'HARD', STATIC STAT BUFFS OR LESS STATIC, INCREMENTAL, STACKABLE STAT BUFFS IN BATTLE?

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Got a question for you guys, and I apologize for not making the premise clearer in the topic; in game making and game player, what do you prefer; a system where buffs applied in battle to base stats are in defined, static increments like States, or a system where buffs applied in battle are a looser, less strict application, like buffs where it's some loose number like 23+ attack, and that buff can be applied and stacked over and over x number of times?

For example, do you prefer

A. Alex casts ATK UP on Bob. ATK UP is a state applied to Bob that raises his attack value by 50%. It wears off in three turns, but cannot be stacked.

B. Alex casts ATK UP on Bob. Bob's ATK is raised by 14. The next turn, Alex casts ATK UP on Bob again. Bob's ATK is raised again by 17. Alex casts ATK UP on Bob again for the next turn, but it has no effect. Bob's ATK boost slowly degrades to its normal value.

This is something that I've always messed around with in game making without a clear consensus (but I personally lean toward the former). Tell me what you think!
Both. Some characters can be momentum-based, such that using stackable buffs is a part of their design.
author=Jude
Both. Some characters can be momentum-based, such that using stackable buffs is a part of their design.

I'd love to hear you expand on this!
author=Feldschlacht IV
I'd love to hear you expand on this!

Eh... I rarely have more than one long written message in me over a 24 hour period, but I'll add a little more.

Basically you're adding another tactical layer. When I say momentum-based, I mean that an entity becomes more powerful as they stay in motion. In this example, that momentum is being able to stack a buff effect. The entity's allies support the entity by enabling them to focus on this task. The counter strategy is to disrupt it: disrupt the entity, tug-of-war with it by using the buff's antithesis, or create a scenario that forces the entity to react with something different. Good traditional archetypes for this theme: bards and dancers.

Think of it like burst damage versus damage-per-second, except applied to status effects.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
I agree with Jude.

Julia the Pyromancer might get a Magic Charge spell that buffs her Magic by 100% for two turns. This lets her quickly spend a turn to get two turns of heightened efficacy when she needs it, before it goes on an 8-turn cooldown.

Brad the Martial Artist gets +5 attack (on top of his ~30 attack) every time he evades or gets a critical hit, and it lasts until the end of battle. After six crits/dodges, Brad is now consistently on par with Julia's doubled damage, but obviously it took a while longer to get there. If the battle continues any longer, Brad will start outperforming her (at least by a base stat:current stat percentage).

My current game uses a system like the second (although with buff/debuff decay the end of every turn), although status effects do exist. Stuff like "attack boost" or "break their armor" adds more buff/debuff% on a single axis, while a "defend now" move (more rare) might give you -50% damage taken this turn.

I've been playing Darkest Dungeon, and they entirely do your "B" method. I think it's pretty effective in those moderate-length bouts, because you feel rewarded for stacking Bleeds and keeping that Dodge rating up from the man-at-arm's Bolster skill.
With B, how do you prevent the 'wall' that players experience when they're later in the game and entire battles evolve into 'buff forever and then attack, maybe'?

I remember one of the Dragon Quest games (I forgot which, 8, maybe?), which I usually love, got real old towards the end because it came down to an attrition of me having to repeatedly stack buffs over and over before I even had a chance to properly begin the battle. Lord help you if the enemy in question had that ability which negates all buffs, and they usually do.

How would you avoid this dynamic?
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
that was probably DQ8 :/ i remember the same thing.

I'd prevent it a few possible ways!

1) over time, through levels/trainers/etc., offer passive abilities that grant stacks at the start of battle
2) base the amount gained off of a stat. in my current game, the Focus stat dictates the power of all buffs/debuffs. for example, a "slight buff" uses 50% of your Focus
3) use percentages and have an arbitary cap. instead of +5 atk, use +5%. it might feel a bit weak early on depending on your numbers, but you shouldn't need to rebalance it as much as the game goes on. and, if you cap at +-90%, you can't drag it out FOREVER.
4) don't have enemies that entirely wipe it (unless it makes sense). have enemies do the same thing, like chunks of -4% defense inflicted that add up over time. the player can deal with it, or combat it with their own buffs.
5) related to 1 kinda, but give the player amps over time. maybe once per battle, Brad can heighten his Attack by 30%

or combine any of the above ;V

LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Is the reason you expect that to happen later in the game because you expect the player to get more and more buffs the further into the game they are? That's almost always true to some extent - the player rarely starts with more than a small fraction of their full arsenal - but it doesn't seem like this would be a particularly common situation. To encounter this problem, I think the enemies would need to have an incredible amount of defense and almost no offense, otherwise the player would very quickly reach a point where attacking was more beneficial than buffing. This might occur on certain bosses, but certainly not on most normal battles. It might not even happen against most bosses.

If you find massive buffstacking being an optimal strategy against too many bosses for your taste, then you just need to give the bosses appropriate countermeasures. As Jude says, this type of buffing is about momentum. If you make bosses that interrupt the player's momentum, then the player will need to use other strategies against those bosses. This can be done a wide variety of ways - paralyzing a party member, dispelling buffs, having a weak spot that gets temporarily opened up once every few rounds, making the boss overload after taking a certain amount of damage, or making the boss do almost anything at all that the player has to spend the buffer's turn responding to.

Also, you don't particularly need to give the player 20 different castable buffs that all stack with each-other. If the game has five total types of buffs (one for each stat), and each buff can be applied up to a maximum of three stacks, that's plenty, and the player will rarely if ever have access to all of those at once. If the player DOES have access to all of those at once, then as the game goes on, you can give the player a skill that applies two buffs at once, or applies multiple stacks of a buff, reducing the time it takes to get buffed up. You can also make skills that damage the enemy and buff the player in a single turn, making the player feel like they're making more progress in the battle.
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
I find option A (time-limited buffs) more enjoyable for the games I design because they make the battle ebb & flow more, but obviously it depends on the game.

With option A, let's say buffing someone's ATK for three turns results in slightly more net damage than just attacking one more time. This is fair IMO (assuming other costs like MP are the same) because attacking nets you the damage right away, and buffing ATK nets you more damage but the results aren't immediate or guaranteed. Sometimes attacking is best (when the enemy is close to dead) but sometimes buffing is best (when you'll definitely get all three hits in). This feels like the idea of "tempo" in a card game to me - I love it!

Then you get to all sorts of other fun factors - are there enemies that can purge or steal your buffs? Avoid buffing! Are there enemies that have a "unarmored" phase where you deal double damage? Prep for it by buffing your team's ATK!

Option B definitely has its place, but IMO I'm less excited about stats going up and down incrementally - I want it done in one big boost. There are exceptions, though - I think attacks that leave a stacking bleed are really fun, especially when multiple characters can contribute.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
Yeah, slash, I think each one is valid, just for different games types.

Darkest Dungeon, for example, is so much about little things adding up. Everything in the entire game is about incremental advantages and disadvantages. Thus, type B.

A typical jrpg or just a flashy game in general would benefit more from type A because it gets that big burst you want. This is how stuff like the SMT series works -- go big or go home.

Despite all our suggestions, I think type A is probably the best for Chronology just because that's how the game appears to be constructed (as a typical jrpg at the core).
I'm glad I made this topic; I've been thinking, and I think I'm gravitating towards B; it adds an extra layer of tactics to battles. Having buffs expire in turns that can be added or subtracted definitely gives the player and enemies a sense of back and forth, as long as I don't make battles dependent on it.

For example, I've been tinkering with a skill that does damage in addition to shaving away a few turns of an enemies Defense buff.

More thoughts guys, this isn't just about me!
You can still make your status effects bursty even if they come in stacks, though. Guild Wars 2 uses Option B but a lot of its spells will add like 5 or 20 stacks of a given buff in a single cast. I find that kind of weird, personally, but it does have some advantages. If you wanted to give a character some passive bonus that increases the effectiveness of his buffs, you don't need to modify the buff itself... just make it add two more stacks or whatever.
Isrieri
"My father told me this would happen."
6155
Hard. Buffs. Suck.

Make them stack. Bonus points if they slowly wear off each turn.

My solution to buffing wars is to just have crowd controlling be in the player's favor 90% of the time. The enemies you would want to use them on won't be able to counter it unless they've got friends in the battle that can. Maybe some bosses can combat your debuffs, but for the most part you have every incentive to use your buff spells except when you want to conserve MP (which I would prefer to be constantly).

The whole point of buffs is to create strategy. The whole point of being able to target enemies is to carry out said strategy. A good game will allow you a variety of strategies that work 100% of the time with the small fry fights, so that when you line up to hit the big sluggers the game can throw you a curveball and you can feel good for figuring it out.
As a note: Remember, contrary to what seems to make sense, additive increases to numbers are less effective as they stack up. There are certain mathematical principles you learn from playing clicker games, weirdly enough >.>

Make sure you are aware how your game calculates buffs before you base a design around it. Obviously, a +2 strength buff in a game where your stats start in the 10 range and go to the 100 range will quickly become obsolete, but if you rely on them stacking percentage buffs, they will improve things less and less as they go, depending on how the math works.

Example: If your base stat is 100, and you have a buff that gives you a 50% boost, you get 150, right? If you have another 50% buff, then the question becomes, is the boost applied to the new figure (multiplicative), or the base (additive)? If its applied to the new figure, you now have 225. If you apply it to the base, you have 200. So drawing that out:

Additive:
100->150->200->250->300->350->400->450
Multiplicative:
100->150->225->337->506->759->1138->1707

Both could have their uses, multiplicative obviously encourages you to keep buffing, as each stack is worth the same as applying the first. Additive would encourage players to stop buffing after a certain point, as each buff applied is progressive less effective (by the end, 400->450 is only a 12.5% boost), thus allowing the buffs to have diminishing returns naturally.

Of course, slowly wearing off also allows them to have a natural cap, though that might just encourage a player to stack different versions on one character, and use that character as full damage output (3 buffers+1 damage dealer, etc).

As a note, try also considering non-standard buffs to mix things up a bit. I've been including a lot of buffs that enable new abilities, essentially alternate 'modes' for characters, or allow for combo abilities (Use one attack to apply a buff to the character at the same time, another to use up the buff and do more damage).

Don't forget debuffs, and most importantly, if you're going to include buffs/debuffs, make sure you have ways to remove them on -both sides-. Nothing is more frustrating than a boss buffing his own strength/defense constantly, while removing yours and having nothing you can do about it. SMT:Nocturne did this very well, Dekunda and Dekaja were available to remove enemy buffs and debuffs, and buffing strategies were important for a lot of the harder fights.
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