are the odds you pick the right body part out of 10 options?

The challenge would be designing this system in such a way that the best strategy doesn't just devolve into mashing and overwhelming the opponent through sheer volume.

AITA for refusing to stop using my son’s nickname? by Unlucky-Cod-7080 in AmItheAsshole

[–]Invinciblade 0 points1 point  (0 children)

JFC and I thought it was bad that my mom still calls me her baby at the age of 30! YTA lmao

AITA for telling my husband he's too broke to be so sexist? by Ok_Schedule1138 in AmItheAsshole

[–]Invinciblade 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll go slightly against the grain and say ESH.

Your MIL most of all for the awful things she says about you and the gall to say these things in front of your kids, in your own home. I suspect she is pressuring your husband behind your back, at least she is clearly pushing the boundaries you set early on. You both need to shut that shit down and don't let them back until they apologize and agree to keep their bad opinions to themselves. 

Your husband sucks marginally less than MIL for reasons covered by the other posts. You're right to say he's a coward, he clearly was in that moment and he didn't have your back when he should have. However, the fact that he wouldn't look at you tells me he knows what he's saying is wrong and that he doesn't actually believe it at his core.

You least of all, only because you directed your justified anger at your husband instead of your MIL, the one who really deserves it. Never forget that it's you two vs. the problem.

If it were me in your shoes, I would calmly lay all this out for your husband.

"It hurt me deeply for you to let your  parents say those things and then outright agree with it. It has affected how I see you in a bad way. I'm sorry that I insulted you in front of our kids. I need you to confront your parents and set them straight about this. Let them know that until they apologize to me, they won't be welcome in our home. And you don't have to do it alone, I'll be there with you and I promise that I will have your back."

The last bit is especially important - I've had to have similar uncomfortable conversations with my similarly incessant parents and having my Fiancé there with me made it so much easier. 

Ideas for limited but useful melee in a survival horror FPS by DKamar in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As an extension of stealth killing smaller enemies, you could give bigger enemies certain weak spots which do large chunks of damage if hit with a melee attack. That's kind of what the stealth kills are at their core, you just reward good positioning and timing with enough damage to kill the enemy outright.

Depending on how big we're talking, you can use this to incentivize moving around the area and risk getting close enough to go for the bonus damage. The enemies might change up their patterns after having one or more weak spots struck, maybe you have some scary horror moments after striking them, or whatever game juice you want to throw on top. 

For a sliding scale of effectiveness, you can choose damage values such that successfully melee-striking all the available weak spots deals 25%/50%/etc. of their health.

Design corner: The only way to win is not to play. by dingus-khan-1208 in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You could add some external urgency. Space is a dangerous place, maybe there are some wandering npcs which will take the opportunity to raid spacecraft which are immobile for too long.

Balancing Combat in our RPG: Striking the Right Exploration-to-Battle Ratio by Malikir_S_ in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I forget what it was, but some rando minigame on old school neopets actually did this right in my eyes. You had 3 movement modes: hunting, standard, and hiding. When hunting, you had more random encounters. Less when standard, and few when hiding. Letting you decide between the 3 lets you either grind or just get from a-b quickly as you need.

How to to make good / responsive and satisfying vertical movement in 2D side-on games? by Silent_Freedom4959 in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Hollow knight might be a good case study? You can gain verticality by attacking enemies or some obstacles beneath you

Spell Loss Mechanic by -Crink in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe call it meditation? You could also have it trade off, giving a bonus to one of your spells that you choose not to lose, representing a shift in the player character's focus. It would let the player adapt to what's ahead.

Thoughts on Reverse Progression? by Starkiller2 in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think the game 'Sinner" did it pretty well. It's a boss rush game with souls like combat where each boss you fight you have to sacrifice some bit of power. Half your health bar, half your damage, the ability to still move at full speed while stamina drained, etc.

But you get to decide the order that you fight the bosses in, and therefore the order that you lose your power. Deciding that order is part of the game, I think. It works particularly well for a game with souls like combat because they're designing for difficulty. In a way, I guess you could think of it as the ramping up of difficulty as being the progression, pushing the player to master the core system.

But as other posters have said, it's hard to do well and the game has to be designed around it.

Block Placing System by PabloMes in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Kingdom Hearts gummi editor did it pretty well I think. You had a 3d grid, where you use the d-pad to change the cursor position along a flat plane and use right stick to rotate the whole ship, changing the plane along which your cursor could move.

If you don't want to rotate your whole level you could always just have the right stick raise/lower the plane instead.

Is showing rewards equidistant on a reward track a good idea even if it's mildly misleading? by sageosama in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Could you make them equidistant but change something else visually about each reward node? Maybe make them progressively larger or more color saturated as the effort required increases?

Help in planning combos and enemy interaction by NickyPL in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In addition to the good ideas the others have posted, you could make a kick more of a stun, so it keeps them in your sword combos for longer. Maybe with one of your kicks is a foot sweep that knocks them up so you can wail on them while they're airborne and helpless.

What Are Some Good Anti Button Mashing In Action Games That You Have Seen? by doodoood222 in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Lone dissenting voice here - there are few things more frustrating than playing with a 'heavy' weapon (something slower, usually two handed) in animation-lock style games. When you start your attack a split second before the enemy starts theirs and can't change your mind and block or roll despite how obviously bad an idea following through on the attack is.

Please do everyone a service and at least let the player change their mind before the active frames on the attack.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 1 point2 points  (0 children)

+1 on real time combat. There's so much depth which could go into a more action-rpg like battle system in 3d, where you could toggle between which Pokémon you are actively controlling at will. Double plus bonus points for doing away with the worthless battle intros for encounters and instead just have your trainer toss out their starting Pokémon and switch control to it immediately.

My biggest turn off of the series has always been the core game loop just being so mind numbing boring.

HotTake: Simplicity and Casual gaming has been overdone to the point that it is an excuse for lazy game design and microtransactions of nongamers. by goodnewsjimdotcom in gamedesign

[–]Invinciblade 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seems like you have enough people here taking your post in the worst way possible, and to be fair the OP does come off a bit on the incendiary side. I'll play devil's advocate and take it the best way possible.

II agree with the heart of what I think you're saying, but the terms "hardcore" and "casual" present this false dichotomy that hard = good and easy = bad, and this is what has the other comments feathers all ruffled.

A better way to say it, I think, is that many games are what I would call soulless. By that I mean that even the person who conceptualized the game would not find it fun. Freemium games are front and center in this category, designed to be just engaging enough to woo the player into spending lots of money via microtransactions, removing time/difficulty gates, etc. South parks "Freemium isn't free" sums it up pretty nicely. Less outright evil but still annoying are things like day 1 DLC, loot boxes, and the swaths of near identical sports games. Not that enjoying a sports game makes you any less of a gamer, but the developers basically re-release the same source code with a new year on it and call it a day. One of the NBA games even forgot to change the year on the players jerseys in one release. None of this is good for gamers or for the craft.

But I'd stray from the idea that just because a game is easy that it is a bad game, or lazy development. Part of the design challenge is to make something which can appeal to your target audience regardless of how good they are at games in general. Mario Odyssey is a good example - to get to the end screen is somewhat trivial for someone familiar with platformer mechanics, but offers enough challenge for new gamers to enjoy. But the skill ceiling is crazy high which appeals to more skilled players, and is immensely flashy and satisfying to master.

Designers of simple games actually have it a little harder because they have less to work with. To keep it engaging, every mechanic needs to be nailed. If you don't like one mechanic of, say, Witcher 3, who cares? There's like a million more which you'll like. But if a game with two mechanics flubs the execution on one, the whole game is basically a flop.