More Game Design

I have previously talked about game design changes I would make to games I enjoy playing. Another thought struck me recently: penalizing the player. By this I mean that the player is penalized in multiple ways for using his character/avatar's abilities.

Your character has an Energy bar that is used to cast his abilities and each ability has an energy usage amount. So, for example, a power may "cost" 10 energy to cast and your character may have 100 energy total. If you do not have enough energy to cast the ability, you cannot cast it. The higher the power (or more powerful it is), the higher the energy cost to cast it. There is usually a method by which your character regenerates those used energy points, either over time or via some sort of "energy potion" concept.

In addition, each of the abilities usually has a "cool down" timer. This means that, when you cast it, you have to wait that period of time before the ability is usable again. More powerful abilities typically have higher cool down times, so can be used less frequently.

Next, many games use a system whereby a power is only useable in certain circumstances. For example, only after a previous power is used or only when a certain game circumstance occurs.

Lastly, a fairly common practice is to create enemies that have powers that take away your energy, impede your use of your abilities, are immune to some or all of your abilities, or render your character completely unusable for a space of time.

So, to sum up: powers have a cost to use AND they also have a timer for how often they can be used regardless of cost AND you are limited by the amount of energy you have and how fast you can restore it AND some powers can only be used in specific circumstances, plus enemies are often designed to make it difficult to impossible for you to use your character's powers. This seems like multiple penalties all to one game system.

I have a few suggestions to resolve these issues:

• Pick either the Energy bar/Energy cost OR the cool down timer concept and eliminate it. Both do essentially the same task: they limit how often you can cast the ability in question. If you don't want the player to use the ability very often, then remove the energy cost/bar and keep the timer. If you want the player to have the choice of how quickly he uses the ability, remove the timer and keep the energy bar/cost. 
• In scenario 1, you remove the bar/cost. You keep the timer. So, in LOTRO, my Runekeeper would still have a low-damage ability I can cast every second, but higher power abilities can only be cast every 5, 10, 15, 30, and 60 seconds. It doesn't matter how much they cost because I'm limited by time to how often I can use them, regardless.
• In scenario 2, I have no timer on anything. The player must manage the resource and the resource costs of the powers. Knowing I have 100 energy points total, do I deem this combat worthy of using the 50 power cost ability, or should I use ten uses of my 10-point ability? How quickly do I regenerate my power? It all comes down to resource management.
• Depending on your choice in the previous step, you may want to eliminate having abilities that only enable if/when another power or circumstance comes up.
• As a player, it is no fun to have abilities that either suddenly pop up and you have (typically) a short period of time in which to click them to make them work, or they only enable after a certain sequence of powers have been selected first. Either make these abilities available all the time (but limited by power cost or a long cool down timer), or make the abilities of the power an upgrade to an existing power, making the timer longer or cost of the power higher to compensate for the added ability.

At this point, you have resolved the issues from the player's side. Either the player has a resource he needs to manage (a power bar and power costs) and he can choose to attack ruthlessly and run out of power fast or efficiently and be available for the long haul, or the player has to time his attacks based on their timers and availability to make "attack chains."

The last point, enemies that somehow make your character unable to use his abilities, either through taking away some/all of his power, increasing the timers on the character's powers, or by "mezzing" (mesmerizing) the character so they cannot contribute at, should be handled delicately. Early on in City of Heroes, for example, the high-end game was not fun because it seemed like every high-end enemy type had one or more energy robbers or mezzers in the group. You either had no energy to use your super-hero abilities, your character was unable to do anything due to being mesmerized, or the enemies turned off your "always on" abilities, making you much more vulnerable. In LOTRO they do the same thing primarily with mezzes; you suddenly find your character completely unable to do anything and very vulnerable to attack. Often, these attacks stack so you are down for 20 seconds, then another hits you just as you come out of it so you are essentially useless for 30, 40, 60 seconds at a time.

Players don't mind when a mob uses good tactics and has powerful hits that take chunks of  their character's "health" (hit points, endurance, etc.) points away and defeat them. But players get upset when they cannot play their character and have no choice in the defeat; the enemy did something that mezzes them and then defeats them, the enemy drains their energy bar to nothing, making them useless and unable to do anything; etc. Game designers need to keep these types of enemy forces reserved for special situations and climactic boss enemies.

In the end, most games I play restrict or penalize players multiple times when they use their abilities. I think a better system would be one that allows the players to make the choice of what and how quickly they will use the player's abilities over one with artificial restrictions.