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View Full Version : Armchair Gameplay Thoughts (on Captain Forever)



BlackShipsFillt
17-01-2010, 11:04 PM
Okay... I don't know if anyone wants to give their thoughts on this, I was hearing a bit about Captain Forever before I finally played it, and, as much as I thought it was great, it kind of frustrated me.

Captain Forever (http://www.captainforever.com/captainforever.php) is the aethetic decendant of Warning Forever and Battleships Forever (http://www.wyrdysm.com/games.php) while having gameplay allot like hexcelle (http://www.kongregate.com/games/Archigeek/hexcelle).

There may be better examples of games with similar gameplay, but I like the hexcelle comparison, while Captain Forever is the superior game, both these games offer feeling powerful as a core experience (I quite liked this article about feeling powerful http://thegameprodigy.com/feeling-powerful-as-a-core-experience/) and both these games bother me for the same reason: while it's awesome upgrading and getting more powerful (especially in Captain Forever) ememies actually have the ability to permanently downgrade the player.

This, in theory, sounds like an awful idea: a shooter where you continuously levelup, and actually design your avatar, but enemies can undo your work... But this has precedent in traditional shooters where everytime the player lost a life they had to start all over, so it's actually not that radical and it does add a lot of drama to the game.

However what I don't like about it is that it means the player may feel the need to play carefully, even timidly, and in a game about getting more powerful this isn't completely satisfying.

In Captain Forever you do become vastly more powerful, but enemies who are equally powerful, or even somewhat less powerful are always an existential threat, and even become more of a threat as the game progresses because you have more to lose.

So, hypothetically, what would happen if upgrades were permanent? Like leveling up in Diablo or any RPG. You'd still be able to die, but instead of having your armaments actually disintegrate, they get disabled. This way you would often be able to escape from a losing battle with no permanent damage, though if you wait too long before fleeing you may find yourself unable to escape. To keep it balanced enemies may have to be more aggressive and be better coordinated (like seriously pursuing you, avoiding killing each other and possibly calling reinforcements), but these aren't tricky things to do.

It wouldn't change a winning game all that much... When I played Captain Forever, once I had worked out the pattern, I barely got hit at all, so it didn't matter that I would permanently lose my armaments because I didn't lose any... the problem is this isn't actually the kind of gameplay I enjoy, I enjoy shooting and being shot, timidly circling enemies isn't my style... there are those occasions where a couple of your guns get shot off but you manage to defeat an enemy and replace them so the loss is an acceptable one, this I did enjoy, this is the most dramatic part of Captain Forever and without the permanent loss it is less interesting. However without permanent loss players may often trade blow for blow with an enemy until both ships are smoldering wrecks which would never purposefully happen in Captain Forever.

So the atmosphere may be different... it would be a more casual game, the player would feel less anxious and be able to behave more recklessly... however this may come at a loss of some of the excitement... Also the game would naturally be shorter, because there would be no downgrading, so the range of power may have to be a bit extended to keep games from being too brief.

Personally I think it could work, so long as the enemies are given the same advantages and behave a bit more aggressively so as to keep the difficulty level comparable. It would appeal more to casual players and less to hardcore indie gamers, but I think Captain Forever, without the downgrading, could be a very enjoyable game.

Sorry about the soliloquy guys... if you have any thoughts on this I'm very interested, I reckon I'll build a prototype at some point, otherwise I hope I have amused you with my ramblings.

(If I were to do it I would probably make the ship design more interesting, if the components are permanent this becomes feasible, like having energy cores and energy distribution mechanics and shields and more gun types)

dislekcia
18-01-2010, 12:41 AM
I have a few things to say about Captain Forever, mainly because it sits on a gameplay space that I've been messing with quite a lot over the last few years with SpaceHack. It's actually quite similar in its core idea: Give players that feeling of getting more powerful without making them grind for ages to get it. SpaceHack's approach is inspired by action RPGs and goes the way of shmups, Captain Forever is inspired by shmups ang goes the way of action RPGs...

I couldn't get into Captain Forever. I played Warning Forever for ages, loved it. (Mainly because I was busy writing my own random boss generation system at the time) But CF just didn't grab me, probably because I found the controls horrible and the enemies stupid. They would either destroy me utterly or be instantly killed by me, I found there was no space for subtlety with the control scheme the way it was: Your options were severely limited. Granted, I've been trying to figure out ways around the "run away, turn, shoot" trap that SpaceHack had too, so perhaps I expect more ;)

The upgrading was interesting, but I found the switch to the mouse and the way the gameplay didn't pause tricky to manage. A collection and build-screen mechanic would have made more sense and felt better to me. Maybe that's not what the game was built for though.

To solve the upgrades not being permanent problem, I think the issue comes from when the player is set back and then feels like they have to re-earn everything they used to have just to stand the risk of losing everything all over again. It's the unfairness conundrum coupled with a feeling of helplessness, the same one the TF2 team overcame with kill cams. I'd suggest populating the game space with shops that would sell you everything you'd collected up until that point, but nothing you hadn't already added to your ship manually. Coupled with this, I'd let players earn bounties on every enemy they killed, scaled according to enemy strength and difficulty. That way you could pick up a single red gun, go find a shop and get a few more (because they'd be expensive compared to your current earnings) OR you could keep a sum in the bank for when all your crap got shot off so that you could get a reasonably good collection of stuff up and running again so that you didn't feel totally helpless.

The shop+cash idea would add some interesting player choices and trade-offs to the game, making it a deeper play experience as well...

BlackShipsFillt
18-01-2010, 10:41 AM
Is this game you mention, with the shops and gold and tradeoffs, a game that you're already developing? Sounds interesting.

Another thing that Captain Forever didn't have, certainly not in the free version, was replay value. Once you'd gotten as powerful as you reasonably could you can modify your ship however you want (so long as you've got three crippled enemies nearby) so there is no meaningful alternate path to play and your choices in the beginning have no lasting consequences... Having different weapons might change this, except in Captain Forever the player discards old weapons a level or two behind, so once again, no lasting consequences for your choices or even the random events.

Having shops would solve this, because you would be able to build your ship according to your own scheme, as well as avoid the panicky upgrading while being chased by the law that happens in Captain Forever.

Though there is a certain elegance to getting all your parts from the debris of your enemies and attaching it to yourself on the battlefield, the game could have been called "Zombieship Forever", this is the feature that people tell their friends about. Shops and upgrade screens will improve gameplay but they're weak on flavour.

Another nice thing about offering cash is that it gives incentive to kill smaller ships who have no parts you want... The danger of this is that players may go around harvesting weaker opponents (though maybe the "law" could become a real deterrent)

Captain Forever is also uglier than Warning Forever and Battleships Forever, I'd imagine because of the constraints on the physics in Flash the creator decided to use only rectangles to build the ships. The jagged techno shapes of Warning Forever are sadly missing... However it is still beautiful enough to be appealing.

There are conceivably still problems even after the additions of shops and cash if the parts are still destructible, perhaps more so. e.g. the player spends all their hard-earned cash on a sweet wing covered in spread-fire lasers only to have it destroyed by a stray larger enemy's shot. This could lead to terrible feelings of helplessness.

So I'm still leaning towards making additions indestructible... This is sort of the gameplay I was trying to get once upon a time with Black Ships- of feeling powerful but without the risk of losing everything.

Another thing that might work nicely... In Diablo when you die, somehow, magically, you come back to life with all your stats but none of your gear by your home base. Then you can travel to wherever you died and loot your own corpse (nonsensical but wonderful flavour)... Diablo did pretty well, so maybe they were on to something.

So another way a game like Captain Forever could mitigate the unfairness and helplessness of losing your hard-earned stuff would be to have the components be detached from the ship, rather than destroyed. In a losing, or unlucky, battle the player would be still forced to retreat but may be able to return and collect their lost parts... This isn't exactly fun, but a lot more fun that losing the bits permanently.

I expect future successors to Captain Forever to evolve in two directions: one faster, more shmup based where weapon loss is as common as weapon gain, with even faster games and therefore less to lose, this would be closer to the original warning forever and be targeted at the hardcore shmup fans. The other way is a more casual, more RPG based route, still relatively brief gameplays (though not necessarily so) but without the helplessness and with more focus on sweet ship design. Though there may also be an awesome creamy centre.