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BLUE MAGIC (AND OTHER "MISSABLE" SKILLS)
Posts
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
LockeZ
View playlists
CloseSo, let's quote two of my friends from the Unofficial Squaresoft MUD.
Dana: Blue mages are, hands down, my favorite type of character in any game.
Omicron: Blue magic is an awful outdated system and I can't think of any justification for using it.
Not exact quotes, but pretty close.
Neither of these guys has terribly unusual taste in games, so it seems like this is a real issue. I'll try to run down some of the pros and cons.
Pros:
- People like collecting things. Jesus, do they ever.
- People who collect things like them to be useful, not just give 10 achievement points.
- As skill-learning methods go, this is one of the more unique.
- Because using better tactics in battle makes it less likely the enemies will have a chance to cast learnable spells, the difficulty curve evens out, giving easier challenges to players that are not as good.
Cons:
- People don't like to miss things. They especially don't like to miss things that are impossible or extremely difficult to go back to.
- People who miss things really hate it when they are penalized for missing those things.
- It's often pretty hard to tell when you've missed a spell, and finding the spells is almost pure chance.
- Because using better tactics in battle makes it less likely the enemies will have a chance to cast learnable spells, you feel like you are being punished for doing better, which is the opposite of how RPGs are supposed to work.
I'm sure I'm missing some points, but that's what I was able to come up with off the top of my head. I was planning on including at least two different types of blue mages in my game (one traditional blue mage, and one thief who has to steal his skills from enemies) so I'm very interested to hear how strong the love and the hate are for our blue-cloaked friends.
Dana: Blue mages are, hands down, my favorite type of character in any game.
Omicron: Blue magic is an awful outdated system and I can't think of any justification for using it.
Not exact quotes, but pretty close.
Neither of these guys has terribly unusual taste in games, so it seems like this is a real issue. I'll try to run down some of the pros and cons.
Pros:
- People like collecting things. Jesus, do they ever.
- People who collect things like them to be useful, not just give 10 achievement points.
- As skill-learning methods go, this is one of the more unique.
- Because using better tactics in battle makes it less likely the enemies will have a chance to cast learnable spells, the difficulty curve evens out, giving easier challenges to players that are not as good.
Cons:
- People don't like to miss things. They especially don't like to miss things that are impossible or extremely difficult to go back to.
- People who miss things really hate it when they are penalized for missing those things.
- It's often pretty hard to tell when you've missed a spell, and finding the spells is almost pure chance.
- Because using better tactics in battle makes it less likely the enemies will have a chance to cast learnable spells, you feel like you are being punished for doing better, which is the opposite of how RPGs are supposed to work.
I'm sure I'm missing some points, but that's what I was able to come up with off the top of my head. I was planning on including at least two different types of blue mages in my game (one traditional blue mage, and one thief who has to steal his skills from enemies) so I'm very interested to hear how strong the love and the hate are for our blue-cloaked friends.
The best part of 'blue' magic is the skills are usually the most useful. Nothing else will give you some of the most powerful skills in such a quick time. Using FF as an example (I can't think of any other games that use it), blue magic covers shit like:
* The often missed water and wind elements. Fire/Ice/Lightning are so common it's laughable and can be covered by non-spellcasters via rods anyways. Or other blue magic spells like Trine.
* Sure you can cast shell, safe, and haste each as their own action. Or just use Big Guard.
* Best armor gives auto-Doom? Don't want to use up an accessory slot? Just use Death Force! Timer runs out and you'll laugh off the effects of the armor. Cheaper and easier to get than Reraise and you don't lose status from dying and reviving.
* Limit Glove murders half of FF9 and all it takes is having 1 HP which is easy to plan around.
* Steal enemny positive status while dumping negative ones on him with Ripple. Or stealing Shadow's dog.
* Shadow Flare mother fuckers.
I hate the learning method though. Christ knows what spells can be learned, or if an enemy even has them. I don't even think the enemies that teach Big Guard in FF7 even use the skill.
* The often missed water and wind elements. Fire/Ice/Lightning are so common it's laughable and can be covered by non-spellcasters via rods anyways. Or other blue magic spells like Trine.
* Sure you can cast shell, safe, and haste each as their own action. Or just use Big Guard.
* Best armor gives auto-Doom? Don't want to use up an accessory slot? Just use Death Force! Timer runs out and you'll laugh off the effects of the armor. Cheaper and easier to get than Reraise and you don't lose status from dying and reviving.
* Limit Glove murders half of FF9 and all it takes is having 1 HP which is easy to plan around.
* Steal enemny positive status while dumping negative ones on him with Ripple. Or stealing Shadow's dog.
* Shadow Flare mother fuckers.
I hate the learning method though. Christ knows what spells can be learned, or if an enemy even has them. I don't even think the enemies that teach Big Guard in FF7 even use the skill.
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, I was talking about the learning method. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I don't really give a shit about how awesome Angel Whisper and Mighty Guard are. Those have nothing to do with how smart of an idea it is to adapt the system for RM games.
Sounds like Con #3 is why you hate it. I wonder if psuedo blue magic type systems which let you easily tell when you can learn a spell would still annoy you. Like SMT: Devil Survivor where you choose one skill per enemy to learn at the beginning of the battle, or the SaGa Frontier monster race where you have a choice to absorb a skill every time you beat a monster, or FF8's blue magic which is learned from items that the monsters drop, or Emma's downloads in Wild ARMs: Alter Code F where you're just expected to download every enemy in the game.
Sounds like Con #3 is why you hate it. I wonder if psuedo blue magic type systems which let you easily tell when you can learn a spell would still annoy you. Like SMT: Devil Survivor where you choose one skill per enemy to learn at the beginning of the battle, or the SaGa Frontier monster race where you have a choice to absorb a skill every time you beat a monster, or FF8's blue magic which is learned from items that the monsters drop, or Emma's downloads in Wild ARMs: Alter Code F where you're just expected to download every enemy in the game.
Ahh, I see. For me I don't like most of the pros. Collectibles for the sake of collectibles aren't fun and only engage the OCD in players (if any), the quality collectibles loses it's flavor if the non-blue magic skills become not-trash, and uniqueness alone won't make up a lacking of quality or entertainment. The fourth pro is something I've never considered before and an interesting angle on it and I need to churn it over a bit in my head before trying to pass judgment on it.
You're spot on on con #3 being a big one for me as well as #4. I'd hate having to dink around learning skills so I have other options than application of the same dead horse moves or passing the controller to the dog. Some of the solutions you mentioned to make it clear what can be learned (or hell, make it all of it) would help as well as being able to provoke blue magic from enemies towards somebody who can learn them would help.
I'm halfway to Omnicron: Not a fan of blue magic. Like making it clear what skills can be learned would help a lot with the issues but I don't think I'll ever really like it.
You're spot on on con #3 being a big one for me as well as #4. I'd hate having to dink around learning skills so I have other options than application of the same dead horse moves or passing the controller to the dog. Some of the solutions you mentioned to make it clear what can be learned (or hell, make it all of it) would help as well as being able to provoke blue magic from enemies towards somebody who can learn them would help.
I'm halfway to Omnicron: Not a fan of blue magic. Like making it clear what skills can be learned would help a lot with the issues but I don't think I'll ever really like it.
Enker
1572
I've always liked Blue Magic (Enemy Skills) but find that the character should have a reason for being able to use it or some similarly game-related explanation. Quistis in FF8 and Kimari in FF10 are examples of this, they hardly use it except on a limit-break of some description, and when they do it's almost useless. However Quina in FF9 collects from enemies in an interesting manner and the skills he acquires make him a pretty useful member of the party (and a healer for when you need one). FF7 managed to have a great thing with the Enemy Skill materia because it could be swapped between characters and it was the materia you were levelling, leading to a single equipment slot containing a lot of great spells . . . and Goblin Punch . . . Still, games such as the Breath of Fire series make getting skills something of a chore, especially in BoF4, and by the time you've got them they're quickly outdated.
So my summary? Blue Magic is great, but it needs to be something you can't just pick-up in a better form elsewhere without the work, and it needs to feel like it is a part of a game/character rather than a throw-away mechanic for completists. In closing, I did the FF7 Enemy Skill challange - beat the game using only enemy skill materia for fun/challange - and found that some of the spells I thought were rubbish were actually pretty darn useful.
So my summary? Blue Magic is great, but it needs to be something you can't just pick-up in a better form elsewhere without the work, and it needs to feel like it is a part of a game/character rather than a throw-away mechanic for completists. In closing, I did the FF7 Enemy Skill challange - beat the game using only enemy skill materia for fun/challange - and found that some of the spells I thought were rubbish were actually pretty darn useful.
author=GreatRedSpirit
I hate the learning method though. Christ knows what spells can be learned, or if an enemy even has them. I don't even think the enemies that teach Big Guard in FF7 even use the skill.
That's why Blue Mages often come with the scan ability don't they? Or at least that's how I remember it. But yeah, it can also be a very painful task to go around scanning every enemy on sight just to find out a very few of them can "teach" an ability...
Well, here is an idea: how about learning an ability after scanning certain combination of monster? Something like: "if I could combine the strengths of that monster and the strengths of that other one I could develop an awesome new technique" so in this way after scanning a bunch of enemies you could enter a menu where you could study their abilities, mix them and such (like if you were fusing items) and in result learning new spells.
...dunno, I guess I need some sleep. -_-
Enker
1572
Scan and Blue Magic go well with a 'Control Enemy' ability too - meaning that you can force them to use their attack in order to learn it. Similarly moves that shut down their options (anger them into just physical attacks or force them to not use physical attacks) do this on a basic level and raise chances of getting what you need.
Yoshio
774
limiting the number of times an enemy has to use it's spells on you in order to learn the ability would make it alot less painful
also make sure the player knows which spells can be learned and which can't so he isn't constantly left in the dark
also make sure the player knows which spells can be learned and which can't so he isn't constantly left in the dark
Would Gau's Rage skill count as 'blue' magic? I guess it would fall under that thief idea you mentioned in the OP. (Gau uses Leap to learn the moves of all the monsters in the party that he leap into (and the moves of the monster party that he reappears in, I think)).
Anywho, the status quo of blue magic could be argued using a risk/reward angle - sure, it is hard and chancy to learn Blue magic, but that magic is very awesome.
If people don't feel the risk is worth the reward, then they can be a Black mage.
Anywho, the status quo of blue magic could be argued using a risk/reward angle - sure, it is hard and chancy to learn Blue magic, but that magic is very awesome.
If people don't feel the risk is worth the reward, then they can be a Black mage.
Hoddmimir
200
author=alterego
Well, here is an idea: how about learning an ability after scanning certain combination of monster? Something like: "if I could combine the strengths of that monster and the strengths of that other one I could develop an awesome new technique" so in this way after scanning a bunch of enemies you could enter a menu where you could study their abilities, mix them and such (like if you were fusing items) and in result learning new spells.
...dunno, I guess I need some sleep. -_-
I think this is a really cool idea, but not quite exactly the way it is. But using combinations to gain unique spells is a pretty sweet idea. Maybe you collect parts of certain monsters and then combine those together like a kind of alchemy idea to then learn the ability... or maybe you just need to kill them and the game keeps track of specific monster skills so that once you have killed the right numbers of the right monsters you get a message like "You learned how to blow sh*t up with a fireball from killing all them there fire elementals!" Or something less ridiculous and red neck sounding.
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
Another friend of mine pointed out that if your other characters' skill learning methods are more generic, then having a blue mage who is an optional character (or optional class) will make the player feel like they always have to use the blue mage. Because if they don't use the black mage for a while and then want to use him later, they just have to fight a few extra battles to level him up and the spells will be learned automatically. But if they don't use the blue mage for a while and then want to use him later, learning some of his spells might be extremely time consuming, or even impossible. So only at the final dungeon do you really have the option of choosing to remove the blue mage.
Personally, I can't say I ever really encountered this problem, since once I pick a team I stick with it. If I don't use the blue mage, then I don't care about not learning his skills. But he apparently likes to be able to get everyone to full power and then compare them for the hardest challenges.
I guess the only ways to solve this are to make your blue mage the main character, or include some easy way of learning skills you've missed.
Personally, I can't say I ever really encountered this problem, since once I pick a team I stick with it. If I don't use the blue mage, then I don't care about not learning his skills. But he apparently likes to be able to get everyone to full power and then compare them for the hardest challenges.
I guess the only ways to solve this are to make your blue mage the main character, or include some easy way of learning skills you've missed.
Kaempfer
1932
Scan is a good solution. Another good workaround to Blue Magic is to have someone who teaches it or points out which monsters use the correct spells (and a chance to encounter them) but not until awhile after you first encounter them.
For instance: You cross a desert, but miss the enemy who casts Sandstorm, which damages everyone and blinds them. After trekking through subsequent caves and sewers, you come back to the desert for a brief trip back to the castle there. You remember some old wise man (tm) told you that Sand Crawlers cast Sandstorm, so you run around a bit and find a Sand Crawler and voila, you learn it. Unfortunately, you've missed being able to use this useful little spell in all of those caves and sewers you've traversed; a penalty for not being more diligent, perhaps?
It's always wise to give the player some ability to go to an area where every blue magic is learned. If your game is extremely linear, monster arenas full of blue magic wielding foes are always a nice touch, since they require zero story input. Having a blue magic spell ONLY learnable during a boss fight is just cruel, since you might not want to use your blue mage for that specific fight.
Of course, if you make the first encounter of that powerful blue magic spell early on during a boss and then learnable later on from powerful minions, that makes sense. It ties in to my overriding idea, which is: Reward the player for going out of his (or her!) way with his (or her!) blue mage by providing powerful skills in a limited fashion early on, but don't punish him (or her!) for not being a perfectionist.
Personally, I like blue magic. I didn't really use it in FFV or FFVI but I thought it was a neat addition, and if I did happen to encounter an enemy who used a blue magic spell (or what I thought was one) I'd go back with my blue mage and try to get it, just for a bit of collection fun.
All this talk of blue magic is filling me with an overwhelming urge to play FFV, actually!
For instance: You cross a desert, but miss the enemy who casts Sandstorm, which damages everyone and blinds them. After trekking through subsequent caves and sewers, you come back to the desert for a brief trip back to the castle there. You remember some old wise man (tm) told you that Sand Crawlers cast Sandstorm, so you run around a bit and find a Sand Crawler and voila, you learn it. Unfortunately, you've missed being able to use this useful little spell in all of those caves and sewers you've traversed; a penalty for not being more diligent, perhaps?
It's always wise to give the player some ability to go to an area where every blue magic is learned. If your game is extremely linear, monster arenas full of blue magic wielding foes are always a nice touch, since they require zero story input. Having a blue magic spell ONLY learnable during a boss fight is just cruel, since you might not want to use your blue mage for that specific fight.
Of course, if you make the first encounter of that powerful blue magic spell early on during a boss and then learnable later on from powerful minions, that makes sense. It ties in to my overriding idea, which is: Reward the player for going out of his (or her!) way with his (or her!) blue mage by providing powerful skills in a limited fashion early on, but don't punish him (or her!) for not being a perfectionist.
Personally, I like blue magic. I didn't really use it in FFV or FFVI but I thought it was a neat addition, and if I did happen to encounter an enemy who used a blue magic spell (or what I thought was one) I'd go back with my blue mage and try to get it, just for a bit of collection fun.
All this talk of blue magic is filling me with an overwhelming urge to play FFV, actually!
Qetzl
0
Curious, have any of you ever played Devil Survivor for the DS? It has a very straightforward "These are the skills the enemy carries" system at the beginning of every fight, effectively removing the tedium of scanning (With the added bonus of everyone acting as a blue mage for the purposes of this argument). If utilized in a Final Fantasy sort of RPG, you could have a menu pop up at the beginning of the battle showing skills available to learn (That have yet to be learned). At this point, the player can browse the skills, and determine whether or not they are worth learning. I like this system, as I've never seen the inherent "fun" in getting into battle after battle, and the first thing I do is "check for blue magic" (If you want to make the spell hard to get/find, you could just go with a monster that spawns very rarely or in a super specific spot, and have in-game NPCs allude to "That fire monster you in the woods by the dead druid tree")
I believe the idea of obvious learnable skills from battle provides a much needed additional element of reward to fighting (Other than obligatory XP/money), and also one that requires some forethought and prep (Perhaps I have to put the enemy in a situation where he would use X, or perhaps letting the enemy use Y would let me learn it, but will also make this fight incredibly difficult), and I can't see how giving the player that information is a bad thing; it seems like just, skipping the step (Costik on Playthisthing once made a good point with megaman "If there's no reason to stop shooting, why not have it automatic?" If there's no reason to not scan, why not make it automatic?)
Finally, I think that an optional class devoted specifically to enemy skills is not the best way to go about it. Given the frequency of combat, and the constant *chance* of learning a new skill, bringing the Blue mage is almost a necessity. I would say either have a permanent character devoted to this advancement method, or have all characters able to do it to some degree.
But that's just me.
I believe the idea of obvious learnable skills from battle provides a much needed additional element of reward to fighting (Other than obligatory XP/money), and also one that requires some forethought and prep (Perhaps I have to put the enemy in a situation where he would use X, or perhaps letting the enemy use Y would let me learn it, but will also make this fight incredibly difficult), and I can't see how giving the player that information is a bad thing; it seems like just, skipping the step (Costik on Playthisthing once made a good point with megaman "If there's no reason to stop shooting, why not have it automatic?" If there's no reason to not scan, why not make it automatic?)
Finally, I think that an optional class devoted specifically to enemy skills is not the best way to go about it. Given the frequency of combat, and the constant *chance* of learning a new skill, bringing the Blue mage is almost a necessity. I would say either have a permanent character devoted to this advancement method, or have all characters able to do it to some degree.
But that's just me.
Enker
1572
Of course the easiest way to produce Blue Magic I've found is to have the monsters drop an item that when consumed by a player character teaches them that skill. The drop-rate should be low and the monsters visually cued on their sprites to let you know that they have one and are worth farming. For added clues the explanation text when the monster uses a learnable skill should differ from others. Instead of 'X casts X' something like 'X uses X' is enough of a difference to be noticable by a gamer paying attention. At least that's how I'd run it on something as simple as RPG Maker 2000. You can get more complex the further up the maker-ladder you go.
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
Hmm, I've come up with a slightly modified version of blue magic for my game's blue mage, that I think solves all the major issues.
At this point, I plan to make the blue mage learn any learnable spell at the end of either the battle or the dungeon (haven't decided which) if he hasn't learned it already. This solves the randomness and the missability, and significantly mitigates the rewarding of poor tactics. However, the problem is that it makes the skills completely effortless to learn - there is no real difference between this method and simply learning all your skills at specific story events.
To solve the effortlessness, I think I'm going to make it so you don't completely learn the spell at first. You have to practice it. Until you've cast it a certain number of times, it will be weaker or have a failure rate or something. And seeing enemies cast it will increase this counter too, so it feels more like blue magic. I'm using RMXP, so it's easy to make the counter visible behind the spell name.
I'm not sure how you would visually cue this aside from a bestiary that lists all item drops. Which, if you have that, then fine. I do like random drops. But I think they're actually less obvious than traditional blue magic! I guess if every enemy in the game had one, it would be obvious? Or maybe you meant that enemies with drops could glow pink or something, which would be... a little weird, but functional I suppose.
This is an excellent point. This more or less solves my friend's problem of having to use the blue mage all the time because he's the hardest character to catch up if you haven't been using him.
At this point, I plan to make the blue mage learn any learnable spell at the end of either the battle or the dungeon (haven't decided which) if he hasn't learned it already. This solves the randomness and the missability, and significantly mitigates the rewarding of poor tactics. However, the problem is that it makes the skills completely effortless to learn - there is no real difference between this method and simply learning all your skills at specific story events.
To solve the effortlessness, I think I'm going to make it so you don't completely learn the spell at first. You have to practice it. Until you've cast it a certain number of times, it will be weaker or have a failure rate or something. And seeing enemies cast it will increase this counter too, so it feels more like blue magic. I'm using RMXP, so it's easy to make the counter visible behind the spell name.
Of course the easiest way to produce Blue Magic I've found is to have the monsters drop an item that when consumed by a player character teaches them that skill. The drop-rate should be low and the monsters visually cued on their sprites to let you know that they have one and are worth farming.
I'm not sure how you would visually cue this aside from a bestiary that lists all item drops. Which, if you have that, then fine. I do like random drops. But I think they're actually less obvious than traditional blue magic! I guess if every enemy in the game had one, it would be obvious? Or maybe you meant that enemies with drops could glow pink or something, which would be... a little weird, but functional I suppose.
It's always wise to give the player some ability to go to an area where every blue magic is learned. If your game is extremely linear, monster arenas full of blue magic wielding foes are always a nice touch, since they require zero story input. Having a blue magic spell ONLY learnable during a boss fight is just cruel, since you might not want to use your blue mage for that specific fight.
This is an excellent point. This more or less solves my friend's problem of having to use the blue mage all the time because he's the hardest character to catch up if you haven't been using him.
I am supporting the Crack system in Devil Survivor (see Qetzl's post).
Otherwise, I rather like blue magic in general. Playing the princess Anastasia photographing demons is pretty great. I do prefer active learning, though (taking pictures, Lancet, Cook). Passive learning (Strago (funny Blind trick aside), FF5) is pretty annoying.
Otherwise, I rather like blue magic in general. Playing the princess Anastasia photographing demons is pretty great. I do prefer active learning, though (taking pictures, Lancet, Cook). Passive learning (Strago (funny Blind trick aside), FF5) is pretty annoying.
FFV makes it worth it by making most of the bosses in the game vulnerable to instant death using blue magic
it's ludicrous but very enjoyable
it's ludicrous but very enjoyable
WolfCoder
3554
I didn't like blue magic because it was so annoying to acquire and I had characters who could fight just as good/or better- so I didn't even bother.
I killed most of the bosses in FFV in 1-2 hits with Gil Toss.
author=geodude
FFV makes it worth it by making most of the bosses in the game vulnerable to instant death using blue magic
it's ludicrous but very enjoyable
I killed most of the bosses in FFV in 1-2 hits with Gil Toss.
Ravenite1
243
author=WolfCoder
I didn't like blue magic because it was so annoying to acquire and I had characters who could fight just as good/or better- so I didn't even bother.
author=geodude
FFV makes it worth it by making most of the bosses in the game vulnerable to instant death using blue magic
it's ludicrous but very enjoyable
I killed most of the bosses in FFV in 1-2 hits with Gil Toss.
No you didn't.
Corfaisus
"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats
7874
One of the things that bugged the shit out of me about FFIX was Quina's Blue Magic where you'd have to kill the enemy just enough to be able to eat them and learn their abilities, which is pretty much impossible when you're lvl 60+ even on your unused characters.
