Context: its about single player games with high level of synergy (like roguelikes and some sandboxes)
I was playing Noita here, and I came up with interesting observations that have been bothering me since Path Of Exile 1.
Ranged combat in most action (and turn-based) games is always fundamentally better than melee combat (or not? That's what I want to talk about).
For example, if you have a 100 damage sword attack and a 100 damage bow shot, then a shot will always be better because it allows you to attack without approaching the enemy, and also interact with objects at a distance. It's not obvious to me, but distance is also a combat resource (like stamina) because the further away an enemy is from you, the more damage you can inflict with a ranged attack, but not with a melee attack. And even worse, a ranged attack allows you to fire projectiles that have a very high ceiling of system synergies.
One of the reasons Isaac (Binding of isaac) is such a great game is the fact that all attacks in it are projectiles or waves (but a wave is also a projectile, technically). And a projectile, unlike a sword attack, is a separate, independent object that can, for example: double, branch, ricochet, fork, chain, stay in place, move in orbits, collide with objects, etc. Moreover, it can do all this at the same time, which creates a huge number of options for projectile behavior. Something like: you shoot an arrow, it shoots 5 more arrows, they ricochet in all directions, when they collide with the walls they create new arrows and everyone in the room dies.
A sword attack, again, can't do ANY of that. Yes, you can throw a sword, and so it will be a projectile attack, lol. Thus, there are increased requirements for melee builds. In the same Path Of Exile 1, if a melee build doesn't blow up the screen with one blow, then it's a bad build. It turns out that long-range combat, if we are not talking about numbers, but about basic mechanics, is always fundamentally better for two reasons at once: because of the distance, and because it allows you to fire projectiles. As a result, we have a situation where, in the same Terraria, melee weapons almost always release waves or projectiles at the end of the game — otherwise they simply cannot compete with melee weapons, and this seems to be obvious to everyone.
HOWEVER, this is ONLY the case when we assume that the projectile behaves as expected and that the arrow hits the target (it is not blocked by an obstacle and does not fly past). I mean, hitting an enemy with a sword is less difficult than hitting him with an arrow at a distance — it requires different skill levels. But, again, this limitation doesn't work in games where you don't need to aim — for example, in games where a ranged attack automatically targets the enemy and has the same chance of hitting as a melee.
And now we're seeing a situation where in some games, melee is more of an aesthetic choice than an effective strategy. For example, in POE 1, I very often play melee, but it is obvious to me that from the point of view of effective play — this is a bad choice. By the way, this also works in real life — in 99% of cases, a gun is more effective than a knife. And if we look at movies and other media where these types of weapons are opposed, then almost always a character with a melee gets very strong buffs (such as invulnerability to projectiles or the ability to parry them), in order to at least withstand competition — otherwise he will be turned into a sieve.
Interestingly, as a player, I don't see this as a problem. I often play games where melee is weaker than ranged combat, and I still play melee because I consider it my aesthetic choice, and in a way it's even interesting to try to make something good out of melee. However, as a developer of my game, I wonder if this is a problem, and if so, does it need to be solved?
The obvious solution to this problem is to balance everything with numbers. Like a shot is expensive, but a sword attack is cheap, and a shot does little damage, but a sword attack does a lot. But I see this approach as very unstable, because in deep games with a wide systems, it will be easy to break it with an insane synergy of projects or a banal kite in ranged combat (which, by the way, will also not be fun). That is, at first it will work, because at the beginning of the game (if it is a roguelike game), the player has few options, and this can be monitored and balanced by dev. But the more factors are combined, the more difficult it is to predict how strong the synergy may be. In the same Isaac, there are combinations of items when you just erase the screen, and you can't balance such a combination with just numbers, without killing the essence of the items or synergy
In addition, this kind of balance is a bad tone in the practice of balance, because it shows that the game has a fundamental problem that the developer is trying to solve, in fact, by brutalizing — that is, by limiting the player, rather than offering him an alternative. I do not know what to do with it, but perhaps this is not a problem. What do you think?
