Control freak - letting the player do their own thing

[Pechudin]

When I map I find myself making fairly linear affairs because "the player will run away from this fight if I let him go". I dislike lock-ins, so this usually results in fairly linear encounters. Although I have gotten some positive feedback on fight quality, I year to make a good map where the player can stretch out, but still be challenged.

 

How do you deal with this without packing each square meter with meat? Lately I have started putting in optional fights, even large optional map parts and found that helps a bit, but these are side-branches mostly. How do you make a nonlinear affair without the player stumbling into a fight "at a wrong angle", how do you prevent cheesing by just running away without lock-ins? Ammo scarcity can be a magnet, or some monsters which cannot be left alone (Archie, Pain Elementals).

 

Maybe sometimes running away can be allowed, not every trap needs to be life or death I guess. Your ideas, thoughts, strategies?

Edited June 3, 2021 by Pechudin

[baja blast rd.]

Bunch of misc ideas: 

 

1) If you escape area A, monsters from that area play a role, or leak out into, the fight that is sprung in area B. (Be more likely to use walkover triggers or sight reveals, so that fights are started "accidentally" -- rather than the player having to press a switch.) 

 

2) Fights that are too "quick" to bother escaping from. (Thoughts you don't typically hear: "Oh no, two imps! Better flee.") 

 

3) Fights that are too "messy" to escape from. Don't overdo this, but viles or pain elementals will generally require the player to stick around and deal with at least them.

 

4) Open-plan or semi-open layouts where big chunks of the map have the relationship in #1, but... with more letters! This might even go as far as "escape by design," which is fun and shouldn't be overlooked. You can design as much around the player leaving as staying.

 

5) Resources tie players to areas, so concentrate those in places you want the player to have to return to. This can set up a dynamic where you tend to have more precarious health/ammo when you've escaped the direct fire, and thus don't feel safe even against the smaller groups of stragglers out in the open. And then you have to keep returning to more populated areas for supplies.

 

6) Or the opposite of #5, resource surplus can make the player less motivated to escape. 

 

7) You can use enough smaller bits of incidental combat or quick traps so that people generally will have enough to do while aimlessly running through your maps. 

 

8) Running away from less important, or less difficult fights is fine imo. You need Dobu-like Dominatrix flair in order for keeping a player confined for every insubstantial fight to not feel overbearing (even good setpiece-heavy mappers like Ribbiks/Danne don't do that). 

 

9) Return fights. In Valiant m31, you can basically beeline an escape from both core areas the first time you're in them, if you know the map, but that makes the map better because you can get real messes going the second time around (where it becomes harder to escape). 

 

10) Study schools of gameplay design that doesn't exclusively center around "fights" that you have to stick around and do. Check out "Doom 2 in Spain Only" and "Arrival" for some great recent examples. 

 

Also, title should be "their own thing." 

[Pechudin]

1 hour ago, rd. said:

* good ideas*

Also, title should be "their own thing." 

 

Hm, the resource angle is something I do not take into account that often, but is a good point. I usually sprinkle them around, but I guess bunching up ammo at one place can make it a necessity to return there.

 

Also, good point, fixed the title.

[Scypek2]

I found a fun technical solution for letting otherwise abandoned monsters catch up with you: if they usually get stuck in one specific area, put monster-only teleport lines there, but then put the teleport destination(s) on top of another monster(s) that only wakes up later. Doom has failsafes against monsters teleporting on top of each other, so the abandoned monsters will only come in after that later fight begins and the monster walks away or dies. Just make sure that the abandoned monsters will be able to cross those teleport lines repeatedly.