by Solitarios » Sun Apr 07, 2013 8:18 am
Alright, here's my two cents.
This game has a lot of potential. There are a few things that I think can be done to improve upon the design however. In my opinion I think that the idea of using the mouse click for both moving and shooting isn't a good idea. As people have said before this system often leads to people accidentally moving when they are trying to shoot. Now, I know that you have the hold position button, I'll get to that later. What I think that you should do for the gameplay is this:
Start by switching the movement mechanic over to the A and D keys. This will improve movement immensely and get rid of accidental movement while shooting. Next, make it so that instead of clicking precisely upon the limb you want to dismember, have the plasma cutter fire a sort of projectile. The projectile will fly in a straight line and dismember any limbs that it makes contact with. In order to keep it from getting over powered make it so that there's no penetration; it can only dismember one necromorph's limb per shot, just like in the original game. By making the shooting projectile based this makes the complaints about a small hit box almost irrelevant. I'd also advise that you add a slightly longer recovery time on the necromorphs once they've lost their first set of limbs. This gives the player a much better fighting chance against larger hoards of enemies. Now on to the hold position function. I think that instead of its only function being to force you to stay put, it should also add some other form of combat perk. For example it could increase Ellie's accuracy, allowing her to dismember multiple necromorphs' limbs with a single shot. It could also increase damage resistance or increase health.
Now, if you are especially fond of the using the mouse for everything approach here's another idea of mine:
Start by increasing the size of the hit box. If you want to make it so that you have to click directly upon the limb you want to cut off, then the current hit box is too small, and should be increased in size. The idea about an increased recovery for necromorphs after losing a limb applies here as well. Next, for the hold position option I say forget about the other options I listed above and go with increased accuracy in the form of an increased hit box. The problem with clicking directly on the limb that you want to dismember is that you'll miss often. Making it so that when you hold position you get an increased enemy hit box will give the player a much higher incentive to use the option.
Now I have some other idea's that don't apply to the current gameplay mechanics.
First off, upgrade. I haven't seen it in the game, or in the other posts (I could have just missed them), but I advise using a tree system, like in your previous games. As for getting the upgrade points, I think that it should either be the necromorph corpse or power nodes. Like in the original power nodes would be a lore friendly way of doing upgrade points. However, using the necromorph corpse will add a choice. Do I want to be tougher/faster/deadlier or do I want to get this new sex scene. This choice will make your resources far more valuable. If you decide to go down the second path then I also advise increasing the number of samples you get from each corpse. If you only have one resource that resource should naturally become more readily available. I'd personally recommend increasing the number of samples from necromorphs to two. You could also make it so that more common enemies require more samples to get their respective goodies and that rarer/tougher enemies require fewer.
Another Idea I had was that if you intend to integrate different suits into the game that each suit offers a unique perk and/or sex animation. The addition of a unique perk per suit shouldn't be too hard to do. I also think that the perks should be double edged swords; providing some benefits and some downsides. As for the animations, this would definitely be far more difficult and time consuming. Depending on the number of suits you could increase the amount of work you have to do by a huge amount. That's why this is only an idea. I do think that the extra animations would add even more incentive to use the samples for sex scenes however, if you decide to use the aforementioned second choice for upgrades.
Anyway, that's just my opinion on the matter. I Hope that my insight was of at least some help. Keep up the good work.