Gameplay Ideas

[Jdbener]

Okay, let me begin the same way I did last time, by saying that the following is going to be an equal mix of half-baked ideas and overly developed concepts. This is intended to be a kind of throwing out of ideas, not really a request but more of a food for thought of something I personally think would be cool. Additionally, this is being designed for three types of adventures: a Jack of all Trades Explorer, a Specialized Worker, and a Mage. Additionally, I'm looking at the different play styles as a sort of easy, normal, and hardcore mode.

The backstory: I have been playing a Modpack a few friends and I threw together, it has some pretty cool features and some features that could be a little more fleshed out (looking at Slice of Life).

Main Minecraft problem: It came out six years ago, its player base is growing up and at least some of them are looking for a harder version of their favorite game (the reason why packs like Attack of the B-team exist). Solution? Let's Dark Souls this!

Warning: a lot of text lies below. 

Hardcore Health

Spoiler

The way health is most video games works is you get hit by the big sharp object and hurts you, and your health is a measure of your ouchie resistance. That's great and all but once you understand the mechanics of a combat system the tension is removed from it... Hit the monster at the right moment to knock it away from you, hide in a doorway so it can't get to you, stay out of its aggro range and take pot shots at it.

The solution? Blood. Weapons are designed to slice and draw blood. So the proposition in this section is to replace health with blood. And when you get injured instead of taking damage you slightly increase your Blood Loss. Instead of a Health Pool, you have a Blood Pool (semantic really). Then every few seconds your Blood Loss is removed from you Blood Pool. Blood Loss can be fixed by using bandages, drinking healing potions, or using a healing spell. While your Blood Pool just regens slowly over time, with sleeping increasing how fast it regenerates.

This then creates a more tense experience where instead of killing your opponent or getting killed, you both start draining health. Making someone playing a sort of support/healer role a vital part of any team. 

This system does have a glaring problem as I see, however, undead. Why would a reanimated corpse care that it has lost blood? It's not like it has any, to begin with. This then creates a need for blunt weaponry which does the standard type of pull down your health, but instead of killing when your health reaches zero it is simply an incapacitate. Blunt weaponry, however, is largely ineffective against armor. 

So now what happens if you are fighting a zombie with armor? Or a ghost? Well, this is where precious weaponry comes in. All that gold and silver people are carrying around in their pockets, It is valuable because of its ability slice through our tethers to reality, killing the soul or breaking magic bonds while doing very little damage to the body. However, the same substances can be used to make special jewelry that strengthens these tethers enough to resist the effects of their more aggressive siblings.

I do understand that the core principle of this system is completely different from what you normally see. However, it is designed to give different people and different ways to approach different situations. While making different types of magic and weaponry valid while still balanced against each other. While at the same time providing encouragement for people to specialize their playstyles and band together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hardcore Food

Spoiler

Food, logically the more you eat one thing the less effective it becomes. Why? Because one type of food doesn't have all of the categories of nutrition needed. While in video games, people just get a lot of one food resource and eat it all the time. Why? Because there is no incentive to having a diversity of food available. 

The way I propose fixing this is having several categories of food: Vegetables & Fruits, Grains, Dairy, Meats, and Fats. All of the categories then decrease equally.and their average is taken and presented to the player. 

This means that if you eat a lot of steak and nothing else, your hunger is constantly going to be low because the only one of the five categories is propping it up. While if you can't find a source of dairy for some reason, your hunger won't ever be full but it will still be high.

 

 

 

Hardcore Movement

Spoiler

Speed is a great motivator and it adds a lot of depth to the game. I would suggest having speed be affected by the hardness of the block the player is standing on, it's easier (and faster) to walk on hard, solid ground than soft shifting ground. Next a simple weight system, nothing where they can't carry more things but a system where as a player has a weight "limit" and as the weight of what they are carrying approaches that limit they get slower. The last thing is hunger, the hungrier you are the slower you will move. 

This paired with harder food mechanics encourages farming and road infrastructure as important things for players to be aware of. 

 

 

Thirst and Sleep

Spoiler

While thirst and sleep don't play as big of an impact on exhaustion as food, they still play a part. This proposition is very simple: for every day you don't sleep or every half day you don't drink you lose one point of maximum hunger. This lost hunger will be restored after sleeping or drinking.

 

 

You can see that I have been getting tired. The boxes are getting shorter and less explanatory as time goes by. That or the ideas are just getting simpler... Anyways as all of my ideas, they are just food for thought suggestions that I personally think would be interesting additions. Maybe only for the harder difficulties.

Thank you for reading a list of more of my crazy ideas!

[Tyron]

Ok, got some time to respond!

@Hardcore health

Sounds just like giving attacks DoT effects (=Damage over Time), is that right?

@Hardcore food

We plan to make it like TFC did - eating equally from all nutrient categories will increase your max health

@Hardcore movement

The path block already gives a 10% speed bonus and modders can use the same system to add speed boni/penalties to any block really :-)
We could easily add some mud blocks or similar that give a speed penalty when walked over, once we have a use case for them.

@Thirst/Sleep

Sleeping is actually something I'd rather want to the discourage the player from doing, because it circumvents being exposed to night dangers. In Minecraft people gladly go sleep to set their spawn point and skip night time mobs. In Vintagecraft I made it so that on every full moon you could not sleep.