MULTILAYER STATUS EFFECTS - THOUGHTS?

It seems to me that you first weakened the status effects to make room for layering them. For example, Dizzy in RMXP will by default lower accuracy to 20%. With your idea you need to layer it thrice to lower accuracy to 25%. Considering how players already tend to ignore status effects, there's little chance they will bother with anything that doesn't immediately add two or three layers at once.

I can see single layer effects work if they are applied as an extra from an offensive move though. There are also ways to balance battles so status effects are more appealing. You can make your idea work if you design your game around that feature. I would however advice against implementing your idea if you don't want to go trough that work.

bahleted

post=146067
The problem with status-effects in traditional RPGs is that bosses are often immune to them and normal enemies often die too quickly for them to be useful. You need to remedy both of these if you are going to make this idea work - normal enemies have to pose enough threat that status-effects are required and bosses can't just be immune to everything.

This poses a second problem: You don't want your normal battles to take ages if they are random encounters. They should be fairly quick (and challenging), so taking three turns to use a status-effect probably isn't going to fly (especially if you have to do it over and over due to the random nature of the battles).

Summary: This will only work if you design your enemies encounters around it.

In my opinion most RPGs I've played (both RPG maker games and commercial ones) would be a lot better if battles lasted twice as long and the encounter rate was cut to one half or even one third.

I don't think that repeating the same strategy over ten battles that takes two turns each is more fun than repeating the same strategy over five battles that takes four turns each. Besides, things like loading the battle, the player reorienting himself and post battle healing won't be halved just because the battle is half as long. So a half the battles, but twice the number of turns, model actually saves time.

Assuming you actually do manage to make battles require strategy, it's unlikely the player finds a strategy he's content with the first time even if he survives the battle. If there were downed members, wasted actions or actions the player can afterwards see are clearly suboptimal, he will try to improve his strategy. I think only a minority of players are satisfied with strategies that will get them trough the battle, but leads to 1-2 downed party members.

Now, assume it takes the player in average three battles to find a strategy he's satisfied with. If the player in average encounters the same monster group five times, that means he will repeat the same strategy twice. With a faster paced battle system, but twice the number of encounters, he will repeat his strategy seven times. So, any time it takes more than one battle for the player for time a satisfactory strategy, halving the numbers of battles means there's less than half the number of repetitions. Less than half the number of repetitions for the price of twice as long battles sounds like a good deal to me.

Finally, I don't think you can "just" squash the same level of strategy into shorter battles. The way you fight RPG battles doesn't seem to me like they were ever designed to be fast paced. In particular, defensive strategies tends to be thrown right out of the window if the battle is over to quickly. There are ways around that, but none which I would refer to as "just". You will most likely have to do some major rethinking of how to handle RPG battles if you want them to be both fast paced and require a high level of strategy. I have never seen that being accomplished.

post=146140
What? Assuming that longer battles will be encountered half as often is asanine and irrelevant.

I did say "if battles lasted twice as long and the encounter rate was cut to one half or even one third". I assumed you disputed my whole statement and not just half of it.

Pokémon has a decent strategy:time taken per battle ratio. If you don't adhere to the rock-paper-scissors style elements then battles will take you much longer than they would if you used the rather simplistic strategy present in those games. And that's just the first example that comes to mind, a lot of games have a fast-battle pace and yet retain strategy - not all strategic battling needs battle-lengths to be like FFT.

I haven't played much Pokemon, but I'd admit I have heard a lot of good things about the strategy that game required. However, in my limited experience most Pokemon battles were either fast <i>or</i> required a good amount of strategy, rarely both.

post=146146
It is a bit too easy to be over-levelled in Pokémon, which removes some of the strategy. To use a more RM-related example, the battles in Speak No Evil require quite a bit of strategy and still manage to be very fast-paced.

Well sure, if hitting an elemental weakness counts as strategy.

If you CANNOT hit weakness then fights will take a sizable amount of time that mostly amounts to either ineffectually plinking away at the enemy, trying your luck with instant death or healing up.

I haven't played either of the game that have been suggested. I haven't played every RPG there is and I know there can indeed be one out there that are both fast paced and has good strategic dept. All I know is that I haven't seen one.

I think that instead of discussing certain games I just tell why I think faster paced battles makes it harder to achieve strategic dept.

Several skills becomes less useful the faster battles are. Status effects usually prevents an enemy from hurting you. So does killing it. If it takes 3-4 attacks to kill an enemy, but only one casting of a status effect to disable the same enemy, then it may be worth doing so. The less number of attacks it takes to kill an enemy, the less likely it is that using a status effect instead of attacking will be worthwhile.

Defensive spells faces the same problem. "Protect" lowers the damage enemies deals to you, but having half of them killed in the first round will also lower the amount of damage they can inflict.

Skills that boosts your offense also has a tough time in a fast paced battle. The more turns you spend taking advantage of a buff, the more useful it will be. Naturally, the number of turns you spend taking advantage of a buff cannot be higher than the number of turns the battle lasts.