Taking the “conflict” out of shared roles:
We opted to do a ‘ranked preference’ for role selection in SFT. Instead of players joining/leaving and selecting anywhere from 1-3 players to control and then having more UI flow when conflicts arise, or a character is left unselected, or a few other scenarios, we simply take everyone’s preference list and the game deals out character roles based on them. If there’s a “tie” (for instance two or more have captain as their first choice) it’ll be random who gets it. This means:
- One UI (simpler implementation)
- No timing based conflicts or resolutions to manage
- More control over how players are distributed.
The core reasoning behind going for this system was also due to the game always has 4 valid characters. You can’t play SFT without one of the roles. If a player drops mid-game, the host takes over that player’s role. The key influence for this system was from Evolve. A fine game I might add that I think deserves way more credit than it has received.