What: Modelling an adventurer's mental health with the Affliction System
The ability and skill to fight is only half of the equation. What if a hero was unwilling to fight?
Darkest Dungeon is about the psychological toll of adventuring. The centerpiece of this is the Affliction System. As heroes adventure, their stress levels build. This is presented in game as a stress meter on each hero. When the stress meter reaches 100, heroes face an Affliction check. If they fail the check (which is common), they manifest a temporary condition of reduced effectiveness — an Affliction. Afflictions are different ways that people respond to stress.
Heroes can become selfish, abusive, hopeless, paranoid, afraid, masochistic, or just plain irrational. The different afflictions cause a wide variety of different game behaviors. For example, a selfish hero may take treasure for themselves, a hopeless hero may give up fighting, and a paranoid hero may become convinced that the other party members are enemies.
Sometimes, a hero will pass the Affliction check. This puts them in an incredibly useful Heroic state, where they may inspire the other team members or fight at increased effectiveness.
To reduce stress, you need to give heroes time off between missions and let them unwind in the ways that people do: drinking, gambling, meditation, prayer, and more. However, there are limited slots in town for each activity, and each hero has their own personal preferences on what they like. This becomes a bit of a board game in terms of trying to make the most of R&R between quests.
The Affliction system puts the player squarely in the role of a team manager, squad leader, or hockey coach. To be successful, you need to consider the human factors on the way to accomplishing your goals. Push heroes to their limit, and they will break mentally.
Why?
We’re big fans of RPGs, ranging from classic old games like the Bard’s Tale series, Eye of the Beholder, Ultima Underworld, etc., on up to Diablo, Dark Souls, and contemporary MMOs.
However, many RPGs lose sight of the human element. Situations are presented as purely a player’s choice whether to face down a terrifying monster with only 1 HP left. We started asking: how would the hero feel?
In addition, we wanted to make something that stood in stark contrast to the "loot pinata" style of RPG. To be fair, some of those are done incredibly well, and we’ve clicked and right-triggered to the best of them, but they rely on a huge amount of procedural loot generation and the game becomes all about finding the next larger sword.
Taken together, those considerations led us to focus almost exclusively on the sword arm, not the sword. More specifically, the ability to fight is only half the equation. What about the willingness to fight?
