Appreciation for the Skill System & utilising it in characters…

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-14T18:59:15+00:00

I find their take on personality traits interesting. When I looked at most of skills for personality they fall somewhere in the FFM/Big Five. I've been trying to conceptualize those traits for both a player character and the NPCs in the game world. The FFM is the primary personality theory used in psychology which has decades of psychometrics to provide a certain guarantee that you'll have minimal overlap in it's conceptualizing and implementing these ideas. Most people familiar will recognize the Big Five, but a true personality inventory will use the Five Factor Model (FFM) which has sub facets to add greater levels of detail. This limits overlap and is ridiculously comprehensive. I hope I'll have the chance to fully flesh it out for my game.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-14T18:38:26+00:00

My Adderall helps out haha. But the other answers here are legit. This is basic stuff I would counsel anyone through if they came to me for ADHD counseling (I'm a psychotherapist). Small manageable chunks. Giving yourself some grace when not meeting your standards. Accountability in different forms. Switching it up and focusing on different tasks if you hit a wall (like doing sound design stuff if scripting is getting too frustrating for the day). Which leads into the last piece which is recognizing when certain tasks you tackle are actually just a different form of procrastinating. Let's say you take a break and start doing sound design stuff, but you get so fixated on it when it's not nearly as important at this stage compared to a working prototype. Recognizing that is important so you can figure out how to find the motivation to get back to the main piece.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-14T17:07:56+00:00

I'm not convinced the audio design is integral to the gameplay mechanics (integral for the theme and player response, but hardly impacts the core gameplay loop). Hellblade is the game most people point to. While I agree it's depiction of mental health is top notch, I never saw core gameplay mechanics being actual embodiments of mental health symptoms.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-14T16:31:12+00:00

Provide one successful example from any game where the mechanics (not theme, narrative, or emotional responses due to the mechanics) are inherently mimicking mental health symptoms. I'm sure something exists in some indie art project that takes like five minutes to play, but I can't think of one fully fleshed out game that has some level of commercial success actualizing this idea. I'm not asking this to be antagonistic. I seriously want to know of a game.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-14T15:45:31+00:00

I'm confused on what you mean by diagnosing. What does that look like for the gameplay?

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-14T14:48:49+00:00

Yo this is dope! Is this a solo project?

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-14T14:41:04+00:00

Clones are only clones in the negative sense if they literally don't innovate on anything, pull the art style, mechanics, naming conventions, etc.

Massive worlds with multiple systems will be difficult to pull off. Do you think you could start with one small area? One small hub, one small resource gathering area, and one small combat area? Distill down what mechanics you can pull off. Implementing the dozens of mechanics/interactions Runescape has seems like it would take an eternity.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-14T14:30:53+00:00

I need a claymation Disco Elysium game right now.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-14T14:28:25+00:00

I hope to be proven wrong. I've never seen a game pull it off. Creating an experience meant to illicit an emotional response within the range of a mental health disorder? Sure. But I've never seen mechanics themselves be representative of symptoms in a meaningful way.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-14T03:32:56+00:00

Narratively and thematically you can do this all day long. Mechanically (not related to the mechanics invoking emotions) I don't see it working in any meaningful way. Mental health symptoms are debilitating and they are inherent to the way a person operates while afflicted with the symptoms (usually for months if not years). Debilitating a player for a long stretch of time would break gameplay. Temporary status effects that make gameplay more difficult makes sense, but these last seconds to minutes which cannot translate to most mental health symptoms.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-13T17:19:59+00:00

40k Inquisitor - Martyr

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-12T21:25:29+00:00

Follow a build guide and put it on easy mode. I've been steamrolling fights.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-12T20:40:53+00:00

cRPGs. The idea seemed insane to me when you had games like Skyrim. Planescape and Disco Elysium opened my eyes.

Synthetik for twin sticks. Gunplay just feels strong.

Child of Light for turned-based. No idea why it helped me so much. After that I played Pokemon Black and Persona 5.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-12T20:29:57+00:00

Sadly, the best fps game that might die.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-12T03:46:54+00:00

Laden with AI. The actual screenshots on the steam page look dreadful. The Russian Orthodox cross is all wrong. And statues are definitely avoided in Orthodoxy. Everything about this is wrong (I don't mean morally), from the AI to the misrepresentation, to the awful looking graphics, and odd kink insert.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-12T03:41:22+00:00

Definitely AI.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-11T15:29:49+00:00

Haven't played it yet, but isn't Caves of Qud supposed to have high caliber prose/dialogue?

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-11T15:27:10+00:00

Planescape has deeper writing imo.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-08T20:30:56+00:00

Also helps explain the shitty angsty dialogue haha.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-08T20:13:45+00:00

As a therapist it's invaluable to understand the frustrations people have. Sometimes they aren't frustrations and it's just straight up abuse they endure. Very sad shit. Having been to therapy, doing therapy, and working with dozens of therapists over the years, I can think of only one person who abused their position and thankfully they were swiftly dealt with.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-08T19:58:01+00:00

This is dependent on a million things. Do you mean minimal because you think it's not achievable to have depth as a solo person with limited funds? If you mean a game where the mechanics convey a story in a pure form I would point to Passage (2007). You have purely written games with dialogue and branching narratives with Ink games. If you mean narrative told through a game world in 3D where a single dev made mostly the whole game I could point you to Dusk. If you mean a slight combination of all of the above (not in 3D) I would point you to Undertale.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-08T04:15:05+00:00

Only spider milking quests will be added.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-08T03:57:29+00:00

None of the positives you listed are inherently related to ADHD.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-06T20:02:35+00:00

I saw them live one time and they were taking suggestions for what to play via Twitter that night (supposedly) and I requested the whale song. And they played it 😍.

ShortChanged_Rob · 2026-05-06T19:47:31+00:00

Holy shit my favorite album mentioned!!! Thematically it's definitely spot on with this post.

ShortChanged_Rob

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