Feedback on experimental shooter ideas

[ExPorygon]

Hi, I'm pretty new here but I've visited before from time to time. I got into shmups through Touhou and consider myself to be fairly decent at them. Despite this, I still consider myself a bit of a novice just because of how limited my exposure to the genre outside of Touhou. I've been looking for recommendations for more games to play to alleviate that lack of experience, but that's probably a topic for another time.

I've gotten into developing my own shmups, mostly in a style similar to Touhou, and have been for several years now. However, I'm now looking to branch out into my own original games. I'm a lone developer simply looking to make games as a hobbyist project (at least for now). To that end, I've been brainstorming ideas and wanted to run one of them by you guys, since I'm sure most of you have a lot more experience.

I was originally going to just talk about the one bomb idea, but I decided it would be best if some more of the context was explained as well. I'll try to keep it simple:

• -The player gains currency during normal play (haven't decided the manner in which this is done yet). The currency is used to purchase shot type customization options between stages.
  -The player can also use the currency to purchase different bombs to use
  -Up to 3 (or maybe more, idk) different bomb types can be carried at once.
  -There will be a button to switch which bomb will be used when the bomb button is pressed. This brings the total number of buttons to 4: shoot, focus (player slow-move), bomb, and switch bomb

I have a number of concerns about these ideas:

• -Would breaks between stages for purchasing break the flow of gameplay too much?
  -Is switching between bombs to use too much of a hassle?
  -Is that too many buttons to manage?
  -I've heard that shmups with any sort of RPG type mechanics don't tend to be well received. How true is that and why? Not that my game would necessarily have a lot of RPG elements but I'd like to try to avoid the pitfalls with the ideas I already have.

These are all just ideas for now, so I haven't been able to test them to get any real feedback. Hopefully those few bullet points got the point across. If not, I'll try to clarify anything unclear. Thanks in advance for any advice you can give!

[mystran]

The "gain currency" type of approach tends to lead to "positive feedback" where players doing well in early stages find the later stages easier because they can afford better power-ups, etc. This is actually what happens with any RPG really, except RPGs usually allow one to "grind" to offset the problem you get if you fall too far behind the power curve.

Many of the better shmups actually attempt to do the opposite, by having a rank system of some sort as "negative feedback" where the game gets progressively harder as the player performance improves (eg. enemies shoot faster bullets, they shoot more often, have slightly more HP and/or patterns get more complex). This effectively makes the game easier for those trying to learn it, while providing more challenge for player trying to score or otherwise master the game (eg. one life clear or whatever).

In some games the rank can be managed (eg. by intentional suicides), while in others it's tied to your main scoring mechanics (eg. in order to score well you have to survive the high rank on top of doing whatever is required for score). Either way it can make a game more interesting in the long run as you keep getting challenged even as you learn the game. Then some games might not even use explicit rank as such, but have a scoring system in place that makes it a lot harder to play in a way that scores well, compared to just surviving through, by forcing the scoring player to take more risks and using less safe strategies, etc.

Either way, my hypothesis is that RPG elements are disliked so much because they tend to push the game away from the "ideal challenge" rather than towards it: they make it harder for those doing badly and easier for those doing well, where as the first group would need an easier game to enjoy it and the second group could use some more challenge.

[ExPorygon]

...

Either way, my hypothesis is that RPG elements are disliked so much because they tend to push the game away from the "ideal challenge" rather than towards it: they make it harder for those doing badly and easier for those doing well, where as the first group would need an easier game to enjoy it and the second group could use some more challenge.

That assessment makes a lot of sense! I've never been a fan of rank systems myself, but the direction away from rewarding good play to keeping a consistent challenge is something I should be exploring more. I've played several games that go overboard on rewarding the player in this way (usually in terms of extra lives or bombs) to the point that the game becomes too easy for those who know the tricks to game the system.

I guess the basic problem here is rewarding good play with a direct gameplay advantage. Either the player is bad and does extremely poorly because they never get enough of the upgrades or the player is good and does far too well cause they get a lot of them. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, so to speak. It's a balance nightmare at best. The farthest most shooters seem to go is rewarding good scoring with extra lives.

This gives me a new angle to come at these ideas. I don't want to completely abandon the concept, though. Perhaps some middle ground can be struck. The only idea coming to me right at this moment is to include some sort of mild ranking system based on the currency that the player has spent, or something like that. Would that be effective or would it just be a sort of band-aid fix? I'll be thinking more on this, regardless. Thanks for the insight.

EDIT: I've thought some more and came up with a couple more suggestions:
-A score bonus for currency not spent
-A static amount of currency gained per stage. In other words, the players cannot control how much currency they get to spend

[Neowing E.X.E.]

Hello I'm new too, and also working on developing a shmup. Your post cought my attention because it raises some interesting points. I think part of it is to consider your platform. My game is mobile, so small breaks to upgrade equipment and what not are necessary , but my idea is to make these stops cool and funny so while the hard core players might still be annoyed, they might forgive the break if it makes them laugh and/or is really necessary to prep for the next stage.

[Ixmucane2]

There is a straightforward, harmless reward for players who are doing well: score.
Whenever a player scores, he knows he's doing the right thing; when, in the same place, he scores better than before, he knows he's learning and improving; when the total score exceeds that of previous attempts or of someone else, it's an important achievement. And all without inappropriate positive feedback!

Powerups are only needed to provide an escalation, and many games tame positive feedback from catching powerup making the game easier by giving out almost certain and fixed powerups and making levels easily survivable at minimum power (without attempting to kill everything) but requiring maximum power for maximum score:

• if the player misses a powerup score is hurt
• if the player dies and loses all powerups score is seriously ruined, but there are often "free" powerups in order to reach a normal regime quickly

[Shepardus]

You could make it work, just think carefully about how you want players of different skills levels to experience your game. How do you expect their play style to change as they become more experienced with the game? Does the system you're thinking of synergize with that?

For some examples of existing shop systems, you can take a look at the Fantasy Zone series. The Gradius fangame GR3 also has a shop system where currency is obtained by uncovering hidden items in each stage. For what it's worth GR3 is very much an example of the "positive feedback" mystran mentioned, since when you die you lose all the currency you haven't spent. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing.

Regarding your bombs idea, if the bomb types are different enough and useful enough that I would actually want to make full use of the different types (as opposed to maybe using one of the bombs once in the game and ignoring it for the rest), it could justify having an extra button for it. You could also try out other control schemes, such as focus+bomb being one type and no-focus+bomb being another type, or holding the bomb button triggering another type.

I personally would stay away from systems that penalize your score for using currency, since that just means good players, and even players who aren't good but want to be or think they are, aren't going to use the system at all. It's a lot of effort to put into a system only to encourage players not to use it.

[mamboFoxtrot]

^ Yeah, don't pull a Sine Mora and waste effort making and touting systems but then having WR scoreplay be "move and shoot everything else is bad"

- - -

Would breaks between stages for purchasing break the flow of gameplay too much?

Most games with shops that I know of do it this way, so it shouldn't be a problem. FWIW, here's a short thread on shmups with shops:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=57770

Is switching between bombs to use too much of a hassle?

Depends on the usage, I guess. If it's the usual panic-button thing, then I don't see anyone really switching to the appropriate bomb-type before using it, instead probably planning ahead what bombs they would use. While having more than 3 types of bombs might be okay, I wouldn't suggest letting the player carry more than three types, as after that cycling through them would become cumbersome.
I mean, if you want to get really silly, you could have bombing pause the game for a bit and pull up a ring-menu so you can choose which bomb type you want to use. That... probably wouldn't be popular with too many people, though

Is that too many buttons to manage?

4 buttons would be on the upper-end of Just Fine, I'd say. Though, I guess this depends heavily on how much bomb-switching you'd have to do. If push comes to shove then I guess you could switch to CAVE's tap-vs-hold style of shot/focus.

I've heard that shmups with any sort of RPG type mechanics don't tend to be well received. How true is that and why? Not that my game would necessarily have a lot of RPG elements but I'd like to try to avoid the pitfalls with the ideas I already have.

Well, your system as you've described it now - just buying bomb attacks - sounds a lot like Trouble Witches where you buy powerful Spell Card attacks, and I've never heard anyone criticize the shop system in that game. I think where people start getting hinky with RPG/Shop mechanics is when:
a) There's a dizzying array of stuff in the shop, especially if a lot of it is really broken shit
b) You need the shops to pimp out your health so you can sponge hits
c) The currency/upgrades carry over between playthroughs, allowing you to grind away the challenge, which is antithetical to how most people approach this genre. So, of course, its also a really popular idea with the shmups targeting people outside the usual shmupdom...
and I think these things are largely part of the "Euroshmup" stereotype.

- - -

I guess the basic problem here is rewarding good play with a direct gameplay advantage. Either the player is bad and does extremely poorly because they never get enough of the upgrades or the player is good and does far too well cause they get a lot of them.

To be fair, this is, to a degree, a common part of the process of beating these kinds of single-sitting arcade games, if not using save-states or practice modes. You figure out how to gain and conserve resources that you then blow through trying to learn the next section, until you eventually learn the starts for that and keep your resources for the next section etc.

A static amount of currency gained per stage. In other words, the players cannot control how much currency they get to spend

Eh, I think with a currency system there should be some fun to getting it, and figuring out how to get more of it (again, see Trouble Witches). Though... definitely put a cap on how many bombs you can carry

If you consider doing a Rank system tied to spending, a thought is that maybe the Rank only starts spiking if you spend a LOT.