Basically, I’m working on a game right now based off of Sword Art Online, the anime.
I’ve been contemplating how long it should take for them to get past each floor [if you’re not familiar its like passing a boss and then gaining another floor to beat]
The map is pretty huge and is supposed to have no filler buildings, so it’s a very big project.
If the maps weren’t so big, like Swordburst 2 or something like it then it could be easier to pass floors.
We are thinking it would take about a month per update, and because we are spending so much time on building it we think it should take a long time to get past each floor to also give us time to update.
In the Anime, it seems as if the bosses are extremely hard to beat, so this sort of leads me to the question.
How long should it take to get past each floor if we are spending about a week in full time on every update?
Obviously the player would get bored if it took too long, but would be over quickly if it was too fast. It also depends on how much exclusive content there is, if its an enemy killing farm to grind or you have dungeons and quests on each floor. If you have plenty of content on each floor, you might as well make it take some time, maybe a few days to a week? Just depends on how much pure grinding there is and how much exploring/questing there is.
The amount of time it takes to produce should not be a part of this calculation. Players think from their perspective. Whether it took a minute, a month, or a year to produce, it is what it is.
Many saw the potential in SAO’s concept but ultimately SAO is designed to be an anime, not a game, so any design decisions in the show should be critically re-evaluated. For example, bosses don’t respawn in SAO which works for an anime but makes no sense for an actual game.
How long should it take?
This depends on the target audience. If you create something so obscenely difficult that it genuinely takes a month to beat, a handful of people will be attracted to that.
If you’re looking at a wider audience, a month isn’t reasonable. Let people beat the boss after 6 to 12 hours of game time. Forcing players to grind for an entire month for one boss won’t be an appealing proposition for most. The longevity should come from other aspects like player transactions, player-organized clans, rare drops, customization (of some kind), or any number of things that aren’t as mundane as grinding for exp.
Say I had very little to no filler buildings, and lots of quests, would about of week - a week and a half be a reasonable amount of time to still attract players who won’t just leave because of the time it takes to beat?
Also, I didn’t think about players getting bored for some reason, thanks for putting that idea into my head haha.
Possibly. It really depends on how repetitive it is, lots of repeating the same action gets boring quick, so new floors would need to be made to make up for that. Lots of fresh content however means players will actively be doing multiple things, and will enjoy their time much better. Meaning you won’t need as many floors, and can slow down the gameplay.
You’re absolutely right about how they wouldn’t care how long it takes to produce. And also about the fact of many things being changed from the anime.
I planned on having a bigger audience because a huge map wouldn’t be good for 10-12 constant players but I guess that some people wouldn’t be attracted to a difficult game like you said.
I definitely won’t be doing over a week now but along with that me and my teammate are going to have a huge workload adding quest, making item drops and interesting things to keep the audience entertained while we update it. That could lead to very time consuming updates that the community might not stay there for, is there a way that would keep them there while we update?
I’m assuming based on the work we have done now it will take about a month to a month and a half for each update.
Yes, we plan to have many ways to interact and make sure they stay busy whether that be decorating a house, or grinding to beat the boss.
What would be a good amount of floors though, because the highest floor game right now is Swordburst 2, on floor 11!
It would definitely be a stretch if we made all 100 floors even though they get smaller with time, as the current floor is going to take around 1-1.5 months.
I recommend you perfect the workings of the game before working on floors. Things like combat, housing, UI, etc. Once you have those things perfected, begin to work on the floors. If the game starts off with mediocre features, but a good floor system people will think thats all the game will ever be. But if you perfect the features, and THEN work on floors, people will enjoy it more.
Once you have those things perfected, you can continuously make floors. If the game is fun feature wise, people will want as many floors as possible, so you can keep updating those and people will play.