[Lab] Surprised and Surrounded #2

Greetings, Survivors!

In our last Lab post, we shared the design intent behind the “Surprise”, “Out of Sight”, and “Surrounded” systems we're currently experimenting with.

However, since we focused on design intent and conclusion, it might be hard to imagine how that translates to the actual combat experience...

So today we're going to share a bit more details, along with the history of the experimentation that led to these systems.

[h3]First Experiment - Is “Surprised/Surrounded” actually fun??[/h3]
Our first experiment was to add Surprised and Surrounded "as is" to the existing Early Access version of the combat rules to see if they made it more fun or if they conflicted in any way.

The goal was to add these rules on top of a basic build for procedural map generation that we were already experimenting with, to see if they would "encourage field of view play (Surprised)" and also if they "add interest to battlefield manipulation (Surrounded)".

The reaction to this test was somewhat divided: the use of the Surprised and Surrounded system was fun as intended, but there were a number of existing rules and content that seemed out of place or in need of tweaking.

[h3]Positive[/h3]

There's more tension than before (due to Surprised) to stay out of sight, and a pretty strong sense of reward for getting a kill without raising any alarms.
Battlefield manipulation skills like Grappling Hooks and place swapping have more meaning due to the value of Surrounded and feels more enjoyable as a result.
It's more intuitive to know "How to do it Right" compared to before.

[h3]Negative[/h3]

The concepts of Caught and Surrounded clash, requiring battlefield manipulation to “escape capture” while also trying to set up Surrounded formations. It feels a bit too much.
Being caught off guard by an enemy you can't see now feels more negative than before.
Creating a Surrounded formation with freely deployable/retrievable barricades feels a bit heavy handed and forced.

At this point, we had an important choice to make: do we tear the existing combat system to shreds to fit our new concepts, or do we abandon Surprised/Surrounded because it doesn't fit with the existing rules?

It was at this point that we started thinking about the direction of our planning, including whether or not to remove the concept of “Caught". In the end we decided to rebuild the entire system around “Surprised/Surrounded".

[h3]Second Experiment - Rebuilding the Rules around Surprised/Surrounded[/h3]
In the second experimental version, the Caught rule was removed, and the concept of directional vision when recognized was also dropped - the intention was to focus the overall tactical play on Surprise-centric before recognition and Surrounded-centric after recognition.

First, we added a sort of "Scouting Item" to help you see where enemies are before entering a new room. We wanted to try implementing an item that could "Light Up the View Ahead" and then, if it worked out, add the concept of lighting the darkness with a "Torch/Lantern" or something along those lines.

We've also simplified the rules for Surrounded to allow for "multiple enemies" to be surrounded, as the original "Surrounded" only worked if there were a greater number of allies than enemies adjacent to them, which was a bit hard to recognize and only complicated the rules.

The new rules are that any enemy or ally that has "No Tiles to Move to" are considered Surrounded, regardless of the number of enemies/allies, which means that the Surrounded rule will work even in situations like the one shown below. The original idea for the Surrounded concept came from the rules of Go, and the goal was to modify the rules so that we could actually create situations like the "multiple stones at once" in Go.

Unfortunately, it still didn't have the feel of completeness that we were initially aiming for. The scouting item, while clearly effective, was not only cumbersome to use, but also had the problem of being useless if you lit up a room and it was empty...

Also, creating a Surrounded angle was often "impossible to create no matter what" depending on the enemy's post-alert movement. While the removal of the Caught rule definitely reduced the "punishing feel", the goal of enhancing the tactical feel of "so how do I play this game well?" was not achieved to the level we had hoped...

It was not easy to create Surrounded situations outside of setting up/recovering barricades, and the feedback from our first experiment that "the play itself feels heavy handed and forced" remained an issue.

[h3]Third Experiment - Systematizing “Out of Sight Preview”, “Moveable Objects”, and “Swapping Places”[/h3]
While the remaining issues were not insignificant, we felt that the Surprised/Surrounded itself had a lot of potential to be fun, so we set out to find a way to address the issues that were raised.

For scouting via “Surprised”, the idea was presented that instead of creating a separate scouting item, it would be nice to be able to “Sense the Presence” of enemies within a certain distance, even if they are out of sight, in the sense that you “Felt Their Presence.”

There's still no way to know which way the enemy is "Looking," so there's still a sense of Out of Sight, but if there's a large group of enemies across the room, it gives you a general idea on whether to scout accordingly or take a different route altogether to avoid risk.

For Surrounded, we also experimented with making Willam's Swap Places Skill, which was a Unique Perk for him, a common feature that all characters could use.

If "Battlefield Manipulation" is the basic fun of the game, then the ability to get out of the way of an ally or get between enemies should be available to everyone at the cost of TP, with the intention of fleshing out each character's quirks later in a more deeply tactical way.

Instead of removing the freely deployable/retrievable barricades, we've also been experimenting with a way to move pre-placed objects on the map by pushing/pulling them around. This was a feature that was requested a lot in Early Access, so we thought we'd give it a shot and see if it made sense.

And thankfully, the new features we added worked very well!

Depending on how you utilize the place swapping, you could create a Surrounded formation if you wanted to in almost any situation, and it added a lot of depth to the game as there were a lot of different possible outcomes rather than a “set answer.”

The ability to “See Enemies Out of Sight” also worked out better than expected. You can throw rocks from “Out of Sight” range to “Prevent” them from seeing you, and it has the side effect of reinforcing the emotional impact of the game, as you don't know exactly what's coming, but you can sense it.

Of course, the rules aren't 100% perfect yet: creating Surrounded situations using Place Swaps is quite challenging even for us Devs (just like Go is challenging in real life), and the Pushing/Pulling of objects was not as easy to utilize as we hoped (compared to Place Swapping at least).

However, the fact that the third experiment gave us confidence that we could use Surprised/Surrounded itself as a base system was a big win, and it's also encouraging to see that the feedback was much more positive compared to the second experiment.

We’re really excited for players to try out the Surprised and Surrounded systems in the future, as we’re hopeful that they’ll be as positive about these changes as we are!

Thanks as always, and we look forward to hearing your feedback!
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