DOING IT! - WEEK FOURTEEN

I'm starting an RMXP game in which my main goal is to make every single battle interesting and challenging. One way I'm doing this is to make the battles all be one-time-only -- because, in my opinion, once the player has proved they can defeat a battle, they shouldn't have to do it over and over again. But another, more important aspect is that every battle will involve its own strategy. Which isn't to say that the game will be constantly changing, but rather that it will be constantly building upon itself.

It's still in the system development stages right now, so I can't post a video or give detailed stats, but I can describe an outline of what I have planned. So here's an example sequence of battles.

Battle 1: Two normal soldiers with swords, and one soldier with a harpoon launcher. The normal soldiers simply move around and attack. The harpoon soldier stays still and shoots harpoons at party members. Party members who are harpooned become pinned, unable to perform physical attacks or use items, but still able to cast magic (only two of your four members can cast magic). The harpoons, once shot, are targettable with normal attacks by other party members - attacking a harpoon will release the party member who was pinned by it.
Battle 2: Same as battle 1, but with two harpooners instead of just one.
Battle 3: Same as battle 2, but in a different configuration. A wall drops down, spliting your party in two so that they can only rescue allies on the same side. The wall can also be destroyed, if it is attacked several times or burned with fire magic.
Battle 4: Similar to battle 3, except three characters are on one side and one is on the other side. The side with three characters also has an additional sword-wielding soldier. This forces the player to choose between spending turns on a rescue operation while being attacked, or letting the fourth character die.
Battle 5: Boss! The boss launches harpoons, and continuously summons sword-wielding and harpoon-launching soldiers to aid him. During the boss battle, one member of the player party has access to a harpoon gun as well, and can target any of the enemy soldiers except the boss. The enemy soldiers also have the ability to rescue each-other, but pinning them is still useful because it does almost as much damage as a normal attack. The boss is shielded and cannot be pinned by harpoons, he must be killed with normal attacks and magic.


This is not all the battles in the dungeon, it's just a few. Each dungeon will have several bosses. The battles before each boss will often prepare the player for the boss in this way.

Any player who says RPG battles are all easy and are a lost cause is way too used to playing bad RPGs, and doesn't seek out difficult ones. Any designer who says so should be drug out into the street and shot. If you think the entire genre is unsalvagably worthless, why are you making games for it? Don't say "story", because any game of any genre can have as deep of a story as you want. RPG is a type of battle system, not a type of story.

If people want to give up without trying then that's fine, but give up properly - don't make a novel with 30 hours of button mashing. If your plan from the get go is to never even try to make a decent game, then don't make a game at all.

Regarding your battle tweaks, I do almost always enjoy the idea of starting each battle with full HP/MP. It makes each battle feel like a real threat, instead of just one step of a 30 minute long endurance gauntlet. Adding cooldowns to items is also a great idea - cooldowns are a great way to add more powerful skills and to make sure the player has to do something different every round. They're not used in nearly enough RPGs.

The hot blood thing is similar to the limit break idea that's used in a lot of games - the Wild ARMs series is probably the closest to how you're doing it. However, I would recommend making the deathblow skills more interesting than just a critical hit. Lufia II's IP system might be something you could look into. With that system, the characters would get different deathblow skills to choose from, based on what equipment they're wearing. Some might cost less than 100 blood points, and the player would get to choose different ones for different circumstances. This also makes equipment a hell of a lot more interesting, adding a lot of customization to your game.

A question to anyone: When making battles, do you prefer choices you make during combat or pre-battle strategy?

A good game has tons of both. Customization and tactics are both vital to creating a good game. Tactics are definitely a lot closer to what this week's topic is supposed to be about, though!

that's what I want to do - make an awesome game with a great story and battles that force you to the edge of your seat. Maybe not every battle, but enough to catch you off-guard and keep you wanting more.

My opinion is that "not every battle" isn't good enough. Start with that if it's an easier starting point for you... but once you have it like that, remove all the battles where it's not true. What's the point of the other battles? Just to take up time?

One I've worked with a bit (although only a bit) is tuned boss AI.

The idea is something like this: You, the creator, have a rough idea of what kind of skills/abilities the player's characters may have at any point in the game. (The stricter you are about how new PCs or PC abilities are gained, the better the idea you have of what they've got available.) Therefore, at any given point in the game, you can at least loosely estimate what options the player has before them for battles.

Turn that to your bosses' advantage.

The general in-story idea would be that Boss X has been observing your team as you've made your way through Dungeon Y. The mechanic is that, each time you acted in battle, you kicked a notch up on some course of action. Eventually, a loose picture of the player's personal playstyle is created - whether they spam attack/Ultimageddoom or try for true strategy; whether they heal every time they take damage or only when they're 1 HP away from ending it; whether they rely on items or attempt to pull everything off by skills.

Then, when the player runs into the boss, all those little bits (kept in variables, of course) determine what he does and how he acts. If the player spammed attack, the boss starts out with attack breakers or defense boosts. If they relied on magic for everything, he'll boost magic defense then begin with the MP-draining skills. If they didn't heal 'til near the end, he'll lead them on with chipping damage then try to strike for keeps at low HP.

The idea, basically, is to prevent a boss where you can go look up the right tactics to defeat it online - the real strategy here is in determining how to design a team capable of more than one tactical assessment in the field. Properly done, -that- is the real weakness to such a boss, not elements or superweapons. A tuned boss is designed to match the player's field behavior - if they can toss out their previous tactics and engage a new set, then they've suddenly boosted their chances for victory.

I changed the final part of the final dungeon in Altima XTREME to be an eight boss gauntlet (before it was just a gauntlet of top tier enemies that you could already curbstomp). Across difficulty levels they don't change much but rather the number you fight at once does. On easy you pick them off one at a time with a menu breather inbetween to save, change your party, and equip the top gear each boss drops. On normal you fight them two at a time with pre-established pairings. On Hard six of them reorganize into two three boss groups with the odd group out getting some changes to make them more formidable. On (E)XTREME there's no more between battle breaks. There's no more whittling a group down to one boss. All there is is one gauntlet of all eight of them, three at a time. Take one out and another takes his place. There's no breathers between them, no saving, no loot until all eight are dead and they keep coming at you until you finally kill all eight of them in one long slugfest!

Then you get your menu and then you can fight the last boss.

gonna give everybody rad sunglasses when playing on XTREME difficulty

you should have a skill called Lens Flare that can only be cast when wearing rad sunglasses. Giant laserbeams would shoot out from the sunglasses.

Does he flay with lens, or does he like to flay actual lenses?

Hmm.. lets see..

http://rpgmaker.net/games/1680/images/12670/
major lightmapping 'nuff said

and, mapping in general