STATUS EFFECTS

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What is everybodies thoughts on the heavy use of status effects?

My current 2k3 project has every single status effect I could think of; (The ten default and seventeen custom.)

I posted a screenshot of this in my locker. I won't post it here since I didn't realise that the screencapture would be 2.4MBs (facepalm.)
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
Status effects are wonderful and fabulous. They can add tons of tactical options to battles, if done well. I like damaging abilities that have a small chance to inflict negative status effects.

But you have to make sure they all have pros and cons versus each-others. A status that makes you essentially instantly win the battle is not balanced, and needs a much bigger downside. This applies to buffs as well as ailments.
It could get annoying if there's too many of them.
Imagine 10 different types of poison and you need to keep track of 10 different types of antidote for example.

It could work if each status effect is somewhat unique, but I haven't explored rm2k3 very much on that.
It depends on the % chance of them inflicting. Also, if they are obscure, like "Gloom" status decreases your HP gain from healing items, it might be hard to remember what they actually do if you happen to be inflicted by them in battle.
I hate useless status effects. Like Level 5 death. How on earth would that be useful?
I always love lots of status effects. MMORPG's like World of Warcraft incorporate a load of both beneficial and detrimental status effects and they always add tons of depth and strategy to combat.

Unfortunately, certain engines that we use here like RPG Maker 2000 only let you have one at a time on a character unless you have a CBS so you can't really explore the possibilities. :l
Um, been a while since I've tested, but I'm fairly sure RM2k permits more than one status on a character at a time. The only restriction along those lines I can recall is that a single action (attack or skill) cannot inflict more than one effect per use. I'll double check that next time I'm at a system with RM2k on it.
Isn't it: you can have more than one status, but you only see one of them next to your name.

I was playing an RM2k3 game a few days ago and I cast Haste on my guy when he was poisoned, it still only said poison but I had the effect of Haste. I remember it being hard to actually keep track of who had haste.
Don't make status effects useless. Why should I poison the monster when I could hit it for like 200 dmg. Make shit like "this attack hits harder if poisoned" to be creative with status effects. Also please let status effects be useable on bosses (immune to stun/sleep is ok, but if its EVERYTHING good job the player probably wasted like 2 turns figuring out your making one of 'those' games).

idk thats all i have to say: dont make them suck by actually giving reason to use them.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
You can just make status effects weaker on bosses (blind is only -25% accuracy, for example). Another way to make them based on stats - whether for their landing rate (Magical Might in DQIX; Luck in the Etrian Odyssey series) or their actual damage (bleeding based on your STR, magical curses based on your INT, a damage-lowering taunt that increases with your CHA, etc.). That way, power grows in a certain way and is (if done correctly) always useful against enemies/bosses around your own level.
post=200394
I posted a screenshot of this in my locker. I won't post it here since I didn't realise that the screencapture would be 2.4MBs (facepalm.)

That's because it's a bitmap. Save it in PNG format and everything will be all set.
Status effects in WeaponBirth will be very, very diverse. Only a few conditions remain after battle and those are also the conditions which you can treat with items. There is no skill that can cure a status effect like these conditions- you always need the proper item. What's even more is that you can only have a couple items slotted to your keys, limiting the items that may be used in the middle of a battle.

There's only a few conditions, but they are nasty. Likewise, you can inflict them on your enemies to gain the advantage- I hate games that have status-effect causing things that are useless because watching the enemy lose 2 hp a couple of seconds isn't effective. The hundreds of other status effects are all random effects caused by skills and the like. Think of a row of buffs in an MMO (only not THAT many). I'll let the player see the descriptions for effects because they also can wind up in your equipment.

So while having exponentially growing poison damage is really not fun, it will be when you inflict it on your enemies. It does make the game a bit harder, but it's balanced out by the fact that you can just as easily do it yourself. It'll work on bosses just fine too if they don't have explicit defenses against the condition you use. Bosses are only immune to instant-kill moves and anything that damages based on current HP % as a fraction, but successful instant-kill strikes will do 6 times damage on bosses.

Effects are an easy, general way to add much more diversity to your equipment, your skills, and the like.
I've posted this on another forum, but it's valid here, so-

My preference for that kind of thing is dealing with Binary Status Effects and their variants.

A basic Binary status effect is really a set of three effects, as follows:
Effect X might be a weak attack down (10% decrease) effect.
Effect Y would be something similar targeting defense.
Individually, these two effects aren't very powerful, but...

When both Effect X and Effect Y are on a single battler, they get replaced (via either scripting or eventing) with Effect XY - in this sample condition, a case where both attack and defense values, instead of the weak 10% drop, get hit for 50%, 75%, even ~100% (depending on personal tastes).

Subsets of the binary effects are catalytic effects, metabolic effects, and anaphylactic effects for the seriously vicious.

Catalytic effects are binary effects where one state is 'ordinary' and the other is designed solely to hype it up (Poison(5%) + Miasma(No Effect) = > Poison(25%): turn a 5% HPDmg per turn poison effect into a 25% HPDmg per turn poison effect)

Metabolic effects are binary effects where one of the components is a normally helpful one, but the cumulative effect is harmful - or where a second harmful effect partially cancels the first one out. That Poison(5%) example above, in a metabolic pair, might be mixed with Haste(AgiX2) to yield a Poison(10%), or mixed with Slow(Agi/2) to yield a Poison(3%)

Anaphylactic effects should be used with care and probably only in specific cases - an anaphylactic effect is one where, regardless of what the original two effects were, the 'cumulative' effect is Instant KO/Death regardless of HP...or normal resistances or immunities to such conditions.
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