Mechanical Disconnects

It's a little strange to say I've seen this lately in both playing Outriders and Godbound - a disconnect between game mechanics and... messaging, I guess?

In Outriders, the game clearly presents multiple ways to play across different classes, abilities, and skill trees. The devs, in one of the first notable patches, nerfed some abilities they saw players gravitating toward in number because "they were so good they felt mandatory and that limits build/play options." Encouraging a breadth of play styles tends to be good, yeah.

The problem there is the entire endgame is centered on Expeditions and Expeditions are timed - that means you're rewarded more for speed, favoring a balls-to-the-walls style that requires DPS over everything else. Careful, strategic play? Nope. Support-focused build? Nope. All those are penalized by reduced rewards.

So the devs say they want one thing, but the game actively encourages something else. That's a bit of a problem.

Honestly, even without the timer, gamers at that level tend to build toward whatever's most efficient - clearing for desired rewards in the least amount of time. Having the game actively encourage it just doubles down on that.

For the record, I ran one Expedition. I believe it was at challenge tier 3 (of 15). I had gear above the reward level already and a pretty solid build. I ran through at what felt like a breakneck pace, only really being slowed by elites. I cleared for silver-level rewards, unlocked CT 4, and decided that sort of gameplay was simply not enjoyable to me, so I stopped. I still generally feel positive toward the game, but I don't see myself playing much more unless there are notable changes or additions at some point down the line.

In Godbound, it's the Dominion system that I'm hung up on.

Mechanically, the game wants you to spend Dominion. You literally need to in order to level up. Dominion represents exerting divine influence on the world, though characters have to otherwise do things for that to support. Maybe a PC helps train a militia to spend Dominion to bolster a land's military might. Or they world with their followers to expand influence. Or spend some time helping farmers to make a land more fertile. Or Dominion can be sunk directly into making magical items (though you need special materials for that).

It makes a certain sense for a game of budding godlings - invest time and energy into the world to become more connected and thus earn more godly powers.

The problem there is when the specific game doesn't really support it.

Kind of like playing a wizard in a campaign that gives no down time to benefit from scrolls and expanding spellbooks, if Godbound PCs earn Dominion faster than they have the opportunity to spend it, there's a bit of a conflict there with the mechanics.

We're something like six sessions in and all the gameplay has happened over the course of a single in-game day. The group arrived at a wrecked airship, fought off some other would-be salvagers, investigated the wreckage some, and engaged in a legal stand-off of sorts with another crew that arrived. We've built up about six Dominion and... honestly, I have no idea how anyone can justify having spend it in that amount of time. There's been no actual time to do anything to build up a place or a faction.

The GM has allowed use of Dominion to self-improve. The only example I'm aware of thus far is a character being allowed to gain night vision. It's a GM-call, sure, but I feel funny about that because 1) that doesn't seem like it should be instantaneous either, 2) it sort of opens the question of how far it can go (if it can effectively remove penalties of darkness, can it grant bonuses ot things and/or boost stats?), and 3) that doesn't mesh well with the idea of needing to spend energy into the world/setting if you can just put it into yourself.

Of course, the Godbound situation doesn't require recoding anything. A little downtime could allow characters to catch upon Dominion stuff, but realistically that may be another session or several away at the pace things run.