BOUNCIN' AROUND IDEAS FOR A STRATEGIC BOSS BATTLE GAME

So, I've been dying to make a small game centered on boss battles in VX Ace, partially because of LockeZ's boss topic, partially because I just replayed Wine & Roses, and partially because I'm restless due working on too many big projects and if I don't release something every once in a while I wanna cry.

The battles are tweaked from Yanfly's FTB, which you've probably all seen - every hero's actions take place immediately, instead of commands being entered in a queue based on AGI. After all the heroes take their actions, the enemies make their attacks, then control returns to the heroes. The major tweaks are:

• Heroes start the battle with full health and every resource available to them.
• Any hero can taunt for free (w/o using their action), making them the focus of enemy attacks. This allows for control over who is taking the most damage, and the player can switch who's currently taunting when necessary.
• Enemies have a "chaos" meter that goes up when they're attacked or when characters heal. If this fills up, the enemy goes wild, ignoring Taunts and using more powerful attacks for a few turns. They're immune to CC during this. Some hero skills can reduce enemy chaos.
• In addition to HP, players have SP (shield points) which act as temporary health. Damage taken will reduce SP first, and the remainder reduces HP. Some attacks and buffs generate SP, and it’s generally easier to build SP than it is to recover HP.

Taunting is there to reduce the chance of enemies all pummeling a hero with low defense. The player can choose who is tanking and swap to a different character while healing the first one. Other characters will take damage from minor attacks or AoEs, but the tank will be taking the brunt of it.

The chaos mechanic adds some flow to the battle - the enemy is going to enrage, but the player has some control over when it happens and can (hopefully) prepare for it. Chaos is supposed to create stress and panic - a crisis situation where the player has to survive as best they can until it’s over.

The Shield Points mechanic is there to add a proactive element to protecting heroes, instead of reactive healing. HP is difficult to recover and will mostly be going down over the course of the battle, and it shouldn’t be possible to keep a battle going infinitely by rotating healing (boring!). Preventing as much damage as possible with shields should be a priority for players.

I imagine there’d be about 10 battles, and each battle would take a few minutes to beat, at most - they’d be challenges you could throw yourself at in any order, rather than a strict, linear progression.

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Each encounter would be unique, with bosses that have attack patterns and possibly additional minor enemies to manage.

Example Encounter:

Lord of the River:

• Uses strong physical attacks on the Taunting hero.
• Every few turns, stuns a random hero, dealing medium damage.
• Has an aura that deals light damage to all heroes every round.
• Every few turns, summons weak skeletons that heal and buff the Lord’s damage if left alive, and deal minor damage to the tank.
• When enraged, deals two powerful hits that targets random heroes.

This is a pretty simple fight, but the gist of the strategy is:
Keep all your heroes healed up from the Lord’s aura (a light shield every few turns should be enough)
Keep the tank healed.
Kill the skeletons ASAP when they spawn.
Before the boss enrages, make sure all the heroes are properly shielded.

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Each hero would have a unique set of skills (offensive skills raise the target's Chaos unless noted).

Example Heroes:

Guardian:
Balanced Strike: Deal damage and lower target's Chaos.
Shield Strike: Deal damage and gain SP.

Mage:
Shatter: Deal high damage and generates a lot of Chaos. Bonus damage if the target is bleeding.
Drain Blood: Inflict bleeding and drain HP from an enemy.

Healer:
Mirror Beam: Deal low damage and generates a little SP for all allies.
Chilling Reflection: Deal damage and Chill an enemy, lowering their chaos over several rounds.

Rogue:
Jab Combo: Deal damage and inflict Defense Down.
Peekaboo: Gain Power Up and Defense Up.

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I have a few thoughts I’m still bouncing around:

1) Is this system too complex? Since all the battles are unique and there’s no random encounters or filler, I want to encourage tactics and thinking a few turns ahead. However, I don’t want to add needless complexity; I want the combat to be challenging and strategic, not confusing.

2) Right now, each hero can take one action a turn - but I’m considering giving them multiple actions. I’ve found players really avoid making choices that don’t deal damage because it feels like they’re not making progress (the enemy HP isn’t going down!). This is why I made the universal “Taunt” action a free action. Still, I’d love to create interesting combinations of support & defensive actions… here’s what I’m thinking:

• Heroes can take as many actions as they want, limited only by a slowly regenerating Energy resource. This would allow players to cast buffs or heals and still attack some turns. I also think this is a pretty easy-to-understand system. However, this is pretty much copping directly off Wine & Roses and I feel kinda dumb about that.
  
  
  
• Heroes can take one offensive action and one support action (separated into different command lists for ease of use). "Support actions" would be buffs, shields, heals, etc. This way, the player always gets to deal damage, and doesn’t feel like they’re "wasting their turn" using a support action. However, I’m not sure if this will be clear & obvious in practice, or add unneeded complexity.
  
  
  
• Don't change anything! If I have four heroes, maybe players would be totally fine with spending an action a round on buffing or healing. I could dedicate one hero of the party to pure support (and little offense) so it doesn’t feel like that hero’s action is being wasted when they have to cast a buff or heal. In addition, several offensive skills already have support side-effects (building SP, etc.) so maybe I’m worrying over nothing!
  
  

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Anyway, that’s the gist of what’s on my mind right now. I’ve had a blast messing around with RM again and I’m hoping I can translate these ideas into a fun and challenging game. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it all! I know it’s a long read, so thanks :D

Yea, I like the idea for Shield Points a lot! I think the concept shouldn't be too hard for players to pick up on, especially if it's displayed in a clear, simple GUI.

The energy system is definitely workable too! Wine & Roses did it pretty much exactly as I described it: you regain, say, 5 energy a turn, and can spend it on as many actions as you wish - attacks, buffs, heals. You can also skip those actions and pool your energy for one big burst during the next round. (It's also a lot like the Rogue class in WoW, if you've ever played it). It's definitely a cool system and pretty easy to pick up on, I think, and it would give players a little more freedom to use actions that don't deal direct damage.

Thanks Unity :D The test battles I've made are already feeling pretty fun, so I think there's something there!

Shield Points are something I've batted around for a while now in prototypes. They're not too hard to set up in VX Ace with a little script hacking - I basically replaced the built-in TP with "SP" and removed all instances where the player generates TP automatically (from skills or taking damage). Then, I hacked in some code to check if the player has TP, and if they do, remove that before they take damage.

Here's the code:


The only other thing I wanna do is tweak the battle GUI to work with SP - possibly with the shield points bar right above the HP bar, but a bit shorter.

author=unity
I think the energy action is a lovely idea. Yeah, Wine and Roses did it, but that doesn't mean that you can't, too, especially if it goes well with your system, which seems to be the case right now ^_^

Yea, you're right. I'm still playing around with ideas, but if that's what ends up working and feeling the best, I'll go for it :)

author=LockeZ
The shield points thing is a very effective way to limit the effectiveness of turtling, a strategy that is kind of the best way to play by default in most difficult boss battles until you go out of your way to add mechanics that create time limits like that. Other time limits can be temporary rather than permanent, like "kill this summoned enemy before the boss summons another enemy," to make the pacing of the battles not all feel so similar to each-other.

Yup! That was my thinking behind Shield Points - with them in play, I can make bosses put enough pressure to make players weigh between offense and defense (or a mix). Too much defense and you'll just die slowly, but too much offense and you'll take too much HP damage early. In combination with the "Chaos" states, which are basically a built-in way to pace battles in phases, the battles seem to have a pretty good flow at the moment. Of course, if I want even more grueling or complex battles, I can add even more phases manually, hah.

The problem with giving the heroes more actions is that you're giving the boss fewer actions. The battles will need to be significantly longer to compensate, and even with that, it will be hard for the boss to have much flow to its actions. It's difficult for a boss to have even a short series of related attacks like "burn the healer's mana, lower the tank's defense, attack the tank" if the player gets 20 actions during that sequence. You can compensate by having more enemy targets, but it seems simpler to just have fewer player actions.

Also, adding more actions doesn't actually do anything about the player's reluctance to use non-damaging skills. All it inherently does is get the player to use seven attacks instead of four. You have to give those skills reasons why they need to be used, and/or combine them with something more appealing like damage or healing.

I don't think you'll have many problems with players trying to spam pure offense in a game that consists of just ten boss battles and nothing else though. The battles are all gonna be long enough that status effects are obviously useful all the time, and probably hard enough that they're gonna be more likely to go all-out defense instead.

Well, I would limit the actions taken to a reasonable amount - you wouldn't have enough energy to execute 4 / turn / hero, more like 1 or 2, depending on your previous round - which is still 6-8 attacks a turn (I realize now why W&R had 3 heroes). That said, there really isn't any reason the player would spend Energy on buffs over attacks unless the buffs are obviously powerful (which they should be, of course, else why are they there?). At that point, I guess it becomes a question of "why not spend 4 turns buffing everyone with everything?" to which the answer should probably "because the boss is attacking you and you're going to die." There's a finicky balance between encouraging players to buff the right heroes and discouraging them from mindlessly buffing every hero.

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Actually, new idea... so right now, I'm limiting heroes to one action / turn, and they have an Energy resource - regain 3 EN per turn, cap of 10. Small skills use 0-2 EN, and big flashy skills use 3-6. If I make big skills powerful enough that players will want to save for them (ofc), then their other turns will be spent on smaller actions. If small support actions are fairly cheap, players may consider casting them while biding time, waiting for their big skill. Maybe I'll give that a shot...

Anyway, thanks :D It's nice to bounce these ideas around and my long-winded rambles are helping me crystallize ideas and visualize how all of this will play out in game.

author=unity
The saving energy idea sounds good, too! ^_^ The more you work on this, the more excited I'm getting, and I don't even know what the stories/characters are like yet XD

Hahahaha, you and me both~ I have a few ideas in mind for the characters, but the plot... not so much.