I'm working on a singleplayer, RPG-esque map in which most of the difficulty comes from the spells and abilities rather than the raw stats of the enemy units.
The trouble is that that's inherently somewhat beginner-unfriendly. It's easy to just click on an enemy unit to see its raw stats, but there's normally no way to find out its abilities other than trial and error. Which means players new to my map would have trouble strategizing and estimating the power of enemy groups.
So I've been thinking about several different ways to make the needed information available to the player, but all the ones I've come up with have both pros and cons:
1) Bestiary in the quest menu.
+I can easily put tons of info there
+Can use different text colors and other attractive formating
+People often expect map information to be in the quest menu
+Easy to make a separate, easily findable entry for each enemy type (or category of types)
-I want to use the quest menu for actual quests, and using it for both could look messy
-Requires potentially lengthy, boring gameplay interruptions to read
2) Message displayed upon double-clicking a unit.
+I can easily put tons of info there
+Can use different text colors and other attractive formating
+Easy for players to bring up without stopping playing
-Floods the screen with text
-Could trigger accidentally if the player is clicking around in battle or the like
-Not something people are used to
-Not so great in a time-crunch (e.g. the enemy is running at the player as they try to read)
3) Give enemies the "Shop Sharing" ability. As I recall, this lets players view all their abilities just like their own units.
+Has a certain elegance/prettiness to it
+Can use nice formatting in the ability tooltips to break up the information and make it easy to read
+Can view ability info at the same time as unit stats
-As I recall (it's been a while since I worked with this ability), this might let the player control the units in question
-Can't easily display as much information
-Terrible in a time-crunch
4) Give enemies dummy aura abilities with buff tooltips that give information.
+Can view ability info at the same time as unit stats
-Have to keep things EXTREMELY brief
-Can't do much formationg
-Not something anyone is used to
-Bad in a time crunch
I guess I have less a single question and more a general request for ideas about other ways to give the players needed info/ways to improve on these ideas. I'm also interested in which approach people think they would most like if they were trying out such a map for the first time.
The trouble is that that's inherently somewhat beginner-unfriendly. It's easy to just click on an enemy unit to see its raw stats, but there's normally no way to find out its abilities other than trial and error. Which means players new to my map would have trouble strategizing and estimating the power of enemy groups.
So I've been thinking about several different ways to make the needed information available to the player, but all the ones I've come up with have both pros and cons:
1) Bestiary in the quest menu.
+I can easily put tons of info there
+Can use different text colors and other attractive formating
+People often expect map information to be in the quest menu
+Easy to make a separate, easily findable entry for each enemy type (or category of types)
-I want to use the quest menu for actual quests, and using it for both could look messy
-Requires potentially lengthy, boring gameplay interruptions to read
2) Message displayed upon double-clicking a unit.
+I can easily put tons of info there
+Can use different text colors and other attractive formating
+Easy for players to bring up without stopping playing
-Floods the screen with text
-Could trigger accidentally if the player is clicking around in battle or the like
-Not something people are used to
-Not so great in a time-crunch (e.g. the enemy is running at the player as they try to read)
3) Give enemies the "Shop Sharing" ability. As I recall, this lets players view all their abilities just like their own units.
+Has a certain elegance/prettiness to it
+Can use nice formatting in the ability tooltips to break up the information and make it easy to read
+Can view ability info at the same time as unit stats
-As I recall (it's been a while since I worked with this ability), this might let the player control the units in question
-Can't easily display as much information
-Terrible in a time-crunch
4) Give enemies dummy aura abilities with buff tooltips that give information.
+Can view ability info at the same time as unit stats
-Have to keep things EXTREMELY brief
-Can't do much formationg
-Not something anyone is used to
-Bad in a time crunch
I guess I have less a single question and more a general request for ideas about other ways to give the players needed info/ways to improve on these ideas. I'm also interested in which approach people think they would most like if they were trying out such a map for the first time.