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DAMAGE FLOOR IN RPGS, GOOD OR BAD?
Posts
Rine
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Rine
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CloseI actually found something interesting RE:Kory and healing floors.
FFXII had traps you could only see if you had an appropriate buff (or accessory that gave that buff). However, it didn't tell you what the trap did in particular. A good chunk of learning an area was figuring out what traps the area had (stone traps, major damage, MP drain, etc), since they all looked the same. The game also included healing traps in certain locations that could almost be relied on. Then again, FFXII had no separate combat screen, so maybe a bit different.
Then again, this is the game that gave us the save point mimic, so...
FFXII had traps you could only see if you had an appropriate buff (or accessory that gave that buff). However, it didn't tell you what the trap did in particular. A good chunk of learning an area was figuring out what traps the area had (stone traps, major damage, MP drain, etc), since they all looked the same. The game also included healing traps in certain locations that could almost be relied on. Then again, FFXII had no separate combat screen, so maybe a bit different.
Then again, this is the game that gave us the save point mimic, so...
author=unityIf it's avoidable by player intuition, nothing wrong with hazards.
Here's something I've been wondering about. The old "this floor damages you when you pass over it" staple of older RPGs. From poisonous swamps, lava, electrified floors... you see this less and less in newer games in my experience, but is having Damage Floor bad or annoying from a design perspective? Is there a right and wrong way to do it?
I've been shying away from it more and more, but I recently wanted to design a Dragon Quest-like "final castle" area and it almost feels like it needs some good old damage floor. Is this just me being hungry for nostalgia or can it be used for solid gameplay, too?
Hell, I use them in my own rpg's all the time, not as necessarily floor damage tiles since I like to customize everything. But like, remember the fireball gates in Breath of Fire III? Or the Spear traps in Wild Arms?
It's just adding a bit of platforming or puzzle-gaming into an rpg, if done well and innocuously without hurting the games flow, you're golden!
Just honestly event them yourself, though! Damage floor tiles are so hardcoded and difficult to manipulate pre-scripts.
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
Damage-per-step floors are just terrible. Seriously, go into RPG Maker and change the swamp tiles to not damage you when you walk on them and make a swamp map with them. Now see how useful they can be when they aren't tied in with -5 HP/tile? It's like a water tile you can stand on (like a real swamp would be).
Poison tiles really don't make much sense at all when you think about it, unless you're walking barefoot through a pool of literal shit with open gashes on your legs.
Poison tiles really don't make much sense at all when you think about it, unless you're walking barefoot through a pool of literal shit with open gashes on your legs.
I enjoy D&D style traps in RPGs, where you can "roll" to see if you detect a trap, "roll" to see if you trip it or "roll" to see if you can disarm it, based on your thief skillz. It's more elaborate than a simple damage floor, but can be more satisfying for the player, as it involves stats they can boost and exert some control over it.
author=kentona
I enjoy D&D style traps in RPGs, where you can "roll" to see if you detect a trap, "roll" to see if you trip it or "roll" to see if you can disarm it, based on your thief skillz. It's more elaborate than a simple damage floor, but can be more satisfying for the player, as it involves stats they can boost and exert some control over it.
and then the inevitable GM fiat as he finds his awesome trap was somehow discovered by a lucky 20
They're really good.
Nothing is objectively good or bad when it comes to game mechanics in my opinion. You can make a good game with what people may call terrible design decisions.
I personally think one important thing about damage floors is to make them count: they should inflict damage - enough to make a player consider: Should I tank through this and just use up precious healing items and MP afterwards, or find a different way?
Damage tiles can be a good element of puzzle solving:
a simple one would be showing where the damage tiles are for a short amount of time - only to hide it and make the damage tiles identical to safe tiles! Then the player would have to navigate a maze of invisible damage tiles (or tank through them)
Another one is to put traps that drop the player into rooms full of damage tiles! They'd know that falling down pits are not good because they would take a lot of damage as well.
In substar, I made some of my damage tiles inflict Fire damage - If a partymember resists or is immune to fire, they won't take damage, but if a partymember was weak to fire, they will take more damage from the damage tiles.
Further on in substar, there are poison tiles that inflict Poison elemental damage and the Poison status - which are also determined based on your poison resistance. The player can Immunize through all the poison tiles at the cost of MP.
Further on in substar, there are poison tiles that inflict Poison elemental damage and the Poison status - which are also determined based on your poison resistance. The player can Immunize through all the poison tiles at the cost of MP.
Damage tiles are also a matter of atmosphere in my opinion: just having them in a dungeon shows how dangerous the place is. Simply walking might kill you!
author=Corfaisus
Poison tiles really don't make much sense at all when you think about it, unless you're walking barefoot through a pool of literal shit with open gashes on your legs.
- The heat is just so strong that it causes your party to get hurt even with equipment on!
- It's not just poison! It's powerful magical poison that simply inhaling the air around the source causes pain!
- The thorns are as sharp as the claws of a dragon! Even with armor, the party is walking through a very painful ordeal!
- Pretty sure giant spikes suddenly pushing out of a floor would hurt even with lots of armor on.
Just because the RTP says swamp tiles are damage tiles it doesn't mean that it's the only way to do damage tiles!
author=SatedPoison tiles really don't make much sense at all when you think about it, unless you're walking barefoot through a pool of literal shit with open gashes on your legs.If I fill a room with ankle-high ammonia, would you go ahead and stand in it for me? Obviously nothing bad is going to happen to you since you aren't barefoot and don't have open gashes on your legs. Except something bad will happen and you will die.
Obviously this is an extreme example (ammonia much prefers being a gas, but it can be used as a liquid), but it just goes to show that poison tiles can easily make sense. Just because there is a liquid on the floor doesn't mean that there aren't any noxious, volatile compounds present/being produced.
I used to work in a warehouse before going on medical leave. One day, a guy was lifting up an entire shipment of bleach when the forklift gave out. Because mixing it with water would just make a mess, one of the genius managers decided to grab another noxious chemical to clean it with. Long story short, we evacuated.
author=SatedSnark is off the charts!Poison tiles really don't make much sense at all when you think about it, unless you're walking barefoot through a pool of literal shit with open gashes on your legs.If I fill a room with ankle-high ammonia, would you go ahead and stand in it for me? Obviously nothing bad is going to happen to you since you aren't barefoot and don't have open gashes on your legs. Except something bad will happen and you will die.
Keep damage floors confined to specific floor terrains so it makes sense (like lava or w/e), and don't over-do it. Then it's fine imo.
Xenomic
1752
I have it set for most of my dungeons that feature lava so that, while it DOES damage the player, there aren't any random encounters on those damage floors at all. Meanwhile, in a later dungeon, there are damage floors that don't necessarily do damage like the lava, but inflict statuses if the player steps on them (there are a few of them at the entrance the player can step on that'll trigger it. They're not directly in the path though, but they're there). There are optimal ways around some of them, but some of them the player will have to go through. This is also combined with the fact that in that very same dungeon, the player cannot use items at all (well, during battles anyways. They can outside for now) so they cannot use those to heal statuses easily.
Really, it's all about making them interesting. FFIV's wasn't very interesting (but you could get around them with the Float spell...which required you to be at the right level to learn it. And you had to recast it every floor and every time you left a room. Ugh...). FFV's wasn't interesting either, though FFVI's and VII's were more interesting (though VII's was a bit of a jerk ha...).
Really, it's all about making them interesting. FFIV's wasn't very interesting (but you could get around them with the Float spell...which required you to be at the right level to learn it. And you had to recast it every floor and every time you left a room. Ugh...). FFV's wasn't interesting either, though FFVI's and VII's were more interesting (though VII's was a bit of a jerk ha...).
