The mechanics in Syndicate were great, and fun to use, and fun to interact with. Those few redesigns would’ve really helped Syndicate’s abilities feel like what the intent behind them seems to be. I want the headshot to feel like it’s got some impact the second it lands, I want multikills to get more intense as they rack up.Īnd that’s it. Not headshot->animation starts->animation tells you that you got a headshot and gives you some meaningless number->animation drains that bar and fills energy.Īdd a sound and visual cue for getting energy. If I get a headshot, the energy should immediately fill. Make it so that at a glance I can see what’s going on with the energy Make the energy a single, prominent UI feature. This makes your choices meaningful, and it allows for… So the big powerful persuade that doubles your power is 100 energy, the aoe that kills everyone is 75 energy, and the tiny aoe that just does a bit of damage and weakens enemies is 30 energy. Make each ability use a certain amount of energy. If I had to redesign the system today, I would’ve done a few things: A simple bit of audio and visual feedback, and a bit more snappiness in the response to your actions and the game could’ve really had that feeling of rewarding skillful play and aggression. So what can we (and specifically, me) learn from this? Well, this is a case of the mechanic being so cool, and being hurt by the way that it’s presented and a small mechanical choice. It was tough for me to feel like my combat actions were having an effect on the ability recharge. What it left me with was basically abilities that always felt either ready or arbitrarily empty. It also means that the feedback that you get is divided, when a single resource could’ve had a much more prominent indicator. If I have to choose between doing a small aoe that will hurt some guys now, or getting more energy and doing a larger aoe, that’s more interesting than just using an ability when it’s ready. This ends up removing a lot of choice from the gameplay that could’ve been in there. Rather, each power individually recharges. There’s nothing really to indicate that abilities are ready other than a bar being filled and changing colours.Īnother part of the problem is that it’s referred to as “Adrenaline” and “Energy” off and on in different parts of the game, but it’s not a single shared resource. It’s not that long of a delay, but it’s enough that it doesn’t feel like it’s action->energy, it just feels like you play the game and get some energy.Īnother part of the problem is that the little animation is all of the feedback you get.
Syndicate’s a pretty fast-paced game (one of the things that makes the hacking cool), so by the time you get rewarded for your action, you’ve probably already done some more stuff. Then there are bars for each power that then fill up based on the energy that you got.
Each item in that queue goes through a little animation in your strange abstracted health bar, that comes up with a number of energy that you gain from that action. When you do one of the things that gets you energy, it gets added to a queue. However, it almost never feels like the cool cascade that it should. If you’re using powers and nailing headshots, then you’ll be able to continue using powers. It works pretty well with another power you have that slows down time and highlights enemies (Which works on a cooldown rather than with energy). It’s a cool system that basically encourages you to be super active while playing.
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