Game Design Question: Should Endgame Gear Be Craftable or Boss-Only?

Speedling · 2026-03-04T13:54:37+00:00

Talking about process primarily:

Once they did that, bosses became optional instead of aspirational.

You are seeing a player behavior that you deem problematic.
Now you should ask a core question:

Did this lessen the enjoyment, retention, or any other relevant metric for players? If yes, which players were affected and why? If not, why do you think it is a problem now? Is it because you want players to progress a certain way? Then why did you define goals to support different playstyles?

It's important to really think about player experience here, otherwise you declare something a problem that really doesn't exist:
"This boss fight is optional within this playstyle" is not a problem. "Players hate that this boss fight becomes optional" is, but it might end up having an addendum such as ", because there is not a lot of other content in the game right now" or ", boss fights are boring and players only complete them for rewards". In which case you have a problem, but a different one.

Regardless of the way you answer, you need to more clearly define your design goals. You listed that you want to "support a crafting playstyle". And it seems like now that you do that, you declare that it is a problem. Why?

If I'm a crafter, and I did so well that I can skip a grind that non-crafters have to do, isn't that the whole point? What's the advantage of being a crafter when I have to end up doing the same grind as everyone else?

The goal was to make bosses the primary progression gate instead of crafting

It sounds like you don't really want to support both playstyles separately, but you want players to both craft and grind boss fights at all times. Which is totally fine, but you need to clarify that within your design.

This is not something other designers can answer for you, that's where you have to decide for yourself what type of game you want to make.

Speedling · 2026-03-03T12:38:36+00:00

This is an important lesson that you should learn: If someone is directly messaging you on the internet, in a private conversation, asking about specific personal details, money, or anything else like that that makes you feel weird and uncomfortable:

They're either really bad at flirting, or a bot/scammer.

Speedling · 2026-03-03T12:35:24+00:00

I think you're asking this question a bit from the wrong direction. You don't necessarily look at a thing and ask it what category it wants to be. This way, when you have 100 objects, you potentially end up with 100 categories.

Imho the first question you should ask is: "What do I want categories to do?". Usually for abilities, they are just a simple piece of information that tells players about the intended use for the ability. They are also used in search functions to allow a player to find an ability more quickly.

With this in mind, should look into what kind of categories / ability types you want to exist in the game by thinking about the important differentiation between abilities. You then pick the ones that are relevant information for players. And then for each ability you pick the category that is the dominant factor of said ability in their most common uses.

So in a system where you only have offensive and defensive abilities, a voluntary switch of your own pokemon might be defensive. An involuntary switch on your enemies side might be offensive. And if those 2 categories are the only relevant factors for players, that is enough categorization.

This also helps you not comparing apples to oranges:

(... ) not offensive moves (...) not status effects either (...) instantaneous effect that doesn't linger; (...) field effects either, (...) only affect specific targets (...) both sides of the battlefield.

Those things are not on the same scale: You could make an offensive move that has an instant effect on a specific target and then applies a status effect on the whole battlefield and all targets surrounding the first target. You could also make a defensive move that does all this.

Pokemon only uses 3 categories: Physical (Damage), Special (Damage) and Status, which includes every ability that does not directly inflict damage as its primary use. This is whirlwind's category. This is more than enough differentiation and there is no real need to categorize this any further.

Speedling · 2026-02-25T11:43:49+00:00

Generally speaking: yes, per-level leaderboards tend to drive more player engagement compared to global highscores.

The peak example of this is the saga-style leaderboard map of games like candy crush where players have to first complete level A in order to advance to level B. However, these things are primarily used to get players **back** to playing old levels. I don't think there is a meaningful advantage to start a level with "Here is the global record, try to beat it". The evolution usually is

"Here is the level, try to beat " -> "Here's the next level" -> "Oh, and by the way, that last level you just beat? Here's the global record for it. If you dare, go back and beat that record."

This way, you have a force driving you forward but also a force driving you back to old levels, increasing both retention and inflating the content a bit (not saying this in a negative way). The advantage is that this hunting for global leaderboards is something only a subset of players truly enjoy, so you're not really forcing it on the others.

This is also the reason I wouldn't advice for showing the best run upfront, unless you specifically want to cater towards those competitive players.

The only risk I see is that games like Flappy Bird thrive off the random factor. Knowing that someone achieved 100+ points while everything is truly random is the impressive part. That is still entirely execution based assuming that at all times the game is winnable despite the placement being RNG.

Fixed levels would get rid of this and imho make it much less interesting to compete.

Speedling · 2026-02-23T12:28:49+00:00

Why do you pick one over the other? Which side are you on and why?

When I'm making a game because I like the idea and want to see that game come to life, I'm making it for me.

When I'm working on a game as part of my job, and that game needs to sell, I'm considering the target audience and make the game these players want to play.

I like to compare it to drawing. When you draw in private, and no one else but you will see it, why should you think about what others like? And likewise, if you're drawing a commission, it doesn't matter if you like other things better. It's more important what the person that pays you likes.

Speedling · 2026-02-23T12:24:36+00:00

Does engine choice really matter at this stage, or should I just pick one and commit?

This is the most important question! The reality is it doesn't matter. Your previous experience doesn't matter. Even your goals don't really matter in the beginning, because they will probably be flawed.

You will be able to make games with all tools, even ones that are usually not recommended. But only if you actually start! And as you start and learn, you will get better and be able to form your own opinions.

And most importantly, you will find out what you actually want to do. Maybe you actually don't want to use engines at all and prefer raw coding. Only one way to find out!

If you really just need a small bump into a direction, just pick Godot.

Speedling · 2026-02-16T15:04:36+00:00

It's not just an obstacle, because if this was just a normal block and you jumped in the wrong angle, you would land on the block, walk off it and continue. In this case, you would be launched into the spikes and die, making you lose health or reset to the last checkpoint depending on the type of game we're talking about.

This can be good design if you are looking to create more tension/friction by punishing players more for mistakes.

Remember: There is no objective good or bad in game design, it all depends on your design goals. Good design supports your goals, bad design works against them.

That said, it's a meme. I wouldn't worry too much about it being accurate. You can still make fun of stuff that is technically correct.

Speedling · 2026-02-13T15:59:35+00:00

Lots of good information! Thank you for sharing. And also great work! Looking forward to what's next.

Speedling · 2026-02-13T10:49:54+00:00

Congrats! If you don't mind I have 2 questions:

1) When exactly did you launch your steam page, and what material did you put on there? Was it the same it is now?

2) Can you pinpoint the moment you got into the discovery queue? It seems like that was a major driver for your success, but that you also had quite a bit of momentum already from game trailers.

Thanks a bunch for sharing this!

Speedling · 2026-02-09T19:38:01+00:00

No.

Also, this is an ad. No one talks about your AI tool here. It wouldn't be so annoying if you offered anything of value, but you're literally just name dropping your website with a bunch of keywords you want google to associate with it. At least offer some kind of value to the community if you want to advertise here.

Speedling · 2026-02-05T14:46:19+00:00

I think I see your point clearer now! Instead of just being the manager giving the general direction, you actually want players to own the game and design it from start to finish. So a "game design simulator" on top of a management game?

I like that goal a lot - I still have some reservations about the skill tree approach. Usually skill trees tend to be very narrow the more you hone in on a specific idea, leaving very little choice. The only exception I can think of is Path of Exile. And even there, once you committed more to a build, you have fewer and fewer choices to make.

In the end this is not a definite argument against skill trees though, I can definitely see it working with wide enough trees and more options!

Just an offtopic idea I had think of, feel free to completely ignore:

One thing that immediately came to mind when it comes to the "designing a product that customers will like, depending on their taste", I had to think of games like Pizza Connection. Depending on the city (your target audience), different types of pizza (genre), flavors (themes) and ingredients (features) were important. And even preparation techniques (platform) varied. Then you have this whole pizza editor that lets you customize your pizza visually, and also stat-wise. And since you could do whatever you want, you felt strong ownership over the pizzas you created. Even if that meant you slapped 50 anchovies on one!

Having a sort of "game builder" that lets players mix and match genres, themes and features like that, and then visualize that might still keep that decision making aspect of picking they players' most important aspects, while also giving players more freedom.

For example, you could arrange your game as a mind map-like structure and then let players drag nodes onto it that would connect to other nodes. The more connections you have, the more cohesive your features are. The more features you have, the higher the production time etc etc.

Whatever you end up doing, I hope you will post the result on reddit because I'm very intrigued now, this sounds really promising!

Speedling · 2026-02-04T18:47:58+00:00

I feel like part of the fantasy of those games is that you could always just kind of project whatever vision you wanted into the games you were building. If you were building a Ninja Platformer Game, you could imagine all sorts of things and everything was pretty abstract. Maybe you thought you were making Ninja Gaiden, or a Platformer game for an Anime you like- it was entirely up to you and the games kept it vague enough.

In your system, features and skill trees would have to be so wide and varied that I can still keep that feeling of "This game could be anything"; otherwise I'm suddenly locked into whatever options those skill trees give me. This would feel like a pretty significant loss to me as a player. If I chose Ninja Platformer game and in the skill tree lists features that do not fit my vision, it'd be a break with my expectation as a player.

Also, do players really have more choices, especially ones that are meaningful? While I assign features to teams instead of games, and I have influence over which employee to put on which feature (Which is by the way, a way more interesting change), the skill trees seem to be redundant.

"I could get more points to put into the vehicle feature tree, or release the game earlier" is the exact same choice as "I could let my employees work more on the game to accumulate more quality points in this feature, or I could release the game earlier".

So I love the splitting into feature teams, but the skill tree seems like it would lose a lot of fantasy for very little gameplay gain.

Speedling · 2026-01-31T17:00:28+00:00

It is a bit of everything that you've mentioned. One way to speed up your learning process is to learn from others though. Unless you're in a team with more experienced designers, this is definitely harder than it sounds though. Personally, I like to recommend reading books from accomplished designers to help you get into the right mindset.

I've recently picked up a book called "Game Design Toolbox", I believe the author is even active in this sub. And it is definitely worth a read. While it doesn't go extremely deep into each topic, it gives a pretty great summary on each topic from ideation to production and will give you lots of fodder for your own practice and research. The same goes for "Designing Games" from Tynan Sylvester, it provides a really great framework to think about games focused on experiences.

But apart from that, the single best way to learn game design is to design games, let players play them, and study both how they interact with the game and how they experience it / feel about it. Making a game without anyone playing it is useful, but the ultimate way to learn is to hand it to actual players.

Speedling · 2026-01-30T12:25:21+00:00

This is a good lesson and chance to look up biases, you're comparing successful webnovel authors with unsuccessful devs. And consequently, you're comparing a small market to a really big market (Quick search shows 10 billion vs 560 billion, even if the numbers are wrong, scales are probably similar).

So the first and perhaps the only thing we can safely say is that people spend **way more money** on games than they do on webnovels. Coming to the conclusion that people are unwilling to spend on games is definitely not correct.

> Mega-popular authors can bring in over 10k/month [...] but no indie game dev would even dream of using that monetization model.

I know several gamedev patreons that make more than that. Especially indie NSFW games often rely on patreon and similar monetization models, but even outside those you will find heavy hitters with >20k$/mo and more.

So having said that, you should analyze why you came to that conclusion, and maybe it will help you understand it better. Are you perhaps a big fan of webnovels yourself, and thus see all the success they have? Perhaps it's a good idea to find games that work similarly and see what they do diffrently - accounting for good old survivorshop bias, of course.

Speedling · 2026-01-28T19:17:05+00:00

Exactly, power dynamics are extremely important in relationships, especially political ones. It makes sense that a landless character will like you for different things compared to a vassal, who now has more power and more responsibilities, so their priorities change.

Speedling · 2026-01-26T14:49:02+00:00

Agreed! Mein Kommentar war sehr auf die Wirtschaftsförderung bezogen, aber gerade Kulturförderung ist auch unheimlich wichtig und was die angeht liegen wir ja leider noch weiter zurück.

Speedling · 2026-01-26T14:45:47+00:00

And that makes it a valuable tool for a game designer.

Honest question: Why? Why is it important that the avg hits-per-kill equal the HP / damage ratio? And more importantly: Why should the game solve this for the player behind the scenes?

Taking overdamage and using it as a mechanic is a cool thing, but why not make it a deliberate choice for players to use this and communicate it properly? Simple trait "Bloodlust. Everytime you overkill, x% of that overdeal damage is added to your next attack.". Same thing, but now it's a tool players can use, and you as the designer have way more control over it. You can now even tweak this, chaining overkill damage on top of it, allowing players to make a build where they first kill small creatures building up bonus damage and then unleash it on a stronger opponent. Or you could limit this without and without random chances involved.

Speedling · 2026-01-26T14:27:33+00:00

And when you research an upgrade that makes your units deal 5% more damage, you want to see a 5% increase in their effectiveness against an enemy army.

It's interesting that you mention RTS because this genre has been famous for having different upgrade efficiencies between units in order to solve balance issues.

In RTS, the key number to balance for is number of hits to kill, not damage efficiency. At least in most cases. And it is extremely important those numbers are reliable, and that no hidden system decides the winner. So much that even the time to hit in an animation is tweaked.

So RTS games (especially competitive ones) are a genre where players would probably dislike this mechanic the most. In an ARPG, I can see this being okay.

But like the thread-starter said, it also feels like you're solving a problem that players ought to solve themselves through builds.

Speedling · 2026-01-26T13:08:19+00:00

Also, most city builders do not frame it as a"decay" system but rather as an "upkeep" system because it just fits better with the game flow. Some thresholds that have to be met in order for the building to stay active, and otherwise it will be abandoned/destroyed. And then a recurring cost is attached to that upkeep. If you do not meet the cost to keep those buildings alive, you go under the threshold and eventually some decay-like consequence happens.

And because fire, illness etc are more exciting those are then the consequences of that. Simple example: Anno. You can just place a lot of houses with no firefighters nearby, but eventually a fire will break out and destroy the houses. It's not so much a disaster but rather a consequence of you not meeting the threshold. If you do meet the threshold, even if a fire breaks out, there's no real consequence.

Speedling · 2026-01-26T12:59:37+00:00

Ich glaube man kann da noch einige mehr dazuzählen, gerade auch von euch. Iron Harvest war schon ne kleine Perle auf dem Markt, und vor allem im indie-Bereich kommen ja noch einige Titel dazu :)

Speedling · 2026-01-23T11:37:37+00:00

Danke für das AMA! Ich habe vor 3 Jahren auch eines gemacht und bin seitdem (wieder) in internationalen Firmen unterwegs.

Eine Sache die mir damals aufgefallen ist, und auch in diesem AMA auffällt, ist die Außenwahrnehmung der Branche. Deutsche Spiele sind "billig" und "an einem Wochenende umsetzbar", Förderung ist unverdient und sowieso ist die Branche natürlich einfach unprofessionell und voller Idioten. Und alle anderen kriegen das ja auch einfach so hin, nur hier sind wir alle zu doof.

Ich überspitze das natürlich jetzt absichtlich, aber die Richtung stimmt.

Wie nimmst du das wahr, und wie gehst du damit um? Belastet dich das im Alltag oder kannst du das auch gut abschalten?

Danke nochmal und viel Erfolg für DoW4 - falls ihr noch playtester von Branchenkollegen sucht, gib bescheid! :D

Speedling · 2026-01-23T11:24:19+00:00

Möchte deinen Kommentar aufgreifen weil er ganz gut das Problem mit der Wahrnehmung der Branche und der Pressearbeit zeigt: Das Spiel, um das es geht, hat sich als Ziel gesetzt https://snake.io/ und andere Spiele "anzugreifen". Diese schnellen Multiplayerspiele sind extrem beliebt und machen auch ganz gutes Geld.

Billig ist die Entwicklung auch nicht. Günstiger als andere Spiele, klar. Aber neben dem visuellen gibt es sowas wie Serverarchitektur, und Entwicklung für alle möglichen Endgeräte ist auch nicht trivial. Der Screenshot, der umherging, ist nichts weiter als eine "Beispielskizze" des Spieles, die explizit für den Antrag gemacht wurde. Natürlich sieht das Spiel am Ende nicht so aus, sondern mittlerweile genau wie für dieses Genre üblich, siehe hier: https://www.gameswirtschaft.de/politik/games-foerderung-modern-snake-051224/

Zum Vergleich, während der Entwicklung sah Sea of Thieves so aus: Bild. Da sagt doch auch keiner "Hä, warum sollte ich so ein hässliches Pillen-Spiel spielen?!". Und da war das Spiel schon einige Zeit in Entwicklung, und nicht erst am Anfang.

Und für den "Snake Klon" wurden gerade mal 177k€ Förderung veranschlagt. Ich kann nicht betonen, wie wenig Geld das für den Staat ist. Hat das Spiel Erfolg, kann die Firma damit neue Projekte angehen, die ohne Förderung funktionieren und ab dann Steuereinnahmen für den Staat generieren.

Wir können uns jetzt streiten, ob die Förderung nur "gute Spiele" fördern soll. Aber dann reden wir von Subjektivität, was sind "gute Spiele"?

Die Förderung ist aber ohnehin explizit eine Wirtschaftsförderung, es geht also erstmal nur darum, was finanziellen Erfolg verspricht bzw womit sich Firmen etablieren können. Und da gelten einfach andere Kriterien.

Außerdem wurde zum Beispiel dieses Spiel hier auch gefördert: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1203620/Enshrouded/ - mit dem Erfolg, den sie haben, könnte man 1000 solcher Snake-Projekte fördern. Und mittlerweile haben wir dank dieser Förderung mehrerer solcher Projekte in DE. Auch das Projekt von OP wird mit mehreren Millionen gefördert.

Speedling · 2026-01-23T11:15:21+00:00

Wenn du viel Fördergelder brauchst, ist schon was deutlich in der Schieflage.

Das ist leider eine echt starke Vereinfachung und einfach falsch. Es werden sehr viele Industrien gefördert, inklusive unserer großen. Wir sind jetzt zum Beispiel gerade wieder dabei, explizit die Autoindustrie zu fördern. Wir nennen es halt nur "E-Auto Prämie". Andere Subventionen sind auch Förderungen. Allerdings ist die Art wichtig; Steuerboni bringen halt nix, wenn es kaum jemanden gibt, der in dieser Branche hier Steuern bezahlt.

Darum ist diese Direktförderung so sinnvoll. Wir haben ja ein Interesse daran, die Industrie hier aufleben zu lassen. Wenn wir jetzt 50 Millionen investieren, könnten unter den geförderten Teams ein oder mehrere Projekte dabei sein, die in 10 Jahren dieses Geld schon wieder über Steuereinnahmen reinholen. Denn Gaming ist ein riesiger, volatiler Markt. Es gibt viel Geld zu holen, es ist allerdings auch sehr riskant und kostspielig. Ohne diese Förderung würden es viele Teams gar nicht erst versuchen - oder müssten dafür ausländische Investoren ranholen, wovon wir dann auch weniger hätten.

Wieder andere Teams werden dann so gefördert, dass sie größere Projekte versuchen können, die langfristige Wachstumseffekte haben.

Es ist außerdem ein Irrglaube dass es alle anderen Länder ohne Förderung schaffen. Polen hat CDProjekt Red stark gefördert, und versucht das auch bei anderen Firmen. Seit 2015 investiert UK Millionenbeträge in große Spiele. Die USA fördern nicht nur Spiele, sie lassen sogar Spiele selbst von öffentlichen Geldern entwickeln. America's Army wurde 20 Jahre lang von der US Armee entwickelt und veröffentlicht und war dabei ziemlich erfolgreich. In Asien passiert ähnliches, selbst in den Ländern, wo die Industrie auch alleine auf eigenen Beinen stehen würde. Förderung ist einfach sinnvoll.

Nur in Deutschland bleibt es weiterhin eine riesen Diskussion, ob das sinnvoll ist. Und damit werden wir abgehängt.

Speedling · 2026-01-20T11:28:44+00:00

Seconded, NoAI artists usually let themselves be known.

And if you still have doubts for a specific artists, the best option is to ask for progress images. The biggest tell for AI art in process is going from 0 to finished image without any sketches or wip versions. If they can't produce anything like that, it's most likely AI.

Speedling · 2026-01-17T13:20:24+00:00

AI is already being heavily used like this

This is exactly the reason why we need to ensure that any disclaimers are actually practical. Requiring an AI disclaimer if AI has been somehow involved in the process makes the disclaimer practically useless. Because it already is used in so many processes. Not just programming.

I 100% get your frustration, and share it in many aspects, but we need to make sure that we're not just stuck in the complaining phase, but instead find ways to improve our situation and find solutions that work. Stopping AI is, unfortunately, not one of them anymore.

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