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Button Mash - Forcing the player to use different skills
author=Crystalgate
Actually, I can add another boring:
- The same combination being the most effective for most encounters.
Even if you make the optimal damage output a complex series of skills, if said series proves to be the optimal strategy against most targets, it will still get boring. This includes minor alterations such as replacing fire spells with ice spells. To keep battles fresh, you have to make it so that the optimal strategy changes depending on the encounter. So far, less than 10% of every RPG I've played manage that.
First i'd like to mention that i dont think series of skills need to be, or should be complex or even complicated. If the battles aren't simple "stand there and beat it to death"-style, the characters have a lot more to do than do their "rotation" of skills, like situative utilities, interrupts, item-use, defending etc. It would discourage the player from using clever stuff if it had a heavy bad impact on the average damage performance. I think a relatively small number of skills can be quite challenging to use "to the maximum" in changing battle situation.
Plus, a player has to take care of more than one character very often, that is also to be considered.
A well made set of skills could allow a character to do different patterns and tactics for different situation, may it be singletarget vs multitarget damage, quick burn phases, doing his damage while reacting to a pattern of boss-action, controlling certain monsters.
To be honest i'm not a big fan of characters that have 40+skills with 3 of them being effective per battle, the "guess the vulnerable element"-style of battles.
Button Mash - Forcing the player to use different skills
I think "encouraging" sounds so much better than "forcing".
There may always be a certain pattern that results in maximum damage but players feel good when they think they found out those well working combinations by themselves.
Lets say we have a "Fire over time" that increases crit against burning targets", we have an "increases next fire spell" on 18 rounds cooldown, a hardhitter on 7 rounds cooldown and a skill that can always be used (filler).
The only thing forced here is that the player can't use the hardhitter all the time while the "fire over time" and the "increases next firespell" encourage the player to use combinations of spells.
Boring would be:
- simple combinations being simply better than more complex ones
- lots of spells doing the same in different colors
- saving mana for bosses while doing "melee attack" on every other monster (yeah, even the mage and the priest), and this is the worst because the boring way should not be the best way to do something.
There may always be a certain pattern that results in maximum damage but players feel good when they think they found out those well working combinations by themselves.
Lets say we have a "Fire over time" that increases crit against burning targets", we have an "increases next fire spell" on 18 rounds cooldown, a hardhitter on 7 rounds cooldown and a skill that can always be used (filler).
The only thing forced here is that the player can't use the hardhitter all the time while the "fire over time" and the "increases next firespell" encourage the player to use combinations of spells.
Boring would be:
- simple combinations being simply better than more complex ones
- lots of spells doing the same in different colors
- saving mana for bosses while doing "melee attack" on every other monster (yeah, even the mage and the priest), and this is the worst because the boring way should not be the best way to do something.
How is this for my first boss?
Hi!
i dont see poisoning the own party as something very counter-intuitive and bad design, you cant just say "this is counter-intuitive for every game in the world".
If the game teaches you that bad effects are meant to be put on enemys and good stuff is always put on heros and/or if other damaging/negative effects can't even target the party, then it surely is counter-intuitive.
But it doesnt have to be that way. For example lets say we have a "dampen holy magic"-skill. That would be useful on heros and enemies, it decreases damage taken from holy and reduces the healing enemies get from holy magic. Of course its not the best of all idea to heal a character using holy magic after shielding him against holy magic.
If its part of the game to think of the different use-cases for effects on party of enemies, breaking sleep using poison isn't such a bad idea. This also says nothing about how much the poison damages the party (it does not have to deal massive damage forever), it can also be short run and deal only little damage. On the other side, since this is damage inflicted by the player itself in a way, it can also mean a different situation for healing abilities, a variation of the healing challenge.
It may be "aiming bad stuff at own heros" that is considered so counter-intuitive, but using damage to break effects is fine i think.
i dont see poisoning the own party as something very counter-intuitive and bad design, you cant just say "this is counter-intuitive for every game in the world".
If the game teaches you that bad effects are meant to be put on enemys and good stuff is always put on heros and/or if other damaging/negative effects can't even target the party, then it surely is counter-intuitive.
But it doesnt have to be that way. For example lets say we have a "dampen holy magic"-skill. That would be useful on heros and enemies, it decreases damage taken from holy and reduces the healing enemies get from holy magic. Of course its not the best of all idea to heal a character using holy magic after shielding him against holy magic.
If its part of the game to think of the different use-cases for effects on party of enemies, breaking sleep using poison isn't such a bad idea. This also says nothing about how much the poison damages the party (it does not have to deal massive damage forever), it can also be short run and deal only little damage. On the other side, since this is damage inflicted by the player itself in a way, it can also mean a different situation for healing abilities, a variation of the healing challenge.
It may be "aiming bad stuff at own heros" that is considered so counter-intuitive, but using damage to break effects is fine i think.
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