Something to take up the time while we wait for Shrouded Spoils:
Skeletons make up a huge part of the SOT experience, and given how often we need to deal with them, they fall short in ways that negatively impact the rest of the game. Feel free to discuss and critique.
Welcome to part one of my very long take on how to make Skeletons more engaging part of the game, especially in battling them on land.
In this entry, I’m going to discuss the principle of satisfying impact and feedback, how skeletons fall short, and what can be done to address the issues. While there are many issues, and this one seems small, I think it is fundamental to getting skeletons right.
TL;DR: Combat should feel good. Skeleton combat doesn't.
Skeleton health is completely random and indiscernible, making our weapons feel bad.
Skeleton health should be constant for its type. More skeleton sub-types should be added (weaker and tankier)
There is little visual or auditory indication that fighting skeletons has any effect on them, or how close they are to death. This also makes our weapons feel bad.
Add visual and audio indicators that show how much damage each individual skelton is taking.
I’m not going to focus on the existing combat mechanics in the game, which you can find 20+ threads on.
I’m interested specifically in how it FEELS to fight the skeletons, regardless of combat mechanics or strategy.
A large component of satisfying combat is that it feels good to swing a sword or fire a gun, and it feels good to use it on an enemy.
There are a few principles that contribute to this feeling. I’ll dive into each and discuss how it is handled in SOT.
The tool does what I expect it to do:
Everyone has certain expectations on how a gun will behave before they pull the trigger. And weapons in sea of thieves are pretty consistent in behavior and damage. However, players also have an expectation on how a gun will affect its target. When it comes to skeletons, results are across the board. When fighting skeletons, there is no way to tell how close they are to death at any point.
Skeletons always have an indeterminate amount of health, regardless of “type” or appearance. Sometimes 3 sword swings will be enough to kill a whole group of skeletons, and sometimes each skeleton can absorb 3 EOR shots.
(This is confused by the different skeleton types. I haven’t been able to detect a pattern in why a skeleton might have more or less health. Of all the varieties (feral, crews, shadow, plant, Gold, Gunpowder), the main differentiator is whether or not they are a captain or Gold, and perhaps the level of your quest. Otherwise, it’s up in the air.)
This removes any sense of impact and consistency to the weapons. A blunderbuss that one-shot skeletons in one fight might feel like a pea-shooter in the next.
It results in gameplay that usually consists of firing or slashing at skeletons over and over until they die, then moving onto the next one. This means that there is no “flow” to a battle. They might as well just be a pile of HP that hurts you if you get too close, instead of individual units.
Solution
Make health amounts completely consistent between skeleton types and varieties. A skeleton type that dies to 3 sword swings should always die to 3 sword swings. If we feel that that removes any “difficulty”, then more varieties could be introduced into each "type". cracked, clean, or bulky types make it clear how much health each might have.
I want to see the effects of my actions:
As a follow up to the previous point, tools / weapons are satisfying if you can tell that they are having an effect. When I use a hammer on a nail I want to see the nail driven into the wood. Sea of thieves has little to none of this with skeletons.
Right now there are only a few visual indicators that what you are doing is having an effect:
Flinching / falling back - sure you hit the skeleton, but for all you know, it could have 90% of its HP left.
Eating a banana - it seems like you’ve hurt it quite a bit, but who knows how much health it has now?!
Running away - probably pretty close to death, but now you need to chase it across the whole island. Not fun.
Actually dying - they exploded into a pile of bones, but because I had no idea how close they were to death, this just comes as a surprise. And really just a relief that I don’t have to deal with it anymore. It doesn’t feel like a victory or consequence of my actions.
Solution
Add visual and audio indicators to skeletons to show how hurt they are. Cracks in the bones, etc. It should be clear that a skeleton with cracks all over is one hit away from death.
In my next post I’ll discuss the basic design shortcomings of a skeleton encounter with some solutions.
