A simple guide I’ve written mostly for myself to help with creating new suggestions for fighting styles. Those without a suggester role can honestly ignore this. Here’s a great tool for making sure you’re spelling things right and using good grammar and punctuation, though you don’t have to do everything it suggests if it looks strange: Free Grammar Checker (Online Editor)
Edit: Also if you’re a suggester you can totally discuss your ideas here with me if you want or do what I did and make a topic gathering feedback on all your fs ideas before you start working on them!
Essential Tips
- Name your topic something easily readable such as: “Lost Fighting Style Idea - Schmungus”
- Always consider if your suggestion is reasonably achievable to develop and fits within the game’s lore and mechanics.
- When coming up with ideas it’s best to use current or planned mechanics, content, concepts, lore, effects, characters, and creatures to help ensure your idea fits well within the game.
- Write your suggestion in a way that someone less-than-half as literate as you could understand without too much help.
- Consider the pros and cons of your fighting style being added to the game thoroughly.
- Make sure your fighting style fits into its own unique niche not already covered by another style already planned, an already existing style, or any other popular fighting style suggestion. You can probably get inspiration from some of the less popular and more poorly written ideas though as long as you aren’t outright plagiarizing and are giving credit for the idea.
- When going over stat scaling or status effects it’s generally better to vaguely indicate the values rather than being exact so people don’t whine about it.
- Carefully consider what tier the fighting style would be. Generally the more game-altering a style’s mechanics are, the higher the tier. Base styles aren’t typically especially different stat-wise but do still manage to fit their own little niche in how they’re played while lost styles have exceptionally powerful effects. We don’t know about ancient styles yet but it can be presumed they can have the most radical alterations to gameplay such as changing the player’s gravity or replacing game mechanics such as gliding with something better. The more significantly one’s style is able to affect others and the environment, the higher the tier should be.
- Don’t bother describing where the style would be obtained or from whom given that you don’t know the future of the game and there’s usually some story involved in such things
- Avoid designing styles with over-complicated mechanics or styles that are trying to do or be too many different things at once. This is a single fighting style, not a whole new build type.
- Listen to well thought out feedback and consider changing your suggestion if you need to. If someone makes a convincing point but you’re unsure on a change then make a poll to get the community to weigh in.
Suggestion Template
.
Introduction
Greet the reader and explain to them the idea you’ve come up with, why you wanted to add it, and what your inspirations for the style are if any.
Fighting Style Name
Description of style in quotes to be used in game such as: “A basic, yet effective style of fighting using all manners of punching and kicking.”
[Mechanics]
- A bulleted list describing all the mechanics of the style, such as Sailor Style’s seawater energy meter, the ability to bottle sea water and drink it, and the effects said energy has on your stats that should once again, be mentioned somewhat vaguely to avoid balance complainers.
[Base Stats]
| Damage | Speed | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Very High | Low | Average |
Stats are relative to the style tier’s average, such as 1x for base tier. Low < Bad < Weak < Average < Decent < Good < High.
A table where you can indicate generally how the stats will be laid out relative to the style tier’s average, 1x being the average for base styles and the averages of higher tiers currently being unknown. You can add additional tables if needed to describe the style’s stats based on a condition such as a meter that changes them.
[Dodge Reflex]
- Special Effect: A special effect that takes place while using dodge reflex such as damage resistance or some interaction with the environment.
- Instant: Description of if and how the style’s dodge reflex becomes instant such as: Yes (Always Instant), No (Never Instant), High Agility (≥1.6x Level), High Heat (50%+), or based on something else.
[VFX/SFX]
Here is where you describe the visual effects and sound effects that would be most suited in your opinion to the fighting style.
[Summary]
Summarize the style as a whole serving as a sort of tl;dr for the mechanics while also describing the kind of niche it’ll fit into the game and the pros and cons of it being added.
At this point you can add in polls. Some ideas could be a single choice poll getting people’s feel on the balance of the style with 5 options, what tier people most think a fighting style fits into, what variant of VFX/SFX presented if you presented multiple that people like most, what different names people like most for the style, or how people would want a specific mechanic to work.
