Vampyr’s enemy design all things considered is pretty solid, at its core the design of the basic enemies is relatively simple which I think is a good thing. Players can’t be expected to learn the attack patterns of every basic enemy the come through. And thus giving those enemies relatively simple to understand attacks and abilities allows the player to understand them over time without feeling forced to sit through the same fight for long periods of time just to memorize and understand all the patterns (that’s called a boss fight).

However as with anything else in this article, there were a few things that didn’t quite click with the rest.

As mentioned in the Combat section, enemy design should match the general combat design and the approach and challenges we want the player to experience during combat (reflexes challenges/strategic challenges/memory challenges etc..).

As the combat system itself is conflicted, some enemies feel out of place. An example of this dissonance is the stagger system of enemies. Like in many other games, when enemies get hit they will stagger, being unable to attack or move for a short period of time after the attack. This system is generally put in place to allow the player to get off more than one attack using quick weapons and reward the player for successfully attacking the enemy by allowing them to finish their combo. This system is usually paired with a “capping system”, a different system that will stop the player from staggering enemies to death once they’ve landed a single attack. For example (and a system that was used in Vampyr) we could use a stamina system. A stamina system lets us allow the player stagger the enemy as much as they can, but only until their stamina runs out, players who let their stamina run out completely open themselves up to counter attacks as they won’t be able to dodge until it replenishes. Thus challenging the player to manage the stamina while staggering the enemy which makes the process a lot more interesting, and also guarantees players can’t kill stronger enemies with essentially once successful hit (some even stronger enemies such as “elite” enemies or boss enemies can even be immune to stagger altogether).

Another type of system (that was also used in Vampyr) is a stagger break system. This system either caps the amount of times enemies can be staggered or allows enemies to counter attack through stagger after being staggered a certain amount of times.

Both system can have their place and can even be used together (as was done in Vampyr). However when using multiple “capping systems” we must be aware of their interactions and make sure the feeling we wanted to achieve isn’t lost in the process.

In Vampyr stamina was used to challenge players to manage it in combat and cap player’s stagger potential. However the counter attack system was also used for some enemies, allowing players to only stagger those enemies a couple of times (generally twice) before being forced to retreat to avoid a counter attack.

One example is the Priwen heavy guards, those enemies move and attack slow with their shotgun. However after some successful attacks they would execute a quick attack that would punish the recovery of the attack that already hit them, which not only felt out of place for that enemy, but also felt frustrating, as the game punishes the player for landing a successful attack without any indication the enemy is about to launch one of their own before the player’s attack is already half way done.

Such a counter attack system could have worked well as a reflex challenge if the player was allowed to cancel their attack in favor of dodging half way through the animation when they saw the enemy starting up their counter attack. However this system just ended up being put there for no clear reason as we already had the stamina system to cap stagger, and only further favored heavy hitting 2 handed bats as the player is allowed to land 2 hits regardless of the weapon they’re using which is usually balanced by a cheaper stamina cost per swing. This counter attack system ended up being interruptive to the balance that was supposed to be done by the stamina system and made fast attacking weapons feel even worse than they already were (read more about weapon design issues in the Equipment section).

Other than the stagger system, some enemies had poor communication about certain effects. This issue mainly came from one type of enemy, the exploding skals. Those enemies had the effect of exploding when killed, however there is no indication this effect is going to take place, and even after I already knew about this mechanic I found myself getting hit by them almost every time as I just kept forgetting about it and getting baited to loot them once I killed them. Adding some indication of the explosion (such as a pulsing glow before the explosion goes off) would make it avoidable by new players who are paying attention, rewarding players who read their environment well and would serve as a quick reminder to more experienced players allowing them to avoid the frustration of forgetting about it endlessly.

Our memory is sometimes unreliable and fallible, and we should keep that in mind when designing games.