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HP X DEFENSE
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calunio
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CloseI'm designing a battle system from scratch, and I'm trying to rethink things that are usually obvious and come up with new stuff.
The issue I want to discuss is the potential redundancy between HP and Defense. I feel like both stats represent how long you last in a battle, or how much damage you can take. If they’re the same, I can only use one. I’m thinking of removing the defense stat, and base damage solely on attack power and some random factor.
Sounds reasonable? Or am I missing something?
The issue I want to discuss is the potential redundancy between HP and Defense. I feel like both stats represent how long you last in a battle, or how much damage you can take. If they’re the same, I can only use one. I’m thinking of removing the defense stat, and base damage solely on attack power and some random factor.
Sounds reasonable? Or am I missing something?
That's a legitimate way to design a game, IMO :D
Things to look out for are mostly covered by good playtesting and balance, but keep in mind stuff like:
Healing: If the discrepancy of HP restored by healing and the characters' Max HP gets too high, this can cause issues.
This is true in any game, but even more so if Max HP is used without Defense.
Items and/or spells that restore a flat amount of HP can become much less useful as time goes by. Making the amount restored based somewhat on the targets Max HP or based enough on the casters' Magic that it keeps up with demand will help.
Magic vs Physical Attack: If you don't have any Defense (and, I assume, Magic Defense), consider what the difference is between Physical and Magical attacks. There doesn't even have to be any, or it can just be "some enemies resist Physical damage and some resist Magic damage" (using the elemental properties in RPG Maker). Or this could open up ideas to get even more clever with how different damage types work.
Equipment: You can have equipment just raise Max HP instead of Defense, if you're using standard equipment. There is one drawback (with how RPG Maker operates, at least): If a new piece of equipment gives a character, say, 50 more Max HP than he had previously, then when the character equips it, he's going to automatically be missing that 50 HP from his total, effectively possibly requiring him to be healed.
This can be negated if, say, you're using a system that restores health completely before a battle or something. Otherwise, I personally find it annoying to find a new piece of gear in a dungeon and have to drink a healing potion after equipping it just to top off the characters' HP.
EDIT: I'm playing Craze's newest version of KO Cupid today and I just noticed that it doesn't seem to use DEF either! And it gets around the HP-loss when equipping new gear somehow, probably through coding XD
All Damage is Equal: Because there's no DEF or MDF to lessen attacks, the actual damage you do is gonna be the same regardless of who you attack, until you bring in the aforementioned elemental properties.
Things like a Metal Slime-type of enemy would have to be rethought (an enemy with an insane DEF but with only a handful of HP).
On the one hand, you could just give them loads of HP and have the challenge be for the player to deal as much damage to them as possible before they run (essentially the same challenge as before, but without the Def it's gonna operate slightly differently).
Then again, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass already showed us how you can do that type of enemy with status effects and other actions (Rad Ghosts are a textbook case of how to make an enemy that's worth a bunch of EXP but exist to torment the player that wants to kill them XD It'll put on a status effect that prevents a character from collecting that EXP, or it will make their attacks useless)
I personally like having HP, Def and Magic Def, but maybe that's because I've been playing games that work that way for all of my life. I like a number that tells me how much damage I can take before I die, and different numbers that lessen the amount of damage I take from sources. But you're correct that it does feel somewhat redundant, and, like I said, a game can operate just fine by kicking DEF and MDF to the curb and just using Max HP :D
Things to look out for are mostly covered by good playtesting and balance, but keep in mind stuff like:
Healing: If the discrepancy of HP restored by healing and the characters' Max HP gets too high, this can cause issues.
This is true in any game, but even more so if Max HP is used without Defense.
Items and/or spells that restore a flat amount of HP can become much less useful as time goes by. Making the amount restored based somewhat on the targets Max HP or based enough on the casters' Magic that it keeps up with demand will help.
Magic vs Physical Attack: If you don't have any Defense (and, I assume, Magic Defense), consider what the difference is between Physical and Magical attacks. There doesn't even have to be any, or it can just be "some enemies resist Physical damage and some resist Magic damage" (using the elemental properties in RPG Maker). Or this could open up ideas to get even more clever with how different damage types work.
Equipment: You can have equipment just raise Max HP instead of Defense, if you're using standard equipment. There is one drawback (with how RPG Maker operates, at least): If a new piece of equipment gives a character, say, 50 more Max HP than he had previously, then when the character equips it, he's going to automatically be missing that 50 HP from his total, effectively possibly requiring him to be healed.
This can be negated if, say, you're using a system that restores health completely before a battle or something. Otherwise, I personally find it annoying to find a new piece of gear in a dungeon and have to drink a healing potion after equipping it just to top off the characters' HP.
EDIT: I'm playing Craze's newest version of KO Cupid today and I just noticed that it doesn't seem to use DEF either! And it gets around the HP-loss when equipping new gear somehow, probably through coding XD
All Damage is Equal: Because there's no DEF or MDF to lessen attacks, the actual damage you do is gonna be the same regardless of who you attack, until you bring in the aforementioned elemental properties.
Things like a Metal Slime-type of enemy would have to be rethought (an enemy with an insane DEF but with only a handful of HP).
On the one hand, you could just give them loads of HP and have the challenge be for the player to deal as much damage to them as possible before they run (essentially the same challenge as before, but without the Def it's gonna operate slightly differently).
Then again, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass already showed us how you can do that type of enemy with status effects and other actions (Rad Ghosts are a textbook case of how to make an enemy that's worth a bunch of EXP but exist to torment the player that wants to kill them XD It'll put on a status effect that prevents a character from collecting that EXP, or it will make their attacks useless)
I personally like having HP, Def and Magic Def, but maybe that's because I've been playing games that work that way for all of my life. I like a number that tells me how much damage I can take before I die, and different numbers that lessen the amount of damage I take from sources. But you're correct that it does feel somewhat redundant, and, like I said, a game can operate just fine by kicking DEF and MDF to the curb and just using Max HP :D
I'm a little curious about the "random factor" that was spoken of in the OP. It could be talking about positioning, situational modifiers, status conditions, elemental effects, and maybe some other things. Maybe there's an effect that straight-up ignores damage unless it's greater than a certain value? Maybe there's an effect that sets the damage to 100 if the damage is between 101 and 200?
*Edit: I'm kinda thinking on Front Mission on this point. Like, I don't know (or remember) if that series had a "DEF" value for each of the wanzer parts (body, arms, legs), per say. However, they certainly had HP! One of the upgrades in 3 for each part was specifically geared towards increasing this value. Pretty sure arms had an accuracy upgrade, and legs had an evasion upgrade, but, that might be beside the point here.
*Edit: I'm kinda thinking on Front Mission on this point. Like, I don't know (or remember) if that series had a "DEF" value for each of the wanzer parts (body, arms, legs), per say. However, they certainly had HP! One of the upgrades in 3 for each part was specifically geared towards increasing this value. Pretty sure arms had an accuracy upgrade, and legs had an evasion upgrade, but, that might be beside the point here.
Darken
3952
It depends on what your goal is. Are you doing this for readability? Or do you want intimate strategy? Does the player need to know exactly what "Reduces damage by a flat 10" means for say a close fight?
Really the thing that RPGs excel at is that since there's so many stats and incremental ways to upgrade characters usually is it's easier to reward things that players may not fully comprehend. You could make a bonus be "All damage reduced by 10" but what if you have multiple upgrades/buffs that do that? It's about as readable as "All damage reduced by 13%" Depending on the type of game the player doesn't typically need to understand what 13% actually is. So even just a number called "defense" generally suffices. Just bigger number = better.
Implementing RNG sounds like you still want to make outcomes as ambiguous as a defense stat. Beyond readability having a clear (HP is HP) also makes it easier to strategize what exactly is about to happen, but can also make it boring if you know you're going to hit the same damage every time. But again I don't know what the goal is design wise.
Really the thing that RPGs excel at is that since there's so many stats and incremental ways to upgrade characters usually is it's easier to reward things that players may not fully comprehend. You could make a bonus be "All damage reduced by 10" but what if you have multiple upgrades/buffs that do that? It's about as readable as "All damage reduced by 13%" Depending on the type of game the player doesn't typically need to understand what 13% actually is. So even just a number called "defense" generally suffices. Just bigger number = better.
Implementing RNG sounds like you still want to make outcomes as ambiguous as a defense stat. Beyond readability having a clear (HP is HP) also makes it easier to strategize what exactly is about to happen, but can also make it boring if you know you're going to hit the same damage every time. But again I don't know what the goal is design wise.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
Leaving aside the strict crunch issues, from a flavor standpoint HP and defense are different things: HP is how much damage you can take, DEF is how much damage you can avoid.
You can absolutely squish the two together, but you'd need to think about how that's reflected in your setup. Armor would be weird, for example, if you only have HP, so some narrative finagling would be in order to avoid the player asking weird questions like, "So, I put on a cuirass and now I have more HP? Did it make me grow extra skin? What if I get poisoned? Is that damaging the cuirass?"
There's also the question of having your system be offputting to your players: a lot of the people who play RPGs in general, and old-school JRPGs in specific, are pretty married to The Old Ways and might bounce off of a big change in basic gameplay. This may or may not be a concern, but it's worth considering IMO.
You can absolutely squish the two together, but you'd need to think about how that's reflected in your setup. Armor would be weird, for example, if you only have HP, so some narrative finagling would be in order to avoid the player asking weird questions like, "So, I put on a cuirass and now I have more HP? Did it make me grow extra skin? What if I get poisoned? Is that damaging the cuirass?"
There's also the question of having your system be offputting to your players: a lot of the people who play RPGs in general, and old-school JRPGs in specific, are pretty married to The Old Ways and might bounce off of a big change in basic gameplay. This may or may not be a concern, but it's worth considering IMO.
Thanks for the input everyone!
One of the reasons I thought about it is I'm not using database, so all stats from all units are stored in variables. So the less stats, less variables. It's going to be an event-based TBS.
Another reason is that every stat progression will be based on spending XP. Too many stats may not be very functional in terms of character development.
By random I meant just random. For instance, the damage can be STR x (random number between 0,75 and 1,5). So damage will not always be the exact same... though some games (like Wargroove) use exact formulas and it works fine.
I'm still thinking about how to design it. So any considerations for a TBS are welcome.
One of the reasons I thought about it is I'm not using database, so all stats from all units are stored in variables. So the less stats, less variables. It's going to be an event-based TBS.
Another reason is that every stat progression will be based on spending XP. Too many stats may not be very functional in terms of character development.
By random I meant just random. For instance, the damage can be STR x (random number between 0,75 and 1,5). So damage will not always be the exact same... though some games (like Wargroove) use exact formulas and it works fine.
I'm still thinking about how to design it. So any considerations for a TBS are welcome.
If I were making a combat engine that's more event-based than anything else, I would probably want a damage formula that I could call from a regular script-call, and pass whatever variables I would need into it. If it helps, my damage formula for what fells like forever a long time has been a script-call that uses...
...this processing. Some games having variations of what to divide when processing "m".
=begin Marrend's HoM&M damage. Creates a standard damage formula derived from the Heroes of Might and Magic series. The general intent is for skills/abilities to use... damage(base, a.atk, b.def) ...as the damage formula, but, can be used for other purposes if need be. =end def damage(base, atk_p, def_p) # Damage is equal to the base multiplied by a "damage multiplier". This # multiplier is calculated via a percentage based on the difference between # the attacker's attack-stat and the defender's defense-stat. m = 1.0 + ((atk_p - def_p) / 16.0) if m <= 0.0 # If the damage multiplier is 0 or less, we can just return the minimum # damage of 1. return 1 end # Now that we know the "damage multiplier", it's time to do the calculation. # The result is a floating-point, so, we round up afterwards. damage = (base.to_f * m).ceil if damage < 1 damage = 1 # Minimum damage value is 1. end return damage end
...this processing. Some games having variations of what to divide when processing "m".
author=Marrend
If I were making a combat engine that's more event-based than anything else, I would probably want a damage formula that I could call from a regular script-call, and pass whatever variables I would need into it. If it helps, my damage formula forwhat fells like forevera long time has been a script-call that uses...
That's actually a great idea and I'll use that, now that I'm learning some scripting. Especially because this is the easiest way to change stuff without having to look back on a lot of events.
I already have some ideas in mind, but would have to test them first. I'm using unconventional stats.
In all fairness, Final Fantasy Tactics has no Defense stat for armor. Closest things are Protect and Shell statuses, which lower physical and magical damage by 1/3 each. Technically magic is also modified by Faith, and there are Defense Up and Magic Defense Up passives, but those are exceptions to the rule and can be skipped.
Armor pieces have an interesting dynamic where heavy armor and helmets only give HP, light armor gives less HP but is widely useable, and robes give little HP but notable MP. Special effects fall under hats, which also give some HP and sometimes some MP.
So if you're axing Defense, that's probably fine. There'll be ways to give temporary protection if desired, but it's not mandatory. I have pondered special "armor" that boosts max HP and other stats, but offer little to no Defense. Then again, the base Defense from armor in my WIP is +5 and the soft cap is +20. This sum is formed by one of the two more protective armors in the game (combat and scrap armor suits, both at +15), and the other +5 would come from one of two dedicated helmets (combat or psionic).
Another suggestion if I may? If not a flat DEF stat, maybe fiddle with elements and other buffs? It's something FFT does with light armor and especially hats. There are reasons not to opt for the heaviest gear for warriors, or the fanciest robes for magicians.
In my above WIP Combat Armor will prevent a DEF & AGI debuff ailment, while Scrap Armor lowers most elements' damage (including weapon elements) by up to 1/3. But there are better buffs on lesser suits than just "Immune: Broken", and the ghetto plate also gives a weakness to energy weapons and fire attacks. It'd cook the heroine alive in her own armor by the endgame, so I'm likely introducing it beforehand. A beloved sweater would grant no protection, but boons that can stack with others like it -- bonus Max HP, TP gain each round, and a higher chance to auto-revive a la "Guts" from Breath of Fire.
...in short, I think armor granting HP and no Defense can work. :p
Armor pieces have an interesting dynamic where heavy armor and helmets only give HP, light armor gives less HP but is widely useable, and robes give little HP but notable MP. Special effects fall under hats, which also give some HP and sometimes some MP.
So if you're axing Defense, that's probably fine. There'll be ways to give temporary protection if desired, but it's not mandatory. I have pondered special "armor" that boosts max HP and other stats, but offer little to no Defense. Then again, the base Defense from armor in my WIP is +5 and the soft cap is +20. This sum is formed by one of the two more protective armors in the game (combat and scrap armor suits, both at +15), and the other +5 would come from one of two dedicated helmets (combat or psionic).
Another suggestion if I may? If not a flat DEF stat, maybe fiddle with elements and other buffs? It's something FFT does with light armor and especially hats. There are reasons not to opt for the heaviest gear for warriors, or the fanciest robes for magicians.
In my above WIP Combat Armor will prevent a DEF & AGI debuff ailment, while Scrap Armor lowers most elements' damage (including weapon elements) by up to 1/3. But there are better buffs on lesser suits than just "Immune: Broken", and the ghetto plate also gives a weakness to energy weapons and fire attacks. It'd cook the heroine alive in her own armor by the endgame, so I'm likely introducing it beforehand. A beloved sweater would grant no protection, but boons that can stack with others like it -- bonus Max HP, TP gain each round, and a higher chance to auto-revive a la "Guts" from Breath of Fire.
...in short, I think armor granting HP and no Defense can work. :p
Those are interesting ideas! They made me consider having actual equipment in the game, which I didn't want to, in the first place.
DungeonDevDude
1237
This is very viable design, but like everything in dev, needs to be balanced well to work.
One recent example of a game that had no defense stat is SMTIV. I think most SMT games abide by this, but IV is where it felt most apparent to
Me.
The only things you had to reduce damage was your own resistances or nulls/absorbs.
As a result, most battles came down to you either steam rolling your enemy or your enemy steam rolling you. The battles felt really cool and fast paced, but could feel a bit unfair if you were ambushed.
Skills like doping that doubled your max hp were really useful in some battles.
One recent example of a game that had no defense stat is SMTIV. I think most SMT games abide by this, but IV is where it felt most apparent to
Me.
The only things you had to reduce damage was your own resistances or nulls/absorbs.
As a result, most battles came down to you either steam rolling your enemy or your enemy steam rolling you. The battles felt really cool and fast paced, but could feel a bit unfair if you were ambushed.
Skills like doping that doubled your max hp were really useful in some battles.
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