Design problem

I’m making a Doom Metroidvania and it has two conflicting mechanics that I’m not sure what to do about.

On one hand being a Metroidvania I want the player to unlock more of the map as they gain new abilities.

On the other hand having boomer shooter mechanics means rocket jumping is a must.

I don’t mind the player reaching some areas prematurely through rocket jumping, but I also don’t want it completely broken.

I don’t want the player to be able to throw a grenade on the ground then shoot it with a rocket for a mega rocket jump that gets them where they aren’t supposed to for a long time.

Any suggestions for a work around?

 

Boomer shooter mechanics? Wait, whut? What the heck is that?

Put a translucent force field barrier around those areas, so if the player prematurely reaches it, they can't go into that area, unless they have some sort of key.

 

Do what other games do and encourage sequence breaking. Or at the very least, properly test for situations where it can happen, and see whether you need to design around it or let it happen.

Games as far as the early Metroid games were able to be sequence broke, and recent games like Hollow Knight had plenty of places were you could break the general sequence of events to no consequence. All of them were better for it, honestly.

Only a very, very small percent of players will actually ever do it anyway.

 

I’m not against sequence breaking, but I do worry that it will be TOO easy and and TOO broken.

Oh, and “boomer shooter” just means retro FPS.

 

I don't understand the question. It's kind of like saying you want to make an unlockable high-jump but you also want the player to already have the high jump from the beginning.

The most obvious solution is to simply make high jumping not one of the things that you need to unlock more of the map.

Another option is that could make a higher-than-rocket-jumping high jump that you need to unlock.

You could make rocket jumping unlockable. Like maybe being in a rocket explosion is instant death until you unlock a force-field or something. (Edit: I overlooked the even-more obvious option of making rocket jumping unlockable simply by making the rockets unlockable.)

I guess another thing you could do is make rocket jumping extremely costly. I.e. rockets are super-rare or rocket jumping kills 3/4 of your health or something. Then people can experiment with sequence-breaking but only if they're hard-core.

 

I think allowing players to break the game is fine. Adjust the level design in cases where it is too easy. Like people shouldnt be able to break it on accident during normal gameplay. But if somebody wants to sit there for an hour ass-blasting to see if they can get a new speed run time, that's not a bad thing at all.

I don't think there is any golden rule to follow. Just playtest a lot and if you find that you accidentally blast yourself off the map in certain parts, tweak the environment to prevent it. I think it's just a problem mitigated through lots of playtesting.

 

I don’t think it’s going to be possible to simply lock off weapons you can rocket jump with since I plan on having grenades available immediately.

But maybe one thing I’m considering adding is a toggle that makes stacking them impossible.

So if you throw a grenade, then shoot it with a rocket the player will only get the velocity of one, then switch it back on when the player starts falling (or close to it).

As for limiting the ammo that’s simply not possible. One of my core mechanics is I want checkpoints to completely replenish the player so that they don’t have to horde ammo.

The current “locks” and “keys” I have are:

-a section that is very dark and almost requires a flashlight.

-areas that require a double jump. (Or rocket jumps).

-a jump that requires the player to use a dash to redirect mid dash.

-a lever that is out of reach and requires the grapple to reach.

-suspended crates that require the grapple to an area far away.

-a couple areas that are too difficult without a certain weapon (which is all I want to say about it atm)

-forcefields that can only be broken with an upgraded melee attack

-a big ominous “you must kill all these bosses to open the last area” door

-an area that you can only outrun swarms of enemies if your grapple is fully upgraded

-doors that will not open until power is restored to an area

-tons of passages that loop back that will unlock as you manage to get through long legs of the map

I’m sure more will naturally come to me as I get into making the actual maps, but these are the essential flowchart doors and locks that I’m starting with.

I suppose I have enough to work with there and make it more Dark Souls than Metroid, but this thread is really useful so far.

Does anyone have any suggestion to add or refine what i have?

EDIT: I suppose the area that requires double jump could use multiple jumps so that you can push into the area, but end up being another “you can do this, but you really ought to wait” area.

 

How about you just lock off areas of the map with things which aren't helped by jumping? A few ideas:

- Heat / radiation / poison / other hazard which you need to get immunity to. Before you get the hazard suit (or whatever) sure, you can rocket jump into the area, but you'll die before you can do anything.

- Good ol' doors. Let people jump up to wherever, and even let them have some rewards for getting there, but stop them completely breaking progression by putting key locations or items also behind doors which require keys.

- Unbeatable bad guys. An objective elsewhere makes them vulnerable, eg: disables their shields.

 

I’m starting to think that I want to lean towards having a lot available to the player immediately, but soft lock it with difficulty.

so for an example, I’ll allow people to rocket jump freely but there will be an area that will require multiple rocket jumps So the player will end up chewing themselves up before having to deal with the enemies.

Or also, I plan on having an area that’s extremely dark that they can access immediately, but will have a lot easier time if they get the flashlight first.

 

If you bubble planned your level as a graph, you can planned for sequence breaking to not be a problem, just add shortcuts to two node. Also if you follow level design 101 you will have rise and fall of intensity along teaching player new skills with "introductionary" challenge, that's where your experience player can skip with knowledge or skills or allowing them to slip low intensity place to let them set their own pace.

 

I do have my game laid out in flow chart, and I do have an idea of how I want to pace the game.

But I still need to gather more of my assets before worrying about how to do them.

 

Assets shouldn't get in the way of level design though, it's agnostic to presentation... that's why "boxing" level is a thing (whiteboxing, greyboxing, orange boxing or color boxing depending on your studio).

 

I know about boxing.

I’m saying that I want to have at least the prototypes done of my enemies, my weapons, and my environmental elements.

I have tons of general structure ideas from decades of level design so I’m not worried about that.

i’m more focused on how these different elements I’m developing going to interact with one another, and the sort of Experience the player will get from them.

 

If possible, if you have a gamecube or an emulator, play the first Metroid Prime game. That will give you a good insight on how to do that, and make everything fit together.