On gameplay variety and breadth of character abilities.

Within my small reference pool of games, I've noticed that gameplay variety tends to fall on a spectrum between the following:

• Having a large pool of very specialized abilities and mechanics that must be chosen from as the situation demands.
• Having a relatively small pool of supremely versatile abilities and mechanics that must be used differently in each situation.

Just as a point of discussion, which end of the spectrum to you prefer and why?

Personally, I tend to favor the latter end as having fewer abilities enables me to better master the nuances of each and in doing so I feel more in control of my character(s).

I guess the latter really. Having a large pool, I'm going to be using a small number of abilities or tactics anyway, so I'd rather focus my time on buiding up what abilities i do have

Well, from the perspective of fighting games, I tend to be able to do more with the characters that have limited movesets than with the characters that have a move for every possible situation. When All You Have Is a Hammer…, and all that, plus it's easier to remember what ability does what with a smaller moveset.

edited 26th Apr '13 9:26:51 PM by TechPowah

I prefer the second, though not for intrinsic reasons.

If there exists a large number of options, then almost inevitably there is one that is objectively the best choice for a given situation- for instance, you should equip the Scuba Gear for the underwater missions, and the Camo for forest ones. Even if the "right" choice is not immediately obvious, players will eventually find it through trial and error. Thus, experienced players are deprived of a meaningful choice: either go with the superior option, or handicap yourself. This is not strategy, and I don't find it enjoyable.

On the other hand, if there are a few choices which are roughly equally well-suited to different environments, but differ in playing style, then players are given a meaningful choice- think Starcraft, with the Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg, all of which are used even at the very highest levels of play, because none of the three is better than the others. That is a meaningful choice, and that gives depth to the game.

Second for single-player - makes the game feel like less like a no-brainer if there's a few more ways to beat it.

First for multiplayer - decisive limitations sets up teamwork.

They're both good. I crave variety so much I crave variety in my variety.

Of course I don't see what's wrong with having as much of both as possible.

Hm◊

That may happen when a game offers type one variety (large number of specialized abilities) but allows a player to go from start to finish by improving and mastering only a small subset of that selection. That's probably what most players would consider the best of both worlds.

Contrast that with a game whose level design and/or scripting ensures that every single one of the 100+ available abilities must each be used at least once (pure type one) or another that provides only a handful of moves (if that) that must be improvised with to tackle each of the 100+ possible situations in the game (pure type two).

Hmm. At what point do you have "Tons of abilities" though I wonder? I guess most directed experiences, that expect you to do tons with few abilities, only give you one or two. Portal is a classic and only gives you two moves; shooting portals and levitating objects.

And at what point do we get "Tons of uses"? Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves gives you a multitude of ways to crush monsters with a hanging net trap, but ultimately all it can do is be used to crush monsters.

edited 26th Apr '13 10:04:05 PM by ShirowShirow

I guess that the biggest example of 'tons of abilities' would be old school MMO design with a UI that looks like the Discovery shuttle's cockpit after a few tens of levels, while 'tons of uses' would be NES-era Mario and the many fan conversions of those games where the incredible must be achieved with just running and jumping (and occasionally throwing fireballs).

Basically we're describing the difference between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. Though I still think 3 is filled with Useless Useful Spells.

edited 26th Apr '13 10:36:21 PM by ZekeFreek

It depends. Usually I prefer a limited set of abilities that you have to use in many different situations, for multiplayer or party-based games I prefer having a lot of options, and I do love customization in single-player games (thinking Skyrim, Mass Effect). A good example of the latter is the Final Fantasy Tactics series.

I like the second kind better.

The first just slows the gameplay down too much if it keeps forcing you to switch up your abilities every next encounter. After all, most games that do that (typically MM Os I believe) give you an action bar with, at most, 10 abilities at the ready, but if you've got way more than that AND they're all required to make progress, you'll constantly find yourself having to stop, switch out this ability for that, and memorize the new inputs. And if it's in an online game, you better be sure you're not under attack while doing all that.

Not to mention, as mentioned before, even if you've got this huge selection of abilities, there always tends to be a select few that dominate all the others in usefulness and usage. If you've got all these options, though, you feel tempted to use them all equally and try to make the most use out of them, but sometimes the ones you've been most comfortable with are just better.

Appealing to both might explain the huge popularity of the MOBA genre. A well-developed MOBA will have somewhere around 400 abilities, but users choose a "power set" of only 4-7 of those abilities to use for any one game. The massive number of abilities gives the game infinite replayability while the constricted set of powers you can use allows you to feel like you can achieve mastery of the nuances of those abilities.

I would consider MOB As that follow Dot A's style of having no persistent elements as being closer to type two while those in Lo L's style with skills etc. that carry from match to match - summoner spells there actually giving champions an average of six inherent abilities during a match as opposed to the minimum four (including passives) of Dot A heroes - would be closer to type one.

The thing we have to remember with games played in matches or sessions is that while the game overall has a large amount of variety, most of that is locked out during a match and thus I don't think any of them can ever get too close to type one except on paper.

There's also the strange situation of community pressure and metagame both forcing a player to master multiple characters (and hence ability sets) and putting a soft restriction on which characters they can seriously pursue.

MM Os following Lineage 2, World Of Warcraft and others of their era typically have multiple full bars of abilities that players must use regularly and that can mostly be triggered with a single key press each. That's why the comparison is often made with playing a piano. Newer MM Os are drifting towards smaller numbers of more general-use abilities especially if they use TPS-like control.

edited 27th Apr '13 1:54:43 PM by Recon5

This is all reminding me I need to try Guild Wars 2.

I'd like to mention that while most heroes in Dota has four skills, there's also a few heroes in Dota that has more than (or access to more than) four skills.

Like Invoker and Rubick.

The former has practically twelve skills (Not counting Quas, Wex, Exort and Invoke), but he can only use one or two at a time. He's hard to learn, but he's powerful if you know what you're doing.

The latter can steal almost every single skill in the game with his ultimate. That means that depending on the enemy team, it's entirely possible for him to have about 20 skills he can steal. He can only have one stolen skill at a time though.

Also a honorary mention, Doom. Doom can copy the skills of neutral creeps by devouring them. It's just not mentioned often for some reason.

edited 30th Apr '13 5:36:50 AM by Eldrake

Personally, I prefer the latter. It occurs to me, that many of my own game ideas and projects are based around that idea - the player only has a handful of options or abilities, and they have to be creative and skillful in their application to make it work.

Depends for me.

I've made games that utilize the second:

• Roid Rage, where your only abilities are dropping Asteroids and Meteors that can do various stuff.
• Arc Angle, a "shoot em up" where your only ability is to convert enemy bullets.

And am planning to do one that uses the first:

• (not decided yet), you gain different weapon data from different enemies and can switch them at will to counter threats. The enemies that are sent at you will try to adapt to your strategy, so you need to adapt to theirs too.

edited 30th Apr '13 6:25:06 AM by ironcommando