A Short Rumination on Boarding Options
Earlier today, in response to a conversation on the Unofficial Discord, Justin dropped this nugget on folks:
Originally Posted by Justin Farren
Right now boarding is a finishing maneuver and an opportunity to make a tactical decision when you do board. (Maximize loot and repair kits) and as of now it’s not going to be a full swashbuckling gameplay. This isn’t from a time concern but an actual gameplay and design decision. Boarding can be further developed and the reference to For Honor is a good one as I would love to see personalization have a part to play in the boarding maneuver.
I cited this in a couple of places already on the forums, but the last sentence requires some context. Here is that context.
As Justin points out, boarding is currently a "finishing maneuver." Once the boarding action commences, it's a forgone conclusion and represents the final victory over your opponent. It's an execution, not a battle itself.
What might exist out there as a parallel? For Honor.
So what could Skull & Bones look at with For Honor's executions that might be able to contribute to how boarding evolves in S&B?
In For Honor, if you kill your opponent with a specific type of attack (a "heavy attack"—light attacks and other attacks do not trigger it), you receive the prompt to start an execution. If you accept the prompt, you perform the execution, which plays out as an automatic animation and, when it's finished, restores health to the executioner.
Heroes have a wide array of executions available to them, all of which have different durations and which restore different amounts of health. It's not always a direct relationship between duration and health restoration, but it's the For Honor devs so :shrug: However, the general idea is clearly that slower executions offer more benefit (i.e. more health restored).
In the heat of battle, you have to decide which execution to use—or even whether to not use one at all—based on ambient risk and prospective reward. If you do a long, slow execution, you [theoretically] get more health restored, but there's more opportunity for nearby enemies to interrupt you and score free damage and prevent the execution (which impacts the respawn timer and the ability to revive the dead hero). Or you can do a quick, low-benefit execution just to get a little health and to get the execution done. Or you can do no execution at all and quickly move on to the next challenge at hand.
If boarding in S&B gave the players different options with respect to amount of loot gained (or other rewards, like repair kits), and if the different options took different amounts of time, then that might add not just an extra layer of risk to the picture, but also reward players who display superior situational awareness and the ability to make the right decision at the right time.
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So that's the backstory on the full context of the quote, and, at the same time, it's also my little contribution to the boarding discussion. I think it's something that could flesh out the decision-making and risk/reward analysis of boarding without compromising what boarding is supposed to be in Skull & Bones. I don't know if this is all necessarily the best path to take, and there might be plenty of reasons why translating For Honor executions in S&B boarding might not make sense for S&B, but it's something I wanted to throw out for consideration and discussion.
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