Full Games List
Featured Games
New Games
Reviews
Media
Images
Blogs
Game Updates
Images Feedback Summary
Game Design Highlights
Tutorials
Articles
Scripts
Utilities / Plugins
Resources
Engines
Engine Bulletins
What is Makerscore?
Past Events
Achievements
Misaos
Forums
Post History
Chat
New to RMN?
Full Store List
RMN Music Pack (free)
BUTTON MASH - FORCING THE PLAYER TO USE DIFFERENT SKILLS
Posts
Avee
5794
Avee
View playlists
Closeauthor=LockeZ
Iniquity and Vindication has a skill called Charge Up There are two obvious ways to counter this. The first is to defend, and the second is to interrupt the attack.
Jude's Necropolis has that too (enemies take a turn to cast spells).
I'd agree with you about everything, I think it does make a game more enjoyable, provided that there is still room for the players to pwn the enemies with basic attacks when they've achieved a high level of experience or high stats, so they can experience the satisfaction of having become powerful enough to not have to play by the earlier rules. I think variety is ideal.
BUTTON MASH = BORING GAME
In any game, just pressing some lousy attack button all of the time makes it VERY boring.
Without 'forcing the player to use different skills', you just pound the attack button. Then I stop wanting to play the game unless it has some other special aspect about it that pulls me in.
I wonder how to do that in your own games that you make.
Make attack seem less and less 'strong'? Make it less 'strong'? Or make skills better than attack? How much better?
One solution might be to remove the attack command from the game all together, and make your weapons give you skills, or power up your skills.
In any game, just pressing some lousy attack button all of the time makes it VERY boring.
Without 'forcing the player to use different skills', you just pound the attack button. Then I stop wanting to play the game unless it has some other special aspect about it that pulls me in.
I wonder how to do that in your own games that you make.
Make attack seem less and less 'strong'? Make it less 'strong'? Or make skills better than attack? How much better?
author=AveeI agree with Avee, having attack being more and more useful once you have become a stronger level, is pretty ideal.
I'd agree with you about everything, I think it does make a game more enjoyable, provided that there is still room for the players to pwn the enemies with basic attacks when they've achieved a high level of experience or high stats, so they can experience the satisfaction of having become powerful enough to not have to play by the earlier rules. I think variety is ideal.
One solution might be to remove the attack command from the game all together, and make your weapons give you skills, or power up your skills.
author=LDanarkosPhylomortis Avant Garde had a fatigue system, except being too fatigued killed the player.
You could make a form of fatigue, where using a command reduced that character's effectiveness with using that particular command by X% for the remainder of the battle.
As for skill cooldowns, in my game, every skill that I find powerful has a cooldown, just to discourage the tactic where you just spam a skill and then restore your MP. The cooldown is usually about 2-4 turns.
Oh and attack mashing, it just brings me to the point where in some games, attacking is way too useless.
Wow, I was totally tempted to make another post about WoW and Paper Mario and then I realized I already did that in this topic.
Anyway, another thought that works is making taking damage more meaningful. In most Final Fantasy games, you get enough Potions to stay at full health constantly, and running out of resources is never an issue.
However, in Earthbound (especially the first few chapters) you have limited inventory, items don't heal you that much, your spells are limited to small amounts of PP (which can only be efficiently recovered at an inn, PP restoring items are rare), and the enemies can hit you very hard. You have to take down baddies quickly and often even avoid battles to survive a dungeon. The game doesn't really capitalize on this fully, but it's certainly not as forgiving as some RPGs.
This theory also applies to roguelikes, where you never know what's around the corner, and every resource is limited.
Anyway, another thought that works is making taking damage more meaningful. In most Final Fantasy games, you get enough Potions to stay at full health constantly, and running out of resources is never an issue.
However, in Earthbound (especially the first few chapters) you have limited inventory, items don't heal you that much, your spells are limited to small amounts of PP (which can only be efficiently recovered at an inn, PP restoring items are rare), and the enemies can hit you very hard. You have to take down baddies quickly and often even avoid battles to survive a dungeon. The game doesn't really capitalize on this fully, but it's certainly not as forgiving as some RPGs.
This theory also applies to roguelikes, where you never know what's around the corner, and every resource is limited.
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 you have very limited HP recovery, winning battles while taking the bare minimum of damage definitely becomes important. I have to point out, by itself, this doesn't do a lot to keep the player from using his strongest attack every round of every battle. But in a game that's already making the optimal strategy inherently more interesting than just Bum Rush over and over and over, it can suddenly change the importance of the more complex strategy from "slightly faster" to "way better".
However, if you have very limited MP recovery, the opposite effect occurs. Suddenly, every point of MP becomes extremely precious. Even with limited HP recovery at the same time, in a huge percentage of cases you'd rather take extra damage than use an attack that costs MP. Now you're not using your best attack every round, but instead using your cheapest attack every round. You gotta save that MP for bosses - you can't be using any of it up on mooks. If you can't get through the mooks without using MP, you won't make it out of the dungeon alive.
Suikoden games are like this - MP recovery in dungeons is borderline impossible, and you can only cast your good spells maybe 2-5 times before having to return to an inn, so the only thing you ever use are normal attacks for the whole game, except on bosses. Sometimes a specific character gets a free once-per-battle skill that's slightly more interesting than a normal attack, but it's the exception, not the norm. And sometimes you get a good Unite attack, but then you're just using that every round instead, so the only thing making it any more interesting is the animation.
However, if you have very limited MP recovery, the opposite effect occurs. Suddenly, every point of MP becomes extremely precious. Even with limited HP recovery at the same time, in a huge percentage of cases you'd rather take extra damage than use an attack that costs MP. Now you're not using your best attack every round, but instead using your cheapest attack every round. You gotta save that MP for bosses - you can't be using any of it up on mooks. If you can't get through the mooks without using MP, you won't make it out of the dungeon alive.
Suikoden games are like this - MP recovery in dungeons is borderline impossible, and you can only cast your good spells maybe 2-5 times before having to return to an inn, so the only thing you ever use are normal attacks for the whole game, except on bosses. Sometimes a specific character gets a free once-per-battle skill that's slightly more interesting than a normal attack, but it's the exception, not the norm. And sometimes you get a good Unite attack, but then you're just using that every round instead, so the only thing making it any more interesting is the animation.
That's why Earthbound strikes me as a great example. You can carry around a decent amount of food, so healing is limited but not ridiculously so. Your main character is the best healer, but he also has the best area-attack spell (for a while, anyway) and his MP pool is pretty limited. Your caster is weak and her normal attacks are nearly useless, but she has great nukes and enough MP to afford casting one or two good nukes a battle (and still having enough MP to spam the boss with nukes). Of course, she has no heals.
This is also why Edifice strikes me as an interesting and possibly amazing take on RPG battles, although Craze's obsession with stats scares me a little bit.
This is also why Edifice strikes me as an interesting and possibly amazing take on RPG battles, although Craze's obsession with stats scares me a little bit.
