School is in session, and the Camelot Unchained team is here to teach you a few things about MMORPG design. In the game’s most recent newsletter, City State’s Ben Pielstick discusses how system core functionality is created first, but following that is the difficult but important step of “finding the fun” in all parts of that system.
“It is surprising sometimes how even small changes can make a big difference in the player’s perception of how fun the game is,” Pielstick wrote. “Things like the number of footsteps a character takes per meter, the way a button highlights to indicate it is ready for use, or the volume of the sound effect that plays when a player initiates a certain action, can drastically affect how responsive and ‘fun’ a game feels without even diving into far more obvious things like how much damage an attack does, or how long a spell takes to cast.”
Another studio professor lectured on how difficult math can get when trying to keep track of all of the variables of stats and combat — and how the team is using Layered Arithmetic Expressions to stay on top of it all.
The team reports that many strides are being made toward beta, including the submission of realm-specific weapons, improvements to the female walk cycle, and a major update to the netcode.
