Combo System
For our shoot em up we have a combo mechanic. Right now if you kill an enemy they shoot out a “combo Object”. You as a player may try to shoot it and if you hit you get combo increase in combo Level. The combo Level makes you do more damage. If you miss the combo objected you combo level will resets. The thought process is that you going to kill an enemy to get stronger and kill enemies faster. This makes it fly out more combo object at the same time, which makes it hard to actually hit the combo objects with your shoot before the leaves the screen and reset you combo. This gives the player a feeling of reward to their action and development while raising the stakes.
The problem
The problem with this was that it takes time to shoot the combo object. This led to a conflict of feedback. You reward the player with the power up to kill enemies faster but to maintain that you need to destroy the combo object. Witch flies out every time an enemy dies. Instead of feeling empowerment of the combo level and kill enemies faster you spend most of the time trying to hit combo objects. This contradicts the purpose of the combo system.
Possible solutions
First solution we discuss in the group is to change so that the combo mechanics drops rate. This will make the combo Objects stick out and not feel like it´s a reward itself if an enemy drops a combo object, instead of being a part of the enemy.
Another solution could be that you shoot faster and maybe around you 360 degrees. This would make the player to shoot combo object and enemies at the same time instead of now that you need to put “a lot” of time focusing on killing the combo object.
What I think is the key is to reward the player so it don´t contradict each other. Either, it need to feel the empowerment of doing more damage with an increase in combo level. But still feel like that the stakes are rising when you advance.
PS. Sorry for the green color on my picture, but i just want to see the world burn.
Pål Schakonat 
Hi, very good post, it was clear what your combo point mechanic and your problem was. You mention that the player is rewarded with progression while rising the stakes. What exactly mean by that, does the enemies spawn faster, become stronger? become stronger does the enemies too, or is there a point where you kill everything in one hit? Does rising the stakes solve this problem? You could maybe explain what is done to rise the stakes and keep the sense of progression. You mention that the purpose of the combo is making the player feel empowerment but it contradicts the feedback were the players focus more on the combo points, but the mechanic that you implemented forces the player to shoot at combo points. Is there a maximum of combo points or does the player have to keep shooting the combo objects through out the whole game?
Overall, I think that the post is valuable, it gives a clear idea of the combo mechanic and it tries to improve it, leading to two posible solutions. I would appreciate that you posted the results of the two solutions and how you solved the problem.
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