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ninnin90 -> Suggestion: Slay The Spire Style Intent and Enemy Telegraphs (3/6/2021 21:30:55)
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For those who don't know, Slay the Spire is a turn based deck building rpg/roguelike. In Slay the Spire, before an enemy makes a move they display their Intent. An icon above the enemy's head that telegraphs to the player what kind of action they are about to do when they get their turn, allowing the player to plan accordingly, not be caught off guard during a new encounter, and not have to commit enemy rotations to memory too too much.
I was trying and failing at the Escheron inn challenge when I realized that it would be much easier for me if I knew whether Escheron was about to invert, do his normal laser attack, or do his lightning attack, and whether the staff was about to heal or attack. Killing the staff can throw off the rhythm of the fight if you aren't staying mindful and I tend to forget that Escheron throws in an extra attack before he inverts you after the first time. I could just try to commit the changes in rotation to memory, but that's hard for me to do personally, takes a lot of trail and error, and I know there must be people out there who have a harder time memorizing and have less patience than me!
The top-of-the-screen-text-bubbles help, but don't tell a player what the enemy is going to do specifically action to action, can be missed or accidentally dismissed if you're not careful, and are insufficient on their own when even a normal attack can be deadly.
If bosses (or enemies in general, but bosses would be the most important) were able to communicate at least vague idea of what they're about to do, either through a widget above their heads like in Slay the Spire, or something else like performing a specific idle animation before doing a specific move, I think that would really help players of all skill levels (but especially new and returning players) around the learning curve of DF's recent complex/challenging bosses and end-game content.
The widget option would be universally applicable to any given fight, tells the player at least a vague idea of what's about to happen, and could allow for even normally mechanically simple "Hit Hero" type 'trash mobs' to be made more complex without overwhelming or blindsiding the player. But, this could be seen as intrusive, clunky, and unnecessary for all the simple "Hit Hero" type monsters that already exist, and would require the creation of a brand new mechanic as well as most likely a whole whole lot of retrofitting for past enemies to be able to use it, so this is most likely not the best solution but would be a lot less work going forward compared to idle animations if it was fully implemented due to just being a series of icons.
A widget mechanic has more potential in my opinion, but would be hard-to-impossible to implement.
Enemies performing a specific idle animation before a specific move may make it harder to figure out whats about to happen compared to a widget, and is more work for anyone animating an enemy, but could be implemented into new ones without having to retrofit anything, can be almost as universal as widgets assuming the animations could be reused by enemies that share Animation Skeletons, would only need to be done for mechanically complex/important fights, and makes important fights more flashy, memorable, and parsable.
This method would technically (I'm assuming) be easier to implement, but makes more work for already taxing flashy fights if it becomes the expected standard, and may not be specific enough to alleviate trial and error.
(also, I tried posting this earlier today but it seemed to vanish into thin air as if it never existed... I pm'd Gingkage about it and it's either due this post breaking a rule but pms are acting strange and the message from a mod informing me of this didn't land in my inbox, or some arcane automated system ate the post for mysterious reasons. This is my first suggestion post, and I studied and double checked the rules so I don't think I'm breaking any, but if I somehow am then please contact me via my email instead of pm if you can... Assuming that's what even got my post last time...?)
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