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[Zack Bell]

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[SundownKid]

Hunting for materials: You could scavenge materials from defeated enemies and use them to craft various items. For example, taking hide from animals to make armor, or taking parts from robots to create guns. This makes more sense than dropping treasure chests, gold and entire suits of armor.

Weakening the boss: This is my gimmick in Megalonia. Each enemy you kill weakens the final boss. It was a glitch in the original.

Collecting data: Pokedex completion!

They piss you off: If they're annoying, the player will want to kill them, right?  

[Falmil]

Just Because: Its a game. What else you gonna do besides kill stuff. Its like at least half the game.

Revenge: You knew those jerks in grade school and they were always messing with you. Turn those tables.

(seriously now)

Growth: The longer certain enemies are alive, the stronger and smarter they will get.

[C.D Buckmaster]

Maybe the amount you kill affects the amount that spawn in later parts, if you let too many of them live, you will find yourself swarmed by them later.

[DavidCaruso]

Just make them hurt you and knock you back when you collide with them, and don't give the player a ridiculously huge healthbar (1 to 3 hits per life is enough). You don't need to shoehorn systems that imbalance the game (like stat upgrades or item grinding) for players to want to kill enemies in an action game; just make the enemies an actual threat. Also, scoring systems are cool, give the player more points if he takes risks and finds more dangerous ways to dispatch enemies (though score kind of becomes meaningless if every player has a different set of levels.)

I don't know if I can change your mind at this point, but actual handmade stage design is a thousand times better than random generation for action games, especially if you're going the direction of "Perlin noise lol" with your algorithm. There's a reason that random level generation works best in turn-based games like roguelikes instead of realtime ones; even then, I can't think of many games like this that wouldn't have been better if the designers just sat down and came up with some amazing stages by hand.

[bart_the_13th]

Score? I mean killing more baddies mean get more score, especially if you have the high score table.

Or let the enemy follow the player where ever he go. That way, if the player decide to skip them, the moment he stop to fight a boss or more powerful baddies, he will get himself pinched.

[Alevice]

"WHY SHOULD THE PLAYER STOP AND SHOOT THAT LITTLE SHIT WHEN HE COULD JUST JUMP OVER IT?"

Ask yourself wether you really ave to go that way. Does your design really gains anything from shooting vs avoiding?

[ActualDog]

One thing you could do without directly adding a mechanic is to just make it super satisfying to blast them.  Give them a nice enough death animation and sound effect and the player will kill them even if there's no direct advantage to doing so.  Feedback is key!

Other ideas:

Have the enemy's blood permanently color the level or maybe reveal previously invisible objects.

Have plants grow wherever enemies die.  Could use the plants as herbs for varying status effects or maybe as platforms, or even just as an aesthetically pleasing backdrop.

Killing certain amounts of certain kinds of enemies changes the way other characters in the game act towards your character.

Kill enemies and push their bodies into ditches to cross over them or into water to raise the level.

You character's vision is constantly fading unless he's killing things.

If you kill an enemy you can skin it and wear its skin which affects how other enemies act towards you.

Hopefully something there is sort of useful! 

[Nix]

hats

[oahda]

hats

This isn't the "How to make a game scary?" thread.

[mirosurabu]

This sounds like Terraria-like... in which case, either get rid of enemies, or make them give you materials. But then, you don't want this for unknown reasons.

Why do you want enemies in the first place?

[Truce]

Why do you want enemies in the first place?

I'd have to back Mirosurabu on this. 

I'd expect that you'd add enemies to a game to add challenge to it, not simply to have something to shoot at. If you want challenge and it's too easy to just bypass the enemies, make it harder to get past them.

Another thing that would help to know is why players would skip the enemies. Is there some goal area the player is trying to get to?

[sublinimal]

I feel that if your game has cannon fodder enemies in the first place, you're doing it wrong. Enemies are fought because they block your progress. The threat they pose should be enough of a reason to get rid of them.

[Montoli]

Actually, I would say that if you want to encourage the user to kill the little guys, then you just need to make killing the little guys fun.

If you have to, you can maybe give some minor reward for them as a bonus incentive, but seriously.  If the activity is fun enough on its own, you don't need anything else.
   
Think about the coins in Mario Bros, for example.  Sure, each one is worth SOMETHING (1% of a 1-up, in fact.  In a franchize where you basically NEVER run out of lives.)  But even though they're worth so little, you show most people that castle with the switch block in mario 3 (Where the whole thing turned into a giant pile of coins) and they will gleefully jump through it collecting things.

So, without knowing much about your game, as long as

• The activity of attacking them is fun
• They die in some satisfying way (ideally a small particle effect with a short, distinctive sound

...then you'll probably have no trouble getting people to take time to blow them up.

[s0]

There's a reason that random level generation works best in turn-based games like roguelikes instead of realtime ones; even then, I can't think of many games like this that wouldn't have been better if the designers just sat down and came up with some amazing stages by hand.

Not to derail this thread too much, but (turnbased) roguelikes would basically become linear puzzle games if they had pre-designed levels. RLs are strategy games and the random level generation is what makes them strategic. Even if they had 100s of hand-designed levels that were randomly selected on each playthrough, you could memorize a level (or at least parts of it, or look up a guide on the interweb if you're a dirty cheater) and simply repeat what you did last time you played it.

[Falmil]

If they randomly selected from hand made levels, I would think the differences in what items you picked up previously and your condition would have a great influence on how you played the level.

[s0]

Fair enough. Randomly generated is still better tho imo.

[gunswordfist]

"1) Excessive knockback: Enemies come in high numbers and inflict knockback on the player, which makes the level hard to traverse without using that trigger finger."

That would make them kind of unavoidable.

Gold, random drops and also leveling up, which can all be seen in Castlevania Symphony Of The Night for the Sony Playstation, are the best reasons I know of. I'm guessing your game doesn't have leveling up though.

[gunswordfist]

Just make them hurt you and knock you back when you collide with them, and don't give the player a ridiculously huge healthbar (1 to 3 hits per life is enough). You don't need to shoehorn systems that imbalance the game (like stat upgrades or item grinding) for players to want to kill enemies in an action game; just make the enemies an actual threat. Also, scoring systems are cool, give the player more points if he takes risks and finds more dangerous ways to dispatch enemies (though score kind of becomes meaningless if every player has a different set of levels.)

I don't know if I can change your mind at this point, but actual handmade stage design is a thousand times better than random generation for action games, especially if you're going the direction of "Perlin noise lol" with your algorithm. There's a reason that random level generation works best in turn-based games like roguelikes instead of realtime ones; even then, I can't think of many games like this that wouldn't have been better if the designers just sat down and came up with some amazing stages by hand.

I don't think annoying enemies and small health bars are the way to go. He should be trying to inspire the players having a fun time dispatching enemies.

[gunswordfist]

One thing you could do without directly adding a mechanic is to just make it super satisfying to blast them.  Give them a nice enough death animation and sound effect and the player will kill them even if there's no direct advantage to doing so.  Feedback is key!

Other ideas:

Have the enemy's blood permanently color the level or maybe reveal previously invisible objects.

Have plants grow wherever enemies die.  Could use the plants as herbs for varying status effects or maybe as platforms, or even just as an aesthetically pleasing backdrop.

Killing certain amounts of certain kinds of enemies changes the way other characters in the game act towards your character.

Kill enemies and push their bodies into ditches to cross over them or into water to raise the level.

You character's vision is constantly fading unless he's killing things.

If you kill an enemy you can skin it and wear its skin which affects how other enemies act towards you.

Hopefully something there is sort of useful! 

Interesting.