I’m trying to make an action courier simulator game where you pick up mail to deliver to buildings around the map. There’s also a currently pretty scuffed combat system for hostiles the player might encounter along the way.
But I’ve reached a stage where I’ve realized the game design pretty much sucks – the delivery part is no better than a walking simulator, and combat gameplay is completely detached from the core gameplay, since you can just jump over or outrun the mobs, and neither do i want to make combat feel forced. There’s also a prestige point system in place that exclusively rewards players for doing deliveries, but it also feels really forced.
Spawn enemies close to escape route when the player approaches
Make heavy enemies. With this I mean enemies that can overwhelm the player by themselves, like being able to outrun the player if they run away, that are huge and do great damage. That way players will have to fight
Give the player points/boosts if they complete a wave of enemies.
About the delivery part
Make it some nice parkour. But not specified:
Give cool shortcuts and stuff
Make goals midway that if reached give extra points (1-3 is good)
Make obstacles
Make the player normal speed at the start, then really fast if they keep running non-stop.
(Poll cuz I like them) How great is this suggestion?
First of all, I just want to say that that’s a pretty cool idea! That’s really creative!
However, that’s not what you were asking about, so I’ll give you some ideas on how to improve your gameplay.
This honestly seems like a hard thing to make work in tandem, but if you do, you’d have a huge advantage because you’d have a unique game that no one’s really created before (that I know of)
This is optional, but you might want to identify the core loop of the game. For example, do you want players to be focusing on delivering items and getting points, or focus on fighting enemies while delivering items?
You don’t have to make your core loop like this, as the loop you already have (delivery then fight then points) would work fine. This feedback would only really be helpful if any on the other tips I give don’t help much.
Now, let me give some ideas for your game (warning, it’s VERY long!). Honestly, some aspects of this could carry over to other types of games, so anyone else reading this could also find some use in this “article!”
Delivery System/Fighting System
Firstly, you said that the delivery part feels no more than a walking simulator. Well then, spice it up! There’s a popular game you may know of called Work at a Pizza Place. Maybe check out this game’s pizza delivery system to get inspiration.
If it feels boring to delivery things, maybe make it more exciting my adding a timer so that you get less points if you don’t make it in time. If you want to integrate the combat gameplay, then maybe you can make it so the mobs can steal your deliveries for themselves, and you have to fight them to get them back. That way, it’s not that you have to fight them, but you do if you want your delivery item back.
Heck, maybe make it so that some of the mobs are just enemy players that are trying to compete with you for some special sort of thievery reward! Everyone loves competition, and it would save you the trouble of having to script an intellegent fighting AI!
This would indeed be forcing the combat, but it’s up to the OP on whether they think it’d fit the game.
Maybe players could just be faster in general, or the distance to the buildings could be closer. Or, maybe they could use their points to buy a vehicle that’d get them there faster. That would add a sort of economy for the prestige points if it don’t already exist.
Speaking of prestige points, I’ll add more on that in the next section.
Economy/Extra Features
The economy of a game is very important and often times very hard to get exactly right.
How so? Maybe you should give the players more ways to obtain the prestige points, like by defeating mobs like @RememberToSmile01 said.
To add more ways to get this currency, or just to add more features to the game, you could allow players to work other jobs, such as packaging the items, keeping track of them, being an executive, or whatever other jobs you can think of.
Maybe you can also give players a little bit of a special premium currency if they complete the deliveries extremely fast. This would require the player to be pretty adept at combat and know a decent amount of shortcuts. Instead of just getting a bonus of the normal currency, giving them an extra exclusive one could help seal the deal. Psst, this could also be a monetization opportunity!
With this new currency, maybe you could unlock special vehicle skins, vehicle stickers, player skins, emotes, or whatever else. You could also make it have a practical benefit, such as increasing your damage against enemies, increasing your health, increasing your walkspeed, increasing the rewards you get from deliveries, and whatnot.
Lastly, maybe there could be different corporations that hate each other, and you can choose one when you first start the game, and you countinue working for them throughout several play sessions unless you decide to move to a differnt corporation. This could give a reason for some players to steal other packages from others, and could add a roleplay aspect to the game (attracting one of the biggest player groups on roblox!). Having groups that you associate with for a long time, if not permanently, would be a cool concept that could elevate your game! Imagine the possibilities!
Just as a friendly reminder, there are four player groups:The fighters (love fighting games), the explorers (love exploring the world and discovering new things), the achievers (love 100%-ing games), and the social people (love roleplaying and interacting with other players). If you can somehow incorporate these four player types into your game without diminishing the game’s quality, then your game would, theoretically, have a significantly higher chance of success.
tl;dr
Add a timer so that players have a reason to do deliveries fast. Maybe even give them a special currency that you can’t get any other way!
Add other ways to get currency (eg. defeating mobs, jobs) and ways you can spend them (eg. vehicles, skins).
Maybe the mobs could be enemy players, or just some of the mobs could be enemy players.
Maybe add global, permanent groups/coorperations that you can join and stay in for as long as you like–this could improve the social aspect of the game.
There are four player groups:The fighters (love fighting games), the explorers (love exploring the world and discovering new things), the achievers (love 100%-ing games), and the social people (love roleplaying and interacting with other players). Always keep this in mind.
(If you’re reading this tl;dr summary, I highly recommend that you at least skim the full feedback, because this summary only has the essential information.)
Anyways, those are my two cents. If you have any questions, please ask me–I’d be happy to answer them!
I hope your game finds success, and that this rantinformative piece of feedback helps!
Like I said, force it but not directly,. Making it more forced gives the player some sort of challenge and fun actually. But give the player a way of knowing heavy enemies are close, but still make the player have to fight their way if they engage in battle.
I meant that if you build this in the game, you would get some sorta parkour/momentum system that I personally love. This is good for the fighters group and if you get enough speed then perhaps then you can outrun heavy enemies. This makes it even less forced and the parkour would be real cool, forcing players to sometimes stop so they don’t lose control of their avatar by going insanely fast.
Yep, 100% agreed
That’s it, also @N1njaFactory you completly ran over my suggestion lol. I mean yours is much better
