GAME-PLAY FUNCTIONALITY

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Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
Okay, I wanted to talk about the functions that go into game play and what seems like a good thing to add to games.
Mostly I'm going for Fantasy RPG types. Like I wanted to make a game, as one did it like this before and I wanted to tweak it a little-bit.

I wanted to add Continue Coins in which you win from boss battles and mini games.
These Coins are used so when you die, they restart the battle and you're funny healed as well as the enemy. Then I wanted to add people in town that are used as special types of save points. Where if you record your 'soul' in their books, if you don't have a Continue Coin it brings you back there instantly and healed as well as you can save the actual game in their books. Also I wanted to make a game, which I am, based on the Suikoden Series, but every person you recruit can be used in battles, which in Suikoden they can, but the idea is this.

You have 6 members, 2 in the out section which you can bring over and switch out. Which seems okay. But here is where it gets fun. If anyone dies, it pulls up the out section, you then choose which one to bring in. Say both out die, then it pulls up a list and allows you to choose right then and there who out of all recruited, who to use to fight with until there is no one left. This allows for longer fights and less dying, but to cause a game over without killing them all, you, the main character will have to die and not be healed in a set number of minutes.

I love the way Suikoden is so far, but this is how I'd do it. What do you all think and what would you do in terms of game play?
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
Wild ARMs 3 and Wild ARMs Alter Code F used the continue coin idea. At the beginning of the game it was a meaningful mechnic, but they could randomly drop from any enemy so by about halfway through the game you had 99 continues and were immortal. If you want the mechanic to be meaningful, you have to come up with some method of giving the player continue coins that gives people who die a lot enough lives to still be useful, but doesn't give people who almost never die enough lives to be immortal. Maybe have fifteen or twenty continue coins hidden throughout the game, but any time you reach a save point and have less than 3 coins less, you get replenished back up to 3 coins for free?

Not that removing game overs entirely is necessarily a bad thing in all cases. FF13 did it and it worked extremely well, but the reason it worked there is because you got fully healed after every battle. This made every battle its only individual challenge. With the normal RPG method of making an entire dungeon a challenge of endurance, where you have to conserve MP and items in each battle so you can use them all on the boss, free continues in the middle of the dungeon probably negate too much of the challenge. Especially if dying can get the player a free full heal any time he wants. You should probably only restore him back to how much HP/MP he had at the beginning of his first attempt, not all the way to full health.

Main character death = game over is a really dangerous way to set up a game. I don't recommend it at all. Here's why: It should never be possible for the player to die to pure random chance when he made no mistakes at all. If the player does everything flawlessly and makes optimal choices, he should never, ever still have a random chance of a game over. Not a 1% chance, not a 0.01% chance. To ensure this is the case in a normal party battle system, you just have to make sure enemies can never do area death spells or area status effects that can randomly wipe out your entire party. In a main character death = game over system, you also have to watch the power of every status effect, every single-target attack, every critical hit, to make sure it's never possible for the enemies to all target the main character in a row. You can never have instant death spells, you can never have any group of monsters whose combined best attacks do more damage than the main character's max HP if all of them deal critical hits. The end result is that either your main character needs to be extremely boss and way more powerful than the rest of the party, or the game needs to be extremely unchallenging, or battles will need to somehow revolve around everyone else protecting the main character (via healing, tanking, buffing), or the game will be extremely frustrating and terrible when the player dies after doing nothing wrong.
Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
Wild Arms 2 also did if you don't recall.
I just wanted to revamp the idea for my own style.
Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
Quoted from the other topic as I am too lazy to repost it.

author=Thiamor
I like the ideas for this.
I was thinking about posting more ideas in my topic I made but I'll do so here too so you can see if you like them.

I am planning to do one where you can recruit many people such is how Suikoden works, and if a party member dies you have a choice of 2 extra people in your 'storage' so to speak to choose from. But if they die, then it places 2 more in the storage out of the total amount of members recruited, but you choose which 2. This makes fights last longer, but also the down fall is if the leader dies, and isn't revived in a certain limit of time it is a game over. But his stats are not purely based on his stats alone. My idea is to have it where he has added stats based on who is in the party. It sounds weird, but it just will be like this.

Say you have 6 members out. Each person is of a special importance to the leader. 1 person who is skilled in strength, well, his strength stat will be added on to the leader, but it takes away from other stats, say, if the power hitter he is using has remaining weak stats; for example, being weak in Agility. This is where the other members come in, to make up for having certain stats go down in power.

Figured others might like to see this and use it, if it is good.


This is one way I figured would keep the leader alive, but not make him too over powered. There would be many combinations to raise stats of the leader. Level up. Weapons and armors. Passive and Active Skills. Also the main thing, the other members.
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
The stats-based-on-allies thing is an interesting customization method, but I'm not sure it actually addresses the issue of making the hero more survivable without being stronger. You're basically just making him stronger.

I like the idea that you have a certain amount of time to revive him, though. That alone is probably enough to solve the problem I mentioned. As long as you still have a revive potion, or can finish the battle before the timer runs out, it's not instant game over. FF Tactics used a similar idea, except it did it for everyone; if the main character stayed dead for 3 rounds, you got a game over, and if anyone else stayed dead for 3 rounds, they become permanently dead and were removed from your party forever.
Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
Well the stat thing for allies was that you'd gain the strongest stat he/she/it has/ trained for, but in return it takes away from the stats it is weaker with. It'd not add, say, 10+10 to agi, if they are weak in Agi. It'd be 10-10 so it'd be 0. So then they have to get individuals good in a set of stats that they, themselves, are more comfortable with.

If the person made their person the leader is using for stats, mastered in Strength, then that is the only stat added for the Leader. The moment you get the recruits, it will ask what stat that you'd like to Master with them. You can only choose 1 until you get them to level 100, then it will reset your level but with the mastered stat, and then ask if you'd like to master another. This way, will add longer play time to the game, also.
Well, the Shin Megami Tensei games handle the random death chance on the MC (and the following Game Over) by 1. Making the instant-kills resistable (with possibility to be immune) element types and 2. Comsumables that block an instant-kill once automatically and 3. A Spell that voids instantkills in the turn it was cast. So a random chance to instantly gameover isn't bad if it is avoidable.
Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
Well I don't mean instantly. Not like 1 hit KO.
The timer allows for people to bring the leader back. The leader is strong based on his/her stats and other members mastered stats plus passive skills.

But if dead and the timer runs out, game over.
Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
New idea I want to discuss with you all.
An Experience System. One in which the leader (same type of leader as above) gets all of the exp, and he only gets to use what is assigned to him to use, then the rest he assigns to the people he has in his party. You can save it up, then switch people out with people who did NOTHING in the fights to earn it, and give them the experience for quicker level gaining. How does this sound?
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
Breath of Fire 5 put something like 25% of your XP into a pool of party XP for you to divide as you wished. I think doing that with 100% of your XP would not work very well - too easy to just give it all to one character and end up with an immortal powerhouse. If you did this, you'd have to make sure that giving all the XP to one character wouldn't be overpowered.

A lot of modern games just give equal XP to all party members, whether alive or dead, whether in the party or not. I like this method. It means you can switch party members later in the game without having to go back and grind them up to the right level.
author=Thiamor
New idea I want to discuss with you all.
An Experience System. One in which the leader (same type of leader as above) gets all of the exp, and he only gets to use what is assigned to him to use, then the rest he assigns to the people he has in his party. You can save it up, then switch people out with people who did NOTHING in the fights to earn it, and give them the experience for quicker level gaining. How does this sound?

This sounds a) like an extra complicating step in the process of character leveling, and b) like a roundabout way of spending extra time to level up characters you don't use often. What I mean is, unlike games where players not in the party are given full or partial exp for every fight, people IN the party are not getting any experience at all. So that time you spend trying to make your weaker characters stronger doesn't benefit the characters you're actually using at all, and thus doesn't save the player any more time than the old-school method of swapping out party members to grind them up.
Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
How about making the system where you choose how much percentage each person gets, and the rest that is saved up, is used on the person who got the last, killing blow in battle?

Say when you obtain a player, there will be a page that pulls up that shows their stats, and their exp growth sheet, and then it lets you change the percentage of how much they gain each battle. Then everyone gets it, but you have a choice on how much is saved up for that 'last hit' scenario.
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'd do it the other way around, if anything. Make it so if you get the killing blow, part of your XP is given to the rest of the party. The guy who gets the killing blow is more likely than not to be the strongest character already.
Versalia
must be all that rtp in your diet
1405
author=LightningLord2
Well, the Shin Megami Tensei games handle the random death chance on the MC (and the following Game Over) by 1. Making the instant-kills resistable (with possibility to be immune) element types and 2. Comsumables that block an instant-kill once automatically and 3. A Spell that voids instantkills in the turn it was cast. So a random chance to instantly gameover isn't bad if it is avoidable.

All of those are terrible because they require that you have done something to protect yourself.
1) Equipped a persona with the appropriate elemental resistance
2) Opened enough shitty chests to find a Homonculous
3) Ridiculously lucky guessing

It should never be possible for the player to die to pure random chance when he made no mistakes at all. If not being able to predict the future is a mistake then punch me, because any situation that requires you to fail before you can figure out the solution is horrible.

edit: By fail, I mean, die/game over. You can easily design puzzles that give lots of feedback through failure.
author=Versalia
[It should never be possible for the player to die to pure random chance when he made no mistakes at all. If not being able to predict the future is a mistake then punch me, because any situation that requires you to fail before you can figure out the solution is horrible.

I have actually used puzzles like this and am UNREPENTANT. Simply because it's at a point where it doesn't really matter if you die (no progress will be lost) and it's evident that you're dying via status ailment (shown via the old faithful red flashing screen) that you need to fix fast.

In the vast majority of cases I'd agree with you though. I just happen to like puzzles where the cost of failure is death (especially if you want your game to make the player feel vulnerable), but the player has been made aware of this either implicitly or explicitly and will take this into account before advancing.
Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
author=LockeZ
I'd do it the other way around, if anything. Make it so if you get the killing blow, part of your XP is given to the rest of the party. The guy who gets the killing blow is more likely than not to be the strongest character already.

But, say you're trying to level someone up and they are the one to get the last hit. It'd take longer to level them up if part of your exp is given away to other members.

This is why it'd be better to make every playable character have a weakness that can be struck, so to speak, during any given fight. So they aren't over powered, and their weakness makes it possible.
Versalia
must be all that rtp in your diet
1405
author=Thiamor
author=LockeZ
I'd do it the other way around, if anything. Make it so if you get the killing blow, part of your XP is given to the rest of the party. The guy who gets the killing blow is more likely than not to be the strongest character already.
But, say you're trying to level someone up and they are the one to get the last hit. It'd take longer to level them up if part of your exp is given away to other members.

This is why it'd be better to make every playable character have a weakness that can be struck, so to speak, during any given fight. So they aren't over powered, and their weakness makes it possible.


the problem with "a weakness that can be struck" is that I assume you mean elemental or attack-type weaknesses, and that is only a threat in fights where that is present. If Maria has fire weakness and only 5% of the enemies in the game cast fire attack spells she is probably not really balanced out by the weakness.
Thiamor
I assure you I'm no where NEAR as STUPID as one might think.
63
I meant more-so, different types of hits that any enemy can do. A special hit, that even if the weakness if fire, the hit will 'act' as if it is fire, and only strike at that person's weakness. Every enemy having this attack and having a 50/50 chance of using it, could be enough.
Versalia
must be all that rtp in your diet
1405
author=Thiamor
A special hit, that even if the weakness if fire, the hit will 'act' as if it is fire, and only strike at that person's weakness. Every enemy having this attack and having a 50/50 chance of using it, could be enough.


that sounds like the worst thing ever
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
If everyone has a weakness, there is literally no difference between that move and a non-elemental attack.
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