Falcon Valley - Design of Items and Progression. (2018)

Overview

Falcon Valley is a real-time online racing game, and for our small team (at the time of development), this manifested as our most ambitious project. The player is inspired, through design, to better their skills as well as advance their falcon's statistics in order to better their chances for victory. Technically, I explored new concepts to deal with the multiplayer aspect, and all the interactions with the server. Visually, the art direction was inspired by the culture of Falconry in the United Arab Emirates (where my studio is based). Over the course of about 15 months, it remained our primary focus, and we managed to produce this thrilling experience successfully.

Progression

A Player of Falcon Valley gains experience with every race, leveling up their falcon and increasing the stats which define it's movement for subsequent races. To some extent, a player with high skill mechanically (and strategically; with power ups) will be able to beat another player who is lower in skill but higher in level. The amount of benefit from leveling up a falcon eventually gives such a valued advantage statistically, that it will essentially be impossible to overcome with skill. This 'window' is a design decision we took, and is important because it rewards skilled game play without completely mitigating a desire to increase in level.

The 'betting system' is how the player can earn more feathers. Each race forces the player to place a bet and based on their position this bet dictates their reward. Races may have two, three or four players and so the rewards are different for all these situations. Bets have a minimum required value, but my be as large as you can afford.

Feathers earned=Feathers Bet * (0.5 + ( (Number of players -1) - (race placement-1) * 0.333 ) ) For Example: Bet: 100, placed 2nd of 4 players Feathers earned =  100 * 0.5 + (( 3 - 1) *0.333) Feathers earned = 116

We wanted to create the situation where the players wealth can grow exponentially, so we give percentage based rewards. This was desirable to us to create sensational risk when one enters a race, while still giving the player control of ‘how much’ risk is involved. It’s also important to note that no matter how many players, there is always someone who will be losing feathers. Aside form the intended aspiration to grow wealth, the player is shown that the best objects to purchase (both statistically and thematically) are exponentially expensive, meaning that we have constructed the environment where succeeding in taking heightened risk with their feathers is inevitably worth it.

Items

Without getting too deep into what how each stat interacts with the game play systems in place, one may simply be aware that equipping a purchased item to your falcon will increase the stats of the falcon by a percentage, which will ultimately improve their ability to reach their top speed. What is important however is the relationship between the cost and the benefits. As an example I have taken a few levels of a hypothetical item. One may interpolate the data below and likely be near to what is implemented for any level.

Note the exponential growth of cost and cost of an epic (purple) item relative to a regular (grey) and rare (blue) item of the next level.

Next, It's important to understand the items effects in a slight increase of depth. Purchasing a regular item will produce a modifier for a stat at a random value between the ranges detailed below.

Note the highest possible value for any level of item may not be higher than the lowest of the following level.

Modifiers for rare and epic items work exactly the same, except with each rarity, we add and extra instance. Rare items generate two random values for two stats while epic items generate three.

This is a system which I have explained as two dimensional in such it is a system which doesn't explicitly command the player to improve their items by increasing height (by increasing the level of their items) nor by increasing width (by increasing the rarity). Instead, the player is left to judge and decide themselves where they want to take a risk with their investments. No matter the choice, there is always a good chance of improvement, assuming the random numbers are in your favour! 

"I might consider upgrading my level 4 rare item to epic, but if I were to win another large bet I may be able to afford a level 5 rare item, with it's higher modification ranges... But will I be able to win without gaining the benefit of the 3rd modifier which the level 4 epic item will give me?" -Anon Game Developer, insane with overthinking.