Experience Principles

Status: Planned

This page exists to stop the project from becoming complicated in the wrong ways.

The target is:

fun, challenging, rewarding, and readable

Not:

boring or requires an engineering degree

Core Rule

Complexity is allowed in content density, encounter variety, and build expression.

Complexity is not allowed in:

• Understanding basic progression
• Reading the next goal
• Using mounts and traversal tools
• Managing ordinary crafting
• Joining a co-op world mid-progress

Design Principles

One New Idea at a Time

• Introduce one major system cleanly
• Let players use it before piling on another layer
• Avoid stacking three different new resource gates in the same moment

Challenge from Play, Not Obscurity

• Difficulty should come from fights, movement, and planning
• Not from hidden recipes or unclear unlock conditions
• Not from needing external wiki tabs open

Short Reward Loops

• Most expeditions should pay off with something meaningful
• A trip can reward materials, relic progress, mount progress, a field-guide objective, or a structure unlock
• Players should not spend long sessions feeling like nothing happened

Setback without Deletion

• Death should create tension without deleting inventory or experience
• Failure should usually cost time, position, or event momentum instead of hard-earned gear
• Base defense should create pressure through readable breaches, not random world destruction

Adventure over Repair Churn

• Progression gear should support long expeditions instead of collapsing into a durability tax
• Players should feel excited to improve favorite gear, not annoyed that it needs routine replacement
• Upkeep, if any exists at all, should never drown out the adventure loop

Clear Next Steps

• The Trail Ledger should always point toward something useful
• Optional content can branch, but the player should still know where the mainline is
• Unlock messages and boss rewards should clearly imply what changed
• Boss summon rules should be learnable in-game

Build Expression without Homework

• Relics, weapons, armor, mounts, and grapnels should create many viable builds
• But a player should not need deep math or perfect optimization to have fun
• Good enough builds should still feel strong and rewarding

Verticality without Friction

• Traversal tools should reduce frustration, not create button bloat
• Mounts and grapnels should feel responsive and understandable
• Falling, climbing, gliding, and route-finding should feel empowering

Controller-First Readability

• Core play loops should be fully workable on a DualSense
• Menus should favor focus navigation over tiny cursor work
• Waypoint setting and map reading should be practical on controller
• New systems should always expose clear button prompts

Co-op Respect

• Important rewards should not be easy to grief by accident
• One player learning faster should not leave the other locked out of fun
• Shared goals should be easy to understand

Anti-Patterns

Avoid these:

• Recipe chains that feel like tech-mod bureaucracy
• Important materials hidden behind overly rare random drops
• Boss summons with unclear sourcing
• Controller-hostile screens that require a mouse for ordinary actions
• Constant repair churn that turns progression gear into disposable maintenance
• Inventory or experience deletion as the default death tax for adventure progression
• Random mob griefing that destroys player work without adding meaningful play
• Dimension unlocks with no breadcrumbing
• Too many currencies with overlapping purpose
• Systems that only become legible after reading patch notes

Success Test

If a new player can answer these questions by just playing, the design is healthy:

• Where should we go next?
• What are we trying to craft?
• Why did that boss matter?
• How do we call that boss back?
• What did we just unlock?
• What cool traversal tool did we gain?

If those answers are fuzzy, the docs need correction before implementation.