On Guiding Game Design Philosophies

Originally Published: Oct. 16, 2024, 11:47 p.m. Last updated: Oct. 16, 2024, 11:47 p.m.

Tags: game_dev

I want to discuss what I'm terming a "Guiding Game Design Philosophy", specifically what GGDP I want to make use of for my blossoming ARPG (essentially a Diablo-like) concept.

First, I want to quickly cover what this is NOT a discussion of:

There are parallels here to what I view as the general idea of "Guiding Philosophies" like moralism or pragmatism or whatever but those only hold up as far as being loosely analogous for the sake of this discussion. This isn't about the most morally acceptable way to fleece a player or keep them glued to the screen.

These are also not general Game Design principles or platitudes like "listen to your players" or "respect your players time". Those should always be kept in consideration but are not part of this post.

Instead what I'm talking about are the self-imposed frameworks and constraints that are core and iconic to the design of many games. I think one of the most dramatic and well-known, especially to us, would be Magic: the Gathering's "Color Pie" (which I will reference extensively), but similarly powerful guidelines exist within many other games. For example, in League of Legends there are champion archetypes that broadly define what a champion should be capable of: marksman, fighter, assassin, enchanter, etc. Or, most relevant, in Path of Exile there is a general theme of 3s that stems from the three primary stats of Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity.

Path of Exile's 7 character options directly stem from the various combination of these 3 (Pure STR/INT/DEX, combo of 2, all 3 evenly). PoE's 3 elemental damage types match up as Fire/Lightning/Cold. The defense types: Armour/Energy Shield/Evasion. The general makeup of weapon types, the passive skill tree, many secondary stats, etc can all be traced back to this initial split of Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity. I submit for consideration, however, that in too many situations PoE has strayed from its philosophy to the detriment of the quality and cohesion of the game. Before I continue on that subject, let me get back to GGDP as a whole.

Why have a GGDP at all? Why constrain yourself to one?

First, as mentioned above, cohesion. A strong GGDP keeps a game feeling like a single game rather than a collection of unrelated minigames and mechanics or a hodgepodge of ideas taken from many inspirations without any connection. Using MtG's color pie as an example, if I told you to create a Green 5-mana common creature, you'd have a pretty good chance of making one that would fit right in with most MtG sets.

Second, emergent systems. After creating a framework, simply exploring that framework and trying to fill it out inspires new ideas that would otherwise be considerably more elusive. Think about MtG's 5-card cycles, especially those that explore how each color would tackle a particular concept like the various splashy rare cycles like the M10 Titans. Would those exist without an initial prompt of "how to we make a huge Constructed-relevant creature for every color?"

Third, the general phenomenon of "restrictions breed creativity'. This overlaps a bit with point 2, but I feel it justifies its own mention. When MtG invents a new mechanic, it has to slot that mechanic into a subset of colors to avoid homogeneity, but when that restriction prevents interesting combinations between mechanics, it then leads to followup designs that to circumvent and so on and so on.

Fourth, breaking the convention in select cases can create novelty and further creativity. Adding the Eldrazi to MtG required WotC to figure out what the colorless part of the color pie could do that would feel unique and alien, but not step on the toes of actual colors. They settled on cast-triggers and exiling stuff which... ehh. But they tried! The point stands! ...and maybe helps highlight why breaking out of the GGDP should not be done lightly.

The Guiding Game Design Philosophy for Dantes's ARPG (name WIP)

I want to start with a set of 3s, similar to what I mentioned in PoE. It's a common starting point among many games, probably for good reasons though I don't know what those are. In Runescape there is Melee vs Ranged vs Magic. In many other MMOs there are Healers, DPS, and Tanks. Starcraft has 3 races of Zerg, Protoss, Terran. Umm... Rock, Paper, Scissors? 3s are nice, triangle strong shape.

I'm basing the initial split of the whole game on 3 broad, "primary damage types" that are further split into 3 "secondary damage types" each:

• Physical
  • Crushing
  • Cutting
  • Piercing
• Elemental
  • Fire (Heat?)
  • Cold
  • Lightning
• Core (still working on it)
  • Vitality (e.g. poisons, bloodsucking)
  • Spirit (e.g. holy magic, phychic attacks)
  • Void (e.g. spatial attacks, eldritch beings)

I find issue with PoE's damage types being insufficient. Besides the elemental ones there are Physical and Chaos which I feel cause a disproportionate amount of balance issues I partly blame on how they don't fit into the greater GGDP I mentioned before. "Well we gave fire/lightning/cold this thing, how do we give a similar thing to phys/chaos? Whoops it's super strong/weak!" Starting with the premise that their system was wrong, the above was what I came up with.

How does this fit into the rest of what I said about GGDPs?

I need a world for the game to take place in. What if I made the world a hexagon and placed the 3 elements at 3 corners? Now the world map has a shape, with a land of fire and lava at the top, ice at the bottom left, and storms at the bottom right. I can create cities, nations, peoples, and so on that fit within each region or along a spectrum from region to region. Maybe there exists a second, higher plane that has a parallel balance between demons, angels, and eldritch creatures (maybe I introduce that plane in an expansion!).

I need to figure out, mechanically, what kind of damage a waterfall spell would do... cold + crushing makes sense! oh, but what if it was a geyser instead? Heat + crushing! (You see why I don't just want it to be "fire" damage?) What about a windstorm? Maybe crushing + slashing? A sword? Slashing or piercing depending on how you use it. Wait depending on how you use it? Then maybe we have thrusting Active Skills which deal piercing damage and slashing Active Skills that deal cutting damage and the sword's damage depends on which skill you use! And there's no reason a thrusting skill couldn't just use any melee weapon that's capabable of piercing damage. And now I have the beginnings of a whole skill system that uses weapon's capabilities as broad categories to determine which skills they're capable of.

An aside discussing issues I have with PoE

There are many examples of missteps and oversights (and positive things!) in PoE that in general helped me form the ideas I have about this game and what I want from it. PoE lacks a number of very common martial weapons. They were left out of the game initially I assume due to budget and time constraints and have never made it back in. The relatively strict system PoE has for melee skills needing specific item types to use those skills I believe plays a part in them never adding those types into the game (e.g. Splitting Steel only works with Swords and Axes, Nightblade only works with Daggers and Claws) due to the enormous task of deciding case by case what skills would support a new weapon type as well as going in and programming all of that to work as expected, creating new passives and effects to support those new weapon types (there are passives that give you e.g. 30% increased sword damage so spears would need equivalents), and trying to keep all that distinct and balanced. As evidence of my theory, Crossbows and Spears are both confirmed for PoE 2.

I went through many thought experiments on improving this system and want to list one example. Why does "Nightblade" only work with daggers and claws? Because those are small weapons capable of covert action. So instead why not have a weapon category of "Rogue weapon" and make it so there are skills that only work with Rogue weapons? Maybe Nightblade and Backstab need a "Rogue Piercing" weapon, but maybe later we introduce billy clubs as Rogue Blunt weapons and have Assassinate work with any Rogue weapon? The system becomes much more free and fluid this way, with more and more emergent systems to guide decision-making, and makes later additions easier to implement.

What else I've come up with as a result of my GGDP

I like hex grids. A hexagonal world map fits well with a hexagonal sub-map. You're going to start the game in the middle of the hexagonal world map, in a hexagonal local area. In the way that Starcraft maps are rectangles and Age of Empires maps are diamonds, each local map instance you go to will be hexagonal, with exits from each edge onto a newly-generated, also hexagonal local map instance. Exiting one instance to another instance correspondingly moves you by 1 hex on the world map. By heading generally the same direction from instance to instance, you'll head that direction on the world map, eventually reaching the previously mentioned themed regions. If you want to go to the Fire region, head north, and so on. But why should you want to head to a specific region?

One of the core aspects of ARPGs is the gearing system, finding or crafting randomly rolled gear to work with your chosen build, to keep getting stronger and stronger, progressing to higher and higher content, rinse and repeat. Starting in the middle and going outwards presents a straightforward way to map monster progression. Monsters start at level 1 and get stronger the further you are from the center of the world map. Naturally stronger monsters drop stronger loot, but what if we made e.g. Fire Monsters spawn more often in the Fire Region and the reason you would want that would be that Fire Monsters are more likely to drop Fire-themed items? So if you were playing a Fire build, you would go to the Fire region and try to find better Fire gear! Now we have not only gearing but a way to aim for specific types of gear!

This is how the starting GGDP framework gives rise to new ideas that aren't strictly related to the initial premise. An immense progression of mechanics and ideas can be built on a humble foundation. There's more I've got, but this wasn't meant to be comprehensive and I've gone on long enough.