These days I concentrate researching on asymmetric design in multiplayer games and I'm sometimes lost in thought of this asymmetric design, it is really fascinating and can really provide players with different experiences during gameplay.
As usual, I looked at some definitions:
Symmetric Design:
Each player has the same starting conditions and have the access to the same resources and information
Asymmetric design:
Give each side different capabilities, resources, rules, or goals
Every opponent has an equal chance of winning
The above definition comes from chapter 10 of the book Game Design Workshop. From these sentences, I immediately understand that if the players are having a similar experience during the game, then it's more likely to be a symmetric game design. The project we are working on is a multiplayer game, I would want the players to have different experiences. As a result, I'm thinking of how can I incorporate this asymmetry into the game. Imagine that players play this game differently but they still got an equal chance to win, how amazing will that be! I then started to research some examples.
Secret Neighbor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P106ER3SNkIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P106ER3SNkI
Different Roles:
6 players play as 6 kids (one of them is the neighbour) - 1 vs. 5
there are 6 kids for the kid players to choose from while 2 neighbour characters for the neighbour player to choose
Different Goals:
kid's goal: find the keys, open the door to the basement and find out who the secret neighbour is
Secret neighbour's goal: catch other kids and prevent them open the door to the basement
Different Abilities for both kids and Neighbors:
Kids
Bagger:
can carry 3 objects at the beginning (1 more than normal kids' characters)
can carry the fourth object once his bag is full for 2 minutes
"Strong Knees": which makes him take less fall damage
"Heavy Bones": which makes the Neighbor slow down if he's carrying the Bagger
Brave:
easier to escape from the neighbour than other kids: by hitting the neighbour 4 or more times
Inventor:
finding gears around the house and making a toy rifle, a pan, or a flashlight.
can also use "Reverse Engineering" to open doorways that only the Neighbor can get into
Detective:
"Field Intel" ability: have a hint towards where one of the six keys is located
after finding two keys using this ability he will then be able to see a key through walls and eventually be able to nab it with ease
Leader:
she can help her teammates to move faster and heal them
she needs to be together with other teammates in order to be powerful
Scout:
equipped with a slingshot that can easily slow down The Neighbor
"Evasive Maneuvers" passive ability： she hits the neighbour three times then she can move 15% more quickly
she can find ammo inside the house to reload her slingshot
Neighbour
neighbour himself:
He can set a bear trap that can trap an unsuspecting player in its clutches
"Rage" ability: when he takes damage 5 times, he can move more quickly and be invincible towards any attacks players might attempt to slow him down
Clown:
can use smoke bombs to escape
can transform into objects to hide in plain sight
"Confusion" ability: make players dazed for a few moments
All images above are from: https://gamerant.com/secret-neighbor-every-character-ranked-ability/#clown
In general, this game provides both kids and the neighbour with more than 1 choice. As a result, players can have a meaningful choice before they enter the game. In this game, players are fighting as a team but they cannot trust anyone because they don't know which kid is the neighbour, this setting gives the game more fun which can be something that we can have in our game. However, I would still want the game we are working on to be less cooperative. In other words, I thought about weakening the importance of the villain character (maybe giving less reward to the normal players when they find out who the villain is).
The Hidden
This is a Mod of the game Half-Life 2 and is quite popular for its asymmetric design.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/hidden-source/images/hidden-beta-in-game-03#imagebox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnZvlbfvIIc
"one against all"
players choose to be a killer (Subject 617) or one member of an Intercept squad ( I.R.I.S.) who has to capture the killer
with different amounts and strengths of weapons
The IRIS team carry a selection of weaponry, fully customisable at the round start
the killer only has a knife and three pipe bombs
with different abilities
the killer is almost invisible, the IRIS team can only see a very blurred outline, also the killer can move faster and has many abilities such as pouncing, wall grabbing, corpse pinning and the fatal pigsticker attack
This game really did great also in the balancing as the I.R.I.S team members can fully customize their weapons before the game. As a result, we can say that the team members are fully equipped with the best outfits, so how will the killer (Subject 617) have any chance to beat them with a knife and three pipe bombs? The solution is really somehow unexpected, they made the killer be almost invisible. In the beginning, I thought almost invisible, emmm, so it can still be seen right? I don't think the killer has any chance to win then. So I went to watch a video of one round of this game and found out that this killer is nearly invisible and I had to go back and set the video to x0.25 to have a little sense of where the killer is (the place that circled in red on the above image).
In my words, this degree of invisibility can be seen as totally invisible. Basically inside the game, the team members are always in a tense mood as they have no idea where the killer is until the killer runs near them and killed somebody.
Back to the topic of asymmetric design, the experience created by The Hidden is much more different compared to the Secret Neighbor. In my opinion, in Secret Neighbour, the degree of the tense mood of the kids and the neighbour can be seen as equal while in The Hidden, the players in the team are way more fearful, they cannot see the killer for the most time and they need to always be prepared when the killer comes and start killing. Also, the strategy for the players is different. In The Hidden, team members need to be closer to each other because of this invisible killer while in Secret Neighbour, players are always acting alone as they don't trust others.
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