HOW MUCH SHOULD ONE CRANK UP THE DIFFICULTY BEFORE IT'S TOO MUCH? (GAME DIFFICULTY BALANCING)

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Bloodborne pre-patch load screens. You haven't known the pain of reiterated failure until you have experienced Bloodborne pre-patch load screens

author=RyaReisender
However, I would have to disagree about items.
Okay, from your paragraph below I see that you are mostly agreeing except that you wouldn't strongly limit the number of healing items someone can carry at the same time. May I ask why you think this is better, though?

I feel limiting these items is what makes games like Secret of Mana a lot more exciting, because you never know if you still have enough items left for the boss.

In other games I feel like I just have unlimited of these eventually except for those I can't buy. But if you make those you can't buy mandatory, you can get the player into a "stuck" situation which you probably wouldn't want. Using more buyable items only comes down to "If you use more then you'll have to grind longer for gold", I'm not sure if I see the benefit from that.


I don't think arbitrarily small item limits are particularly helpful for most RPGs. For some it works, for others it doesn't, but in the end it comes down to the actual design of the items.

If you strongly limit the number of items the player can carry, then A) you have to allow the player to restock them frequently and cheaply, lest players get into the mindset of putting even basic items into the "Too Good to Use" Club; and B) you must raise their effectiveness to compensate for their immediate scarcity.

If you allow players to carry large numbers of items, you don't have to be so worried about making them readily available at every turn. Most games that do it this way are also paced in such a way that, by the time you can afford to buy enormous stocks of an item, a higher tier that is more efficient in its usage is usually available and has superceded the prior one in enemy drops, treasure, and stores.

I'll throw out FFVII as an example (which is no exemplar of game design, I'll admit, but it fits the model I'm describing). A Potion heals for 100HP and costs 50 Gil to purchase. 100HP is less than 1/3rd of the starting HP of two of the three starting character, and just over 1/3rd of the third character, so even from the beginning Potions are not terribly efficient for their price.

About the time I leave Midgar and get to the first town, I like to buy up to 99 Potions. By that time, the roughly 3500 Gil that requires is a reasonable chunk of change but doesn't break the bank, and 100HP is a very inefficient amount of healing per item at that stage. Helpful for topping up after battles to save a little MP, and not much more. At that time Hi-Potions, which heal five times as much for six times the price, become available for purchase regularly. (You can buy them at one particular shop very early, long before you can really afford them, and I believe this was just an oversight.)

By the time Hi-Potions stop being efficient, you can easily buy up to 99 of them and the game starts giving you X-Potions, the best single target HP healing item.

The point is, it never feels like the ability to have 99 of the items makes the game any easier. The items lose efficiency long before that point. But having that many of them is helpful for conserving MP, or if you get trapped in a dungeon for a long time, or perhaps if you wanted to challenge yourself and not use Materia.

Better have them and not need them than need them and not have them.
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 what you actually want is for the skill to be free and infinite-use then just make it a free, infinite-use skill instead of an item. The defining feature of items is that you can run out of them and that limit is shared across your party.
FFVII is a really bad example, because FFVII is fucking dick easy of a game to begin with.
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
author=Feldschlacht IV
FFVII is a really bad example, because FFVII is fucking dick easy of a game to begin with.


He also said it was a bad example, but it does help describe his theory.
I don't know. Like,

author=Standard
Better have them and not need them than need them and not have them.


I'm not sure I agree with this. I like a sense of scarcity in RPGs, because it actually forces me to think where and when to use and allocate my resources. Always having the ability to chuck a potion whenever I need it begins to feel like a formula and not really playing.
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
For me, and I guess some other people too, scarcity in RPGs makes me not use items at all, becayse they're scarce! :P

So having them abundantly would probably make me use them more.

Zeboyd games did something good in a game of theirs, where items have a set limit you can use per battle and recharge to full once the battle is over, this makes it much easier to use them without fear.

Also, who the hell buys 99 Potion in Final Fantasy VII?! ;P
I kid, I kid..
author=iddalai
For me, and I guess some other people too, scarcity in RPGs makes me not use items at all, becayse they're scarce! :P

I'm very familiar with that feeling, but that means the game isn't difficult enough; if the choice was between using an Elixir and not using an Elixir and fucking dying, the latter option almost always wins. The issue is that with a lot of games (particular some FF entries) that choice is almost never an issue. Games with a healthy amount of challenge usually don't have the hoarding problem.

Rechargeable items (intelligently applied) isn't a bad idea, but the big elephant in the room is difficulty.
We are not talking about forever limited items like elixirs. We are talking about healing items that are cheap to get at any store but you can't carry more than 9x or 15x.

Certainly those games will still give you the feeling that you want to conserve them and not use them. But if you clear the dungeon without using any, it just shows that the dungeon was too easy. Gotta make the player desparate enough to actually learn to use his resources.
Elixir, Potion, etc, same logic applies to what I was trying to communicate.
If you limit your basic items in such a way, though, and crank up the difficulty of every dungeon such that players cannot put them into the Too Good to Use Club lest they perish, then you also run the risk of players getting burned out very quickly, having to constantly micromanage even cheap resources.

Also, there are few feelings worse than having to leave items behind (or worse, having them disappear entirely) because the inventory is maxed. When that max is as low as 15, that will happen all the time, leading to a lot of bad feelings.

author=iddalai
Also, who the hell buys 99 Potion in Final Fantasy VII?! ;P


A man with way more Gil and free time than sense, I assure you!
author=Standard
If you limit your basic items in such a way, though, and crank up the difficulty of every dungeon such that players cannot put them into the Too Good to Use Club lest they perish, then you also run the risk of players getting burned out very quickly, having to constantly micromanage even cheap resources.


I don't know, WRPGs manage to do it pretty well.

author=Standard
Also, there are few feelings worse than having to leave items behind (or worse, having them disappear entirely) because the inventory is maxed. When that max is as low as 15, that will happen all the time, leading to a lot of bad feelings.


A couple things;

1. The dynamic of leaving items behind is sometimes a very intentional aspect of game design; dungeon based roguelikes for example, where item management is half of the challenge.

2. There's a difference between limited inventory and limited inventory max per item. Are we talking about a max of 15 items, period, or a max of 15 copies per item with an infinite inventory? Because Tales games do the latter, and they're not too difficult.
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
I speak for myself, but even when the games are hard I hardly ever use items...

author=StandardFiend
author=iddalai
Also, who the hell buys 99 Potion in Final Fantasy VII?! ;P
A man with way more Gil and free time than sense, I assure you!


:P
I used to buy 99 Potions playing the original Final Fantasy, but I never did or felt the need to do that in any other FF game, that's why I find it weird.
In FFVII you can pretty much rely on magic healing through all dungeons and you'll never run out of MP, so I didn't need to use Items after the Scorpion boss.
I tend to sell all my Ethers during the first segments of the game in order to buy cool stuff, and spam Enemy Skills as soon as I get the materia, so having a nice stock of Potions with which to top off after random battles is useful to me. :D
author=Feldschlacht IV
author=Standard
If you limit your basic items in such a way, though, and crank up the difficulty of every dungeon such that players cannot put them into the Too Good to Use Club lest they perish, then you also run the risk of players getting burned out very quickly, having to constantly micromanage even cheap resources.
I don't know, WRPGs manage to do it pretty well.

author=Standard
Also, there are few feelings worse than having to leave items behind (or worse, having them disappear entirely) because the inventory is maxed. When that max is as low as 15, that will happen all the time, leading to a lot of bad feelings.


A couple things;

1. The dynamic of leaving items behind is sometimes a very intentional aspect of game design; dungeon based roguelikes for example, where item management is half of the challenge.

2. There's a difference between limited inventory and limited inventory max per item. Are we talking about a max of 15 items, period, or a max of 15 copies per item with an infinite inventory? Because Tales games do the latter, and they're not too difficult.


Well, as far as I know, we're not talking about WRPGs or roguelikes in this situation, so I'm not sure that those are helpful points.

Taking inspiration from a Tales game isn't the worst thing you could do, however. By all means, if they offer a system that works and that you like, emulate it.
I thought we were talking about RPG's in general.
I guess we're kind of wafting between that and talking about JRPGs specifically and the OP's game more specifically.
I suppose, by the same token I could cite a WRPG that doesn't handle items the way you describe: The Witcher 3 comes to mind from recent memory. If anything, it's a combination of the two schools of thought. Your best healing items (your alchemical potions) are severely limited and are only replenished when resting. Other, less powerful items are only limited by your carrying capacity which, let's be honest, is of such mythical volume as to be pointless. So, in theory (and in practice, in my case), there's nothing stopping you from carrying around 80 bottles of beer and 127 loaves of bread, which Geralt can cram down his esophagus with impunity during combat for incremental healing.

Does this make the game any easier? Not really, not on any significant level. The enemies will outrace the healing factor if you play poorly. But they can help save your better potions for more critical moments, so they can play a key role in your combat strategy if you choose.
Well, limiting the discussion to just JRPGs when this topic applies to all kinds of RPGs arbituarily limits the discussion, yeah? I think the subgenres have a lot to learn from one another.

author=Fiend
I suppose, by the same token I could cite a WRPG that doesn't handle items the way you describe: The Witcher 3 comes to mind from recent memory. If anything, it's a combination of the two schools of thought. Your best healing items (your alchemical potions) are severely limited and are only replenished when resting. Other, less powerful items are only limited by your carrying capacity which, let's be honest, is of such mythical volume as to be pointless. So, in theory (and in practice, in my case), there's nothing stopping you from carrying around 80 bottles of beer and 127 loaves of bread, which Geralt can cram down his esophagus with impunity during combat for incremental healing.

Does this make the game any easier? Not really, not on any significant level. The enemies will outrace the healing factor if you play poorly. But they can help save your better potions for more critical moments, so they can play a key role in your combat strategy if you choose.


That's a pretty excellent example (like the Witcher 3 is for most things, honestly) of the philosophy of limited, yet meaningful healing/utility items that are easily replaced, yet the player feels no particular 'hoarding' sense because the game encourages item use for specific situations; the game pretty much tells you 'hey, you should probably use an item for this boss, it's pretty hard'.

That's pretty much what I mean.
author=Feldschlacht IV
Well, limiting the discussion to just JRPGs when this topic applies to all kinds of RPGs arbituarily limits the discussion, yeah? I think the subgenres have a lot to learn from one another.


I agree, they definitely do. However, and this is my opinion, the best JRPGs are classics because they stick to certain tropes of the genre. They meet certain expectations, follow certain rules. The worst ones, to me, are the ones which try to stray too far from that magical formula for the sake of innovation or originality.

That isn't to say that such games aren't or can't be good in their own right. They might be great games. But they aren't good JRPGs. Final Fantasy XV is that. It's a great game, but a bad JRPG. There new Star Trek films, the Chris Pine ones, are fantastic films. But they are terrible Star Trek stories. The right feelings are not evoked.
author=iddalai
Zeboyd games did something good in a game of theirs, where items have a set limit you can use per battle and recharge to full once the battle is over, this makes it much easier to use them without fear.


I really enjoyed the item system in the Zeboyd games I've played (especially the two Penny Arcade games, which have a tonne of REALLY good ideas for RPG combat). Rather than finding potions you find the ability to use more of them in combat, which is a much better reward. There are also several types of items, including healing, buffing, stat healing, magic replenishing, and damage. Each can have it quantity and efficacy boosted at stores with upgrades, as well, although Zeboyd's stores aren't that much fun.

The difficulty in those games was also pretty great, too. I only played them on Normal, but I used potions lots to help me stay alive. Some of the battles were easier than others, but the majority of the bosses/minibosses/item guardians were quite difficult. Since the game was built around items being replenished, there was never really an issue with them being overpowered in combat. They also added a character who can use items as spells, meaning the upgrades you've purchased for them apply to his skills, as well, adding another interesting dynamic.