Okay, I'm back, and I've collected my thoughts.
My ideas are focused on exploring the consequences of your actions
...in a narrative sense.
Well, I mean that the consequences of your actions are embedded into the story. The gameplay enforces a respect for the lore. Hmm, let's look at some examples to get on the same track:
Here would be my generic observations on each race's perspective on combat:
- rabbits may defend themselves, but would much rather run to live another day.
- Dogs would never run from a fight. neither would they hesitate to defend what's important to them.
- Wolves have utter confidence in their ability to survive. This confidence could often be their downfall.
The nuances of each of these concepts could reveal numerous things about gameplay. Finding these things would be intuitive, and really satisfying! Here are some cases I threw together. Each one sets Turner against the odds, where the player would need to use his knowledge of each race to survive the encounter.(Doesn't that sound exciting?)
Here. turner is surrounded by wolves in the forest. The player would look around and notice quickly that he is in a -bad- situation.
As far as the map goes, there is thick, thick bush all around where Turner would be caught and ripped to pieces if he tried to run, save one exit through the river.
The wolves would be circling as a pack, but initially, they wouldn't all fight together. Confident, wolves would not interrupt a 1 on 1 fight, but if the player tried to run, the wolves would all join in and make sure you didn't get away.
Therefore, the player would have to skillfully defeat the wolves, one at a time, until the gap between each wolf left an opening to the exit and turner might be able to manage an escape.
The second case is a stronghold full of raider rabbits. As far as raiders go I imagine two classes of them - the abusive leaders and the fearful pawns. For interests sake, I will assume that they can be classified like that for now.
The level here could be approached in many ways, but for the story we will imagine that there are friends turner is looking to free, and his goal would be to simply get the raiders the heck out of there, so he can get his friends away safely.
The simplest plan of action would be to break in, take a hostage, and use it to make the more fearful rabbits cautious. However, the ones who are brainless and/or in charge would approach. Cutting the throat of the hostage could earn some extra distance from the nervous rabbits, and turner could manage the attackers until everyone flees, or dies.
That said, in general, bodies could be used to wean out any unnecessary fights or create enough hesitation to have the advantage - and against other classes and races, could also be a sure way to get ganged up on.
It should be clear at this point the feeling I'm going for, and your opinions on if this makes sense or if Wolfire would enjoy such an approach ought to be set by now, but here's one more that I haven't really thought through.
It's a dog fort, perhaps it's an armory where they've taken and stored things that turner values. The dogs would be patrolling casually.
Turner would have to use stealth here, as if any dogs noticed a struggle, they would make enough noise to make sure that everyone on the map was after you. You should notice from the very beginning that you won't be scaring them off, and that they won't hesitate to dog-pile.
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In the end, that kind of mechanic is something that would be a real asset to level design. It would create a feeling of increased immersion, choose-your-difficulty approaches, and punish players who try to do obviously stupid things. In lugaru, I was taught the hard way how NOT to do a lot of things.
Anyways, I just wanted to put a different perspective in. The mechanics you guys are all talking about are very interesting! Although I don't know if such complex ranking systems would be convenient for either the devs or modders. My views have similar, unexplained, or possibly worse consequences but I enjoy thinking about it! How do you guys feel about it... in a narrative sense? Perhaps a mix-and-move-forward is in order
...Now I need a nap.