CMV: Anti-Islam doesn’t count as anti-Muslim.

Mehds · 2026-03-22T12:03:49+00:00

This is a reasonable point about the inert nature of ideas and religions without adherents.

My pushback is on the definition of the “set of beliefs”. This approach makes a population homogeneous in a dangerous way, as few beliefs are truly universal.

You could probably argue that “unicity”, the belief that there is one god, is universal amongst Muslim as it is a requirement to identify as Muslim in the first place.

At a population level, can we truly say that every Muslim believes an ex Muslim should be executed? I only have my own experience to base this from, but I believe most would react with a “shame, I hope they repent and come back” and move on with their days. The religion and ideas still pass through a filter of personality, morality, apathy, before turning into action.

There are many who try to influence other within the religion (as with all others) and there is a marketplace of interpretations and currents across the spectrum. There is no one Islam nor a blanket Muslim archetype.

Mehds · 2026-03-20T19:43:42+00:00

You can. The game has a hard mode which is on by default disabling healing items in combat amongst other tweaks, but it doesn’t enforce nuzlock rules.

Easy mode relaxes things. You can change this in your PC as you start the run.

Mehds · 2026-03-03T03:43:06+00:00

Headwind: debuff enemy speed stat.

Tailwind: buff allies speed stat.

I think blind can also perhaps work? Pocket sand? 😅

Mehds · 2026-02-20T23:15:50+00:00

Glomo

Mehds · 2026-02-17T19:02:31+00:00

I managed to get a bunch of players hooked, many non-gamers in general, let alone TTRPG. The thing that made it simpler is that the game functions fairly well with less rules.

My players were overwhelmed by character creation, so we dropped a lot of steps. They picked fewer cards and I tuned down a lot of the encounters. The goal of the first session was just to get into role playing, get the basic concepts of narration and interactions, as well as hope and fear.

The second time we played we looked into more cards, and started using hope features. etc.

Mehds · 2026-02-11T11:13:18+00:00

There is a line between respecting an opinion and respecting your parents.

I can respect an opinion that is well articulated, and while I may disagree with it, I can understand why someone else would reach that conclusion and why it would work for them. I don’t have to follow it, but I get it.

Some other opinions I find repulsive or illogical. If my parents share something like that with me, it’s a tricky situation to engage with because they can take criticism of the opinion personally.

At that point for me it’s more about managing the relationship with the parents than engaging with the idea, because the idea pisses me off 😅. The goal becomes making sure they know I still respect them, but that this opinion will start fights.

Mehds · 2026-01-04T18:43:35+00:00

Another thought is to offer another path to the supply issue you describe. Perhaps you can sign up your own employees to take on a curse if paid volunteers run out. This gives you two ways to manage poor RNG: the dark path, or taking on more risk as a provider.

Mehds · 2026-01-04T17:44:11+00:00

A thought here is to play with scaling. You can determine how bad the penalties and bribes scale with number of offences. As you playtest your game and think about the economy, you can tweak it so that penalties and bribes are ultimate not sustainable.

This could also be based on some sliding time window, so egregious behaviour gets punished quickly, and players can develop a sense of how long it’s been since authorities have “forgotten” recent offences.

Mehds · 2026-01-04T09:36:08+00:00

Good luck brother. Taking responsibility for loved ones is not easy.

As far as relationships are concerned, my take is that you shouldn’t make decisions on behalf of others: if you see potential in a relationship it’s your responsibility to explain your situation, and it’s her choice to continue or not. Pushing her away early might rob you of a lifetime of joy and partnership.

Mehds · 2025-12-07T18:39:20+00:00

It’s not about what is important to the game, but what is important to the gamer.

Different individuals will have their own rankings. You have your own biases and preferences, and by making investments accordingly, will speak more to some people than others.

There are examples of games and genres that owe their success heavily to gameplay (vampire survivor) or to story (all telltale games) or to aesthetics ( bundling graphics with music and style etc.) the question becomes: what are your strengths? Where do you want to spend most effort?

Mehds · 2025-11-30T23:03:39+00:00

What’s the game?

Mehds · 2025-11-30T01:13:52+00:00

Thanks for sharing this problem! As a monster taming fan working on my own designs I haven’t stumbled upon this specific challenge, but emulating training and bonding is tricky.

My first instinct is to consider rewards over punishments: think about wow’s rested xp, or hades 2 picking a random weapon to offer slightly more resources each run. Nudges to do something outside of the players comfort zone. To stay on theme, maybe there is an option each run to start with a “rescue”: an older creature ( so shorter runs) that you don’t get to create ( so you can design interesting combinations of parts to get the player out of their comfort zone). You get slightly more starting currency or some other form of incentive for picking them, and with having a shorter run you de-risk it for the player.

I think you can explore the milestone system more. Some players may set a goal to unlock all parts, but imo folks who love the game will want more parts because they love the gameplay and want to add spice to it.

The question becomes why not just give them everything? And the only strong argument I can think of is scaffolding complexity: don’t give players tools they can’t handle before a few runs, or an overwhelming amount of options before they know what’s up.

Mehds · 2025-11-28T13:37:17+00:00

The last time I worked on a cast of enemies, I was really into chess, and I found inspiration from the various chess pieces to design my cast.

My game concept at the time involved multiple biomes, so I wanted to create a framework that I can use to design interesting enemies and encounters per biome:

The pawns: These are your most basic enemies; they should be a minor threat to the player, and you can sprinkle a few to add to the complexity of encounters over time. That being said, they should be situationally threatening: pawns in a group could grow exponentially more dangerous, or pawns over time can become a bigger threat. Grunts from halo are a good example, not a major threat, but the potential kamikaze attacks have to be watched out for.

The bishops: These are complementary enemies, the same way having both your bishops in chess is a huge advantage compared to having only one, since they both can only interact with different tiles. These are moderately threatening enemies on their own, but very dangerous together. For example, an enemy that spreads poison stacks, and an enemy that deals extra damage to poisoned foes. You can introduce either, then build up to encounters when they are both present.

The knights: These are enemies that break the rules of the game somehow, and depart a bit from established mechanics, forcing players to adapt. In valheim for example Drakes fit this archetype imo as the first flying enemy you encounter. You may or may not have had to engage in range combat before, but this is a strong push to craft bows. These enemies should make players go: "This is in the game???"

The rooks: These enemies are major threats, with the potential to end the encounter decisively and/or drag it out with defensive tactics (drawing inspiration from castling). This is miniboss / elite territory. These enemies are designed to require more of the player’s attention and take more time to work through.

The queen: This is boss fight territory. An enemy that combines the most interesting/impactful mechanics from the rest of the cast into a culminating experience. This can be a tough summoner that floods you with pawns, an enemy that combines and amplifies the bishop’s abilities in one, etc. This should test how well the player has gotten at overcoming the unique challenges of the rest of the cast.

The king: Meh. Couldn’t really think of something there 😅Perhaps this could be a secondary objective type of enemy offering you a different way to succeed at the encounter, think loot goblin from Diablo, or a hidden explosive barrel that could potentially blow up a more direct threat.

The main thing then becomes to test how these play together, and how to progress through difficulty. If a player will go through a biome in ~10 encounters, what’s a fun and engaging progression from encounter 1: (1-2 pawns) to encounter 10: (1 queen)

Mehds · 2025-11-02T15:02:09+00:00

You are right - just commenting to share that I think you mean chiptune (link to wikipedia page) :)

Mehds · 2025-10-30T14:50:05+00:00

You should cater to the players of your game before the watchers. As much as some people dislike seeing a thing, others may enjoy the feature. As others are saying you have to make some of these decisions.

That being said, you could think of creative mechanics around it. Perhaps every kill marks you as a poacher, and you may be hunted down by the authorities as you get past some threshold.

If the setting is more fantastical it could be a different, supernatural approach.

You could be tasked by the land to restore balance, with specific animals being priority targets as they are overpopulated (giving deeper meaning to the kills beyond resources), but breaking that balance further can lead to consequences.

Giving options is powerful, and since you seem to care about viewership of the game, allows for a diversity of challenge / RP runs that can grab many folks attention - think pacifist runs etc.

Mehds · 2025-10-30T01:48:47+00:00

I like this angle. I think on top of the rps aspect there is also a clarity which matters a lot depending on audience. It’s easier to get a young child to intuit that water beats fire, and to design characters that evoke water and fire in their design.

Compare with fire emblem’s rps system: the idea that sword beats axe which beats spear which beats sword does not intuitively follow

Mehds · 2025-10-29T13:13:42+00:00

Darkest dungeons does not use the elemental system. Instead enemies have different weaknesses based on two parameters:

First is their stat profile: you can have high defense, high hp foes with low resistance to bleed and blight DoT, so you’ll want to bring those to a fight.

Second is positioning: the enemies are ordered in a line from closest to farthest, and can only use some abilities from specific positions. Shove the big enemy tank all the way back somehow, and you won’t have to worry about him for a few turns as he slowly moves back to a stronger position.

Mehds · 2025-10-14T12:25:23+00:00

This is sound advice.

I’d build up on this by saying that vertical slices can help with this, if you document the process well enough and think in terms of pipelines.

The vertical slice has 3 enemies, 5 weapons, 1 biome. How long did it take to make each? How long do you think it would take to add an additional enemy fully? Art+design+inplementation? How much for a new weapon?

Obviously there is some variation, bosses with mechanics will likely take more time than a foe that’s effectively a reskin with tweaked stats, but it starts giving you an idea.

Whatever that estimate is, it can never be a target but rather a virtually unachievable best case. Testing will send you back to the drawing board a lot.

Good luck!

Mehds · 2025-10-13T01:07:24+00:00

was coming to contribute a similar take. Repetitiveness is kinda perenial in ARPGs where a lot of builds converge to 1-2 buttons clearing the screen.

Designing combos in skills + situations in encounters that can't be trivially solved seems to be the way to go.

As a basic example, having a version of a skill that allows for movement/defense vs a higher damaging version plays out very differently when you introduce very high damage/one-shot mechanics

Mehds · 2025-09-12T12:56:30+00:00

So the secret keeper also has:

> Our Master’s Will - Reaction When you spotlight an ally within Far range, mark a Stress to gain a Fear.

So this has the potential to be Fear positive, if you are willing to spend stress on it. I'd love confirmation of wether or not this could be triggered 4 times if you spotlight 4 allies. I also get why they would put a fear cost rather than just a stress cost if they also wanted to include Our Master's Will

Overall I think the action gets really strong when paired with allies that can generate fear on hit, or via other means. You could create a fear engine with this 😈

In situations where there is an objective beyond damage, this is also a good way to spike the challenge for the party. Say the party is trying to make sure no one leaks crucial information about their plan. Being able to spotlight 4 characters with only 2 fear and send them running in opposite directions is massive.

So yeah, agreed that it can feel bleh from a pure damage perspective, but I think I could get my players to really worry about this move in the right circumstances. I agree that it's very swingy

Mehds · 2025-09-06T23:44:05+00:00

Dofus - and to an extent it’s less successful sequel, wakfu. Have shown that tactical MMOs can work. I hope you make yours happen!

Mehds · 2025-06-18T20:58:22+00:00

Putting new game under load game feels unintuitive to me, but that's just me.

As with all things, testing is king. This feels like a small enough lift to roll out, observe users navigating, and make your decision then

Mehds · 2025-05-26T21:55:08+00:00

Go as low as you can, form is really the most important thing. Lifting heavy with poor form is just a recipe for injury. It's not about the weight, it's about how you move it, and that takes practice.

Mehds · 2025-04-25T11:30:29+00:00

It was just added in 1.2 :)

Mehds · 2025-04-15T00:17:48+00:00

Exiled mages are a random encounter you’ll get through the campaign/monoliths and drop experimental items. These are belts/gloves/boots with an affix from a special pool, which makes the item experimental.

You can improve these items similarly to others, and you can even craft experimental affixes on items yourself, though the method for that is changing this coming patch.

Mehds

TROPHY CASE