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Promised Design ~ Attributes and Relationship Stars
Also, when you say some abilities require Morale, do you mean a Super Robot Wars-esque thing where increasing morale unlocks your best abilities, or do they actually consume morale as a resource? Based on your wording, I'm assuming the latter, but no reason for me not to try to get it 100% clarified.
Promised Design ~ Attributes and Relationship Stars
Make the player use offense
I LIKE YOUR POST A LOT TOO. I THINK WE'LL GET ALONG JUST FINE MAN.
That's brutal, yet very, very interesting. (Challenge = Good, after all...) Not really my cup of tea, as I don't like that with this in place, a broke player has a severely reduced combat capability. I'd rather just cut potions out of the game entirely and leave all healing to be done with skills. Still interesting...
Played a bit of the first once, but never went too far with it. With all the praise I've seen you give it, I'm very tempted to pick up the second now.
Yes, yes, so much yes. Protip: If there's an action that the player should use every time it's avaliable, you're only giving the illusion of choice. Make it an automated passive instead.
Yeah, that. You could still argue that despite being just a damage upgrade, it's not just a spell tiers matter, both skills have different uses. The first is a more efficient way of dealing damage, and your go to skill for dealing damage of that type in normal conditions. The second is your panic button skill, it's horribly inefficient, but you need it for damage races, those situations where you need to deal a certain ammount of damage before time runs out or something horrible happens.
Skill tiers like that are all up my alley. My pet peeve is when the next tier skill serves as a replacement for the original. The best example is the -ga spells in FF. When you get Firaga, the enemies' power and your MP pool are so much higher that what it ends up doing is replacing Fira. My first proper post on my blog was actually a rant about precisely this. Maybe I should revise it and submit it as an article here...
This also happens because traditionally, magic attacks scale terribly with level in JRPGs. Just look at the default damage formulas in Ace! Physical attacks are a function relative to the physical attack stat, while magic attacks are a constant value plus half of the physical attack's damage variable. Some games, like Golden Sun, reach the ridiculous extreme of not even bothering with a magic attack stat because attack spells have constant power! With mechanics like these, spell tiers are a necessity so mages can remain worth keeping in the party.
When I read this, I immediately thought of Mega Man X: Command Mission, where each character has 100 Weapon Energy (the MP equivalent) and two equipment slots for secondary weapons, which are your special skills and cost WE to use. A character's turn ends when he either attacks with the primary weapon, guards, or uses a Limit Break-esque ability. Before ending the turn, you can use the secondary weapons for their WE cost. Nothing's stopping you from going all out and unloading all your entire arsenal in a single turn if you so wish. Much more WE intensive, but good if you need as much burst as possible.
Then I actually went to your game page, saw a video of the battle system in practice, and loved what you have there. Congratulations on your new subscription!
Yes. To me, knowing you screwed up is punishment enough in death. There's no need for further punishment, making things even harder for the player. "You screwed up, that didn't work, try a different strategy." I'm not one with the hardcore crowd's "death must mean something" mindset.
But I'm going off on a tangent here. If there's enough craving for a discussion of this, we can make a thread about proper damage per level scaling and skill costs, and whatever else... I get carried away easily...
author=Craze
If you cut out Esuna, made status effects more potent, and nerf spell healing (maybe Potion-types explode to heal the whole party, and a White Mage can only heal single targets (the WMG class would then get more of a war priest vibe with holy magic, weapon blessings and armor)), items would be used, because they have to be.
That's brutal, yet very, very interesting. (Challenge = Good, after all...) Not really my cup of tea, as I don't like that with this in place, a broke player has a severely reduced combat capability. I'd rather just cut potions out of the game entirely and leave all healing to be done with skills. Still interesting...
author=Craze
Devil Survivor 1/2
Played a bit of the first once, but never went too far with it. With all the praise I've seen you give it, I'm very tempted to pick up the second now.
author=Craze
Notice how a lot of these are passive abilities? That's because boring shit is boring.
Yes, yes, so much yes. Protip: If there's an action that the player should use every time it's avaliable, you're only giving the illusion of choice. Make it an automated passive instead.
author=Craze
OKAY YOU CAN STILL DO SKILL TIERS, BECAUSE:
Yeah, that. You could still argue that despite being just a damage upgrade, it's not just a spell tiers matter, both skills have different uses. The first is a more efficient way of dealing damage, and your go to skill for dealing damage of that type in normal conditions. The second is your panic button skill, it's horribly inefficient, but you need it for damage races, those situations where you need to deal a certain ammount of damage before time runs out or something horrible happens.
Skill tiers like that are all up my alley. My pet peeve is when the next tier skill serves as a replacement for the original. The best example is the -ga spells in FF. When you get Firaga, the enemies' power and your MP pool are so much higher that what it ends up doing is replacing Fira. My first proper post on my blog was actually a rant about precisely this. Maybe I should revise it and submit it as an article here...
This also happens because traditionally, magic attacks scale terribly with level in JRPGs. Just look at the default damage formulas in Ace! Physical attacks are a function relative to the physical attack stat, while magic attacks are a constant value plus half of the physical attack's damage variable. Some games, like Golden Sun, reach the ridiculous extreme of not even bothering with a magic attack stat because attack spells have constant power! With mechanics like these, spell tiers are a necessity so mages can remain worth keeping in the party.
author=Craze
<In my current project, I've actually taken this idea and gently caressed it sideways, since you can spend all your Energy (which regenerates every turn) on your turn, if you so choose - there's no action limit per character. Or enemy, heh heh.>
When I read this, I immediately thought of Mega Man X: Command Mission, where each character has 100 Weapon Energy (the MP equivalent) and two equipment slots for secondary weapons, which are your special skills and cost WE to use. A character's turn ends when he either attacks with the primary weapon, guards, or uses a Limit Break-esque ability. Before ending the turn, you can use the secondary weapons for their WE cost. Nothing's stopping you from going all out and unloading all your entire arsenal in a single turn if you so wish. Much more WE intensive, but good if you need as much burst as possible.
Then I actually went to your game page, saw a video of the battle system in practice, and loved what you have there. Congratulations on your new subscription!
author=Craze
This is really what it boils down to. There's a challenge that necessitates the character's resources, and without careful management of those resources, you're going to die. Death is not a terrible setback in GW2, but it's an important notice: "you screwed up. Get smarter or try something else." Fun fact: there are ways to get smarter, and there are plenty of something elses to do. GET ON IT.
Yes. To me, knowing you screwed up is punishment enough in death. There's no need for further punishment, making things even harder for the player. "You screwed up, that didn't work, try a different strategy." I'm not one with the hardcore crowd's "death must mean something" mindset.
But I'm going off on a tangent here. If there's enough craving for a discussion of this, we can make a thread about proper damage per level scaling and skill costs, and whatever else... I get carried away easily...
Make the player use offense
author=Crystalgate
In my experience, it tends to be early game where you have to worry about MP since you have few to no MP restoring items and little money to replenish them. As the game goes on, I get more and more means to conserve/replenish MP.
And that is exactly what I don't like about RPGs in early game. MP is such a scarce resource that you can't spend it in order to improve your battle capability, because you may just need that one heal. I'm also a potion hoarder, so that may have something to do with it as well.
And that is also why I'm planning on having every single skill in my game use a resource that is infinite, but limited, very similar to Ace's default TP. It stays at a set maximum for everyone throughout all the game, it regenerates through the battle, and skill effects are balanced around their cost relative to the unchanging maximum, which means that with proper damage per level scaling, there is no incentive at all to make direct upgrades of previous skills. (Looking at you, -ga spells!)
--------------------
Also, I think Guild Wars 2 is worth taking a look at as a case study, as one of its design goals was precisely what is being discussed here, except translated into a multiplayer environment. The behavior you're discussing here is pretty much single player tank & spank.
No direct aggro manipulation is one of the things done to prevent tank & spank, but it's pretty much irrelevant to us unless someone is implementing a custom aggro mechanic in their game. Moving on...
Enemy damage is high / player survivability is low. Sure, you can heal, but you're only delaying your death. Heals are simply not powerful enough to allow you to simply heal back the damage done. Even the warrior, the class that combines the highest base HP with the best armor, will be butchered in seconds if the player is simply expecting to live through the hits. This means you're fighing to kill your enemies before they kill you instead of simply outlasting them in a battle of attriction. It also shifts the defense focus from reactive health regeneration to proactive damage mitigation and prevention, which is a much more agressive form of defense.
Access to healing skills is restricted. There is one slot on the skill bar dedicated to healing skills. Just one. And most of them are just self-heals with added effects. There are some healing skills in your weapon and utility slots sometimes, but they're few and their effectiveness is much more reduced than that of the dedicated self-heals of slot 6. Which brings us to...
Outgoing heals have been severely nerfed. This is related to the previous two points. You are considerably less effective at healing others than healing yourself. You can make a character that focuses on healing, but as I said before, you can't heal beck the damage done. Healing will buy you time, and that extra time may be what you need to have success in the battle, but you can't prolong a battle indefinitely.
Defensive skills are more resource intensive than offensive skills. The MP equivalent resource was removed somewhere during development, but you are still managing a resource. Time is that resource. defensive skills have significantly longer cooldown than offensive skills. Let's look at an example, the Guardian's skils Judge's Intervention and Merciful Intervention. They are both teleports, but one offensive and the other defensive. JI teleports you to an enemy and burns the nearby enemies, while MI teleports you to an ally and heals them. JI has a cooldown of 45 seconds, while MI has one of 80 seconds. This means that a player will be using JI, the offensive skill, much more often. For those with traditional MP systems, you simply have to make defensive skills cost more MP than the offensive skills. This regulates how often the player will be able to use them.
Heal skills do something other than heal. This doesn't necessarily make the playstyle more offensive, but it makes healing less boring. A heal skill that gives the healed character a defense buff as well is much more interesting. Or maybe an attack that deals damage to an enemy and heals an ally as well. Or maybe passive healing that happens every time a certain condition is fulfilled. (GW2 example: the elementalist class can have a minor heal happen every time a spell is cast) By making the heal spells more interesting than just single heal, party heal, regeneration, you are making healing more fun. It adds a new layer where even two skills that heal for the sam ammount and have the same cost may be more useful than the other in specific situations depending on the secondary effects, and figuring out the right situation for the right heal is fun.
What are you thinking about? (game development edition)
author=OmegaHunter
You could have MP start between 30-70, or 40-60. Or have certain equips influence where it starts at. So maybe you have powerhouse equipment on that will heavily increase damage output, but makes it likely to start with lower MP. Or you have high capacity gear that is "weaker" but gives you a high chance of starting with a lot more MP. Just a random thought. Could probably done with a bunch of variables.
I'd like to keep it simple for my first game (My ideas for games tend to be mechanics from other games adapted to a different genre. In this case I was inspired by super bars from fighting games, where usually they follow the same rules for every character.), and I am thinking of having equipment determine something else, but that is certainly an idea worth exploring in the future. High capacity geared characters are capable of a large initial burst but then burn out, while the powerhouses don't have the same burst potential but have a more sustained output.
It actually reminds me of the generator mechanics in Armored Core. Equipping your mech with a high capacity generator means that it has a lot of energy to waste at any single moment, which means you can do things like shredding your foe with a barrage of energy weapon shots, but after that you have to wait a while while you get your energy back. High output generators have a low energy capacity, but regenerate it fast. Mechs with high output generators aren't really suited for energy weapons because of that, so they tend to have solid ammunition weapons equipped, but the fast energy regeneration means they can use the boosters more consistently, which makes them overall more mobile, some of them even reaching the point of being able to hover permanently as long as no other energy draining actions are taken.
Heh. After this, some of you may correctly guess that I have a mecha RPG concept in the back of my head.
author=OmegaHunter
As for my own game, I randomly thought of an idea and now I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm not sure if I should make my mage learn new spells as the game goes on, or attach spells to each staff she can use. You would start with a basic fireball staff, then later find staffs with more powerful spells and such attached to them. The way the current system works, adding more than 6 or so spells will make it things too complicated, but with the staff idea I could add an infinite number of them. Then again, more spells doesn't make a better mage. The current system might be better since each spell has a specific purpose. Any thoughts on this?
author=LockeZ
The staff idea seems good as long as she also has those six basic spells she can always use. I think if you're worried about being too complex and overwhelming, making every ability she has depend on her equipment is going to be worse than having twenty spells at once. Basing all her spells on her equipment means the player would have to re-learn the entire character every time he gets a new staff. That might be what you want, to keep things changing as the game goes on, but it might not. If you give her some basic key spells that she never loses access to, and then also have one or two spells that are equipment-dependant, you've created a semi-customizable character in a fairly simple manner. Lufia 2 did this to great success, for example (though it also linked the skills to a limit break system).
And I was also thinking of having the skills be determined by equipment. The core of the skill set would be determined by the accessories, specific to each character. The armor would give passive properties. And the weapons would be the most interesting part. Four characters, four types of weapons, each type of weapon equippable by two characters. That means there are some skills that can be used by more than one character, and allows for some leaning into the other characters' roles.
But yeah, I was wondering if the characters should have a core of skills that they have regardless of equipment. Perhaps it is better if I do. Anyway, I shall check out Lufia 2 then, to see how it worked there.
Man, that's one big wall of text...
What are you thinking about? (game development edition)
author=Craze
cyberdagger: start at 50 mp
That was one of the two compromises I thought about. It seems like yet another case of the golden mean fallacy at first, but after thinking about it, it does have some value and is worth exploring.
The reason why I am reluctant to implement it that way is because it adds a new dimension to skill design. When I design a skill, I have to think about if I want it to be able to be used at the start of a battle or not. It adds a sort of border between skills.
And yeah, my prediction came true. The reason why I took so long to get back to this? Guild Wars 2 happened.
As for what I'm thinking about right now? A title! I need a title for my game! Then I can make a page for it, and start posting stuff!
The Screenshot Topic Returns
author=Liberty
Messing with mapping, like I do. Trying to get a darker feel with the RTP.
I think you may have gone a bit overboard with the darkening, unless that's supposed to be a very cloudy day. I think the decreased saturation is enough, and you should keep a level of brightness similar to the original. Also, I echo Tau's comment about the water. But it's going well, I always thought the VX RTP tiles were a bit too saturated.
What are you thinking about? (game development edition)
Trying to figure out what would be best for my game, in regards to the infinite, but limited MP system I'm thinking of using.
Basically everyone's max MP is set at 100 throughout all levels, no matter the class. It regenerates 10 pointa (current value, but I'm willing to go up to 25 if the game demands it) every turn, and skills cost from 10 up to the entire 100 point pool, with average power rising according to cost, obviously.
My dillema is in figuring out if it is better to have the MP bar start out full or empty at the start of each battle. I have already thought about the pros and cons of each implementation as well as two possible compromises if none of them ends up being the best choice.
This is worthy of a post on my blog, actually! I'll do it later, though. Stress test in less than an hour. Heh... I certainly see myself not working on this game at all once Guild Wars 2 releases for good.
Basically everyone's max MP is set at 100 throughout all levels, no matter the class. It regenerates 10 pointa (current value, but I'm willing to go up to 25 if the game demands it) every turn, and skills cost from 10 up to the entire 100 point pool, with average power rising according to cost, obviously.
My dillema is in figuring out if it is better to have the MP bar start out full or empty at the start of each battle. I have already thought about the pros and cons of each implementation as well as two possible compromises if none of them ends up being the best choice.
This is worthy of a post on my blog, actually! I'll do it later, though. Stress test in less than an hour. Heh... I certainly see myself not working on this game at all once Guild Wars 2 releases for good.
Greetings...
author=kentona
One of these days I am going to play around and learn some of the newer makers.
From my experience, I fully recommend C2. It exports to HTML5, which, while a fairly new standard, is expected to have a massive boom in popularity soon. It is easy to learn and understand. And the best part, in my opinion, is that it is completely modular. The base program itself does nothing, it just coordinates the plugins, some of which it comes bundled with so you can do the basic functions. Anyone can write plugins to extent the program's capabilities.
author=kentona
Welcome to RMN! Enjoy your stay!
Thank you. I certainly plan to.
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