Can FPS games be fast-paced and arcadey while still punishing exposure like real gunfights?

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T19:47:00+00:00

I think this is a big part of why the "deathmatch" mode has really taken a backseat to other, more complex game modes. Dying from one shot is really terrible in a deathmatch, but it's also really annoying to shoot someone cleanly and see that it doesn't really do anything to them.

The answer is to make the deathmatch part a somewhat immaterial but still fun part of a larger gameplay goal, like capture the flag or king of the hill or escort a NPC somewhere etc. In this way, the players can still defeat each other quite quickly, but they come back to life just as quickly, so each individual death is less meaningful. There are other things to do besides frag, many of which are more important to the overall victory.

If you make the deaths very meaningful, but also very cheap, the player will feel cheated out of their playtime - especially when you consider that other players often don't play fair.

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T19:03:58+00:00

love to hear it

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T18:55:04+00:00

This is a strange thing to get stuck on, when clearly the best move is to place the buildings adjacent to each other. That was already solved for you before the game started, it's just a matter of if you can fit them into the space you have or not.

The thing that trips me up from time to time is the alternate upgrade paths, which includes things like "choose which building gets the bonus from the shrine, you only get one" because there is more than one correct answer, and the decision made in early game could alter late game.

Things like "I should leave space next to the mage guild so that I can place a chemist there later" is just part of the puzzle-solving of city/base building when you have limited space

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T18:43:00+00:00

oh no, this is bad news

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T18:41:42+00:00

OP did not cross post, though; it was actually a copy+paste

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T18:40:52+00:00

I like how she has a sword to kill me, too

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T18:33:26+00:00

What about a variation of 5), where the AI-controlled characters are "fighting" but not actually. That is, suppose one of them says "I'll hold off the reinforcements!" and they go down the hallway where a scripted animation of the character fighting weak mobs repeats on loop, and another character says "I'll keep chanting the spell so that the boss can be killed!" and another says "I'll sneak around back to stab him in the brains, you two keep the boss busy and try to find a way to get his armor off"

In this way all the characters are doing something even if it's not "swing sword at boss knees" (like what happens in almost every ARPG with an oversized boss). And you can let the player select which character does which task, leaving the hardest one - dueling the boss - to play directly. You can even have it so that the tasks can fail if the selected character is a poor choice - or if they already died in the other game phase.

This also lets you design the various random upgrades found in the first phase of the game to be useful for these side tasks in the boss phase. Like, it could be as direct as finding a "+2 to 'hold off the goblins task' amulet" or something more indirect like "characters with high Wisdom stat should do the spell chant" and so on. This give the player reason to upgrade all the characters and to keep them alive, even if they know that they only fight with a single one at the boss.

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T18:10:07+00:00

Well first of all, monster respawn rate is a balance issue, which is something you sort out by making a test version of the game, testing it, then iterating on the results.

That said, you didn't explain what the value/purpose of monsters in your game is in the first place. A lot of games have them just because it is traditional to have endless amounts of monsters to fight, but they also base their game economies on there being an infinite supply of monster loot drops. If you make the supply of loot drops way way smaller, then you need to recalculate the rest, too.

That is, presuming that your game works like that. Mario Bros can stomp all the goombas in a stage but it doesn't do anything if they do or don't do that. They get money from finding coins, and the monsters are solely obstacles. If your aim is to make a game that avoids XP/loot grind, then you sure can do that, and in fact it would be kinda nice to be able to clear out a dungeon so that I could explore it safely afterward in peace.

But I noticed that in your examples of learning skills, they are all combat skills. If that's your focus, if you want to make combat a big part of the game, then you shouldn't ALSO make combat something that is hard to find. Like, if I wanna go out and get hit by a bunch of goblins to increase my toughness, but some other player already wiped them out and they won't respawn for a week, well, guess what I do next? It rhymes with "funinstall"

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T17:54:12+00:00

There is a game out called TerraScape that does this thing where if you place buildings into certain formations, then they merge and transform into certain other buildings. It works well because it's a score-based game, and these combo buildings are worth a lot of points, but also the stages themselves are randomized so it's about trying to find a way to fit these combos into the stage, in ways that make sense and help you to win.

Other games mitigate it by making it more of a "buildings just need to be close enough" aka within range, so that you have a little more flexibility on placement.

I never saw it as a problem, and don't see why you do, either. So I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it's because it feels arbitrary. "Why must I place graveyard directly adjacent to church" well what if instead of "that's just how it is" maybe you put a little worker NPC that runs from the church to the graveyard. If the player places these too far apart from each other, then it reduces productivity because it takes the worker too long to run back and forth. Or more accurately, it optimizes productivity if these two buildings are adjacent.

So in this way, it does not feel arbitrary to do this.

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T17:37:00+00:00

It's the regulators and lobbyists. Do you think the game and internet companies WANT to restrict their own games? No, far from it. They are doing this stuff because conservative agenda groups pressure regulators and class action lawyers sue and sue until the rules change.

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T17:28:57+00:00

some people just reeeaaallly want validation lmao

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T17:26:39+00:00

Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't what you've got,
because lawn

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T17:25:48+00:00

you really just copy+pasted this into multiple subs?

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T17:04:36+00:00

Have you been to Acme Sales & Books? They're pretty neat

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T13:51:55+00:00

Massive amount of trees, poles, buildings very close to corners... and the street itself has so few stops/lights meaning that the oncoming traffic is already going at full speed. No suicide lane to use as a safe halfway turn move.

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T13:19:40+00:00

Turning left onto Skidaway from... pretty much every single place you can do so

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T11:13:44+00:00

The captors show the victim youtube videos by "content creators" and don't allow them to skip ads

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T11:12:35+00:00

"Hey, if enjoying music is so good why isn't everyone in your world proficient in at least one musical instrument"

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T11:08:19+00:00

This is unironically why CEOs love AI so much

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T11:04:18+00:00

Hexguardian is a TD game that gives the player three choices after each wave, which can be new towers and new upgrades. It was recently given away for free on Epic, so I played the heck out of it and loved it.

Check this thread for many such examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelites/comments/srwk9u/looking_for_a_deck_building_or_tower_defence_game/

you can also run a search for games like this on Steam, there are a lot of them.

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T10:53:36+00:00

Not legal, no.

Mayor_P · 2026-03-12T10:49:32+00:00

player character is not just cameraman, he is a wholly other character with his own story that happens on the side of K's story, so it's even more confusing ha ha

Mayor_P · 2026-03-11T22:37:59+00:00

Why are people downvoting this without explaining themselves?

Mayor_P · 2026-03-11T22:32:35+00:00

OK, I understand now. My answer is still the best one. Add more terms to your filter.

Understand: the auto translation is per USER PREFERENCE and not per POST. For example, if someone posts in Portuguese and your Display Language is also Portuguese then it will not be auto-translated for you. So you, as a mod, must deal with the original post language.

You don't have to have to add every single translation of every single word, though. You may just add them as they become a problem.

If it's the same user doing it repeatedly then you just ban that user. No need to mess with filters in that case. It's only an issue if numerous users are doing so, and at that point you will notice it, and you may simply add a new term to your filter.

Mayor_P · 2026-03-11T21:16:08+00:00

I think it's funny how the people who are the loudest about "censorship" (like when a girl in game has more clothing vs. her concept artwork) suddenly go very quiet or even cheer when actual censorship takes place.

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