How to actually marry an ARPG with a Soulslike - some thoughts

"

Storylyne#1859 wrote:

Not a real issue .. maybe. Its a different customer group.

I would lack eventually things like pvp.. only thing which kept me longer than 1 ng+ in dark souls.. invade mechanics. Other than that i was fairly quickly done with dark souls.

If i expect to see here another elden ring? Nah
... i just got a dlc.

"

Xenus_Paradox#7530 wrote:

"

Maldosam#3663 wrote:

Here's the thing, imagine a graph with three axes representing how important the concept is important in a game. The axes are : mechanical skill (twitch reflexes, timing) (MS); building skill (BS); RNG (gear, maps mobs).

This how I see how these dimensions play in each genre
ARPG: MS:~20; BS:~80; RNG:~80
Souslike : MS:~80; BS:~20; RNG:~20

So, in my opinion, they are on completely opposite sides of this cube. You sure can try to mix both, but it would be neither an arpg, nor a soulslike, and frankly it would *probably* fail. There's a reason each genre evolved in a direction.

I pretty fundamentally disagree with this premise. Other games have managed to pull off various aspects of the Soulslike genre in a Diablo-esque type of game. I'll be back and while they may not have been runaway commercial successes, they have pulled off some impressive gameplay innovations.

This is a very tough industry with a lot of competition and if you're not Diablo or Path of Exile it's extremely difficult to get eyeballs on your game. Even Marvel Heroes, which launched right after the first Avengers movie, barely had 12,000 players when it rolled out.

"

Maldosam#3663 wrote:

"

Xenus_Paradox#7530 wrote:

"

Maldosam#3663 wrote:

Here's the thing, imagine a graph with three axes representing how important the concept is important in a game. The axes are : mechanical skill (twitch reflexes, timing) (MS); building skill (BS); RNG (gear, maps mobs).

This how I see how these dimensions play in each genre
ARPG: MS:~20; BS:~80; RNG:~80
Souslike : MS:~80; BS:~20; RNG:~20

So, in my opinion, they are on completely opposite sides of this cube. You sure can try to mix both, but it would be neither an arpg, nor a soulslike, and frankly it would *probably* fail. There's a reason each genre evolved in a direction.

I pretty fundamentally disagree with this premise. Other games have managed to pull off various aspects of the Soulslike genre in a Diablo-esque type of game. I'll be back and while they may not have been runaway commercial successes, they have pulled off some impressive gameplay innovations.

This is a very tough industry with a lot of competition and if you're not Diablo or Path of Exile it's extremely difficult to get eyeballs on your game. Even Marvel Heroes, which launched right after the first Avengers movie, barely had 12,000 players when it rolled out.

You're welcome to correct me if what I'm saying is out of ignorance. I call it opinion, because I don't play soulslike. They're not my thing, but I respect that a lot of people enjoy them, and they are great games.

So, I'll try to be more explicit, and you tell me where I'm wrong:

First of, the percentages I gave can be seen as how "core" of a concept they are, but also "how much power" (hence also variance) you can expect if you succeed on those dimensions

Mechanical Skill (MS) is the most obvious. Traditionnaly in arpgs you don't need much MS. The gameplay is usually quite basic, except may be for a few bosses, or limited aspects of the game. In soulslike games, afaik, you basically cannot progress if you don't have a good competency in this aspect. The gameplay is more fleshed out, different attacks have different timings, you have to read the mobs and bosses moves, and the better you react to them, the better you perform.

Building Skill is quite obvious also in my opinion. arpgs are numbers games. You make build with bigger number than ennemy, you win. This aspect is expected to be fleshed out, to have depth, to offer a lot of options... and it's where the difficulty of the game lies.
In soulslike, i understand that you can somehow overpower the content with some godly weapons (but that's gear, see next point), and there's attribute allocation I think? I'm not aware if there are any other fleshed out systems around how you build your character, but I'm not sure if there is much variance in power with builds.

RNG in gear In arpgs one god drop can basically completely trivialise your run. On the other end of the spectrum if you're totally starved of gear your build will probably suck. So there is a lot of power to be found in gear. Also there is usually crafting, where you can vastly improve that gear.
In soulslike my understanding is there is variance, but it's more limited, there is some crafting, I'm not sure how powerful it is. But certainly there is much less RNG. My understanding is legendary gears can be found/dropped in a deterministic manner, once you know where it is, you can find it and use it. So not much RNG, and probably not much variance ? But this where I'm less sure.

RNG in mobs is basically all over the place in arpgs (random mobs with random mods with random rarities). You can influence it, but it's all over.
In soulslike my understanding is that it's much more deterministic. You know exactly what mobs you will face at each location. May be I'm wrong.

RNG in maps/zone Same as above afaik.

With all that being said, you have to figure out how to pull the arpg formula towards a soulslike, without totally breaking it.

Say you only add more mechanical skill demand. Is that enough? No. Because if you leave a lot of power in building skill and gear, then you can reach a point where the mechanical skill is not needed anymore. That's what's happening with poe2.

So you hammer out the variability there (more deterministic balanced gear and character builds) oh but your mobs and maps are all over the place! So depending on how you tune it, either most of your content is trivial, or it's an absolute pain to play. Player power is restricted to a narrow band, but your monsters are all over the place. That can't work. So you have to curate that too...

Oh well, you end up with a soulslike, the arpg is gone :)

"

Maldosam#3663 wrote:

I'll add this (hot take): the soulslike formula is more compatible with the mmorpg structure. If you want to go "live service" with multiple expansions, I think that's what you should target. Everything there is deterministic and curated, there is already skill involved (not the same as soulslike, but can be adapted), and it works with the expansions model, where you have more zones and bosses to fight.

Now you'll probably want to remove the raids (or make them less of a focus) and stuff and make it more single player oriented, but I think that's how a soulslike can function as a live service.

"

Xenus_Paradox#7530 wrote:

If you don't play Soulslikes then you probably shouldn't be acting like you know what you're talking about.