WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT? (GAME DEVELOPMENT EDITION)

Good games and good books are a big category, are there any specifics you're looking for? Like just RPGs or games in general? Also, are you looking for more obscure stuff? For example, I assume you don't need anyone here to tell you Chrono Trigger is a good game, but you might not have heard of Radiant Historia or The Last Story.

As for books, again are you looking for a specific genre? Once again, I assume you don't need to hear someone rattle off all the classics of western canon. If you're trying to improve your writing for RPGs then I imagine you might be looking for fantasy and sci-fi stuff.

If so, I'd recommend the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's my favorite fantasy series, so I'm a little biased. The first three books are a tad dated and were written for a younger audience in mind, though they have a general appeal. But the fourth book, Tehanu, is what I consider the best book of the genre. It was written close to twenty years after the original trilogy. Le Guin wanted express her feminist views more in her work and felt that she had a better handle on how to portray the world of Earthsea through that lens. Real time passes, the boy from the first book is a grizzled old wizard by the fourth. The book in general feels much more mature. The result is a an author's fascinating deconstruction of not only the world she created, but thoughtfully deconstructs fantasy literature in general. I could say a lot more but I don't want this post to be huge. There's also a fifth book, but no one cares about it.

EDIT: And if you're looking for a bad game to know what not to do, check out Xenoblade Chronicles 2. A lot of people talk of the difference between complexity vs depth, and Xenoblade 2 is the most tangible example of "all width, no depth", I've ever seen. Combine that with a plot that seems to be saying "respect your partner, don't put on her a pedestal", yet can't stop putting the women in ridiculous outfits and shoving Pyra's breast and ass into every camera angle, you end up with a hell of a confused game.

author=GreatRedSpirit
You don't have to redefine RPG combat with every game, hell I'm pretty much like that. My brain just doesn't get some of these games that do their own things and idk if that's become I'm some geriatric or the game. Familiarity can be a huge boon!

I sympathize with this. I like simplicity, there's an elegance to it. I am Dragon Quest fan after all, and it irks me when I see people saying the series' lack of drastic change is a negative. I'm not really trying to reinvent the wheel, ideally I do want a more meat and potatoes combat system. But without the production value of games made by big companies, I feel indie games have a greater obligation to really hit on meaningful fun mechanics, if that makes sense.

And then, when I google around for articles on balancing rpg numbers, I inevitably come across articles by people who point out all the problems with RPGs (this one in particular put me in a sour mood about making my game: http://www.castaliahouse.com/jrpg-systems-best-when-used-in-non-jrpgs/). This sort of thing stokes a fire in me where I want to prove them wrong and that makes me worry about needing to find a set of mechanics that break the mold. Granted my time would probably be better spent making something for people who actually like the genre, but I can't get stuff like this out of my head.

I've also become really fascinated by Paper Mario's design after replaying for the first time in over a decade last year. I'm curious how it's design philosophies could work within a more traditional rpg. I sort of want to make a topic about that and taking a deep dive into the design of the first two Paper Marios - and I don't mean the timed button presses. Are new people allowed to make topics or do I need a specific post count? Is that even a topic-worthy discussion?

My problem with Xenoblade 2 is that all that complexity is mostly an illusion. There's a lot to the combat, but all the layers follow a strict series of steps: Auto-Attack to fuel arts > Use arts to fuel specials > Use specials to set elemental orbs > Use chain attack to burst orbs. There's a lot of layers, but only one layer is active at a time, it's more like a state machine the player robotically progresses through. I feel like the developers actually realized how banal it was and intentionally obfuscated the system with all these weird proper names for the system and overly verbose tell-don't-show tutorials to hide it. Learning the system is less of an organic process and more about figuring out what the hell the game is talking about with names like "Blade Specials" and "Fusion Combo".

It's a shame, because I'm a big of fan of Monolith Soft and Takahashi's work in general (I even played Soma Bringer with a fan translation), and I loved the first Xenoblade. I agree Tora is terrible. My sister actually stopped playing because of Tora (and she played all of the first one and X with Riki and Tatsu) I don't know how far you are, but I hate how the Blade tends to have the same story role as the driver. Rex and Pyra are both generic shonen heroes (Mythra's a little more interesting in fairness), Tora and Poppi are both comic relief. Then the fifth character is also comic relief, and so his blade has to be as well. Half your party is comic relief. The fourth driver is great though, I played as her for most the game as a dodge tank, I even soloed some superbosses with her.

The review you're talking about is Tim Roger's. I've been following his work for a while, both his work as a journalist and an indie designer (he has a company called action button, they made ziggurat and video ball). He's probably more passionate about Dragon Quest than I am. I hope you enjoy 11, it's a nice game to just chill with. I thought it was divine, but again, I'm biased and still in the honeymoon phase. I'll probably double dip on the switch version for the orchestrated soundtrack and extra content.

I'm glad to see someone else say that the blogpost was mostly weak arguments and I wasn't crazy. The comments were just going on about pokemon and not really engaging the substance. I like to give views like these the benefit of the doubt that there's truth to them, though the part about Japanese developers not thinking through the numbers felt very dishonest. You could make that point with the first Phantasy Star perhaps, but the math behind the original Dragon Warrior/Quest is very carefully thought out.

Oh, and if you have time for it, the DLC story campaign for Xenoblade 2, Torna the Golden Country, is actually pretty decent and feels a little more mature. The story of Lora and Jin is a lot more personal and heartfelt than Rex and Pyra's. I don't want to spoil too much, but I love how they handle the final battle - not gameplay, but thematically. They even cleaned up the combat a fair bit - it's still a far cry from deep and engaging, but it's a step in the right direction.

re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2
I agree with pretty much everything. Hell the bits about the orbs I still don't know what that's about, if the game ever told me it sure didn't stick and it doesn't feel like there's feedback from the game of what I'm doing that "sets" an orbs. Got Mythra to the final ring of her affinity chart and unlocked the cooldown reset on crit ability and I just let the double spinning edges fly atm.

One disappointment was coming to XB2 after playing FF14. It has a much better UI and I wish XB2 had anything from it. The monster you're targeting has a circle around it on the ground with markers for front/flank/back, who it's targeting has an arching red line, and it shows the relative aggro everybody has for a given mob. Most enemies in FF14 have indicators on the ground appear if they're using an area-based attack too, get out of the red circle before the enemy cast gauge fills up and you avoid the attack! There's nothing like that in XB2. Plus those super small and aggressive mobs are annoying and I really really hate blowback.

I'm around... chapter 5 or 6?


I did get the Torna DLC which came with piles of other goodies (yay legendary cores, I got some new cool blades from that). Once I beat XB2 I'll probably switch to another game then go and do Torna, I'm still enjoying the game even if I complain about it a lot. The difficulty hack bit helps too, hell that's kinda what got me to buy the DLC. Kill X of one mob in Leftheria (sic?), aggro one and five other mobs join in over the course of the fight. Got tired of that shit, bought the DLC, and turned enemy aggro off (and during one obnoxious enemy their HP too).


I hope I enjoy DW11 too! I'm less of a dumb internet edgelord than what I was a few years back and hopefully I can give it a fair shake. It's practically a different genre but I enjoyed Dragon Warrior Builders too and I'm excited for when DQB2 finally comes out on the switch.



re: Superstar Saga

Superstar Saga is so good and I agree with the Dream Team problem. Fights became a huge slog in that game with the elaborate attack patterns enemies had, failing could result in a ton of damage, and if you don't kill enemies quickly it becomes an enormous slog. I remember there's an airship of Shy Guys that just fly in and pelt you with cannon fire late in the game. I almost finished it but jesus the endgame was just too much.

Superstar Saga was super smooth in comparison. Enemies don't overstay their welcome, it isn't super punishing if you fail the counters/dodges, and those with the big attacks are bosses. It's such a great game except for the final boss bit.

Also for the first FF boss, it's intended to be some sort of ATB tutorial. Don't have to act right away when a turn comes up kinda deal. Except the rest of the game and use of the ATB doesn't really support it. It's never clear what enemy actions are counter attacks or if what you're doing triggers them or when you should wait except that you can. Hell you can't even switch whose turn it is until FF6 iirc. It's bad communication from the game (which Superstar Saga does much better).

@Darken
I like those examples you posted, having not played the game myself. Honestly, I forgot there was another Mario RPG series. The main thing I'm getting about what works for the enemy design in both has a lot to do with animation. As someone who is trying to do all the pixel art for my project alone, enemy animation is quite the task, but maybe it really would be worth it in the end.

EDIT: I misread what your point was about first FF bosses and realized I just said a bunch of redundant stuff. Sorry about that, I should've read more carefully.

I completely agree with what you said about the enemies in the Mario IP easily lend themselves to interesting puzzles in the process of figuring how to convert them for a turn based game. My issue is, shouldn't that be even easier with a completely original work? You have full creative control without worrying about adhering to anything that already exists. So why do so many RPGs making completely new enemies often fail to give them a lot of variety and different ways to interact with the player? It makes me wonder if the creativity specifically comes from the process of interpreting platformer enemies into a different genre. Maybe I should start doing some thought experiments about adapting something like Devil May Cry enemies into a turn based game.

I saw your post in the Paper Mario thread. Thank you for posting there, the blog post you linked looks interesting I'm going to give a read later today when I have some time. Thanks again for posting it.

@GreatRedSpirit
The elemental orbs are set by completing a "blade combo". The first elemental blade special you use on an enemy gets set as a status effect visible on the top right of the foe's nameplate. Two more specials can be stacked on top of this and the last (third) special stacked determines the element of the orb. It gets weird because you can't stack any element on top of another. There are set paths of elements you have to do and they're all arbitrary. For instance fire>water>fire is a usable combo as is water>earth>wind and water>water>dark, they all have weird names for each combo to. You're best of finding a spreadsheet for all possible combos, I think the wiki has one. This doesn't apply to Torna though, the basic system's still there but it's handled differently.

Spamming double edge with Mythra is indeed the path of least resistance. Most the challenge you'll find in Xenoblade 2 is self-imposed. It's why I soloed superbosses with Morag and took advantage of the dots set by her specials instead of actually completing a blade combo and sitting on my charged up level 4 special waiting to use it's invincibility frames for when the level 130 boss uses his instant death attack.

There's a guy on youtube named Enel who has videos showing a bunch of crazy things you can do with specific blade set ups in the post game and dlc challenge mode. Unfortunately most of Xenoblade 2's tactics are really only usable in the post game content.

I've never really played MMOs. I have some social anxiety issues that always made the genre seem daunting to me. But I have watched a lot videos for Final Fantasy XIV and would like to see some ideas implemented into a single-player game. The first Xenoblade was my first experience with this sort of "tab-target" real-time but still abstract and stat-based style of battle design and I really like it when done well. I've read people say things like xenoblade should either be full turn based or full action instead of experimenting in the middle, but it just clicks for me for whatever reason.

EDIT 2: Cut some stuff here because this post was monstrously long and what I was saying wasn't very interesting. The gist of it was that, I really like AOE-indicator idea from FF14. If I were to design a game with a movement aspect, I would like to incorporate it. Also, the Pillars of Eternity games look to do some interesting stuff with the same kind of AOE markings, though I haven't played them yet.

One thing I do disagree on is how other mobs can pulled into your fight in Xenoblade 2. For me, it just made it feel like the game wanted me to care more about the environment you're in and it worked. Be aware of the space around me and carefully using the lure mechanic to get enemies alone was one of the parts of Xenoblade 2 that made me actually feel like I was being creative and tactical. Xenoblade X did this to an even greater extreme. I fully understand why other would find it annoying though.

And Builders 2 looks great, looking forward to picking it whenever the switch version comes out (this summer, I think).

@Etherpenguin

Ah, those elemental chain things. I follow them, I see the "Seal Thingy" that I have no actual idea what that does, and I can't remember what ends with what anyways. Feels like another overdesigned thing. It is neat that you can solo the super bosses too.


I get the anxiety of MMORPGs, I had that too when playing 14. Older trial unfinished, watch a video of it, FC talk is about clearing it for some newer people, and I sit out because of anxiety 'n shit. Oh well~ I would like to see more games use the AoE indicators of FF14, or otherwise try to inform the player of what they're doing. One game went all in with this: Into the Breach if you've heard of it. It's a turn based strategy game where the enemies show exactly what they're doing when they take their action. I like the turn based approach, you can see what enemies are doing at your own pace and they have multiple objectives to mix up each map. It's been ages since I've watched Last Story (never played it myself) so idr the cover system in that game.

For XBC2 pulling I did try the slow, actually play the game approach. I lost my patience with jerk birds jumping in, mobs walking into range of attacks (if I could switch to Morag who was tanking and pull away from other mobs, and if walking with weapons out wasn't so slow...), or running to kill a bird for an affinity chart node w/o aggroing other enemies before the bird flew off. It was just way easier to just cheat enemies to be less of a chore, I hope Torna's better with all of that.

Where can I buy willpower for cheap? I'll need about a few trucks.

I kind of have to accept that my fear of screwing up is holding me back to the point where I can't even bring myself to start doing the hard parts of my project. Fear of failure is a paralyzing force.

Maybe if I embraced failure, I'd be more productive? Like, accept that my first version will be absolute garbage, so that I can get on with it.

On a whim, I felt the desire to go with a FF10 style CTB combat system. Originally, I intended for the classic method of queueing up commands and watching them play out. I like how agility feels important without being THE most important stat in that classic system, but I'm thinking CTB would just feel more fun when your characters act immediately after input.

I don't have a whole lot of my game built so it's not a massive overhaul, but it's making me rethink how to implement some of the stuff I wanted for the battle system. The biggest issue I'm stuck on is how to handle damage over time effects, especially since I wanted a character like Riki in Xenoblade where all their damage came from dots. If casting haste on your party and slow on the opponent increases the amount of turns you get and pushes back the enemy to hardly act, then isn't this just punishing a character who relies on dots for damage? So, here's what I'm thinking:

Solution 1: Damage over time effects get their own 'turn'. They wouldn't show up on the turn window, but they would have their own amount of ticks passing and go off independently of the unit suffering their effect. I would probably have all dots on a unit get clumped together in one turn. If an enemy is already suffering burn damage and you inflict frost damage, then that frost will just go off when the burn does.

Solution 2: Dots go off when the character who inflicted them get a turn instead of when the one inflicted does. This gets dots to work with the goals of CTB, not only does casting haste on a character make them get more turns, it also makes their dots deadlier, and casting slow on an enemy reduces the threat of their dots. This might reinforce the problem of agility being too important though.

The concern I have with these is that they could slow down the combat. I wanted the FF style sideview but with a more dynamic camera. I intend to have the camera move around and center on whoever is taking a turn. Making dots go off independently of the unit their inflicted on would mean more camera movement which could get annoying. I also worry it's less clear what's going on. Then there's the general concerns for CTB: if agility becomes THAT important, casting haste and slow becomes the dominant strategy and could end up feeling like chores.

I also considered the method that a lot of modern rpgs have settled on where it's still one turn per round but actions play out after input and there's a turn window (Octopath Traveler, Xenosaga 3, Divinity: Original Sin, Tokyo Mirage Sessions for example). To me, this is a wishy washy middle-ground between the classic system and CTB that carries the strengths of neither. I never cast haste in Xenosaga 3. In classic Dragon Quest, casting agility buffs is about helping to ensure predictably for your plan to work. If you can see the order of turns and your next character gets to react to what the enemies are doing mid-round then you've thrown all that out the window. Dragon Quest XI sort of pulls it off by just not having a turn window but I've seen a fair amount of complaints regarding that. This style in general just feels like a milquetoast solution where the developers wanted the more visceral feel of CTB but didn't want to actually balance a system without strict rounds. I've decided this is probably not what I want (though I'm open to a good counter-argument in favor of this style).

Now, I've not actually built a CTB system inside of Game Maker before, though I have an idea how to go about it with data structures. Creating the turn window is giving me a bit of headache to think about (I'll probably make it more Blue Dragon than FF10). If I can't get it to work, I'll probably scratch the whole thing and go back to what I was doing.

Thanks for your response!

I'm favoring solution 1, nice to know someone's done something similar. Just having damage numbers without any spell animation or pausing would be nice (though I'd probably have some particle effects pop up with the damage number to indicate which dot is going off, red for burn, blue for frost, etc.).

It was more the enemies I was worried about showing damage numbers on if the camera's away from them. Like you said, player characters could show the damage taken on the HUD, but that's not workable for enemies. I could use the enemy's icon in the turn window though. Alternatively my idea for a more Xenogears-like camera may just be a dumb idea for a pixel art game. I should probably mention I'm using a 384x216 resolution with 32x32 sprites. If I go with ff6-style 24x24 sprites there would be less need for a moving camera, and it would reduce the workload. I only have a 4-directional walk cycle done for one character and it took forever so FF6-proportioned sprites are starting to look more attractive.

To deal with the last thing you mention, about higher agility changing how often to use dot-inflicting skills, I'm thinking about making the charge time for dots based on the average of all combatant's agility. Pretty much all skills will have an immediate damaging effect as well since dot damage is planned to be a percentage of the damage that inflicted it (burn = 40%, frost= 70%, poison = 100% per tick).

EDIT: I didn't want to make a whole new post to say this, but I agree with what LockeZ says below. I was overthinking things, the numbers do not need be shown every time. Also, I got the CTB system working, so that was my big accomplishment for the week lol! Turn window exists but looks rough.

I'm having a little trouble with terminology for my current project. The main villain, Xangorath, is labelled as a necromancer. A necromancer being a magic user, normally a living person who conducts magic on the dead. But Xangorath himself is a splinter of a greater evil whom died some thousands of years before who possesses living people, erasing who they were but retaining the hosts memories, essentially making him also a lich, a lich being an undead magic user. So I'm torn between keeping Xangorath's title as necromancer, changing his title to lich, or creating a new word that could potentially mean 'a demon who possesses the living, and also has control over the dead, or undead'.

And while we're on the subject of terminology I was thinking of using the word Scholary as a place of learning instead of school. As with school is invokes the word Scholar, but part of me thinks the word is too stupid sounding and sounds too close to a scullery.

But I think I've gotten in way over my head as what initially started as a small 2 to 3 hour game to test if I can write dark fantasy or not has instead turned into a full blown project with a world I want to create, something that's actually populated and has it's own religions, politics, and struggles rather than just a map that serves as a backdrop for the heroes to travel from town to dungeon to town to dungeon.

author=Pyramid_Head
And while we're on the subject of terminology I was thinking of using the word Scholary as a place of learning instead of school. As with school is invokes the word Scholar, but part of me thinks the word is too stupid sounding and sounds too close to a scullery.

Scholary sounds and looks too much like the adjective scholarly. If I saw it in a game, I would assume it was a typo at first glance. Have you considered the word Seminary? Might also be too religious-y though. You could also make up an ancient scholar in your world that the schools become named after sort of like Lyceum.