CAGD 270 - Simple DnDMap v2 - 2/20/2023

 

My DND may version two was play tested by Muhammad Salaman and Angel Suazo. In this playtest, Angel Suazo was playing as the mage and Muhammad Salaman was playing as the warrior. What the play testers liked about this version of the map was that they were able to choose which path they wanted to go at the top and how there was a different type of enemy for both routes. Another thing that they liked was that they had three different path choices at the bottom, and they were not forced to go down the same path, each player could make their own decisions. They also like that the three different paths had three different types of rooms, so each room was a different experience.

One thing that the players did not like so much was the hallway on the right going from the top of the map to the bottom. They felt like it was boring because it was just a long empty hallway with nothing going on. The feedback that I was given on how I could improve that hallway was to add either another enemy or to add another barrier for the player to have to jump over. Another thing that I can improve about the map is that the three hallways could be shown to the player, but the stats of the enemies could be hidden so the player has no clue how strong or weak each one of the enemies is.

 

I believe that the challenges of the level were appropriate to the fact that this level is a tutorial level. Each enemy has their strengths and weaknesses, and they were made all different to keep the balance of the enemies, besides the final boss, balanced. Each one of the enemies is different and you can either take them out in one hit or hit would be harder to take them out, but they will not deal much damage to you. This was accomplished by giving them one high stat and then making the other stats super weak. For example, each enemy that had a high attack had low health and defense, each one with high defense had low health and attack, and each one with high health had low defense and attack.

        

The path of the map was semi-linear as going forward was the only way to progress, but the player was able to choose how they would experience the level. During the playtest for this version of the map, the player was able to see what they were going to be up against at the end because the final boss was visible to them. I made the final boss visible to the player because when they ended up reaching the three-way split for the path at the bottom, they were able to know that each path led them to the same spot, but it was up to them to choose and see what will happen before they reach the boss.

Which path to take was not so obvious to the player because each path had a different difficulty level, so I did not want to allow them to always take the easy way out. However, the player was always knowing what the end spot was because they were able to see the boss right away. This was to allow the player some freedom in deciding what surprises they would like to experience and not force them to walk down the same hallway for the entire game. The rule mechanics that were taught to the player easily was combat, heal, jump, and unlock doors.