Testing and Testing and Testing

Let's set the scene. Very early into development of Lifeship, Scout emerged as the first DPS class. It had the lowest health/highest energy combo in all of the classes, 14/14. It could do a ton, and was very fragile. The perfect glass cannon. It had powerful cards and Light Melee weapons as Class Equipment, one of the only classes to get a weapon type as class equipment.

In the beginning, I had this idea that seeing what was inside of rooms before you opened the door would be fun and exciting. Think of any video games where they simulate SWAT type activities. Scanning under the door, heat sensors, the whole shebang. Scout had a card that allowed them to "scan" a room at range 3. They would reveal the enemies inside, then the team could decided whether opening the door was the right move or not. We even expanded their special rule to add that they applied Stun 1 to all enemies in a newly opened room. As testing wore on, it became clear that missions with lots of rooms to open were slower and those rooms needed to be small to fit into the allotted space. It was also difficult to pay off scanning the rooms with narrative because in Lifeship, doors usually have a story trigger that describes what you see and what happens when you open the door to a room. Sidestepping this narrative trigger posed almost insurmountable narrative problems. However, this isn't where we fundamentally changed Scout. We did reduce the number of equipment items that "scanned" rooms though.

During this time, the Scout's Bounty was "Gain 1 CK when a marked enemy dies." The Scout had a card called "Mark for Death" which applied Mark to an adjacent enemy. This resulted in the Scout getting very few CKs, because they only had one way to mark an enemy and it would then have to die. This all came to a head during a fateful vacation playtest with my amazing partner who has thousands of hours playing board games with me. She picked a Scout and we did a mission. Suddenly, all of the problems were front and center. The Scout was not just getting rewarded less, it had committed the greatest of all sins in gaming...it was BORING. She spent the whole mission trying to make things happen and failing.

So we pivoted. Mark for Death was replaced and Scout gained an entirely new basic action. The ability to Mark enemies at Line of Sight. (Quick rundown of Mark - Marked enemies take 1 extra damage from every attack.) Now the Scout could Mark everything on the field and get rewarded for it! Yay! We solved it. Except, we didn't. This new Scout was MUCH better at earning CK, but it spent the whole mission at the back Marking things instead of, you know, engaging with the combat, or doing the objective. We accepted this as a feature of the class. But the only interesting Scout behavior was the same as it had been in the beginning...overextending and getting killed. It happened so often that we made a small but hugely significant change to the Scout. We gave them 15 starting health instead of 14. Hilariously, the amount of times a Scout survived on 1 health after the change was NOTICABLE.

Fast forward a couple of months and we are reviewing the Bounties of all the classes to try to bring them into line and make sure they are rewarding players for the type of behavior we WANT to encourage. Scout comes up again. We don't like that Scout's CK earning potential is directly tied to how many enemies are in a mission. Not to mention the non-interactivity we are encouraging with the current bounty. So we ask a question. "What is the Scout supposed to be good at?" Movement. Scout is supposed to be the fastest class. Almost every Class card they have has movement built into it and high move characters make good scouts. So we change the Bounty. When a Scout moves 6 or more hexes in a turn, they gain a CK. But now we are left with another problem. If we are paying them to move around, what is to stop a Scout from just running in circles and not engaging with the mission?

Well, we have already made Marking enemies less important by taking it off the Scout's bounty. Why not change their special rule? We want to reward Scouts for moving lots, and for engaging with the mission. So we arrive at our penultimate iteration of Scout. Their new Special Rule allows them to apply Weaken 1 (Reduce the next attack by the amount of Weaken) , or Mark, or Hobble 1 (Reduce the next move by the amount of Hobble) whenever they move into a hex adjacent to an enemy. This sort of works but the Special Rule encourages an immersion breaking behavior...Moving back and forth in front of an enemy to apply conditions. Picturing it, a Scout flailing between two hexes over and over, it just doesn't work fluff-wise. Bradford also thinks Hobble should be replaced with applying 1 damage. I won't recount the whole discussion here, but the issue with the damage was that a Scout could run in a circle around a boss enemy and kill it without engaging with it.

And so, the Final (Hopefully) version of the Scout is born. 15 Health, 14 Energy, Gain 1 CK when you move 6 or more hexes in a turn. When you become adjacent to an enemy, apply 1 damage, or Weaken 1, or Mark. Now, the Scout interacts with the mission, is rewarded for doing Scout things, and the image of a Scout dashing in and out of melee range to do small cuts on an enemy works because they can't just run in a circle.

Was this a long time in the oven? Yes. But it was so worth it. Not only did we solve the Scout, but it has led to major QOL changes to other class bounties and abilities. In short, we have figured out what makes a class FUN. The great thing about Scout, is that despite all of these major changes, we managed to preserve one constant. Scouts overextending and getting killed for it.

-Till next time. Chris

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