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ANOTHER LEVELING SYSTEM WHERE YOU DON´T LEVEL
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RPGCreator
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RPGCreator
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CloseI´m not going for the usual leveling system in my game. I´m doing more of a Metroid thing where you find your powerups. ATk,DEF; MAG powerups and even Level ups which are awarded for defeating a boss (like Zelda). This means that battles must be well thought out. every battle needs to be mostly, but what I mean is that you have give the player a chance even if they are at Level 1. Give some strategic skills that could be used well in the right combination and think about everyone´s stats in different circumstances.
What do you think?
I´m using it now in my main project and I´m not really gonna throw this idea away, but if you have any decisions how to make it better I would be really happy. :)
What do you think?
I´m using it now in my main project and I´m not really gonna throw this idea away, but if you have any decisions how to make it better I would be really happy. :)
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
The levelling system by itself is pretty straightforward, the interesting part here is the idea of making battles beatable without utilizing it. If you want the game to be technically beatable without ever gaining any power-ups by a true master, one way is to give every enemy attack a way it can be avoided. This is easy in an action RPG, pretty hard in a tactical RPG, and extremely hard in a standard RPG battle system with no movement.
One way to make enemy attacks avoidable is to use an ATB, and give each enemy attack a charge time, during which you can see the enemy charging up for the attack. I use another method in my game, which is to have a "Charge Up" buff that many enemies cast on themselves, which lasts for one round and allows them to access more powerful skills when they are affected by it. Without something like this it'll be extremely hard for the player to really prevent anything, because they won't know what to prevent. Unless boss AI is ultra-predictable, and even then they'd have to die a few times to figure out the AI.
Once you figure out a way for the player to be able to see attacks before they're cast, you'll need to give the player some way to not take damage from them. A combination of brief defensive buffs, interrupt skills (with cooldowns so you can't interrupt everything) and other ways of dodging. Jump, hide, reflect, image, invisible, self-petrify, stun, blind and silence are all examples from the FF series. I believe the SMT series has party-wide buffs that grant immunity, absorption or reflection of a single element, which is also an option. Individual enemies can also have tactics that allow for other ways of avoiding their specific attacks.
I don't really think it's a problem if a player has to beat the bosses of all the game's major story dungeons before they're strong enough to beat the final boss though. You don't have to start the player with all these skills, you can hand them out as the game goes along. No matter how nonlinear you try to make the game, some of your content is going to be mandatory, after all.
One way to make enemy attacks avoidable is to use an ATB, and give each enemy attack a charge time, during which you can see the enemy charging up for the attack. I use another method in my game, which is to have a "Charge Up" buff that many enemies cast on themselves, which lasts for one round and allows them to access more powerful skills when they are affected by it. Without something like this it'll be extremely hard for the player to really prevent anything, because they won't know what to prevent. Unless boss AI is ultra-predictable, and even then they'd have to die a few times to figure out the AI.
Once you figure out a way for the player to be able to see attacks before they're cast, you'll need to give the player some way to not take damage from them. A combination of brief defensive buffs, interrupt skills (with cooldowns so you can't interrupt everything) and other ways of dodging. Jump, hide, reflect, image, invisible, self-petrify, stun, blind and silence are all examples from the FF series. I believe the SMT series has party-wide buffs that grant immunity, absorption or reflection of a single element, which is also an option. Individual enemies can also have tactics that allow for other ways of avoiding their specific attacks.
I don't really think it's a problem if a player has to beat the bosses of all the game's major story dungeons before they're strong enough to beat the final boss though. You don't have to start the player with all these skills, you can hand them out as the game goes along. No matter how nonlinear you try to make the game, some of your content is going to be mandatory, after all.
prexus
309
This is similar to the way I had planned to have "Levelling" work in a project I am not bothering with for the moment.
Essentially, Gear was the only way you customized your characters. Mainly due to special effects, too. Stat increases were minimal and usually percentage based.
Some weapons would give you access to certain skills, elemental damage, chance to inflict status, etc. Armors would give you various defenses, bonuses to stats, bonus to after combat spoils (items, etc.) or the effectiveness of magic/items, and so forth.
You would, however, gain a "Level" every time you encountered a certain point in the story. I think I called them growth points (but not at all like that other guy's system with the spendable points) which didn't necessarily mean a boss fight, but most often a boss would cause it. Occasionally it would occur after clearing a dungeon, or whatever. The growth would increase your stats so that the percentage bonuses would be higher, give you access to new skills, and remove restrictions on certain gear and items.
This way, I knew exactly how powerful the player was, and could balance my fights and bosses appropriately. The player was then charged to think about his equipment and the combinations in order to defeat challenges.
Unfortunately, I realized it would be a pain if you forgot to change your equipment and found yourself in a random encounter you couldn't beat, but then I thought about not having random encounters, then I realized that there would still need to be fights between bosses and events otherwise what is the point of all those stats and skills and what have you.
It's a system that can work, but it doesn't work in the standard basic RPG.
Essentially, Gear was the only way you customized your characters. Mainly due to special effects, too. Stat increases were minimal and usually percentage based.
Some weapons would give you access to certain skills, elemental damage, chance to inflict status, etc. Armors would give you various defenses, bonuses to stats, bonus to after combat spoils (items, etc.) or the effectiveness of magic/items, and so forth.
You would, however, gain a "Level" every time you encountered a certain point in the story. I think I called them growth points (but not at all like that other guy's system with the spendable points) which didn't necessarily mean a boss fight, but most often a boss would cause it. Occasionally it would occur after clearing a dungeon, or whatever. The growth would increase your stats so that the percentage bonuses would be higher, give you access to new skills, and remove restrictions on certain gear and items.
This way, I knew exactly how powerful the player was, and could balance my fights and bosses appropriately. The player was then charged to think about his equipment and the combinations in order to defeat challenges.
Unfortunately, I realized it would be a pain if you forgot to change your equipment and found yourself in a random encounter you couldn't beat, but then I thought about not having random encounters, then I realized that there would still need to be fights between bosses and events otherwise what is the point of all those stats and skills and what have you.
It's a system that can work, but it doesn't work in the standard basic RPG.
This is a very interesting thing that I never thought of.
The game I'm working on, this seems like the most logical thing to do. I'll like to use a variation of these things if you all wouldn't mind.
I still will have the standard leveling up system, but more so used as a way to limit side quests and secret bosses, so it's an optional function, and also used as a sort of 'Title', more or less.
The game I'm working on, this seems like the most logical thing to do. I'll like to use a variation of these things if you all wouldn't mind.
I still will have the standard leveling up system, but more so used as a way to limit side quests and secret bosses, so it's an optional function, and also used as a sort of 'Title', more or less.
RPGCreator
10
Thank you for the feedback this far. I´m seriously thinking about the ideas that LockeZ gave me here and spin around with that for a while. Especially how players can think about their next moves when they see the oncoming attack of an enemy. Thanks to prexus, I will also think about the gear´s role in my game. Now Ghart (the protagonist) only has a weapon and a basic armor. I had an idea to level up the gear in some way at first, but I´m not really sure about this. I might have to "rethink" about some parts of this "system".
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