Why enemies with invulnerability are unfun.

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Fierlyt

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Published on October 8, 2022 8:30:47 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HJYQc_VaNM

Duration: 4:12

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Old footage from Cave of Trials that I think proves a point. Don't get me wrong, I think Mabi can be really fun. I am critical of this because the game doesn't live up to the potential it has.

You can't interact with the shield on Fleur. You can't interact with the scythes. Taking away player agency is actively unfun. Give me a way to interact with these mechanics or abilities and they become the best part of the game. They make you care because they impact your play, and give you an objective to complete or a hurdle to overcome. As they stand, they are simply annoyances that must be tolerated to enjoy the other parts of the game. This can be so simply improved.

Make the scythes targetable and susceptible to daze, blind, slow, or bind type effects but immune to damage. Make the scythes move in patterns centered on a player rather than chase the player. Give the scythes indicators on their movement so they can be avoided with skill and strategy. Allow them to take damage through counter attack or forced back with windmill, wind blast, blow, or shockwave. There are so many ways to increase player agency without sacrificing difficulty, and you don't need to pick just one way to do this if there are options you want to give the player beyond just one solution. Having more ways for the player to engage with the content makes it better every time. I've never come across an instance where a cheese strategy has made me want to *stop* playing or made the content less fun. I think allowing some level of player agency in how they overcome an obstacle is a good thing. I know players that stop playing or that refuse to participate in certain content because of the lack of agency, but never the other way around.

Force the flower shield to go away after a single attack breaks it so players can strategize on using low damage abilities. Remove the reflect damage if the player is using mana shield, allow certain abilities to pierce the shield and bypass the reflect damage, or instead have a hit count on the shield before it breaks. Allow Stardust damage to remove it, or even something like it gets removed by Fateweaver application or by using another shield within range (Fire Shield, for example, eats her shield completely if used close enough to her while she has the shield on as "two magic shields can't exist in the same space" or something. Maybe Ice Shield freezes her in place as a result of the two shields clashing, Natural shield instead bolsters her shield, and Lightning Shield causes the shield to break and deal damage to both Fleur and the player). Give it a cooldown so once Fleur uses it she doesn't gain the shield again even if she uses the same ability within a certain time frame, or limit the use of that ability more strictly such as only at specific HP thresholds or with a cooldown of 1 minute. There are so many ways to give the player more agency while still forcing them to deal with the shield itself as a mechanic. A reflect shield on a boss? Probably a fantastic idea. Making the boss spam it with no way to interact or remove it? You've failed to properly implement a great idea.

A perfect example of where the game does this right is the Frozen Cari in Crom Bas. You can interact with the Frozen Aura mechanic in several ways. You can stop it from initializing by displacing the Cari before the aura starts, you can kill the Cari to remove the effect, you can move the mobs to fight the Cari one at a time or to move the Cari away from the other mobs to kill them first if you prefer. You can use Pragarah (or I guess technically Brionac too) to remove the protections and effects of the aura. The mechanic is one players care about deeply because it directly challenges them, gives the players several methods to overcome, and in some ways rewards the players that have perfected a skillful way of dealing with it. Players will always prefer the efficient methods, but having many layers of ways for players to interact with it hits a sweet spot for Mabi that other games will always fail to replicate when done right.