And indeed there’s an important tenet of game design, which I think is found in one of the essays in The Kobold Guide To Game Design: Make the most fun things to do also the things that will help you win. One key thing to do in playtesting is find the strategies equivalent to your “archer spam” example and rebalance so they’re not so powerful. It’s interesting as a designer to see what players find fun, and vital to test enough that you can empathize those parts.
(Relatedly, one of the pieces of feedback I kept getting on my game Steam Works is that people have lots of fun even if they don’t win. That’s also a great trait for a game to have but it’s rather harder to consistently achieve.)
And indeed there’s an important tenet of game design, which I think is found in one of the essays in The Kobold Guide To Game Design: Make the most fun things to do also the things that will help you win. One key thing to do in playtesting is find the strategies equivalent to your “archer spam” example and rebalance so they’re not so powerful. It’s interesting as a designer to see what players find fun, and vital to test enough that you can empathize those parts.
(Relatedly, one of the pieces of feedback I kept getting on my game Steam Works is that people have lots of fun even if they don’t win. That’s also a great trait for a game to have but it’s rather harder to consistently achieve.)