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How do you go about plotting out combat progression?
post=132628
I do a lot of this in a way that's not easy to lay out on paper. I have kind of an intuitive sense for this stuff.
I do it the opposite way, I plan it out carefully and calculate what stats the monsters should have. I make sure I know what happens if you raise or drop a stat, like "if I drop Attack Power by 10%, the monster will deal 20% less damage to the average character" and so on. I think this goes to show that not everyone can use the same method and that you need to find what works for you.
Battle Party Size
This reminds me of Wizardry: Tales of the Forsaken Land. You have six battle characters, but most of the time you will use something called allied action which usually requires two or more characters to coordinate their actions, so you end up issuing less than six commands. Issuing an allied action command however, usually toke twice or more the time it takes to issue a single action command and the allied actions were ridiculously powerful, often to the point where they overshadowed the skill of the participants. The Suikoden series also features attacks that uses two or more characters, but underutilized it by requiring specific combination of characters, making it something of an afterthought rather than a major tactical element.
If you have a party of six, I think a system in-between those two e.g. not overpowered and quick to use, but still has a great tactical value, is the way to go. That doesn't seem to be what you want though.
You have a challenge if you want to allow six character simultaneously and still make the battle system a tactical challenge.
Give characters a too uniform role and it becomes obvious what the best action for them to take is.
"My fighter is good at inflicting physical damage and bad at everything else, should I have him attack or should I let him do something he's bad at instead?"
"Most of the enemies are weak against Fire, what spell should my black mage use?"
"I have a wounded character and a healer who pretty much can only heal, what should my healer do?"
One the other hand, the more flexible they are, the bigger the chance their skills overlap. With a lot of active characters, it's likely you end up with too many actions to spare. For example, if there are four character who can inflict damage and you need someone to throw a cure paralysis item on the healer, having one of the damage dealers do it will cost almost nothing since you still have three characters who can continue to inflict damage.
I am curious how you intend to dot his. I'm sure there's solutions, but it will take some thought.
If you have a party of six, I think a system in-between those two e.g. not overpowered and quick to use, but still has a great tactical value, is the way to go. That doesn't seem to be what you want though.
You have a challenge if you want to allow six character simultaneously and still make the battle system a tactical challenge.
Give characters a too uniform role and it becomes obvious what the best action for them to take is.
"My fighter is good at inflicting physical damage and bad at everything else, should I have him attack or should I let him do something he's bad at instead?"
"Most of the enemies are weak against Fire, what spell should my black mage use?"
"I have a wounded character and a healer who pretty much can only heal, what should my healer do?"
One the other hand, the more flexible they are, the bigger the chance their skills overlap. With a lot of active characters, it's likely you end up with too many actions to spare. For example, if there are four character who can inflict damage and you need someone to throw a cure paralysis item on the healer, having one of the damage dealers do it will cost almost nothing since you still have three characters who can continue to inflict damage.
I am curious how you intend to dot his. I'm sure there's solutions, but it will take some thought.
Alternative to battles
post=130144
For instance, I too hate the "fight and level constantly" paradigm, so I was trying to come up with some kind of alternative that allowed combat, but didn't constantly encourage it. The idea I had was to have something more of an objective system, where you get rewards from completing quests, missions, and discovering things like treasure in dungeons. In the course of, say, exploring a dungeon, one may come across monsters. Some might be squarely in your way and need to be killed, but I'd likely give you a lot of options to try to get around them, either through alternate paths or stealth skills. Really, you have to ask yourself whether or not you're okay with the notion of the enemy still being in that same place later on when you maybe trek back through the same area. If you're okay with that, you can just pass the fight up, and not lose anything for it. Your real goal is to reach the treasure or whatever other important things are in the dungeon, and that's you'd earn all your xp there.
I've had a similar idea. Basically, you play a magician and mostly you use magic to manipulate people (mind read, charm, e.t.c) or the environment. You can enter combat, but this setting has no fireballs or other offensive spells, the best you can get is something that weakens the enemy. There's no healing spells either, if you get hit you lose stamina which can only be replenished with time or resting. Doing straining activities such as climbing will also cost stamina, so you may want to avoid fighting if you plan on searching a mountain. Exp will also be rewarded mainly for completing objectives (often that is learning a new spell).
If you do fight anyway I'd try to make combat as deep as possible though.
RPG numbers (level, damage, XP, etc.).
I find statting characters and enemies fairly simple. It helps a lot if you actually know what the stats does (so far I've always seen people answer wrong whenever someone asks) and the actual consequences of raising or lowering a stat. Personally, I always rewrite the damage and hit-chance algorithm to something I'm comfortable with which I suppose makes things a bit easier. Also, I plan the stats so that I'll know in advance how much damage is going to fly around.
Experience and money is a bit tricky at first. I suggest you play trough your dungeon while fighting as much as you expect the player to and then see how much exp and gold you got. It should not be that hard to adjust afterwards, if you end up with say twice as much gold as you wanted, halve whatever gold the enemies drop. For future areas I found it easier. You can compare the new exp/price requirements to advance a level with what you required before going trough the former dungeon and then wing it a bit.
For battle length, I prefer if they last 3-5 turns. If they are to fast, you remove a lot of strategy. A defense up spell lowers the damage you take from enemy attacks, but killing the enemy prevents it from attacking which in turn also means you take less damage. Silencing an enemy prevents it from casting spells, so does killing it. Casting an attack up spell causes you to do more damage, but you lose damage by buffing instead of using an offensive skill and with battles over in two turns it's not so likely there will be enough time for the buff to earn back the lost damage. Pretty much anything that doesn't cause direct damage or heal is almost inevitable factored out by making battles to short.
To long battles can simple get boring where things changes to slowly. Seeing the enemy number dwindle is one of the joys and makes you feel that you're winning. Alternatively, one enemy fell and so did one of my party members which will not necessarily make you feel like you're winning, but things are still happening and the battle is in one way or another progressing. If after two turns you still have all enemies left, it will feel more like I'm walking on a treadmill. For bosses I thinks it's fine if no progress can be seen immediately, it's sort of the point with bosses that they are powerful adversaries which you won't get trough to easily.
Experience and money is a bit tricky at first. I suggest you play trough your dungeon while fighting as much as you expect the player to and then see how much exp and gold you got. It should not be that hard to adjust afterwards, if you end up with say twice as much gold as you wanted, halve whatever gold the enemies drop. For future areas I found it easier. You can compare the new exp/price requirements to advance a level with what you required before going trough the former dungeon and then wing it a bit.
For battle length, I prefer if they last 3-5 turns. If they are to fast, you remove a lot of strategy. A defense up spell lowers the damage you take from enemy attacks, but killing the enemy prevents it from attacking which in turn also means you take less damage. Silencing an enemy prevents it from casting spells, so does killing it. Casting an attack up spell causes you to do more damage, but you lose damage by buffing instead of using an offensive skill and with battles over in two turns it's not so likely there will be enough time for the buff to earn back the lost damage. Pretty much anything that doesn't cause direct damage or heal is almost inevitable factored out by making battles to short.
To long battles can simple get boring where things changes to slowly. Seeing the enemy number dwindle is one of the joys and makes you feel that you're winning. Alternatively, one enemy fell and so did one of my party members which will not necessarily make you feel like you're winning, but things are still happening and the battle is in one way or another progressing. If after two turns you still have all enemies left, it will feel more like I'm walking on a treadmill. For bosses I thinks it's fine if no progress can be seen immediately, it's sort of the point with bosses that they are powerful adversaries which you won't get trough to easily.
Generic Combat System complaints
Of course, even games that have fairly unique systems have dumb enemies, until you get all the way up to games that are actually labeled as strategy games of some sort. But does a game have to be about armies to have strategies and smart opponents? Certainly we can do something better than "mage casts most powerful spell, all enemies die, move onto next fight." I honestly have more fun towards the beggining of RPGs since your powers and options are much more limited, forcing you to act smart. Your wizard doesn't have huge end-game nuke spells, so you have to instead try using your Sleep spell and things like that, and have your other characters pick out particular targets and coordinate their attacks in order to eliminate enemies in the most efficient manner. At the end of the game, you tend to just spam powerful attacks and win.
I think this have more to do with poor skill design. There either shouldn't be a "most powerful spell" period or the game should prevent the mage from casting said spell every battle. Ideally, you don't have a best spell, you only have spells which are best in certain situations. If you give the mage a spell that can wipe out every enemy and the resources to cast it every battle, making enemies intelligent will not help at all.
What is your basis for this opinion? If you design a proper system of attack, counterattack, and defense that requires you to arrange your party and strategies smartly to counteract the enemy's tenancy to go after your high-value targets, it could be perfectly exciting.
Ok, I think I see what you mean now. Well, a suppose a "proper" system would work. The question is what would qualify as a proper system. Mind you, you didn't like casting the most powerful spell over and over. However, "move swordsman and axeman to intercept enemies" every battle can also get boring. This means that a "proper" system would have to require variety in how you intercept enemies. If the system isn't very well designed, you will end up with just making battles more annoying. If it's to hard to intercept enemies, the mage will just kick the bucket over and over which will annoy the player. If it's to easy, all you've done is to give the player another task he has to do, but which provides no intellectual stimulation.
So, I retract the notion that making enemies target the weakest automatically means the battle system gets more boring. However, this is a feature you can't half-ass, it has to be well implemented. I have seen poorly implemented item creation systems and the result was just that I ignored them. Your idea can't be ignored though.
Generic Combat System complaints
In my opinion, you should give enemies the AI which makes battles the most fun, not the one which makes them the smartest. Having enemies go for the weakest target (unless that target is defending of course) would make battles really boring. That said, I do think enemies should be smart enough not to take pointless actions all the time. For example, they should not heal an enemy at full or near full health and they should not heal at all if there's only one enemy left. Random encounters should only cast stat up spells the very first turn (it's a waste to cast a buff when the battle is over the next turn) and not target anyone who already has the stat up in question.
Difficult Boss Battles, Skippable Cutscenes, and Rage
post=124556
being able to skip cutscenes should be something that everyone takes care to remember with all of thier boss encounters.
of course, this should only be aviable after the player has already seen it once.
Isn't it easier to just make sure the player can't accidentally skip the cutscene? Some games requires that you first pause the cutscene and then press a specific button. This should be enough to ensure the player won't skip the cutscene by accident. Of course, with an RPG maker you will probably have to ask the player if he wants to skip the cutscene at the start of it since the RPG maker doesn't distinguish between a cutscene and gameplay. However, making sure that "Watch" is the first option and that pressing cancel doesn't skip it should do the trick.
Challenge versus Frustration
My first advice would be to make getting back to the challenging part quick. If a boss is difficult, there should not be a long unskipable cutscene in front of it and the player should be allowed to save first. Also, be careful with bosses with multiple forms, if the third form is the one that causes the game overs, the first two forms will end up being time wasters.
I prefer that if I fail it's because I did something wrong, not because the RNG decided to be a dick. While the RNG will inevitable make some parts harder or easier than expected, buffer it's impact.
Let the player know what happened. If a boss uses a nasty attack called Dark-Flare and you can't see whether it's a fire or dark attack and can't either see if it's a physical of magical attack, it's hard for the player to plan accordingly. It gets even worse if the player has no idea when that attack will come. Sure, the player can experiment, but I don't think it's fun in this case. Unless we're in a logic defying mood, we humans like to be safe when experimenting. When testing whether or not an enemy is susceptible to sleep, we make sure we won't have the party wiped out in case it turns out it's not.
Finally, the more fun the challenge is, the more tolerant a player tends to be towards retrying it. Having the right amount of challenge (where what's right varies from player to player) makes the game more fun, but there's fun that comes from other sources than the challenge. Try to figure out what can make your game fun other than the right amount of challenge and make sure such elements are present in the challenge.
I prefer that if I fail it's because I did something wrong, not because the RNG decided to be a dick. While the RNG will inevitable make some parts harder or easier than expected, buffer it's impact.
Let the player know what happened. If a boss uses a nasty attack called Dark-Flare and you can't see whether it's a fire or dark attack and can't either see if it's a physical of magical attack, it's hard for the player to plan accordingly. It gets even worse if the player has no idea when that attack will come. Sure, the player can experiment, but I don't think it's fun in this case. Unless we're in a logic defying mood, we humans like to be safe when experimenting. When testing whether or not an enemy is susceptible to sleep, we make sure we won't have the party wiped out in case it turns out it's not.
Finally, the more fun the challenge is, the more tolerant a player tends to be towards retrying it. Having the right amount of challenge (where what's right varies from player to player) makes the game more fun, but there's fun that comes from other sources than the challenge. Try to figure out what can make your game fun other than the right amount of challenge and make sure such elements are present in the challenge.
Which battle type is good for you?
There's really no system I really like since I've learned that execution of the system is far more important than the system itself. If you want me to like combat in your game it's going to involve a lot balancing, doing the math and testing so that things actually work as intended.
I do not like the ATB however. It shifts the battle system towards reflexes. While many great games requires reflexes, the problem is that the ATB still uses a menu based system which is there for strategy. If you play say Contra and get into trouble, you can maybe survive by via reflexes hit jump and left. This kind of situation doesn't translate well on a menu based system. Meanwhile, the need of thinking quickly negates strategy. Since the player doesn't have time to think, the game can't demand very much strategy in the first place.
Of course, there's Wait in ATB. However, having Wait chosen negates the point of ATB in the first place. I still always use Wait though since I consider the point of ATB pointless.
I do not like the ATB however. It shifts the battle system towards reflexes. While many great games requires reflexes, the problem is that the ATB still uses a menu based system which is there for strategy. If you play say Contra and get into trouble, you can maybe survive by via reflexes hit jump and left. This kind of situation doesn't translate well on a menu based system. Meanwhile, the need of thinking quickly negates strategy. Since the player doesn't have time to think, the game can't demand very much strategy in the first place.
Of course, there's Wait in ATB. However, having Wait chosen negates the point of ATB in the first place. I still always use Wait though since I consider the point of ATB pointless.
What Drives Your Villains?
I don't want to post the motive of my villain from my current project, but I'll post some motives from abandoned ideas.
One villain simple wanted to extend her life.
One villain was a reborn demon lord. At late teenage her power and memory of her former life awakened. However, she was at this point used to be a human and the thought of being a demon scared her. In an attempt to rid herself of those troubles, she gave her power away to somebody else (that person wasn't aware of it happening). Unfortunately for her, the memories would not go away with the power, she kept remembering more and more about her former life as a demon lord. Eventually she got more comfortable with the idea of being a demon and wondered if she shouldn't try to shed her humanity instead. The problem is that she had given away her power and now her desires is to get it back.
One villain is also a demon lord. Actually, he's not so much a demon lord as a lord in a different world, but humans call creatures from that world demons. Anyway, in the demon world power determines your social position and other attributes like intellect and social graze helps very little. The villain happened to be rather weak for being a demon lord, but also rather clever. As such, he wasn't pleased with how things worked in his world and wanted to figure out a way to topple that social structure. He realized that the other demon lords would have killed him if they find out what he's trying to do, so he moved to the human world to carry out various experiments. This ends up causing trouble for humans as well, but one plot twist is the heroes finding out that his plans would be far more devastating to the demon world than the human world.
Another idea didn't have a specific main villain, but had a desperate government which used questionable methods. The land was under big threat of being attacked, and consequently conquered, by another country and the government desperately sought a way to bolster their defenses.
One villain simple wanted to extend her life.
One villain was a reborn demon lord. At late teenage her power and memory of her former life awakened. However, she was at this point used to be a human and the thought of being a demon scared her. In an attempt to rid herself of those troubles, she gave her power away to somebody else (that person wasn't aware of it happening). Unfortunately for her, the memories would not go away with the power, she kept remembering more and more about her former life as a demon lord. Eventually she got more comfortable with the idea of being a demon and wondered if she shouldn't try to shed her humanity instead. The problem is that she had given away her power and now her desires is to get it back.
One villain is also a demon lord. Actually, he's not so much a demon lord as a lord in a different world, but humans call creatures from that world demons. Anyway, in the demon world power determines your social position and other attributes like intellect and social graze helps very little. The villain happened to be rather weak for being a demon lord, but also rather clever. As such, he wasn't pleased with how things worked in his world and wanted to figure out a way to topple that social structure. He realized that the other demon lords would have killed him if they find out what he's trying to do, so he moved to the human world to carry out various experiments. This ends up causing trouble for humans as well, but one plot twist is the heroes finding out that his plans would be far more devastating to the demon world than the human world.
Another idea didn't have a specific main villain, but had a desperate government which used questionable methods. The land was under big threat of being attacked, and consequently conquered, by another country and the government desperately sought a way to bolster their defenses.
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