Project Intent
For the last several years, shooters haven’t been able to hold my attention the same way that shooters of the past were able to. Games like Overwatch & Fortnite just aren’t able to hit the same spot as something like Team Fortress 2 did. I struggled with why this was the case, I could play a couple rounds just fine, but the reality of the matter was that they just started to get boring after that.
My theory is that they lack an element I had seen in other games that had held my attention, strategy. Fundamentally, due to their movement away from player centric design and towards a more streamlined experience they had removed some of the most lasting gameplay that would keep them fresh for hours. My goal with this project was to take on a modern shooter and reintroduce strategic elements without compromising the integrity of its given design. I chose a genre I had never been happy with and got to work.
Research
In order to figure out what really made a BR game a BR game, I took a look at a couple of the most popular battle royal games at the time, in addition to a couple less popular ones that had failed in order to figure out what the key was to the genre.
Mechanic breakdown
Elimination gameplay
Fundamental to the genre, the beginning of the game has significantly more players than the end. As the game goes on, players are eliminated until there is only one player (or a squad of players) left.
level playing field
At the beginning of every round, players all start with the same resources. Aside from their game knowledge and skills, everybody has the same stuff.
Shrinking map
As the game progresses, the map gets smaller. This is to force engagements. The map gets smaller in a semi random manner forcing players to think on their feet and experience new environments and geometries. Though the shrinking is random, the pacing and knowledge of the shrinking are consistent and equal to all players, eliminating the bullshit feel of the floor dropping out from under you.
Loot & Gear
getting geared up as you play a BR is critical to success. Gear can be found in chests scattered around the map or collected from the bodies of defeated foes. Players have to choose when to fight and when to run constantly while playing a battle Royal game. Gear can be a wide variety of items, from new weapons, to ammo, healing items, armor, and even extra inventory space.
Conclusions from research
There are absolutely strategic choices that can be made in all love battle royal games, choices of when to fight and flee, how to manage your inventory, and what areas of the map to explore are critical to success, however they don’t provide enough meat to a player due to the strong presence of dominant strategies and inconsequential gameplay. Because of this, I wanted to introduce new strategic elements while streamlining the moments of gameplay that I didn’t think added to the experience.
Things to avoid
Inventory Management
While playing BR games for research, I was shocked at how much tine I was spending in menus, specifically my backpack, trying to figure out what I wanted to take and what I wanted to leave. Not only did this break the tension and pace of gameplay, but often felt completely unnecessary and clunky. There was such complexity in my loadout management when there wasn’t a need for it. Why do I need to drag the nicer price of armor onto my character when it’s super clear that I want the upgrade. I was never making choices comparing stats, it was complexity that wasn’t required and slowed everything down.
Hiding in a corner
Several times while playing I would see other groups of people fighting and decided to just not engage. It didn’t seem like I was actually going to profit off the risk and potential health loss it would cost me to engage. I already had decent equipment and would just stay in the zone and avoid all conflict. In a shooter that’s fantasy is all about beating 100 other players, I found myself only having to fight a handful of others to get a W. A game shouldn’t reward you for not playing.
Irrelevant Gear upgrades
Because the foundation of the gameplay is built upon getting an edge over other players through gear, progression systems are built into the gear system. This leads to a progression that makes sense with the systems in place, however leads to picking weapons by their stats and not player preference. This does introduce a need for players to become well rounded with all types of guns, but this is often a superficial need, as maps are large enough to have enough of every weapon at highest tier, leading the progression system to be unnecessary.
Design
Homogenizing the resource
One of my biggest problems with the typical BR design was simply the amount of complexity that came from the number of items and things I had to carry and how little they provided to a player. So, I scrapped virtually all resources in favor of a single central currency, money. Ammo, would directly consume money, consumables could be directly purchased for money at given points in the map and could not be taken with you. This also allowed me flexibility when it came to adding new possibilities and incentivizing a player to do a bunch of things.
A map that has purpose
Rather than having the map simply be an environment for combat, it was also going to be critical to players success. I wanted to make players feel like they should move around and engage with the world rather than just exploring it and leaving it barren.
New context
I wanted to develop a context that made sense for all these new changes and played around with a bunch of ideas, but I ended up settling on the Park Brothers game Monopoly. It provided a fresh new take and allowed me into introduce an aesthetic I found perfectly meshed with battle royal gameplay, the beauty of Art Deco architecture, Gershwin, and an uncomfortable cultural assumption of Social Darwinism.
So around now I’m assuming you are probably very confused where this adventure is headed. Monopoly, have you lost your damn mind? Just keep reading, it will make sense in a bit.
The Map
This is what the map I made ended up looking like. Properties scattered around a board, a railway encircling the play space to allow for fast travel around the map. The property locations are randomly placed each play session allowing for interesting and varied routes every game. There is also a platform in the middle I will explain further down the line. Bridges between properties are generated randomly, in addition to elevators, and community chests that function as shops.
Properties
So in order to understand the flow of the gameplay, understanding the function of property is very important here. Property is one of the primary things the player will be spending money on during the game. Players who enter a property are charged an amount of money, depending on how long they stay inside the bounds of the property.
Property changes hands during the course of the game by either being purchased from another player or being picked up off the body of a slain opponent.
Monopolies
Acquiring all properties of a certain color will give players passive unique bonuses, E.G. dark blue will increase rent from all properties by 2x where having every yellow property makes community chest costs slightly lower.
Upwards
A big difference in how the geometry of the map changes compared to other BRs is that everything in this game moves upwards. Every tower spirals upwards, forcing players to race up and around the map. Sometimes there isn’t a bridge and players will have to risk jumping from tower to tower to get to locations of interest or further upwards.
As the game goes on, the zone will start to shrink from the bottom, the large go to jail block at the bottom of the map can be compared to the zone shrinking in other BR games.
Inflation & Property pricing
Property can be acquired at any time and bought right out from another player so long as you have the money. Whenever a player buys a property the cost is doubled (due to inflation), however as players climb, with each level above the last acquisition the price will return to its base value, meaning the higher up you purchase a property, the cheaper it will be for you, and the more expensive it will be for your opponents to steal it.
Bringing things together
The money system and property systems both add new gameplay but they are still a little disjointed from the rest of the game. Paying tend doesn’t really mean anything if all you can do with it is buy more property. But money is also used for consumables, ammo, and when you can’t afford a transaction, health is substituted in its place. Money becomes a critical resource in all aspects of the game.
Going around the board
One of the things I wanted to promote was engaging and traveling around the map. While the property system definitely gives meaning to the world, it doesn’t directly address the desire to get people moving around the board, enter one of monopoly’s most important mechanics, going around the board.
Each player has an indicator on their screen that tracks which properties they have been to and where they have to go next. By entering the next property you progress through the board until you reach go and collect your money.
This makes players have to navigate the board in interesting ways, given the generation of each map, these routes will be unique and allow players to really have to learn their map each round. Because money is so important to the winning this will be a pull to players to take risks and run around the map.
An AlternAtIve way to Win
One of the biggest problems with battle Royal gameplay as I see it is the hiding in a corner problem. How can you push people to take risks if the goal is to survive as long as possible. My solution was to add an end game to the collection of resources.
By collecting enough money, players would be able to buy a ticket to an elevator in the middle of the map. The elevator would slowly rise and if they are able to survive to the top, they win the game.
This provides others with the opportunity to stop their victory if they are skilled enough to shoot them as they rise, but also provides an interesting way to play the game and a great way to prevent stalemates.
A few other future SYstems
Elevators & the Railroad
Scattered throughout the map there are a bunch of elevators that allow you to quickly move several floors up. In addition to this, the railway that circles the plays pace will allow players to get to different areas of the map quickly, these will both cost money to ride.
community chests
Players will be able to spend money on community chests scattered around the map that will dispense cash rewards, new guns, health packs, & unowned properties.
fortification
The environment is very barren as of now, partially because my art skills are lacking and partially because I would love to see a fortification/building system similar to Fortnite (though nowhere near as flexible) to add more ways of spending money and avoiding combat while still engaging with the game. It would also greatly improve the alternate win condition’s excitement if both players involved have something to do.