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COMBAT SYSTEMS: DO'S AND DONT'S & OPINIONS
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JosephSeraph
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m4uesviecr
200
author=LockeZ
Uh, you don't want to include a gameplay element that's more fun unless you can explain it with the plot?
You're doing this game design thing backwards, man. It's supposed to go the other way around.
That's not what I mean at all. It's more akin to "don't add it simply because".
The best games are able to effectively house gameplay and plot. I mean, there really isn't a way to introduce the system in FF13 by way of lore, and there are going to be gameplay aspects like that in many games. Even so, there are some things (i.e. commands, bosses, moves, attack formulas) that I do believe should be congruent with the settings and the story itself. I'd definitely say that the use, and purpose of specific cool down attacks, would be one.
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
author=LouisCyphreauthor=LockeZCute, but you can do better. You shouldn't be sick anything before it's finished. That means it's outstayed its welcome.author=LouisCyphreAlthough you might stubbornly refuse to believe it, repeating a 45 second loop is actually objectively less repetitive than repeating a 5 second loop. Try it with audio files on repeat, and see which one you get sick of faster.
The cooldowns don't make it any less boring.
They just use the same boring skill rotation. Don't kid yourself.
If you're going to have cooldowns, use them to their fullest. By the time you finish a "rotation", the combat situation needs to have changed to require reassessment. At that point, though, you have to ask yourself why you're not doing this every round.
I look forward to your next strawman.
Hahaha, discussing it for real then, if you actually want to.
If you're sick of something before you've even done it once, the problem is definitely the task itself and not the repetitiveness. But you can probably get sick of anything after doing it enough times with no break.
I totally agree about the combat situation changing. I find it's nice to have a rotation last an entire non-boss battle, so at the very least, each time you repeat the same skill rotation, you're fighting a different foe that's using a different strategy on you.
My typical use of skill rotations isn't just to change things up, though. It also creates the opportunity for enemies to interrupt you in the middle of doing what you're doing. If you set up an enemy for a big attack, and then it puts one of your characters to sleep or casts a protection spell on itself or starts charging up its own big attack, then following through becomes a choice instead of an inevitability. You have a set of skills, which form a theoretical best rotation in a vacuum, but enemies are constantly doing all sorts of different things to try to prevent you from using your skill rotation at maximum effectiveness. Removing your buffs and making you stop to heal and summoning new allies and whatever. That's not something you can do if your "best rotation" is only a single skill. They can't interrupt it because there's no midpoint.
If your rotation is based entirely on cooldowns and the skills don't actually interact with each-other in any other way, then this aspect is certainly diminished, I admit. But it doesn't totally disappear. You are still wasting resources - specifically turns - and losing out on your optimal damage. But still, you should be using cooldowns and buffs and debuffs and resource generation and usage in tandem with one-another to create rotations. They are all useful tools, more useful when used together.
author=LockeZ
then following through becomes a choice instead of an inevitability.
^ winner
That's sort of the basis of "ideal challenge" in a combat system (I'll get to the problems in a second). Competitive games are often based on incomplete knowledge and prediction of enemy moves. "What will they do in reaction to card X vs. card Y?" forms the core of the thinking exercise from start to finish. But this can't happen if the player has only one valid card to play.
I was jabbing at the tendency for cooldowns to be used as a sort of a crutch to mask this lack of viable options. That's the problem; most people don't know how to give the player viable choices without having a CLEAR optimum. They know how to use Fire on blue slimes and Bufu on red slimes. Sure, you might have a couple dozen FF/DQ ailment spells, but those aren't any good. They aren't real options; at least when talking to the game devs who need to learn this particular lesson. Having four spells on a three-turn cooldown each; forcing you to stagger them one a time, creates the illusion of tactics without actually introducing any new options to the player.
Cooldowns can absolutely be used to fantastic effect. You'd just have to plan and balance them in ways that promote creativity.
---
Example: You have Bash, a spell that stuns one enemy for a turn, deals good damage, and takes 3 turns to recharge. If it does the same damage as Fire1, obviously you're going to use it every 3 turns and rely on Fire otherwise. A simple rotation, but still more interesting than spamming Ultima.
However, if you have a boss that spends a turn charging and then casts Bonzo-Beam, which does massive damage and status effects and is overall no good for your party. So you stun him while he's charging - but of course, it means you need to use Bash more conservatively so you know you'll have it prepared when the boss begins to charge. Now you have some depth created by the other side of the battlefield.
There's a million other ways to create spells with unique resources (i.e. not mana), and mixing up a few of them can remove spamming completely, reduce reliance on rotations, and promote strategic planning and proactive/reactive decisions.
Some one-liner examples:
These are silly ideas, but you can see how you could easily make interesting spells without even adding too many new mechanics/debuffs/etc. Mixing up MP with other resources compounds the depth of your spellbook while (if done right) not making everything too complex.
---
Of course, if all your battles are the same, your players will eventually settle on their "optimal rotation", most likely maxing damage done while reducing damage taken. That's why no matter what magic system you use, creating enemies that can disrupt your player's plans will force them to think on their feet, keep battles interesting and create a better sense of accomplishment from a win.
---
Example: You have Bash, a spell that stuns one enemy for a turn, deals good damage, and takes 3 turns to recharge. If it does the same damage as Fire1, obviously you're going to use it every 3 turns and rely on Fire otherwise. A simple rotation, but still more interesting than spamming Ultima.
However, if you have a boss that spends a turn charging and then casts Bonzo-Beam, which does massive damage and status effects and is overall no good for your party. So you stun him while he's charging - but of course, it means you need to use Bash more conservatively so you know you'll have it prepared when the boss begins to charge. Now you have some depth created by the other side of the battlefield.
There's a million other ways to create spells with unique resources (i.e. not mana), and mixing up a few of them can remove spamming completely, reduce reliance on rotations, and promote strategic planning and proactive/reactive decisions.
Some one-liner examples:
- Volcano: A high-damage spell with no mana cost, on a high cooldown, hence best used when the boss's Magic Def. is broken.
- Eyeball Lazers: A high-damage spell that stuns you for a turn, ala Hyper Beam. Good as a finishing move.
- Brain Ball/Pia Mater: A low-damage spell that grants you mana back with no cooldown, and a high-damage spell that uses all remaining mana for extra damage. Ad oculos.
- Flora: A spell that grants you a buff, increasing the damage that particular spell does. The buff is lost when another spell is cast.
- Mutant: A spell that changes every time you cast it, in a predetermined cycle. Each variation inflicts a different status effect.
These are silly ideas, but you can see how you could easily make interesting spells without even adding too many new mechanics/debuffs/etc. Mixing up MP with other resources compounds the depth of your spellbook while (if done right) not making everything too complex.
---
Of course, if all your battles are the same, your players will eventually settle on their "optimal rotation", most likely maxing damage done while reducing damage taken. That's why no matter what magic system you use, creating enemies that can disrupt your player's plans will force them to think on their feet, keep battles interesting and create a better sense of accomplishment from a win.
DFalcon
2141
Relying on a common resource isn't necessarily bad. I think a lot of harm in such systems gets done when players are carting around an MP pool large enough to use several abilities with impunity. If your MP starts at 0 and grows slowly, for example, you can actually have to make choices about whether eventual perfection is worth not achieving something right away: "stun the monster this turn or save enough to kill it next turn?"
(Though of course the usual caveats apply, and that specific method can also kill your pacing in terrible ways depending on the game.)
I probably tend to oversummarize the major points in discussions like this ("Yes, games should have meaningful decisions, already!") so instead I'll give another example. One thing that often works well is to have skills that synergize with some time flexibility.
Say each enemy has a random evade value that changes from turn to turn (independently, so there's usually a spread, but sometimes they're all pretty low or pretty high, sometimes the same target will have a low one a few turns in a row, etc.). Each skill has an accuracy and hits every live enemy with evade lower than that. Each skill can be used once per battle per user.
Skill A has very good accuracy and removes all buffs and debuffs on the user.
Skill B has good accuracy and heals the user, but gives him a debuff that damages him at the end of battle.
Skill C has good accuracy and gives the user a buff/debuff - it's heal-over-time as long as only one PC has it, otherwise it's damage-over-time.
Skill D has poor accuracy but gives the user a heal-over-time buff if it hits multiple enemies.
And I guess for the example as written you have to have some weak but always-available attack option.
(Bonus points if you can guess the board game that was horribly mutilated in the making of this example.)
The player has a tension between generating hits and buff/debuff synergy, but the flexibility in ordering means he can optimize for them together as he plays rather than choosing one or the other.
(Though of course the usual caveats apply, and that specific method can also kill your pacing in terrible ways depending on the game.)
I probably tend to oversummarize the major points in discussions like this ("Yes, games should have meaningful decisions, already!") so instead I'll give another example. One thing that often works well is to have skills that synergize with some time flexibility.
Say each enemy has a random evade value that changes from turn to turn (independently, so there's usually a spread, but sometimes they're all pretty low or pretty high, sometimes the same target will have a low one a few turns in a row, etc.). Each skill has an accuracy and hits every live enemy with evade lower than that. Each skill can be used once per battle per user.
Skill A has very good accuracy and removes all buffs and debuffs on the user.
Skill B has good accuracy and heals the user, but gives him a debuff that damages him at the end of battle.
Skill C has good accuracy and gives the user a buff/debuff - it's heal-over-time as long as only one PC has it, otherwise it's damage-over-time.
Skill D has poor accuracy but gives the user a heal-over-time buff if it hits multiple enemies.
And I guess for the example as written you have to have some weak but always-available attack option.
(Bonus points if you can guess the board game that was horribly mutilated in the making of this example.)
The player has a tension between generating hits and buff/debuff synergy, but the flexibility in ordering means he can optimize for them together as he plays rather than choosing one or the other.
DnD...?
I like a lot of those ideas! I agree that you could make a great game out of a single resource. The difficulty with resources is if you add too many (and too many is often more than 1 or 2) then your game becomes horribly complex and it's too difficult to bother remembering what spells you can and can't use, and when. You always want a mix skills that are accessible and more complex, limited options that require some critical thought.
Fighting against the oversized mana pool is important though. If you're not thinking about how much MP you're using, there's no choice created by resource cost. Part of that might help create a feeling of end-game-powerfulness, but it also feels kinda cheesy.
I like a lot of those ideas! I agree that you could make a great game out of a single resource. The difficulty with resources is if you add too many (and too many is often more than 1 or 2) then your game becomes horribly complex and it's too difficult to bother remembering what spells you can and can't use, and when. You always want a mix skills that are accessible and more complex, limited options that require some critical thought.
Fighting against the oversized mana pool is important though. If you're not thinking about how much MP you're using, there's no choice created by resource cost. Part of that might help create a feeling of end-game-powerfulness, but it also feels kinda cheesy.
Fireball costs 3% + 7 (flat) MP
Firaga costs 10% + 25 (flat) MP
Heal costs 5% + 12 (flat) MP
i don't understand the problem with mana, here ;V
Firaga costs 10% + 25 (flat) MP
Heal costs 5% + 12 (flat) MP
i don't understand the problem with mana, here ;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
Costing a percentage of your mana pool isn't any better when you have 70 hi-ethers in your bag. But really, the problem with mana costs is almost never that they're not high enough. It's that it's a boring choice. Fire vs Firaga? Is that what we're down to now? This is pretty low guys
And I mean, I want to be able to use my skills, you know? If mana is the only resource, then usually either I have to conserve it or I don't. It's possible to get a balance in between where I care about mana but still use magic in most battles - natural mana regeneration is one solution - but it's much harder to get that balance if mana is the only resource I'm caring about. It's much easier to hit that balance if I'm managing a second resource also and have to consider the two issues against each-other. The extra resource doesn't have to be a literal extra bar that fills up on the battle screen, it can be something as simple as FF13's battle timer where you get more rewards for winning faster, or even the fact that I can't outheal the enemy's damage and need to either nuke it hard ASAP or use buff spells to protect myself. That HP bar is already a resource the player understands - why don't any of your non-boss battles ever make any use of it, guys?
And I mean, I want to be able to use my skills, you know? If mana is the only resource, then usually either I have to conserve it or I don't. It's possible to get a balance in between where I care about mana but still use magic in most battles - natural mana regeneration is one solution - but it's much harder to get that balance if mana is the only resource I'm caring about. It's much easier to hit that balance if I'm managing a second resource also and have to consider the two issues against each-other. The extra resource doesn't have to be a literal extra bar that fills up on the battle screen, it can be something as simple as FF13's battle timer where you get more rewards for winning faster, or even the fact that I can't outheal the enemy's damage and need to either nuke it hard ASAP or use buff spells to protect myself. That HP bar is already a resource the player understands - why don't any of your non-boss battles ever make any use of it, guys?
One game I tried to make in RPG Maker used an energy resource. It started at 100, your skills used anywhere from 0-100, and it recovered by 10 per turn. That alone had some pretty fun dynamics to it.
If your only spells are Fire and Firaga, of course you're never going to have interesting choices. One of my personal favorite choices is whether or not to go "All-In" and blow all your resources to finish off a boss that is near death, rather than playing conservatively. It's a fun strategy, unless you predicted poorly and the boss is still alive when you're tapped.
If your only spells are Fire and Firaga, of course you're never going to have interesting choices. One of my personal favorite choices is whether or not to go "All-In" and blow all your resources to finish off a boss that is near death, rather than playing conservatively. It's a fun strategy, unless you predicted poorly and the boss is still alive when you're tapped.
I usually limit the amount of items my player can take into battle. Either 5 or 10. Also, I tend to make items powerful early game and fairly useless late game.
(Ethers are more powerful when you use an alchemist-like character, but that's a lot of turns playing defensive, and isn't always needed.)
Anyone played WoW cata? I'm looking into a healing strategy that works similar to this.
Weak heal, low cost.
Strong heal, high cost.
Instant heal, very high cost.
Any healer dps, Ace's TP resource.
Plus any flavor spells that are limited with cool downs and what not. The healer would be setup to not have a high MP regain, and items will only make him overpowered for the first few hours.
I would try and make the enemies hit hard enough for him to throw a heal every battle. This isn't very hard to balance when you have a tank character, which is very easy to do in ACE.
(Ethers are more powerful when you use an alchemist-like character, but that's a lot of turns playing defensive, and isn't always needed.)
Anyone played WoW cata? I'm looking into a healing strategy that works similar to this.
Weak heal, low cost.
Strong heal, high cost.
Instant heal, very high cost.
Any healer dps, Ace's TP resource.
Plus any flavor spells that are limited with cool downs and what not. The healer would be setup to not have a high MP regain, and items will only make him overpowered for the first few hours.
I would try and make the enemies hit hard enough for him to throw a heal every battle. This isn't very hard to balance when you have a tank character, which is very easy to do in ACE.
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
If you make it so he's throwing a heal every turn you can do so much more with the healing. You can make healing spells combo in with each-other.
But maybe you don't want to do that. Understandable if so. Some people don't like dedicated single-role characters, especially if you have a team of 3 party members. You can make healing spells combo in with damage spells, that works too. Makes the healing less interesting, but doesn't make the character any less interesting (possibly more interesting). I have a character with a healing spell that raises the user's offense on the following round, to encourage the player to perhaps consider not healing a second round in a row even when healing is the obvious thing to do.
But maybe you don't want to do that. Understandable if so. Some people don't like dedicated single-role characters, especially if you have a team of 3 party members. You can make healing spells combo in with damage spells, that works too. Makes the healing less interesting, but doesn't make the character any less interesting (possibly more interesting). I have a character with a healing spell that raises the user's offense on the following round, to encourage the player to perhaps consider not healing a second round in a row even when healing is the obvious thing to do.
Milennin
2060
I was thinking of using a turn-based combat system that doesn't use items. Instead when a character kills an enemy he gains a bit of health back. Thoughts?
author=MilenninIt could work. just remember that items hold a lot of nifty gameplay ideas.
I was thinking of using a turn-based combat system that doesn't use items. Instead when a character kills an enemy he gains a bit of health back. Thoughts?
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
This topic has basically turned into What are you thinking about? (game development edition) (again)
Two of those topics is probably enough guys :/
Two of those topics is probably enough guys :/
Crystalgate
694
Don't make single target status effect have any less than 100% accuracy, I will not use it then for anything less than a boss. If an enemy dies in less than three hits or is nonthreatening, I will not use the status effect even if it has a 100% accuracy. Attaching the status effect to an HP damaging attack doesn't help either, if I'm injuring an enemy, it's scheduled to be dead very soon anyway.
Don't make evasion go up gradually as the player progresses similar to how defense does, evasion doesn't scale the same way as defense unless you drastically alters how chance to hit works. In theory, this also goes for hit-rate, critical hit and all other stats that are percentage based, but the issue seems the most common with evasion.
Don't use an ATB or other system designed for "quick thinking," it ends up being about either mashing attack or quickly scrolling trough a menu rather than actually thinking. Also, if I'm playing an RPG, chance is I'm not in the mood for that kind of gameplay anyway.
Do put an emphasis on avoiding taking damage in the first place rather than just healing it. Note that giving me the option to do so isn't enough, you also need to give me a good reason to actually take that option.
Do look up what the stats actually does before assigning things stats in the database, especially if you're using RMXP. It's very common that I notice the author has no idea what he/she is doing and is just winging it.
Don't make evasion go up gradually as the player progresses similar to how defense does, evasion doesn't scale the same way as defense unless you drastically alters how chance to hit works. In theory, this also goes for hit-rate, critical hit and all other stats that are percentage based, but the issue seems the most common with evasion.
Don't use an ATB or other system designed for "quick thinking," it ends up being about either mashing attack or quickly scrolling trough a menu rather than actually thinking. Also, if I'm playing an RPG, chance is I'm not in the mood for that kind of gameplay anyway.
Do put an emphasis on avoiding taking damage in the first place rather than just healing it. Note that giving me the option to do so isn't enough, you also need to give me a good reason to actually take that option.
Do look up what the stats actually does before assigning things stats in the database, especially if you're using RMXP. It's very common that I notice the author has no idea what he/she is doing and is just winging it.
Crystalgate
Don't make single target status effect have any less than 100% accuracy, I will not use it then for anything less than a boss. If an enemy dies in less than three hits or is nonthreatening, I will not use the status effect even if it has a 100% accuracy. Attaching the status effect to an HP damaging attack doesn't help either, if I'm injuring an enemy, it's scheduled to be dead very soon anyway.
Don't make evasion go up gradually as the player progresses similar to how defense does, evasion doesn't scale the same way as defense unless you drastically alters how chance to hit works. In theory, this also goes for hit-rate, critical hit and all other stats that are percentage based, but the issue seems the most common with evasion.
Don't use an ATB or other system designed for "quick thinking," it ends up being about either mashing attack or quickly scrolling trough a menu rather than actually thinking. Also, if I'm playing an RPG, chance is I'm not in the mood for that kind of gameplay anyway.
Do put an emphasis on avoiding taking damage in the first place rather than just healing it. Note that giving me the option to do so isn't enough, you also need to give me a good reason to actually take that option.
Do look up what the stats actually does before assigning things stats in the database, especially if you're using RMXP. It's very common that I notice the author has no idea what he/she is doing and is just winging it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
author=Crystal
Don't make single target status effect have any less than 100% accuracy, I will not use it then for anything less than a boss. If an enemy dies in less than three hits or is nonthreatening, I will not use the status effect even if it has a 100% accuracy. Attaching the status effect to an HP damaging attack doesn't help either, if I'm injuring an enemy, it's scheduled to be dead very soon anyway.
I am totally down with this if you are also assuming that all status effects don't work on all enemies.
And if you are also assuming that status effects don't really give a very relevant tactical advantage.
Now, I was playing a game that had a high emphasis on status effects a while ago... But I can't remember what.
On a side note I've come to think of it and there's no "do's and dont's" of battle system design. Anything, and I mean anything, cam be made interesting, or boring.
Now, I was playing a game that had a high emphasis on status effects a while ago... But I can't remember what.
On a side note I've come to think of it and there's no "do's and dont's" of battle system design. Anything, and I mean anything, cam be made interesting, or boring.
author=Joe
And if you are also assuming that status effects don't really give a very relevant tactical advantage.
If status effects don't give a relevant tactical advantage, then they're not worth using at all, aren't they? To add on the above, I'm not sure how I feel about status effects having 100% success rate (assuming non immunity). Part of the issue with status effects is that if the chance of success is so low that they're not worth them failing over and over again and basically never working, the opposite can happen, they always work (once again, assuming non immunity) and every single subsequent fight becomes a predictable joke.
For example, say you're fighting a motherfucking Behemoth that poses a very credible threat to your party. You know that casting Poison on it can pose an incredible advantage, but he's so strong that you're unsure if it'll work, so part of your battle tactic is a contingency plan of preparing other skills to use for victory.
Part of any battle ever is the assumption that everything, anything might not work, even if it can. Part of the fun of battles, for me, is the back of my mind of 'well, this might not work, and if it doesn't, what else do I do? How can I increase the odds of my trump card working? What's my backup plan if it doesn't?'
