New Game Design/Gameplay needed for dealing with Enemies in future games

[pinkribbonscars]

Monster encounters were still effective, just not as impactful as when I first played Penumbra / Amnesia. You can tell the encounters weren't as much a priority, too. Look at Amnesias masterfully crafted buildup compared to Somas first encounter.

[Rapture]

I couldn't get over the infinitely patrolling paths of the monsters, and how they were always kept within close proximity of you.

I was scared shitless from Amnesia because a game has never done (to my knowledge this effectively) the more realistic "Monster explores and leaves once it can't find anything". I was always on edge, wondering when a monster would pop out.

I had way to much time being frustrated over SOMA's patrol paths and getting to know the ins and outs of the monsters. Sometimes they would randomly charge me when I was crouched down, waiting for them to pass. (They were sometimes 10-15 feet away to)

[EnDash]

I disagree with this. The fact is that people can already avoid the enemies if they want to just by running around a lot, and more than a few people have commented on how boring and stale that becomes, and how it ruins the carefully crafted atmosphere of horror.

i actually agree with you on this one, i commented before on this forum saying the enemies were the worst part of soma.

Providing well structured in game opportunities to delay or avoid enemies would give greater depth to the gameplay, without reducing the sense of horror. They in no way reduce the sense of horror than the situations the game already provides in which you're able to avoid enemies, like when

Spoiler below!

you climb through the lab's broken window and you're able to spend all the time you want in it, while the proxy can't reach you.

maybe it's different for you then for me, but every time i "outsmarted" the enemies in soma i was no longer scared. when

Spoiler below!

i was crawling in the vents or crouching under a desk looking directly at the monster, counting the seconds until it got away, i was bored, and then annoyed. the monsters were scary the first couple of times but after i figured all the hiding places and running routes, i was literaly checking my phone waiting for the monster to go away, and dying became an annoyance, not a jumpscare.

All they provide is a temporary respite, which is completely necessary (and built into the game at many points), in order to allow your tension levels to fall from peak to a lower plateau. This gives the game the opportunity to build up that tension anew, which keeps the game lively and engaging, and refreshes the sense of horror instead of it becoming stale.

monsters are definitely a tool you want to use, but only if you do it right. in soma many times i was chased by an enemy while trying to access lore stuff or explore the area, and when i died i often had to wait for doors to open or the monster to go away before getting to what i want, and the monster always came back way too quickly. the monsters were a hindrance.

contrast that with amnesia, where the monsters spawned dynamically based on a number of parameters, like how long the player has gone without solving a puzzle or how much sanity you had. and if you died often the monster would despawn so you could have a chance to explore. there was an attempt to make the monsters an engaging part that would come and go unexpectedly and would be there to support the player's actions, instead of directly opposing them.

it wasn't perfect either, but to me the enemies in amnesia were much scarier and were scary for far longer then the enemies in soma.

The mechanic in A:TDD is powerful evidence against this. All of us spent plenty of time hiding in closets, knowing we were safe while doing so. Yet the tension and sense of horror did not diminish, and in fact the close proximity to the enemy and the fear of sudden exposure (however likely), only heightened the fear. It did not make us any less terrified of the enemies, even when we saw them repeatedly in the game, and used the same mechanic to avoid them.

again, it's probably different for me then it is for you. after a while of playing amnesia the monsters became a routine part that wasn't scary. they were still a solid gameplay part but i wasn't in tension or afraid. when i realized i can just run right past them it became a game of cat and mouse that i knew i would win every time, and was not scary.

i urge you to go back and play amnesia again, get to the parts of the game where a monster is chasing you and tell me, now that you know it are tuned to how it works, it still scares you.

if it does, well then the audience is split.

[PathOS]

This article I thought articulated well what I think Frictional did great with SOMA and why, for me at least, the games like Alien Isolation that are touted as "more scary", are not so much.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-frict...sign-douse

The thing about horror games is that the art of sustaining suspense is paramount to the fear experience. In Alien Isolation, the Alien itself was a tool designed to do just that. So were the androids. In Amnesia, Penumbra, A Machine for Pigs, and SOMA, their relative 'enemies' are tools designed to do just that. The problem with these tools is that they generate fatigue. Sustaining a state of being is naturally impossible since we adapt to our environment, not to mention we are enduring fiction. Sustained happiness is insanity. For myself, once killed a few times by the Alien, the fear effect was lost. It became a man in an Alien suit with a job. It didn't crawl along the walls. I knew its tricks. It ambled along the corridors, and an algorithm decided if a vent above you killed you. I adapted and therefore my immersion was broken. In my opinion, Alien needed more tools.

That's the problem with horror game design in 2015, and at this stage I've already written off action games posing as horror. There is a delicious temptation to show too much, and to trigger a jump scare - but with each scare the player grows tougher, more aware, and more fatigued. It loses its effect and the tool is reduced to a short-lived commodity. You can only die so many times before you start playing recklessly, and at that point you've lost the player. A jump scare is useless if you want to sustain an emotional state in your players. It is often damaging to your objective.

...

Nobody really gives a shit if their character dies, but if you -- the player himself -- doesn't get to figure out what went on here, you'll go nuts. There's a ratio that has to be considered: unpleasant sense of fear:frustration of not knowing. This is where Penumbra differs to, say, Alien Isolation. In the latter, you already know what happened, an Alien happened. Therefore, the player is propelled (or not) by collectables and survival instinct.

[WALP]

I had a couple ideas the other day which could possibly deal with this.

There are 2 major issues with the current approach.

1. Players go into horror games like this, with the basic horror sneak and hide gameplay in mind, and while you can scare the player by going against the expectations, there's only so many ways you can do that.

2. You are also very limited in regards to how much you can betray the players expectations, because if you go too far you risk making it too hard for a lot of players, resulting in them failing or getting killed so many times the fear elements disappears.

My idea is that to counter this, you cannot simply make the game with a fresh player who has basic expectations in mind. Instead you should 1. spend a very large portion of the game building up new expectations for the player, while focusing less on scaring it. And 2. make use of all this time to learn the player more complex/hard gameplay.

This would mean that when you get to the point in the game where you are truly trying to scare the player, you will have a brand new set of expections about the games world and how the gameplay works, which you can play with and as such scare the player with. What kind of gameplay this is you have a lot of freedom with, but you probably want it to fit in. It could be something like giving the player a gun, which he has expected to use entire game, only for it to not work at all, or having the player somehow learn to do a lot of intense running, so when he encounters an enemy he wont just run around the corner but try to put as much distance as possible between him and the enemy.

Theres no perfect example of a game that has done this right, but if I were to give some examples I would say (spoiler alert for Rayman 3 + Quake 4)

Spoiler below!

The part in Rayman 3 when you fall down to the knarren, or when you are captured and stroggified in Quake 4(this part is the most I have ever been scared by a game, left 9 year old me shaking on the couch)

Learning the player the gameplay as you build up expections is also important, because now that the player has needed to go through difficult sections to get here, he has an expection of how hard the game is, and what it will take to fx Survive, meaning the player will never halfass anything. And as mentioned before the fact that the players are doing their best and are way more skilled means you have to worry far less about player failure when you betray their expections.

In short you should spend a lot of time building up expectations in the player, and your expectations for the player. Especially in the gameplay.

[Alligator]

I don't have anything against a "combat system" when it is similar to Penumbra Overture.
As long the game don't turn into a "fun competition" it is a nice feature. But I always suggested that the best horror is caused when the player lose his weapons. Then he felt more helpless than if he would never had weapons. So you should be able to kill enemies in some "very special" way for the first 30 % of the game. The other 70 % you should be helpless.

But don't understand me wrong. It should never be fun. Overture also was not fun. So when this combat system works as well as it does in Overture, then it would be very nice!

I think it would be cool if there was a level where the player has to get past let's say 5 monsters and it's possible to find a one-shot flare gun (and no spare flares). The player could use it to kill a monster if he had difficulties sneaking past it, but he would risk alerting other nearby monsters, so using the gun could potentially make his situation even more difficult. Most players would probably save the gun in case a monster starts chasing them or in case they encounter some even scarier monster.

I think that having a one-use weapon like this would be great for the exact reason that Googolplex mentioned: it's scary to use the weapon, because you know that once you've used it, you become completely defenseless.

[Romulator]

Such a thing is possible with mods

[Kein]

Will pay in PURE structure gel for a mod that restores original FG's idea about "passive" monster who do not instantly attack player.

pls

[bazookatooth]

I don't have anything against a "combat system" when it is similar to Penumbra Overture.
As long the game don't turn into a "fun competition" it is a nice feature. But I always suggested that the best horror is caused when the player lose his weapons. Then he felt more helpless than if he would never had weapons. So you should be able to kill enemies in some "very special" way for the first 30 % of the game. The other 70 % you should be helpless.

But don't understand me wrong. It should never be fun. Overture also was not fun. So when this combat system works as well as it does in Overture, then it would be very nice!

I think it would be cool if there was a level where the player has to get past let's say 5 monsters and it's possible to find a one-shot flare gun (and no spare flares). The player could use it to kill a monster if he had difficulties sneaking past it, but he would risk alerting other nearby monsters, so using the gun could potentially make his situation even more difficult. Most players would probably save the gun in case a monster starts chasing them or in case they encounter some even scarier monster.

I think that having a one-use weapon like this would be great for the exact reason that Googolplex mentioned: it's scary to use the weapon, because you know that once you've used it, you become completely defenseless.

this was very similar to my thinking....make the player able to defeat monsters in very limited scenarios and with potentially risky consequences

[Radiance]

The game Underworld Ascendant has 3 classes to play while thief class has non-combat gameplay. Maybe something similar could modders implement in Soma and Amnesia.
It's example of luring the monster rather than fight him.