IS IT JUST ME, OR ARE BATTLES WHERE IT ALL GOES WRONG FOR RM GAMES?

Actually it wasn't. I asked how does a spell name "impede" one playing the game. It was a silly question (because it was a silly complaint) and I was halfway being sarcastic, but I'm dead serious when I say I have never heard of such a complaint before.


I'm hardly a skilled gamer, but the name of a spell has never gotten in the way of me advancing in a game ever, even if it did sound a little ridiculous at first. RPGs have a tendency to give stupid names to everything---character names, towns, items, etc. It's never really bothered me, but then again I never felt the need to pick apart and criticize every aspect of what makes a game an RPG.

But if you use them enough, shouldn't you kind of already know what they do? 0.o
Also, just about every game I played came with descriptions that let me know that this spell did ______, and so forth.


I mean, Persona's spell names still don't make a lot of sense to me, but the first time I played it, it didn't take me long to figure out which spells did what, and this was a guy who was completely and utterly devoted to Final Fantasy and Lunar at the time.

To each his own, I guess.

I personally find no problem with different spell names because I eventually get used to them. I know what Taru-, Raku- and Suku- all increase (Attack, Defence and Agi/Eva), aswell as knowing what elements Sizzle and Zap refer to (Fire and Thunder) because after using them for sometime I get to know them well.

As for battles themselves, personally I don't find the ones in RM Games that bad, aslong as they present me with a challenge beyond constantly hammering attack. But mostly I'll only really play an RPG for the battles if I know the story isn't really that great. That said I've not once stop playing an RPG because of the battles, except possibly for Pokemon, which I find annoyingly slow....

I completely agree with the OP. I've quit playing many a game because they begin with ye olde turn-based fights against rats and other assorted weak and boring creatures.

post=134595
Agreed. Characters should start with a few skills, and the first encounters should be about more than pressing "attack". Making the player think by incorporating elemental weaknesses and unique battles early on will keep them hooked.

This is one thing that's baffling me, why do so many people insist on having the characters start with 0-1 skill? Doing so guarantees that battles will be boring. Even if you want to ease the player into the battles (BTW, do you really think people new to the RPG genre will play PRG Maker games?) you can instead set it up so that using the right skills in the right situation isn't necessary in the beginning, but doing so nevertheless rewards the player by making battles faster. Then you can make it so that using the right tactic gradually becomes mandatory rather than optional.

While I'm at it, why do so many people also insist on making healing skills cheap compared to other skills? A common scenario is that the player rarely uses anything else than attack and heal. It looks to me like the most obvious solution would be to increase the SP cost for healing or decrease the SP cost of everything else or a combination thereof. As a rule of thumb, the SP cost of doing anything else than healing should always be cheaper than same tier healing. The only exceptions I can think of is multi-target something else vs single target healing and over power skills.

post=134605
I like the idea of starting with 0-1 skills... if I start with 5, it's very unlikely that I'd test them all and check what they do or how well they work, unless it's a very difficult game that demands me to.

ditto.

Even with "seasoned" RPG players, you still have to ease them into your world and your rules and your game mechanics. Perhaps less so than the average Joe. Throwing the book at them is as sure a way to turn them off your game, imo. And saying somethng like "It's just like Suikoden Mapersona Tensei (SMT) battle system, with octohedron grids!" doesn't help.

The (actual) SMT series is very good about easing you into the battle system before it kicks your nuts in half. You also only get eight skills at a time on a character/demon (including passives), and early-game you'll only have an elemental attack and a physical attack or buff/debuff, usually. Simple and effective.

Also, SMT games have pretty simple battle systems, especially Persona 3/4 and Strange Journey. It's how the games apply the (also simple) skills and how it deals with weaknesses/strengths/critical hits/misses that make it fun and challenging.

I mean, seriously, half of a SMT game's skill list is elemental damage and healing (and associated RESIST FIRE passives). SMT games are simpler than your game - they just do it better than you do.

EDIT:
My general rule of thumb is that if you have more skills than fit into one page of your skill list, you have too many skills. The battle skill selection window in In Praise of Peace shows eight skills. Guess how many active skills you can equip? (You also start with 2-3 actives on each of the first three characters, and two of those start with a passive skill auto-equipped that you probably won't even notice at first (I say this because it doesn't matter yet, so I don't need to bother the player with HEY DUDE LOOK LOOK LUN HAS +20% HP DO YOU CARE NO okay moving on).)

Crystalgate
Stuff

Reading through all that I was comparing it to the Persona games (And in extension the whole SMT series in general). Those games start you off with a limited set of skills at first, yet the battles are not boring. I can't say exactly why it is, but I'm pinning it down to the limited amount of skills you can carry (8 in P3 and 4, 6 in SMT 4) and the fact that each battle system has it's own uniqueness between games, for example the Push Turn system in Nocturne and the DDS games, putting more emphasis on strategy.

This is best present in DDS and DDS2, where the order of your characters in combat can influence things. having 2 buffers in your team in the top two slots can buff up the party so that the Third is ready to hit high damage immediately when it reaches his turn. A better example would be hitting a weakness, which gives a "Half" turn to the player, which means the next character gets to take a free action, which can be passed at the cost of this Half turn.

On the thing of healing spells being cheap, I'm going to guess that it's because people don't want players to complain that the game is too difficult because they don't have the MP to heal, or that healing is not cost efficient in regards to it's MP. I have to disagree with your Rule of Thumb though, but only a little. I think Healing should cheaper than the same tier attacking spells, but not by much, aswell as balanced against it's cost. Once again using Persona as an example, the healing skills cost very tiny amounts less than the attacking skills, but this is balanced due to attack spells being ever so slightly stronger due to Elemental Weaknesses.

EDIT: Damnit Craze got in before me... need to learn to stop writing huge paragraphs for posts...

lengthy discussion on number of skills

All generic units in To Arms! start with 0-1 skills. More often 1 than 0. They buy skills with JP and there are ten skills available for each class to buy; units can switch Classes at any time but can only use the skills of the Class they are in (so far). It is too early in the game to say if it is even possible to buy all ten skills for your class...switching classes will make it harder to max out any one class's skillset. There are nine available classes (so far). You will have between three and ten generic units in your party most of the time.

All main PCs in To Arms! cannot switch classes. They all also function as improved versions of existing classes with unique skills thrown in, except Janos who is totally unique. They start with 1 skill and can buy skills with JP. Each one will probably have a skill list of 10-12 total skills.

What do people think? Is this too much? Too little? Just right?

Even with "seasoned" RPG players, you still have to ease them into your world and your rules and your game mechanics. Perhaps less so than the average Joe. Throwing the book at them is as sure a way to turn them off your game, imo. And saying somethng like "It's just like Suikoden Mapersona Tensei (SMT) battle system, with octohedron grids!" doesn't help.

I like to think that seasoned RPG players aren't overwhelmed by 3-4 skills, especially not if it's skills you've already seen a dozen of times. You should have a good idea what skills like "Fire", "Heal", "Sleep" and "Attack Up" does in advance. Granted, the question remains how effective they are, but that shouldn't overwhelm you. Of course, if you throw 3-4 alien game mechanics on the player at once I can see the problem, but 3-4 well known skills?

On the thing of healing spells being cheap, I'm going to guess that it's because people don't want players to complain that the game is too difficult because they don't have the MP to heal, or that healing is not cost efficient in regards to it's MP.

When it comes to healing, the player doesn't have a choice, he has to recover lost HP. If the heal spell is less MP efficient than an offensive spell, the player will still heal (he could use an item instead, but games with strict MP limit usually has strict item limits as well). However, if the offensive spell is less MP efficient, chance is the player will simple not use it which is exactly what I see happening in many RPGs. In fact, the only RPGs I've seen getting away from that problem is those who simple does away the MP efficiency issue, either by throwing in enough MP replenishing items to make MP cost barely matter or by giving the offensive and healing skills to different characters. I have not ever seen any RPG where I've thought that the MP is better spent on an offensive skill than on healing.

If you're afraid of the player running out of MP, you can keep the healing cost as it is and lower the cost of everything else instead. I have never heard of the problem that "players are casting the sleep spell to much and hitting attack to little" anyway.