My player has a ranged weapon, and the enemy slow with a melee attack. Why isn't my game fun?

Hello all!

In one of my games, a slow, large, and strong, enemy lumbers towards the player whom has a ranged attack.

the player can constantly run away from the enemy, chipping away at it's health before it can ever lay down an attack.

Does anyone have any clever solutions to this? the term is also called "kiting".

some of my potential ideas are:

• The enemy has an ability that prevents the player from moving (which is effectively a ranged attack).
• the enemy becomes immune to the player attacks
• the enemy has some kind of "charge attack"

do you recall any games with enemies like this?

 

make him faster, give him ranged attacks, add weaker fodder enemies to break players attention so they aren't focused 100% on mr bullet sponge.

The "tank" in left for dead comes to mind.

 

Maybe any the player gets further than X meters away from the enemy, he takes out his huge shield and becomes immune to any ranged weapons. When the player gets closer, he switches back to his 2-handed massive weapon, and becomes vulnerable to ranged attacks again. This could be an interesting "dance", where the player has a ranged attack, but they can only use it within a very narrow distance range. Too far and the enemy is immune; too close and the enemy will get in a big hit.

Or give him a deadly explosive bomb that he'll hurl at the player if the player is too far away. He doesn't use it at close range because otherwise it would hit him too.

 

Level design will help, give your enemy something to hide behind, areas where they can block you in, or traps you can lure them in to. Anything to make your player have to think about it rather than just repeat.

 

Shucks.
I was about to say, make the enemy a bit faster, and give him a few more attacks. But it was already mentioned above.

 

You should really just post a link to a build.

Anyway, the problem is almost certainly a lack of “orthogonal gameplay”.

Orthogonal gameplay basically means situational rather than just varying sizes of numbers like damage and life.

Think about OG Doom.

You walk into a room with a bunch of soldiers, an imp, and a pinky.

You will want to eliminate the soldiers first since they’re hitscan enemies and will whittle down.

While doing so you need to avoid the imp’s fireballs and periodically reposition from the pinky.

Once you have the soldiers taken down then you can choose between the pinky and the imp.

You’ll likely need to pick this based on the room.

But you can see how these three enemies all serve a specific niche and are completely different.

Meanwhile you have a swath of weapons to pick from and a limited supply of ammo to consider.

It makes the player plan out their actions and improvise as their plan hits various speed bumps.

So when you have only one enemy and one weapon to interact with OF COURSE it’s boring.

You need to keep tabs on the pressure each enemy puts in the player, the way they work in different settings, and don’t make the mistake of over balancing your weapons.

Also, keep in mind that most people can only track 7 things at once. So don’t make the mistake of throwing everything at a player at once. It destroys flow.

 

Thanks everyone for your comments. I am still interested in other ideas if you have them.

at this time, I am testing a few different options:

-giving the slow-moving enemy an irregularly timed range attack that is very strong
-giving the slow-moving enemy a 'weak point' on the it's back that the player would want to maneuver to
-giving the enemy a 'charge attack' where it runs at the player
-turning the enemy into a fast-moving enemy
-having the enemy become "angry" and gets faster when its health is low

Level design is also a good idea, but I am not quite there yet. I'd prefer to have some enemy archtypes that I can build levels around instead of building a level and hoping that I can make a fun AI that will fit what I created.

I looked at all of larger enemies in Doom, and it seems they all are either fast melee attackers, or slow/fast ranged attackers. It didn't have any slow melee attackers from what I saw, so perhaps if Doom doesn't have this type of enemy, it's not a fun enemy to fight against.

if it helps pique your imagination, the enemy is a big, heavily armored, slow-moving skeleton with an executioner's axe. It's covered from head to toe in armor, and as you shoot it, the armor falls off.

I already have other enemies that are smaller and run at the player or shoot from a distance.

 

Dead Cells has an enemy(Golems) that will teleport the player next to them if they try to flee after initiating combat. You could do something like this, so the player has to manage the distance from the enemy as it approaches. Moving too far away will be bad because the enemy will pull you into melee range, so while kiting will still be a viable option, it will require some more skill. When you throw other enemies into the mix this will instantly become much more engaging as staying at the safe distance while dealing with the new enemies will be much more difficult. And if you throw 2 enemies of this type it will become a great challenge as the player will have to find the sweet spot for both of them at the same time.

 

Correojon, I appreciate your feedback as well. I did try toying with this, but I couldn't find a way to make the animations look good.

after trying around for a few weeks, I think I've given up. I changed the enemy design into a high health, slow enemy, with a ranged attack. Now, the player must dodge projectiles while firing at the enemy. It's more engaging, but not my original vision.

I even played a bunch of games that I had hoped would have an enemy like this, but they all end up giving the enemy a ranged attack, or allow the enemy to run fast.

 

Yeah, making animations can be kinda tough. I know this from personal experience, being someone who has done 3d and 2d animations, for years.

 

Bullet sponges are boring.
Is better to have a lot of fas weak enemies, it gives more satisfaction.

 

Agreed.

And when you do make large enemies make it more dynamic than just large numbers.