RPG WITH NO REPEATABLE BATTLES

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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
I'm attempting to start on a new RPG. Now, given that my last one took like six or seven years to finish, and this one is going to be much more complicated, this may end up getting scrapped. But my basic premise is something that I think will solve the biggest problem I have with keeping myself interested in commercial RPGs.

In my new game, you will not be asked to do any battle twice.

If you can beat the battle once, that should be proof that you can beat it. There's no need to make you do the same thing over and over. Repetition and grind are the least fun part of RPGs.

Now, yes, I realize that the ability to repeat battles for the sake of increasing your power is considered by a lot of people to actually be the definition of an RPG. But I think this is a bastardization of what makes RPGs fun. Tabletop RPGs don't have this feature - you are presented with whatever obstacles the dungeon master thinks are challenging, and the ability to repeat them is not present. Many Final Fantasy games have this feature but downplay it a lot - you are given the ability to grind, but unlike Dragon Quest games, the game is designed so that if you simply go through each dungeon a single time and fight whatever enemies you come across, you will be more than powerful enough and will experience very little repetition. The Fire Emblem series actually already does exactly what I'm talking about, though Fire Emblem games are tactical RPGs, not traditional RPGs.

However, removing all *possibility* of repetition not only means that each battle will be doable just once, but also that each battle will have to be different, and challenging in different ways. In Fire Emblem there are only 30-40 battles per game, but in a traditional RPG there would have to be hundreds at least. Do you guys think this is feasible? What kind of battle system do you think would best suit this type of gameplay?

My initial thought is to go for a Chrono Trigger type battle system - having enemies that move around and attacks that have geometric areas of effect would certainly help keep things more interesting than a standard battle system would allow. However I'm curious if anyone has any other ideas they think would be particularly well suited for this type of game. Yay for community input!

(Also, I'm not sure this is worth mentioning, but I'm planning on filling every dungeon with puzzles that use Zelda/Lufia 2/Wild Arms style tools, to help accommodate the fact that there will have to be a lot less battles than a normal RPG would have.)
LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
I already had a game like this in the works before I had to get back on IW. It consistsof battles, scenes, and choices only.
Well... it's feasible if you make a very distinguished take on battles. If you have FF-like battles, than you're doomed to fail. I don't like RPGs where you CAN'T grind, even if you want to.

If you had a battle like... FFT, than yes, it could work.
It doesn't have to be tactical. It has to be:
Big
Long
Complicated
Unique
Interesting
Plot-relevant

Which means you'll definitely need a distinguished BS, like I said.
LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
have you never played FFMQ

It did exactly this.
Really? I don't remember that. You sure?
LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
post=144949
FF:MQ had special areas set aside for your battles. You could see the battles in caves and on the overworld there were special places to go where you fought like 10 battles.
But once those where done, they were done. You couldn't repeat them.

and how do you propose to have non-repeatable battles that don't appear on the map...?
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
My battles would certainly have to appear on the map, yes. And I definitely would not do this with a simplistic battle system. I wouldn't do anything with a simplistic battle system, these days.

Once upon a time I had a story to tell, and I mostly used the DBS to tell it. But my focus has vastly shifted in the years since then. Now I want to design a game instead.
It doesn't exactly cover this, but the flash RPG Sonny and it's sequal almost did this, with the main story battles unrepeatable. However they also had training battles available, but they weren't really necessary if you leveled up your skills properly.

Another thing is that it had a fairly simple, yet sometimes strategical, battle system (Skills that greatly boost damage inflicted, flip healing and damage around, etc) and it had a simple, yet good story behind it.

As long as the battle system is well refined and somewhat strategical, and it has a good story to back it up it'll work well.
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
It'll have a good story, at least I hope! I'll be reusing the story from my other game, Vindication. It started out as a good story even originally, and I think that giving it a fresh rewrite after having the better part of a decade to constantly mess with it and stew on it will result in very solid writing.
Dragon Age did this. But it covered it up very well.
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
Yeah, Dragon Age did a great job of it. It even added "random" battles when travelling between locations - but they were still unique, one-time-only battles, even though they were randomly chosen and there were quite a lot of them.
Back to Fire Emblem... As mentioned in the OP, it does a very good job of it. See, the difference between the 30 battle system and this game with potentially hundreds means that, well, sort of obviously, there are hundreds of battles required. I'm not a huge fan of gameplay that requires you to complete the same task over and over again. I think mandating the hundreds of battles only makes this worse. FE did its job well by making the battles interesting every time and the unit development unique. Unless you have some really killer gameplay in this traditional RPG, I can't see it working. The gameplay style just isn't something that works over and over again in the same style. The potential for variation really isn't there.
Lots of games do this. More than you think.

Except for the removal of all repetition part. You're really pushing it if you decide to have every battle being completely unique. If you don't give somebody a chance to learn enemy strengths, weaknesses, patterns, etc, balancing is going to be really hard. It will be really difficult getting a stable difficulty curve. Slight repetition is needed in some form, depending on the battle system.

Also balance balance balance. That is the most important thing.
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
Well, just because no two battles are the same doesn't mean no two enemies are the same. However, as noted, my goal is to make it so it feels like you are never given any repetition.

Psy, my goal is not to "force the player into doing more battles", it is the opposite. Once they've done a battle once, it is permanently completed and will never have to be done again. Imagine Chrono Trigger style encounters, but all the redundant ones are removed or replaced with new and different ones, and they never respawn. (And a much more interesting battle system than Chrono Trigger.)

Neophyte, I don't understand your point. If the battles rely on the player having done them many times already to learn the weaknesses and patterns, then they will be too hard to beat until you've already beaten them several times. That's obviously not good game design, nor do I think I've ever seen it done, since it would mean that the game is impossible to beat except by dumb luck

Obviously, you can't claim that boss battles require repetition. Whatever repetition you need to do is done within the fight itself. Once you've shown that you've mastered it well enough, the fight is over and you move on to a different fight. That is the model I'm going for - except with every enemy, not just bosses. Normal enemies will be easier than bosses, but no less unique. (And I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up making every fourth or fifth enemy a boss.)
If you think you can make "hundreds at least" interesting and unique battles (like you claim) then there shouldn't be that much of a problem. The real issue is in what aspects you're making them unique. Neophyte's correct in the sense that you can't use typical "enemy X is weak to type Y" thing because that would require experimentation/experience which isn't possible when each enemy is faced only once. What sorts of variation are you thinking of?
LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
post=144979
If you think you can make "hundreds at least" interesting and unique battles (like you claim) then there shouldn't be that much of a problem. The real issue is in what aspects you're making them unique. Neophyte's correct in the sense that you can't use typical "enemy X is weak to type Y" thing because that would require experimentation/experience which isn't possible when each enemy is faced only once. What sorts of variation are you thinking of?


It's not a matter of each enemy being unique as each situation. How many Darkspawn did you mow down in Dragon Age?
post=144979
It's not a matter of each enemy being unique as each situation. How many Darkspawn did you mow down in Dragon Age?

Sorry, never played... But reflecting, that's probably a moot point anyway. The whole "weakness" thing is pretty bland anyway; that wouldn't warrant unique battles.
Guess it's an incentive for the player to follow the progressive path in the game in order to get stronger.

I agree some kind of extra battles would be easier rather than having a pure set number of battles it would be restricting on the player if they're struggling on a boss and know they can't retry and train a bit more to overcome it when they know all the other monsters have already been beaten.

I guess that's more of a peace of mind sense than actual in game balancing. If Dragon Age can basically let you tick off areas you've cleared the player's reaction will be to go for the new areas and constant new battles will be more than enough variety for the player.
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