I was working on an RPG game inspired by an anime. Of course, that means it follows the typical repetitive gameplay that a Roblox anime game brings, because there’s not much else that can be done with it aside from innovating and giving it a new coat of paint. To elaborate on that repetitive gameplay:
Players join to a main menu
Players get to customise their character, maybe use an RNG roller for something or select a starter weapon
Players are placed into the map with all their applied customisations
Players fight training dummies, other players or enemies to advance their stats
Players complete quests or progress in any offered way to boost their stats, which are used to get them better stats and gear, so on
This game play loop is honestly very boring and uninteresting. It’s also been done over far too many times and it loses it’s effectiveness. People play mostly to see the differences between games but then that’s where it ends. For example, if you look from a conceptual standpoint on all Roblox One Piece games (very common) you’ll notice they don’t actually differ from each other majorly. Even Ro-Ghoul, the most popular of this niche, follows this same paradigm.
I’ve been given a lot of tasks and requests to help boost the game’s appeal but in the end, again, it’s not much different than creating a niche game with a fresh coat of paint. It’s just PvPvE with other things on top of it. These games are typically only fun for higher levels to mercilessly beat lower levels or show off gear. There’s not much else to do.
Ideas for keeping the game have been one of the major struggles during production and we’re quite stuck on how to proceed. I personally don’t know if the concept has any stable market, it just appeals to a small coterie of people. I’d like it to be good enough to stand out and potentially be on the same level as any other game, but that is almighty difficult.
How could I keep a mundane game like this interesting?
I’ve played several RPM styled games, and the thing that always drives me away or bores me is the combat being:
Sluggish
Inconsistent
Laggy
Points two and three are the most common issues I find in most games like My Hero Academia fan games - the combat looks pretty decent for Roblox in most cases, so it isn’t sluggish, however, they are rarely consistent and seldom optimised.
Its a real shame, I love these sorts of games that let you do whacky stuff because I am super competitive and love beating up my friends in these types of games.
On the flip side, games that have very consistent and performant combat tend to lack any real ‘oomf’ or impact.
Please remain on-topic. I am looking for ideas, not discouragement.
Owari no Seraph.
Synopsis by MAL Rewrite:
With the appearance of a mysterious virus that kills everyone above the age of 13, mankind becomes enslaved by previously hidden, power-hungry vampires who emerge in order to subjugate society with the promise of protecting the survivors, in exchange for donations of their blood.
Among these survivors are Yuuichirou and Mikaela Hyakuya, two young boys who are taken captive from an orphanage, along with other children whom they consider family. Discontent with being treated like livestock under the vampires’ cruel reign, Mikaela hatches a rebellious escape plan that is ultimately doomed to fail. The only survivor to come out on the other side is Yuuichirou, who is found by the Moon Demon Company, a military unit dedicated to exterminating the vampires in Japan.
Many years later, now a member of the Japanese Imperial Demon Army, Yuuichirou is determined to take revenge on the creatures that slaughtered his family, but at what cost?
Owari no Seraph is a post-apocalyptic supernatural shounen anime that follows a young man’s search for retribution, all the while battling for friendship and loyalty against seemingly impossible odds.
Any gameplay system in any game must have a strong core foundation (combat, in your case) before focusing on long-term gameplay, like how the player progresses. The issue with this genre of games on Roblox is not the genre itself, but the fact that many developers do not make an attempt to make the combat system fun. You mash click to do standard attacks and press the number keys every few seconds to use your abilities, waiting for the enemy’s health meter to go down. It’s an outdated real-time RPG format with glitter sprinkled on top.
You want to design your system in a way where it actually FEELS fun to do combat in most battles. I can’t design your game for you, but I recommend doing your own research on which games have fun combat and pinpointing exactly why the combat is fun. Building off of that research, you would design your own combat system (and you will most likely be testing/iterating it A LOT if you’re trying to make it good). At this point, you would have the most important part of your game’s structure done properly. Once your core gameplay loop is actually enjoyable to players, you can worry about other things, such as character customization, who the player is fighting, and how the player progresses.
To add to what @BeetBowl said, try and make your combat system unique. Maybe try and make your system in a way that the player has to think about what move they do next rather than spam clicking them. Lets say a player has low health, they have a choice whether to heal or carry on fighting or use a block ability for a short amount of time to get away from the fight. This way the combat will feel more engaging and less of a clicking simulator.
At the moment, all the player can do is fight or do quests. This gets very repetitive and boring after a while. Maybe you could focus on more of an exploration element for your game. This could help break up the repetitiveness.
Really great points for the combat system made in previous posts.
But have you considered any sort of narrative or storyline? In your first post you said “Players complete quests or progress in any offered way to boost their stats” but if those quests are “kill x enemies” then that’s not a storyline. Consider adding one, even a part of one, and see how players feel about story progression in addition to character progression.
I’d love to see an actual story in a game. Story missions, maybe in a unique environment would add something unique to it. As you’re basing the rpg off OnS, you have plenty of events to take inspiration from for missions.
You could also have some more unique quests such as rescue the civilians where you have to defeat the Vampires holding them hostage, then guide them to a safe zone where you must protect them from the Four Horsemen of John.
I look forward to you releasing this as I’m a huge fan of Owari no Seraph (poor Guren )
this is really stupid, but, maybe introduce that every 13 days the player plays, their character dies (referencing the above-13 year old death virus) and they will get these special points from that death depending on what they did when they were alive, used to get stuff for the next lives?
The project itself has been discontinued (at least as far as I’m concerned, I got removed from the project) but the suggestion is welcome.
I don’t know how well this would mesh with the nature of the game nor of player experiences. Being immersive is one thing but I don’t want to overdo it to the point where I start introducing forced rebirths over a set time period. It’d also be hard to track in many regards - data management, especially.
This does fit in with a thread I asked a while ago though, regarding permadeath as a game mechanic. That’s essentially what your suggestion seems to equate towards. For this type of game, I’d definitely be willing to consider permadeath-esque mechanics, especially punishing ones (we hardly get an entertained player-base or the audience that permadeath would serve as an anti-pattern to, anyway).
Your suggestion is pretty far from stupid and I’m glad you brought it up, since it tides well into a similar design mechanic I’ve been looking into.
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