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EQUIPPING SKILLS
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Adon237
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CloseI have had a thought recently about the way some game's skills are. There tend to be a long line of upgrades for one general spell, such as Fire, Fira, Firaga, Firaja, Firajagalagawagagaga, etc. This happens for pretty much every single spell. Some games are super guilty of this (I am looking at you Final Fantasy!), and there could have been a simple way to combat this. Equipping Skills. This would avoid the tediousness of using a skill in battle, by stopping the million scroll march. It would also make the player think about what skills they want to have someone equip, and remember, it's always nice to have a player thinking about your game.
So my question is, what do you think of the concept of Equipping Skills? Do you think there would be a better way to go about it?
(Also, equipping skills can do other things that reducing the amount of skills you have to scroll through obviously, but I want to see what the community thinks about this subject in general.)
Equipping Skills = A character can choose an X amount of skills to be usable in battle.
So my question is, what do you think of the concept of Equipping Skills? Do you think there would be a better way to go about it?
(Also, equipping skills can do other things that reducing the amount of skills you have to scroll through obviously, but I want to see what the community thinks about this subject in general.)
Equipping Skills = A character can choose an X amount of skills to be usable in battle.
I did this in one of my games - well sort of. So, swords would teach you three skills (Speed, Power and Sweep) and you could keep one skill from each sword. So say on the Iron sword you learned all three and could access them all, but when you swapped to another sword, you could keep one of the skills from the old sword. In total there were about 8 swords - so ten skills available all up.
I know you said sort of, and I should have made it more clear in the OP, but
Equipping Skills = A character can choose an X amount of skills to be usable in battle.
Equipping Skills = A character can choose an X amount of skills to be usable in battle.
Yeah, figured that, but I was just saying an alternate version instead of 'just' equipping skills. I mean, that's already a well-used mechanic. There's scripts for it already out there.
I like this since it gives that feel of customizing your characters.
It's great for games that have a smaller cast of party members.
It's great for games that have a smaller cast of party members.
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
SaGa Frontier does this an interesting way - the interesting part is that you can learn skills mid-battle, and if you do, you can choose which of your currently equipped skills will get replaced by the new one. Whichever skill you put in the "bottom slot" when equipping the skills in the menu is the one that gets overwritten.
Granted, unless you have a skill system that lets you learn skills mid-battle, this is kind of irrelevant to you. But maybe you do! Even if you're not using SaGa's tech lightbulb system, you might be using, say, a blue mage?
Anyway, generally I think most RPG players love love love customization. They want to be able to make their teams and their characters their own, and they like the puzzle-solving aspect of setting up their team in the way they think is best (even if there are actually many other valid options).
Skill customization can potentially alter your characters to a much deeper degree than stat customization, which may or may not be what you want! If customization is your thing, then it sounds like it would almost always be good, but sometimes when you're designing enemies, you just need to be able to assume that the player has a fire spell and a stun attack. So maybe you want something that lets you customize certain skills, but not others. The upcoming World of Warcraft expansion changes the talent system to work this way: you get a bunch of base skills that you are forced to learn, and then every ten levels you get to choose one of three new skills to learn. You can change these any time you're in a city. The first two Wild ARMs games take a different approach: only one of your characters can choose which skills to equip (the character with crest graphs). The other characters learn skills permanently, but can choose which ones to power up.
Some people don't like having to micromanage something so "complex," but... that's a weird complaint from someone who picked up a game with turn-based strategic combat that has numbers flying everywhere. And you can certainly do it in a way that's not complex. Hell, the original Legend of Zelda has equippable skills. I've toyed with the idea of having "simplified" and "complex" gameplay modes, where in the former all the character customization is chosen automatically for the player...
Granted, unless you have a skill system that lets you learn skills mid-battle, this is kind of irrelevant to you. But maybe you do! Even if you're not using SaGa's tech lightbulb system, you might be using, say, a blue mage?
Anyway, generally I think most RPG players love love love customization. They want to be able to make their teams and their characters their own, and they like the puzzle-solving aspect of setting up their team in the way they think is best (even if there are actually many other valid options).
Skill customization can potentially alter your characters to a much deeper degree than stat customization, which may or may not be what you want! If customization is your thing, then it sounds like it would almost always be good, but sometimes when you're designing enemies, you just need to be able to assume that the player has a fire spell and a stun attack. So maybe you want something that lets you customize certain skills, but not others. The upcoming World of Warcraft expansion changes the talent system to work this way: you get a bunch of base skills that you are forced to learn, and then every ten levels you get to choose one of three new skills to learn. You can change these any time you're in a city. The first two Wild ARMs games take a different approach: only one of your characters can choose which skills to equip (the character with crest graphs). The other characters learn skills permanently, but can choose which ones to power up.
Some people don't like having to micromanage something so "complex," but... that's a weird complaint from someone who picked up a game with turn-based strategic combat that has numbers flying everywhere. And you can certainly do it in a way that's not complex. Hell, the original Legend of Zelda has equippable skills. I've toyed with the idea of having "simplified" and "complex" gameplay modes, where in the former all the character customization is chosen automatically for the player...
Xenomic
1752
Ah....reminds me of Genius of Sapphieros, which is based on the SaGa series, and Gensoumaroku (yes, both Touhou fangames). I think both of them pulled it off really well, and I think it makes the game much more diverse. Granted, both games had their own way of doing it, and there were a LOOOOOOT of skills and stuff in both of them, but the more the merrier if you ask me!)
Crystalgate
694
If you're worried about clutter, you can just kill outdated skills. There's no need to implement a skill selection system for that. However, if you want the player to have to think about what skills to bring, then it's a good system. In most games that I can think of that uses the skill selection system proposed, or a variant thereof (Paper Mario for example,) they actually work rather well.
Guess I'll share some of my features. In SR, I've outfitted my characters with about 10-ish major skills, and a few fluff abilities, like one that increases SP by 20%.
None of these skills will ever be outdated. No final fantasy Fire XXX :3
Now you don't equip new skills, but you alter them.
For example,
Penance deals damage to an ally, only to greatly heal them. (good tank heal)
With a skill mod:
Penance deals GREAT damage to an enemy, but will also heal them afterwords. (good kill strike)
You can only equip ONE skill mod at a time. And every character can use a skill mod. I think this is a pretty good way to customize characters, without losing the character's main role in a party.
At the very least, it's different...I think~ :P
None of these skills will ever be outdated. No final fantasy Fire XXX :3
Now you don't equip new skills, but you alter them.
For example,
Penance deals damage to an ally, only to greatly heal them. (good tank heal)
With a skill mod:
Penance deals GREAT damage to an enemy, but will also heal them afterwords. (good kill strike)
You can only equip ONE skill mod at a time. And every character can use a skill mod. I think this is a pretty good way to customize characters, without losing the character's main role in a party.
At the very least, it's different...I think~ :P
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