AVERTING LEVEL GRINDING

Well the thing is that with this method there's no incentive for players to go after encounters besides item drops. You could make item drops very rewarding, I guess, but there's no real drive to finish the fights when the EXP you're getting is diddly squat.

I think it's because battles make up the 'gameplay' of RPGs while bosses are indeed more plot-orientated so they serve a different function. Having difficult bosses is great (wish more games would do it) but they are still a plot device.

Also that said there's an issue of balance and underlevelling. There is always the preference that player can complete your game over finding it difficult. Restricting EXP like that may result in issues like a player reaching a boss they just can't beat and quitting, and as an indie developer you don't have that luxury (and the player doesn't have the monetary incentive to continue i.e they didn't just $60 for your game)

If you want to do it this way you could always try to have a different method of levelling progression that doesn't revolve around EXP.

An idea in that regard would be minor enemies dropping individual stat points and bosses dropping loads which gives the player the option of customization and it means grinding isn't orientated around levels- a player may grind just to add a few points to their AGI stat because the boss is way too fast for them.

Or you could completely throw stats and levels out the window but THAT'S AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT BALL GAME, YO

:x I don't mind grinding if the combat is rewarding (I actually kind of find it fun)

...but I started RPGs with the original Dragon Warrior, which has warped my views on RPGs forever.

I hold FF6 and Chrono Trigger as the gold standard for challenge and EXP rewarding. The basic idea is that a player can progress in a straight line, killing everything they meet, and not have to stop to grind. If they choose to grind anyway, they get some leverage for awhile. If they run from everything, well, shit, you did it to yourself son.

So it comes to a balance where your design should be focused on drawing a straight line from the town to the boss (including off-the-path treasure chests) and still being able to beat the boss with some strategy. But don't totally discourage grinding, because some people are thick and just won't get it.

(also, bosses who give no exp are for low-level playthroughs)

author=rabitZ
I actually played the Hellgate from Tactics Ogre twice :)

Four times here.
One pair with my Lawful party, another with my Chaotic. Both were on PSX with no frameskip D:

author=SorceressKyrsty
Well the thing is that with this method there's no incentive for players to go after encounters besides item drops. You could make item drops very rewarding, I guess, but there's no real drive to finish the fights when the EXP you're getting is diddly squat.

How about using the fact that the enemies are trying to kill you as an incentive? That seems to work just fine in a lot of games from other genres. Of course, if you make the encounters boring spam feasts that require no thought and barely even attention, then sure, this can be a problem.

Mind you, I do think that the cannon fodder enemies should give you a proper reward, but you make it sound like a bribe used to get the player to fight battles he'd otherwise just skip. I think it's sad that it's practically assumed that RPG battles aren't fun enough to be fought just for the battles themselves.

OK, that was rather of a tangent, but if the battles were a lot of fun, it would solve a lot of the problems. A player that's used to the idea of actually thinking during battles is more likely to conclude that he needs a better strategy rather than that his level is to low. You also don't have to worry about if your bribe is high enough to get the player to actually fight your battles.

As for the actual question, I do know that Wild Arms 3 have bosses grant the most exp. This worked just fine as far as I am concerned. I think 70 times more exp is a bit to much though, but frankly, you should test what number works best and not decide in advance.

author=Dyhalto
I hold FF6 and Chrono Trigger as the gold standard for challenge and EXP rewarding. The basic idea is that a player can progress in a straight line, killing everything they meet, and not have to stop to grind. If they choose to grind anyway, they get some leverage for awhile.

See, that latter part is the main thing I want to avoid by removing grinding. Grinding is boring and not fun. It shouldn't be presented as a valid alternative to figuring out how to defeat bosses the normal way.

Actually instead of writing this all out again, I'll just quote an article I wrote a year ago.

Grinding. For the sake of this article, I'm using the term to mean "repetition for the sake of some reward", not "stuff you don't like to do."

You could easily call this kind of repetition the definition of an RPG, as the most basic forms of rewards - experience points, money, and random drops - are the heart of the genre. You could easily say that if you remove the ability to accumulate strength via repetition from an RPG, it's not an RPG any more; it's just an adventure game with menu-based combat.

And you can say that if you want. I don't care what terminology you use. The fact remains that the primary feature I enjoy about RPGs (and what I consider the defining feature of the genre) is tactical, menu-based combat that forces me to think about my actions and gives me time to do so. And the primary feature I despise about RPGs is repetition.

There are two reasons I am on a crusade against repetition in Iniquity and Vindication. The first one is that it's simply not challenging, and thus not satisfying, and thus not fun. When you've already proven to the game that you can overcome a specific challenge, it should not force you to overcome the exact same challenge again. What's the point? You literally have a 0% chance of losing. You can, and almost always should, do exactly the same thing as you did last time. It's not just a matter of being too easy - there's literally no challenge to overcome at all. This type of repetition barely even qualifies as gameplay.

Granted, if the player has limited resources, then a few identical battles are more justifiable. In such a case, each individual battle is not the challenge - the challenge is being able to conserve your resources to last through the string of battles. I don't mind this type of challenge and will most likely include a few of them in Iniquity and Vindication. But I don't think it should make up 95% of a game. And many RPGs don't really have limited resources anyway - you can freely head back to town and restock, and save points probably heal you to full HP/MP. So the repeated battles are utterly pointless.

The second reason I dislike repetition is the reward scheme for it. Being extremely bored for several hours and then essentially skipping the next several challenges should not be presented as an acceptable alternative to playing the game the way it's meant to be played. Who ever decided that this was good game design? What's the point of including challenges, and then giving the player all sorts of encouragement and incentive to not tackle them? Shouldn't you be encouraging the player to have more fun, not less? Are you working on the assumption that your challenges aren't fun? If so, why are you making games?

You would think the only reason anyone would willingly grind up their power would be if they can't overcome your challenge, but that's not the case - many people (called completionists) simply like to experience everything a game has to offer. Other people are drawn in to the grind by story-driven side-quests, or by game mechanics like synthesis shops and monster hunts. And in the process of simply trying to play the game that's presented to them, they actually become so strong that they are prevented from being able to experience the game's challenges. They can still experience the battles, sure. But the challenges are taken away from them. You can tell me, "Oh, you can just not equip that new armor; you can just not use the new skill you learned; then it's the same challenge as before." But the human brain doesn't work like that. The game is less satisfying. You're not beating the game, you're beating your own game you made up because the real game isn't fun enough.

Grinding has its uses, for sure; it's not without benefits. It gives people goals to strive for, it makes every victory feel valuable. I can't argue with anyone who feels like these benefits outweigh the problems. But I want to see a game without grinding; with no repetition, but with RPG style battles. And so that's the game I'm making. Vindication had a somewhat unusual approach to preventing grinding, at least on hard mode, which was that it was impossible to obtain gold from random battles, and there were no sources of unlimited free healing. This made it feel almost like a kind of survival horror game at times. (On normal difficulty, obtaining gold was still difficult, but not impossible.) But I want to take it a step further this time. I'm not removing normal battles from Iniquity and Vindication, but each one will be different - at least diferent enough that you have to think a little bit about what to change in your strategy. None of them will be repeatable. And every third or fourth battle will be a boss. If you're like me, which hopefully some of you are, this will keep every single battle in the game interesting.

Right, and if your game is set up so that surviving the series of fights without running out of resources is an actual challenge, then that's fine. But so many games fail at creating that kind of gameplay because it's basically impossible to ever run out of resources. And even when it's done right, that doesn't change the fact that going into a dungeon, fighting four fights, then heading back to town and sleeping at an inn, and repeating that process ten times in a row, is still ultra-boring grinding.

author=Dyhalto
it helps counter the randomized nature of RPGs (in platformers, you can learn boss patterns. In RPGs, bosses can use SuperAttack three times in a row by mere chance)

I can't think of any reason why RPG bosses would not follow patterns. Even in RPG Maker 2003 it isn't hard to do; you can set skills to only be used every tenth round, you can set skills that only get used below 30% HP, you can give enemies limited MP so they can only use a certain skill once per battle, you can create battle events that inflict a silence-like status on the enemy every other round, etc. RPG battles are supposed to be more about strategy and tactics and planning than platformer battles are, not less!

So basically I guess my point is that I think the boss battles should be designed around making the player figure them out, and if it's done right, then it'll be fun. And if you can make it fun like that, then I don't think it's cool to design your game so the player feels like either doing it the fun way or fighting goblins for thirty minutes are both valid options you intended people to pick from. Because if you do, then some of them will pick the goblins.

my favorite thing to do with bosses that i now do consistently is something i lifted from nessy: it has a rotation of x slots, and each slot has a few possibilities within it.

for example, a very simple Czarina boss might be:

Round 3X+0
--Strong ice spell
--Moderate area ice spell
--Moderate ice spell + speed/accuracy debuff

Round 3X+1
--3x moderate physical attacks
--2x moderate physical attacks + defense debuff

Round 3X+2
--OBLIVION PUNCH (very strong physical attack), followed by moderate area light spell

EDIT: re:randomization, that doesn't mean it HAS to be there. For example, Radiant Historia has no miss rate or evasion. Damage is still somewhat random, but the goal is to build attack chains since higher chains = more damage. If you could miss, it'd screw that system up.

author=Skie Fortress
This is all in my effort to prune out what I find annoying while promoting what I think is fun of course.

"Be the game you wish to see in the world" ~ghandi