A: To develop my paper design skills in order to match my hands-on design and practice designing something I'm unfamiliar with. The intention is to emulate the fun of an open world adventure but for 3Cs.

Designed as an alternative to skill trees, progression resembles more a deck builder than a traditional branching system and as a result emphasizes strategic planning, personalization and greater overall meta-game importance.​​

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• Player Motivations

  • RPG Classics: build creativity, discovery, power fantasy, player agency, synergies​

  • RPG New*: combo mastery, combo emergence, greater build complexity

• What problems does this solve?

  • The player tells the weapon what to do, not the other way around.

  • Attacks are now contextual tools the player strategizes with:  blocking frames, movement, setup, etc. 

    • Breaks out of the [dodge, attack, parry, attack] loop​ with a little build creativity

  • Completely breaks open end-game possibilities and massively increases replay value

  • Even R1 mashing can be more meaningful

• Influencing core loops

  • Player unlocks attacks by killing enemies and learning their moves

    • Exploration is more rewarding at the cost of increasing alienation risk​

    • Fighting cool enemies provides motivation for acquiring their attacks.

  • Player can frictionlessly adapt their combos to a new foe.​​​

  • More attacks instead of more weapon classes. Creates a larger possible build pool.

• Budget considerations

  • Enemy attacks are unlockable on the player - each animation's value is doubled with re-use. Lessens the required amount of animations for MVP.

  • Attacks being applied to a reduced amount of weapons classes means greater value per move and lessens the required amount of animations for MVP.