Analyzing Mechanics 1

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Strengths of each Mechanic

Health
A health system benefits an open-world game as it encourages smart decision-making based on your health. Depending on your health, you have to make risky choices on whether or not you should continue or head back and heal up. The health system itself adds a lot of skill required in order to progress in the game. If you were to have infinite health, you would be reckless and nearly no skill would be involved in the game, so adding the health system adds more risk and reward to the game.

Stamina Bar
A stamina bar would add realism and would require the player to have strategic movement as well. If you are not able to endlessly sprint/climb, you need to take into account whether or not you are able to perform the task at hand, whether it be clearing an obstacle or getting away from an enemy. Using your stamina correctly would also reward the player with a sense of accomplishment. Forcing the player to stop every once in a while to recover stamina is also good, because you can take a moment to analyze the situation you're in instead of allowing the player to mindlessly roam with no consequence.

Discoverable Map
An empty map that you are able to slowly discover more and more would promote the idea that the player should explore the entirety of the open-world. Some players can look back at their map and feel rewarded to see the entire thing filled out, knowing that they explored every single room in that area one by one. This also forces the player to venture into more dangerous places to figure out where certain things are. If you were to reveal every single important location on the map, players will just skip all the extra exploration given by the open-world, and instead skip straight to what is necessary.

Weaknesses of each Mechanic

Health
Limited health can also be very bad. One of the biggest weaknesses from limited health is losing a lot of progress, and having to retrace your steps all the way back. Not only do they slowly get demotivated from the repetition of dying and coming over, but they would lose the willingness to experiment and explore due to the potential chance of wasting healing resources. In an open-world game, exploration is necessary, so the repetition and fear of losing resources will prevent some players from wanting to explore the world.

Stamina Bar
A stamina bar could very often become annoying as they interrupt the player in very unwanted times. For example, you could be about to clear a dangerous obstacle, but your empty stamina bar prevents you from achieving the hurdle and you fail. In this case, some players could feel cheated by the stamina bar, as it is not exactly the player’s fault. They should not be monitoring their stamina bar the entire playthrough, they should be enjoying the open-world exploration. Players may also feel annoyed whenever exploring a massive area and having to constantly stop and slow down just to recover stamina.

Discoverable Map
Having to deal with the empty map and exploring every area in it could get repetitive extremely fast, causing a lot of demotivation for players. An empty map can also make players feel lost with too many options to go to without a nudge in the right direction, especially in the early stages where navigation tools are very limited.

What I would do

Health

Keep the health bar relatively low, but add a lot of healing resources. For example, much more resting spots to heal fully, and a lot more healing resources lying around. Too much health will just make you a juggernaut, but low health with no sort of regeneration makes you as weak as a fly. The perfect solution would be to keep the somewhat low health but have a lot of items for regeneration, and potentially add items throughout the game that increase max health capacity.

Stamina Bar

Only have the stamina deplete when there’s an enemy nearby. When the game is not dangerous at all, stamina should not be another problem for you to deal with. However, climbing and jumping will still take some stamina, but not as much. If there is an enemy nearby, then you lose your stamina normally. Just like the health, there should also be items throughout the game that increase your stamina bar capacity, allowing you to perform hurdles you previously could not due to the low stamina.

Discoverable Map

Keep the empty map that you need to discover, but instead add a little nudge to where you’re meant to go. For example, there could be a random pinpointed location on your map. You do not know what it is, but you’re eager to explore closer to that location and find out what it is. Design the map in a way that secret rooms could be found if you pay close attention to the map. And lastly, add some items in the game that would greatly increase map discovery. For example, an item that reveals an extra room ahead of you (Spelunker Hat from Binding of Isaac!!!).

i had to make a google doc for this 😭

[mighty girder]

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