Open MicroChasm opened 4 years ago
nsmryan
commented
4 years ago What are some examples? I could see things like complementary movement patterns, or distance attacking vs close up attacking being synergistic.
There is also a possibility of some monsters that interact with the environment, like burning up any grass, or leaving rubble when they move. Or a monster that gains health when it goes over rubble, which absorbs into its body.
MicroChasm
commented
4 years ago I like the idea of monsters interacting with the environment, for sure. It adds another layer of complexity and importance to terrain tiles, which follows design goals.
As far as monster synergy, I want to, for the sake of argument, split synergies into two categories- mild and major. I think that we would need to either avoid or be very sparse with major synergies. An example would be many small monsters that fight in close combat, and a wizard behind them that raises them from the dead when they fall, like the fetishes in Diablo 2. Another example would be a group of close combat monsters and one that put them in a frenzy state (moths of wrath + Orb Guardians). While these do lead to interesting situations, I don't believe that they will work as well for a game where destroying monsters is not straight-forward. Also, I find these synergies to be both stressful and not that fun, since the conclusion is obvious-- kill the moth of wrath first. Kill the necromancer first.
A mild synergy might be a close combat monster and a ranged monster that can shoot through its tile. I can imagine a golem tile with a round, open chest that allow projectiles to pass through. Another example might be a monster that can do AOE and another that does ranged damage (like Hoplite). Combined, they may be able to quickly cut off your movement options. Witches, and sorcerers in Hoplite are another option, because their similar attacks work together. Double rooks in chess work this way as well. These could also be called soft synergies, though this is a slightly different issue. I will have to think about actual ideas we can implement, and we may need to brainstorm.
We’ve discussed a bit that the monsters are currently fairly simple in the game. While this isn’t bad, I do think that it is an area where a little more complexity would make the game interesting. Taking another lesson from Crawl, I think that we should consider monsters thats synergize with one another. This makes them interesting to pick apart, and the player has to prioritize one monster over another. This is what makes the latter parts of crawl interesting, along with monsters that remove or invalidate the player’s defenses.