CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

author=unity
EDIT: What was Chrono Cross's deal with that again? I really need to play it again; I remember you got "stars" when you beat bosses and your stats would sometimes go up between bosses.

You got stat increases from cannon fodder enemies, but only until a certain point. Once you reached that point, you had to defeat a boss to get a star level which will allow you to get more stat increases from cannon fodder enemies.

There is one problem though. If you don't get the stat increases between star levels, they are lost forever (or a part of them at least.) So, every time you get a star level, any character who doesn't get maximum stat increases before getting another star level is permanently crippled.

Why they didn't simple make it so that star level just capped your stat increases baffles me.

When you enter the Forum during the intro, the game tells you to save. However, you cannot save at all.

The intro is also way harder than before. I've had five or so game overs and resets because a character fell twice, so far. The boss can two shot my characters (especially felix since he has 100 HP and she usually deals more than 50 damage) and she sometimes gains two turns in a row as well as being able to score a critical hit and that way one-shot a character. Am I missing something?

Once the game is released and I've beaten it, I think I'll make a new class guide. My current one is rather outdated.

Did the Shaman replace the Alchemist? I could have sworn there was once 9 classes.

author=turkeyDawg
Anyways, maybe not the most balanced article ever, but I think the message of keeping your battle system from getting overly complicated for both the player and the developer's sake is worthwhile.

I agree with not making the battle system complicated, but I don't think you need to keep your numbers low for that. I think it's enough if implications matches up with the reality.

I give one example. The player open the status menu and notices that fighters have around 20 magic defense while mages have around 50 magic defense. The implication of this is that mages will take significantly less damage from spells than fighters. This is however often not the case. Maybe each point of magic defense only removes half a point of damage and enemy spells hit for 120 or so. Fighters will take 110 points of damage and mages 95. It's a difference, but it falls way short of what I think a two and a half time the magic defense implies. Never mind magic defense being rather weak period as even characters with a lot of it only remove 25 points of damage out of 120. If mages don't take significantly less damage from spells than fighters, then they shouldn't have a significantly higher magic defense. Likewise, unless you intend for magic defense to have a significant impact, you should not even have a magic defense stat in the first place. This should go for every stat.

If a stat can be increased with a significant number by somehow investing in it, then doing so should also have a significant effect whenever the stat is checked. Say you can choose between different accessories that boosts different stats. What shouldn't happen is that increasing strength increases damage by a significant amount while increasing accuracy has an unnoticeable effect on your chance to hit. If that's the case, why did you even give the player the option to boost accuracy in the first place? The obvious exception is if you already hit 100% or almost that much, but in that case there is no longer an implication that even more accuracy should be useful.

As long as things work like is implied, the player doesn't need to know the exact mechanics. Going back to magic defense, imagine a player loses to a boss. The boss is a spell caster and the player can equip a magic defense boosting accessories on all characters. Even if the player doesn't know how magic damage is calculated, as long as she/he can trust that if you give her/him the option to boost magic defense via an accessory, then doing so will be useful against spells, she/he can still make an informed decision. However, assume that the player previously did the mistake of equipping an accuracy boosting accessory and found out that doing so was nearly useless. Well, now the player has no reason to trust that the magic defense accessory won't also turn out to be almost useless.

As long as you know what you're doing and can teach the player to trust you, she/he can make useful decisions even without knowing exactly how things works. It will go like "I'm taking too much damage, so let's focus on defenses" or "I'm doing fine, so let's boost my offense so the battles become shorter" and so on. This is also all that should be needed for a casual playtrough.

author=alterego
I'm not well versed on these subjects, so correct me if I'm wrong. But the problem is not the mechanics, because no matter how similar they are, they're not grounds for this kind of legal action. You can't trademark (nor copyright, for that matter) an idea or "game mechanic". ...This is strictly about the similarities of the names, which can lead to "confusion". (It pertains to unfair business practices and all that.)

Mechanics cannot be trademarked. However, a dissimilar mechanic may make the difference between confusion and not confusion. If I make a platformer named "Candy Hunter" where your goal is to shoot evil candy aliens, nobody will think it has anything to do with Candy Crush Saga. However, if I used that name for a game where you move around candy in a square grid, not too dissimilar from CCS, then people may get confused.

The thing about trademarks is that they're practically auctions. It's all about who's has the deeper pockets, because the guy with the most moneys pays the most taxes, or something like that. So it's in "everybody's" best interest that they keep that property instead; Things like who was first matter little. Also, trademark holders are legally required to challenge anyone who may be infringing on their rights, so...

Not exactly. You cannot go to court and just say "my company's bigger and my wallet fatter" and expect to win a case. The reason the bigger company usually wins has more to do with them being able to hire better lawyers and having ways to manipulate the process. In this particular case, King.com could not use Candy Crush Saga to cancel Candy Swipe's trademark. I don't think even the best lawyer could have pulled that off. What they did was to locate an even older trademark than Candy Swipe, Candy Crusher to be precise, buy it and then use that trademark as a platform to attack Candy Swipe. Since Candy Crusher is older than Candy Swipe, King.com was suddenly "first."