CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

post=147881
That's not what I'm really talking about. Let's say the random NPC wanders in front of a door. How is that not annoying that you have to wait for a second for him to move out of the way to get to your destination? What about a sitation where you're trying to walk out of the town, a random NPC walks infront of you, you accidentally press against him but decide to go around him but he goes in the direction you were trying to go around. It's not about getting stuck, it's about getting your time wasted.

If you consider that a concern, you can do what Liberty said and put an event in front of the door that bars NPC from occupying that spot. However, this is rarely a major concern. An NPC standing in front of the door usually has three directions to move which means he's very unlikely to stand there for long. This sort of problem rarely amounts to more than 3 or so seconds wasted for every 5-10 hour of game. Of course, if you have a lot of wandering NPCs in a tight quarter, like you're simulating a party, then the problem of NPCs blocking your way becomes far more likely. Worse, other NPCs can in turn block the blocking NPC. In this case I would recommend setting up invisible NPC blockers.

Normally though, the only major concern is 1 tile wide paths. If an NPC walks into them they can be stuck there for minutes.

I haven't played either of the game that have been suggested. I haven't played every RPG there is and I know there can indeed be one out there that are both fast paced and has good strategic dept. All I know is that I haven't seen one.

I think that instead of discussing certain games I just tell why I think faster paced battles makes it harder to achieve strategic dept.

Several skills becomes less useful the faster battles are. Status effects usually prevents an enemy from hurting you. So does killing it. If it takes 3-4 attacks to kill an enemy, but only one casting of a status effect to disable the same enemy, then it may be worth doing so. The less number of attacks it takes to kill an enemy, the less likely it is that using a status effect instead of attacking will be worthwhile.

Defensive spells faces the same problem. "Protect" lowers the damage enemies deals to you, but having half of them killed in the first round will also lower the amount of damage they can inflict.

Skills that boosts your offense also has a tough time in a fast paced battle. The more turns you spend taking advantage of a buff, the more useful it will be. Naturally, the number of turns you spend taking advantage of a buff cannot be higher than the number of turns the battle lasts.

I don't think that repeating the same strategy over ten battles that takes two turns each is more fun than repeating the same strategy over five battles that takes four turns each. Besides, things like loading the battle, the player reorienting himself and post battle healing won't be halved just because the battle is half as long. So a half the battles, but twice the number of turns, model actually saves time.

Assuming you actually do manage to make battles require strategy, it's unlikely the player finds a strategy he's content with the first time even if he survives the battle. If there were downed members, wasted actions or actions the player can afterwards see are clearly suboptimal, he will try to improve his strategy. I think only a minority of players are satisfied with strategies that will get them trough the battle, but leads to 1-2 downed party members.

Now, assume it takes the player in average three battles to find a strategy he's satisfied with. If the player in average encounters the same monster group five times, that means he will repeat the same strategy twice. With a faster paced battle system, but twice the number of encounters, he will repeat his strategy seven times. So, any time it takes more than one battle for the player for time a satisfactory strategy, halving the numbers of battles means there's less than half the number of repetitions. Less than half the number of repetitions for the price of twice as long battles sounds like a good deal to me.

Finally, I don't think you can "just" squash the same level of strategy into shorter battles. The way you fight RPG battles doesn't seem to me like they were ever designed to be fast paced. In particular, defensive strategies tends to be thrown right out of the window if the battle is over to quickly. There are ways around that, but none which I would refer to as "just". You will most likely have to do some major rethinking of how to handle RPG battles if you want them to be both fast paced and require a high level of strategy. I have never seen that being accomplished.

It seems to me that you first weakened the status effects to make room for layering them. For example, Dizzy in RMXP will by default lower accuracy to 20%. With your idea you need to layer it thrice to lower accuracy to 25%. Considering how players already tend to ignore status effects, there's little chance they will bother with anything that doesn't immediately add two or three layers at once.

I can see single layer effects work if they are applied as an extra from an offensive move though. There are also ways to balance battles so status effects are more appealing. You can make your idea work if you design your game around that feature. I would however advice against implementing your idea if you don't want to go trough that work.

I think that a final boss is a good opportunity to test everything the player has learned from the game. With multiple forms you can set up more "tests" than with only one form.

I will however say that all forms should be designed to challenge the player. I have played games where only the final form was a threat and it made me feel that the earlier forms only serves to waste the player's time.