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DUEL MECHANICS / SINGLE CHARACTER RPGS
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JosephSeraph
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CloseI'm fairly sure we've done the single character RPGs topics a few times, but this time I want to focus on the duel aspect of a single character RPG.
Specifically on scenarios where you only ever face one enemy at a time.
Such scenarios tend to put emphasis on a constantly-at-risk tide of the battle, where every turn is a potential chance for the enemy to turn the battle upside down in a single action.
I don't, however, know many examples of one-on-one RPGs, and thus I'd like to invite you to discuss these mechanics.
The two that immediately come to my mind are RPG Maker games, perhaps for a sense of scale, as turn based 1 character RPGs are much of a rarity to begin with.
The first is Helen's Mysterious Castle, which uses a really interesting mechanic where Helen herself has no stats, and instead relies on the stats of her equipment -- effectively her actions -- to act in battle.
Each action comes with a set of three stats: Power, Defense and Wait. Upon selecting an action Helen will wait for a number of ticks equal to the Wait stat to perform the action. During this time she is susceptible to attacks launched against her, and her defense is equal to that action which she is preparing. Likewise, as she attacks the enemy's defense is based on the action they're preparing. This creates an ebb-and-flow dynamic where the player is constantly dancing around the enemy's attack patterns, predicting what they'll do as to mitigate damage with more defensive actions then strike when they're the most vulnerable.
The second game is Standstill Girl, which uses a similar Wait based turn mechanic. Alice, however, has three stats herself -- HP, power and speed (but no defense at all)
She can equip actions she learns through the game, up to a maximum of five. Actions cost Emotion Points, HP or both, and she gains 1 Emotion Point per turn (importantly, the enemy uses Emotion Points as well)
This makes it importantly to time the use of Guards and cheap skills in order to unleash the most powerful skills in the right time, once again creating this dance-like rhythm of preparing, defending and attacking.
What are other mechanics that you think would be at home in a game like this?
I for one can think of a "tide meter" that both the player and the enemy can affect with their actions, changing their stats accordingly. So the player can choose to let go of the tide meter to unleash a powerful attack, in exchange of having the enemy become more powerful for the next few turns as the bar is on his favor.
Status effects as well wind up being tremendously more impactful on these games, so there are plenty of interesting things that can be done with them as well.
Specifically on scenarios where you only ever face one enemy at a time.
Such scenarios tend to put emphasis on a constantly-at-risk tide of the battle, where every turn is a potential chance for the enemy to turn the battle upside down in a single action.
I don't, however, know many examples of one-on-one RPGs, and thus I'd like to invite you to discuss these mechanics.
The two that immediately come to my mind are RPG Maker games, perhaps for a sense of scale, as turn based 1 character RPGs are much of a rarity to begin with.
The first is Helen's Mysterious Castle, which uses a really interesting mechanic where Helen herself has no stats, and instead relies on the stats of her equipment -- effectively her actions -- to act in battle.
Each action comes with a set of three stats: Power, Defense and Wait. Upon selecting an action Helen will wait for a number of ticks equal to the Wait stat to perform the action. During this time she is susceptible to attacks launched against her, and her defense is equal to that action which she is preparing. Likewise, as she attacks the enemy's defense is based on the action they're preparing. This creates an ebb-and-flow dynamic where the player is constantly dancing around the enemy's attack patterns, predicting what they'll do as to mitigate damage with more defensive actions then strike when they're the most vulnerable.
The second game is Standstill Girl, which uses a similar Wait based turn mechanic. Alice, however, has three stats herself -- HP, power and speed (but no defense at all)
She can equip actions she learns through the game, up to a maximum of five. Actions cost Emotion Points, HP or both, and she gains 1 Emotion Point per turn (importantly, the enemy uses Emotion Points as well)
This makes it importantly to time the use of Guards and cheap skills in order to unleash the most powerful skills in the right time, once again creating this dance-like rhythm of preparing, defending and attacking.
What are other mechanics that you think would be at home in a game like this?
I for one can think of a "tide meter" that both the player and the enemy can affect with their actions, changing their stats accordingly. So the player can choose to let go of the tide meter to unleash a powerful attack, in exchange of having the enemy become more powerful for the next few turns as the bar is on his favor.
Status effects as well wind up being tremendously more impactful on these games, so there are plenty of interesting things that can be done with them as well.
Ramshackin
1462
There's a board/card game called BattleCON that might give you some inspiration. Essentially it's a 1v1 arcade fighter converted into a turned based tactics game.
One thing that's unique is each player gets a list of the other player's moves, and when you play your move, it goes into an openly visible cool down pile before it can be used again. This creates a situation where the core of the decision making is predicting what move your opponent is planning. His most powerful move just came off cool down, so obviously he'll use that, so I'll play my counter move. But wait, maybe he's expected that, so he's trying to trick me into putting my counter on cool down, then he'll strike.
Essentially each turn begins by playing for your opponent in your head to determine the optimal moves to defeat yourself, then trying to find a counter play in your currently active skillset.
One thing that's unique is each player gets a list of the other player's moves, and when you play your move, it goes into an openly visible cool down pile before it can be used again. This creates a situation where the core of the decision making is predicting what move your opponent is planning. His most powerful move just came off cool down, so obviously he'll use that, so I'll play my counter move. But wait, maybe he's expected that, so he's trying to trick me into putting my counter on cool down, then he'll strike.
Essentially each turn begins by playing for your opponent in your head to determine the optimal moves to defeat yourself, then trying to find a counter play in your currently active skillset.
My suggestion for a one on one battle system would be to give the hero (and her opponent) the ability to perform more than one action per round. Craze's Wine & Roses is one example off the top of my head where the PCs can do this.
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 2 had a unique dueling system; most battles in the game were typical party battles, but whenever you fought a single enemy, you'd go into a duel battle where you got eight mini-actions per turn and could create combos for certain combinations.
It... didn't work very well. All the interesting parts of the duel system revolved around trying to learn combos you didn't have yet. If you actually used combos you already knew, it was boring as hell.
When I make a single-character-vs-multiple-enemies game, one of the biggest ways I make battles interesting is through targetting. With a duel system, that's removed too, so you need to add another dimension of combat, or the game will be extremely simple and quickly get very stale and repetitive.
My instinct would be to add positioning as that new dimension of combat. Essentially I would try to recreate the choices and flow of a fighting game I was familiar with, like Street Fighter or Smash Bros. A Street Fighter style RPG would give the player two actions per turn: the first would be to choose a movement or position and the second would be to choose an attack. Turns would represent extremely short amounts of time - like 0.1 seconds - and the distance between the players would be represented by a meter visible on screen. Jumping toward and drop-kicking the enemy would probably take three turns to execute, giving the enemy time to respond in various ways, some of which might also take multiple turns. There would be a lot of dodging and predicting happening on both sides, as you could see what the enemy was doing this turn, but not exactly what that was leading to two turns from now (even though they'd already input their three-turn-long action and committed to it).
...Anyway, that's all very unusual and hard-to-imagine, and you should probably just recreate Pokemon instead. It's by far the most successful duel-based RPG ever made. For a game where you really want only one character for story reasons, you'd probably want to replace the pokemon-swapping with a class change or stance change system.
It... didn't work very well. All the interesting parts of the duel system revolved around trying to learn combos you didn't have yet. If you actually used combos you already knew, it was boring as hell.
When I make a single-character-vs-multiple-enemies game, one of the biggest ways I make battles interesting is through targetting. With a duel system, that's removed too, so you need to add another dimension of combat, or the game will be extremely simple and quickly get very stale and repetitive.
My instinct would be to add positioning as that new dimension of combat. Essentially I would try to recreate the choices and flow of a fighting game I was familiar with, like Street Fighter or Smash Bros. A Street Fighter style RPG would give the player two actions per turn: the first would be to choose a movement or position and the second would be to choose an attack. Turns would represent extremely short amounts of time - like 0.1 seconds - and the distance between the players would be represented by a meter visible on screen. Jumping toward and drop-kicking the enemy would probably take three turns to execute, giving the enemy time to respond in various ways, some of which might also take multiple turns. There would be a lot of dodging and predicting happening on both sides, as you could see what the enemy was doing this turn, but not exactly what that was leading to two turns from now (even though they'd already input their three-turn-long action and committed to it).
...Anyway, that's all very unusual and hard-to-imagine, and you should probably just recreate Pokemon instead. It's by far the most successful duel-based RPG ever made. For a game where you really want only one character for story reasons, you'd probably want to replace the pokemon-swapping with a class change or stance change system.
Merlandese
3235
Fleuret Blanc and Last Word aren't extremely traditional, but both have single-character duels. Both are 1:1 turn-based.
Fleuret Blanc uses Style to win. Certain actions and button-presses can increase those Style points and whomever has a bigger number at the end wins. HP is used to determine where that end point is. The system has no leveling up (although it could have, easily), but purchasing skills can change how advantageous you are against certain enemies. There's also a Paper Mario-style timing mechanic to diversify.
Last Word uses a tug-of-war style, which is pretty basic. Leveling up only affects who has how much advantage on the "rope" when the battle begins, and the rest is affected by skills and how you use them.
Both games rely on a set of pre-determined commands shared by both the player and the enemy. I find that the best way for a duel system to work is if both parties play by mostly the same rules, but I'm betting a really neat asymmetrical system is possible.
Lots of room for alterations in each depending on how you want weapons or stats or the like.
Fleuret Blanc uses Style to win. Certain actions and button-presses can increase those Style points and whomever has a bigger number at the end wins. HP is used to determine where that end point is. The system has no leveling up (although it could have, easily), but purchasing skills can change how advantageous you are against certain enemies. There's also a Paper Mario-style timing mechanic to diversify.
Last Word uses a tug-of-war style, which is pretty basic. Leveling up only affects who has how much advantage on the "rope" when the battle begins, and the rest is affected by skills and how you use them.
Both games rely on a set of pre-determined commands shared by both the player and the enemy. I find that the best way for a duel system to work is if both parties play by mostly the same rules, but I'm betting a really neat asymmetrical system is possible.
Lots of room for alterations in each depending on how you want weapons or stats or the like.
Square Enix had Bloodmasque on iOS, where the player could attack and dodge while enemies would attack or guard. It was all about timing your attacks so that you could hit an enemy with a combo before they blocked and reduced damage and without leaving yourself open to their attacks. It worked well to some extent; later bosses and stronger mission targets would frequently be either unable to flinch or so fast that you could not reliably pull off a combo or dodge.
Unfortunately, the game was an always-online affair where even playing single player required an internet connection. The whole thing felt like a spin-off of Vampire The Masquerade, which was appealing at first but then makes you wish the Masquerade series had been adapted into video games more professionally.
Unfortunately, the game was an always-online affair where even playing single player required an internet connection. The whole thing felt like a spin-off of Vampire The Masquerade, which was appealing at first but then makes you wish the Masquerade series had been adapted into video games more professionally.
Just having a repertoire of powerful and strategic skills between the two characters seems to work for me. I made a game in RPG Maker for the Playstation which had a powerful character fight optional battles at the very beginning against another powerful character. If the range of skills granted to each character can play off of each other well enough, the fights will feel well-balanced (and sometimes nail-bitingly close, since the player always have to predict what will happen in the battle several rounds in advance).
Aegix_Drakan
6037
I've actually made two games with "duels".
Delusions of Duty:
This is less of a game and more of a minigame (The whole game is just one Duel), as the mechanics wouldn't work for a larger game. The point is that you and the one single boss in the game have the exact same HP and skill loadouts, and it's about gauging your opponent to figure out how to bait and counter him and when to press your advantage because you realized a vital counter-skill was on "cooldown".
The main thing with the game was keeping in mind what skills your opponent likely had available, and trying figure out when it was safe to boost your speed so that you go from being as a speed disadvantage to a speed advantage.
Heresies of Discord
The main shtick here is that the game uses ATB combat that never pauses even when you open your skill or item menu, and where there's no inn or shop, and all items (including healing) are limited. To make this easy enough to keep track of in the heat of battle, there's only one party member and all battles are against single enemies. So combat is about "What is the quickest way to make the enemy helpless, and kill them before they can do serious damage to me? Is it worth using one of my limited attack items to resolve this fight quicker, or should I save it? Can I time this Stun skill perfectly to get the maximum amount of free time out of it?"
The real stress in the game comes from trying to make these decisions on the fly and trying to lose as little HP as possible in each fight. The fact that the game doesn't pause while you consider your moves actually adds to the game a lot, as otherwise it would be too easy to come up with the perfect solution every time. The system wound up reasonably decent at countering the "Item Hoard" mentality, I find.
-
The main thing to remember about 1v1 games is that every turn and action matters a hell of a lot more than usual.
Delusions of Duty:
This is less of a game and more of a minigame (The whole game is just one Duel), as the mechanics wouldn't work for a larger game. The point is that you and the one single boss in the game have the exact same HP and skill loadouts, and it's about gauging your opponent to figure out how to bait and counter him and when to press your advantage because you realized a vital counter-skill was on "cooldown".
The main thing with the game was keeping in mind what skills your opponent likely had available, and trying figure out when it was safe to boost your speed so that you go from being as a speed disadvantage to a speed advantage.
Heresies of Discord
The main shtick here is that the game uses ATB combat that never pauses even when you open your skill or item menu, and where there's no inn or shop, and all items (including healing) are limited. To make this easy enough to keep track of in the heat of battle, there's only one party member and all battles are against single enemies. So combat is about "What is the quickest way to make the enemy helpless, and kill them before they can do serious damage to me? Is it worth using one of my limited attack items to resolve this fight quicker, or should I save it? Can I time this Stun skill perfectly to get the maximum amount of free time out of it?"
The real stress in the game comes from trying to make these decisions on the fly and trying to lose as little HP as possible in each fight. The fact that the game doesn't pause while you consider your moves actually adds to the game a lot, as otherwise it would be too easy to come up with the perfect solution every time. The system wound up reasonably decent at countering the "Item Hoard" mentality, I find.
-
The main thing to remember about 1v1 games is that every turn and action matters a hell of a lot more than usual.
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