GEARING UP AND PACE OF DISTRIBUTION

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The fact of the matter is in order for developers to avoid this issue they need to not give out the best equipment early. It's that simple.

In my own games, I rarely give out the best equipment. There's also the issue of whether it'll be useful or not when you receive that equipment; for example, in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, the secret bosses give out weapons, but there's no use for them once you have them besides the Mirage Arena. Which is, sadly, an improvement over the other KH games where the best items were rewards for end game fights.
Equipment should not be given out early nor should it be a reward for defeating the strongest boss. The best equipment in a game should be given near end-game, ideally, to prepare for a) the final battle and b) any 'extra-curricular activities' the player wishes to partake in.

With FF13, I personally thought the way money was handled was the best in any RPG I've played (though Persona 4 did it quite well, too). Money should be quite sparse, and counting it as insignificant in the process is far from ideal. Money in games is universal, unlike items that are specifically for other uses (such as 'screws' for synthesis) and should be counted just as important in the race to obtain the best of the best. However, it is true that a player shouldn't be rewarded for farming; FF13, I still think, did this well in that upgrading weapons to their best potential required careful use of crappy EXP items for the bonuses and the better ones once those bonuses were obtained. In order to avoid the dilemma where a player has all the best equipment by the time they reach the 5th Ark or something ridiculous, they should've put restrictions on upgrade levels. Such as being unable to use this type of equipment until you Crystarium level is higher.

There are many solutions for this problem, truth be told. It is an issue, definitely, but if we as developers are to confront it, we have to do it in our own ways. And then test, test, test test. Test.

editted for grammatical errors. I'm sleepy.

Even in a game like Final Fantasy 6 with a very traditional equipment system, you can get some of the best accessories in the game (Auto-Haste, Magic Power+, Dual Wield, Counter-Attack) very early in the game. But I don't see this as a problem. What you get later in the game is choice: you get the versatility to adapt to different situations as needed by gaining a large variety of accessories that do different types of things. You never actually get an upgrade to the Genji Gauntlet or the Black Belt, but you get lots of other options that are better in some situations and worse in others.

I am a big fan of gaining versatility as the game goes on, not just power. I don't actually see this as a problem. As long as I'm getting useful things still at the end of the game, I don't mind that the stuff I got much earlier is still good too. (I do get annoyed by Dragon Age's random shit equipment that is only ever good for selling.)

However, just because a power-up is numerically better doesn't mean you should use it over your old one - for instance, if I'm a spellcaster, I don't want to equip something that boosts my physical damage and would rather stick with the thing that gives me more mana.

Disgaea also has a nice equip system similar to this - you equip one weapon (which not only can give you widely customizable stats and bonuses, but also determines the physical skills you can learn and use) and three non-weapon items (bar consumables). Also, you can enter every item's Item World to level it up (boosting the stat boosts of the equipment and improves the healing/stealing effect on fodd items/hands).

In Demon's Gate I took making the end-game gear good too far. I avoided making the next tier weapons the previous tier + 1. There were significant boosts to stats and at best only one weapon a tier was the "hit things harder" weapon. Others would have an assortment of bonuses like first strike, inflict worse and more status more often, resist more statuses and elements, ect. . The endgame was balanced around the player having some stupidly powerful weapons (hit+poison all, hit four times, inflict all debuffs on attack) and without them the difficulty jump was huge. The ultimate weapon, the Berkut, was just plain stupid: It hit everybody three times with a boost to critical damage with an element that nobody was weak to but nobody resisted (and enemies resist a lot at the endgame) and on the off chance anything survived that onslaught it would also just randomly inflict Death. Stupidly overpowered that only the endgame enemies could drop it at a 2% chance (or the endendgame enemies at 10%) *.

Such strong weapons had a huge problem though: Skills and tactics went out the window in battle. The most significant decisions came before the battle deciding who should use what (and if you had the Berkut it was a no brainer). Sure you could try to use a debuff skill but you got the Skullkraken a while ago so just hit with that for a chance to inflict everything and do some damage at the same time! Bunch of tough enemies? Hit using the guy with the hit-all+poison weapon! Your dog could beat the endgame if you got the best gear and good enough stats to last long enough to hit first.

The endgame gear was fantastic but it made the endgame a quest of getting that gear then curbstomping everything. If you want a game with challenge then the endgame should be where the player has to use everything they learned throughout the game not where they get Murder Swords and cruise control through it. There's the happy place between cool equipment and difficult endgame but that's the elusive endgame balance and balancing everything before it is already tough. It only gets harder with endgame side quests and optional top tier equipment (hel~lo optional superbosses please go ahead and turn the final boss into a giant wimp).

* There's a guaranteed spot to find it but it's stupid and bad game design and nobody would ever find it without being told where it is and how to trigger it. Almost Zodiac Spear kind of stupid.




In Altima XTREME I'm going to try and find that sweet spot. After all it's a game where:

Tonfa's Review of Altima
... after all, a free roaming game where you can get the strongest sword in the first 20 minutes has its own appeal - but you're untouchable to all but the final boss when decked out in decent gear.

I was trying to write something up here but I can't keep a train of thought going on it so I'll just leave it there for now.

author=Corti
My plan:Giving every monster group a small chance to drop a piece of gear matching its level. I made myself an excel-sheet in which i enter a level and it returns the statvalues for all combinations of stats (atk,def,haste,crit). Its all calculated so that every combination is equally strong (as much as that is possible).

All my characters can use the same gear, atk for example improves melee damage, magic damage and healing. While dealing more damage and healing more is never bad, haste and crit lead to different playstyles. Taking a lot of "% chance on crit"-talents invite to give the best crit gear to a certain character for example.
Things like that exist for every character, so it will be a bit off a puzzle, combining characters, their talentsystem and gear for a more effective way you want them to be. Fast & Critting, slow hardhitting and almost invulnerable~

It's a nice way to plan... But since I'm under experiment phase, I have to deal with drop rates and equipment quality distribution once it's over and ready to start the main project. But then, I need to stick with a bit more finesse in combat, requiring a balanced party organization and know-how of various enemy attack patterns, especially those that can change patterns depending on status effect in place.

Regardless, I still have to craft equipment to either suit classes or test scripts, particularly using firearm weapons that can be augmented with ammunition accessories that slightly alters the properties. For instance, I can give a Rifleman class a bolt-action rifle, and only deals regular damage. The "Anti-Material Ammo" allows the rifle to deal damage without reduction from the enemy's defense stats, or "Incendiary Rounds" that can deal fire elemental damage, or "White Phosphorus Rounds" that can inflict "burn" status effect. But before doing that, I still need to know how to do scripting.

I'm all for tiers and upgrades and other nontraditional "equipment."

But back on the topic of traditional endgame equipment, such as ultimate weapons, I would say that the gamer should have access to the equipment at an early stage. Maybe say halfway through the game. However, the barrier to actually obtaining this equipment is extraordinary difficult at the earliest point you can obtain.

In other words, IF you want to gamebreak and get the super equipment early, the option is open to you. If not, progress through the game as you would and get the ultimate weapon at the end of the game much easier.

author=Sauce
I'm all for tiers and upgrades and other nontraditional "equipment."

But back on the topic of traditional endgame equipment, such as ultimate weapons, I would say that the gamer should have access to the equipment at an early stage. Maybe say halfway through the game. However, the barrier to actually obtaining this equipment is extraordinary difficult at the earliest point you can obtain.

In other words, IF you want to gamebreak and get the super equipment early, the option is open to you. If not, progress through the game as you would and get the ultimate weapon at the end of the game much easier.

I have to agree with this. Some players just want to become incredibly powerful early on, even if they have to jump through many unnecessary hoops to get there. And why try to stop them? As long as it's not too easy to get for players who don't care for such grinding, then what's the problem? It might make replaying the game more interesting as well. That's just my opinion, though.

I also must say that traditional weapons and armor are getting slightly old. Games that I would make in the future would omit armor altogether, in favor of accessories and such. A current idea I have actually involves equipping magic spells to use in battle that also alter your stats, kind of like Materia from FF7 only more drastic.