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DoubleX RMMV Equip Prerequisites

Updates
v1.01f(GMT 0300 17-1-2016):
1. Fixed undefined variable req bug
2. Exposed this plugin's equip manipulation plugin calls
3. Increased this plugin's compactness, compatibility and readability

Using OODA to write battler AI

author=the13thsecret
Obviously, perfect defense by the enemy is undesirable. However, I'd also just say that changing the probability for the enemy to properly respond is reasonable.

For example, Ralph has a Fire Shield equipped against a fire boss. Normally, boss should attack each player in a four-actor party 25% of the time. Instead of changing the time Ralph gets attacked to 0%, maybe instead 20%. If Ralph also has a Fire Helmet, maybe dock another 5% probability. After all, if the player is beefing one at the expense of others, he should be able to accept the changing odds...assuming he notices the subtlety in the first place. Plus, if the change is obvious and Ralph is always ignored because of the fire equipment, the player now has a blatant counter-strategy with equipment distribution.

Another example. Let's say the boss has stance tendencies. If the player decides to spam super attacks, the boss starts mixing in more defensive options after a while. Realizing that there seems to be an uptick in boss defense, the player switches to stat-effects to get beefy. Eventually the boss catches on and instead of more defense, mixes in more offense while the player is goofing off with silly stat-effects. Thus, we now have a battle of cat-and-mouse.

Anyway, I like this article and I wouldn't mind fighting a smarter enemy...but maybe not this smart.

This remind me the "chaotic" parts of OODA, as it also suggested that some probability and uncertainty should be added into the mix when making decisions(the D part), thus increasing variety and reducing the chance being deciphered.

Using OODA to write battler AI

author=Hasvers
author=LouisCyphre
It's cute on paper but it is remarkably unsatisfying to play against
I wonder. That's definitely true if you also make enemies stronger and/or more numerous. I could see the appeal of a game where you are the guy with 5-digit HP fighting four puny humans who happen to be clever. Though of course they have to be able to fail in predictable ways.

Exactly. It's completely possible that the battles are designed in ways that no matter how well the enemy AI utilizes the OODA, players can still consistently defeat them if they can constantly make the best moves.

Using OODA to write battler AI

author=LouisCyphre
Worth noting: This is the RPG equivalent of a fighting game boss that reads your input to block.

It's cute on paper but it is remarkably unsatisfying to play against. No one likes being 100%, perfectly countered with nothing they can do about it. Imagine a FPS where enemies are perfectly accurate, or--more relevantly--trying to beat a modern chess AI. It isn't fun. Don't put these in your game.

In a game that uses this, all you do by equipping the Fire Shield is make enemies target someone else. There's no point in making any character beefier than normal, because that makes enemies target the next ally down. You can't have frail healers, because they will be focused down. And above all else, unlike any action game where you can overcome these issues with good positioning and reaction time, in an RPG you are purely at the mercy of enemy attack rolls.

I strongly encourage anyone who read this and thought, "Wow! My game needs this!" to fully rethink why they are making a game in the first place.
Then I'd tweak the OODA application a bit: Instead of using it to beat the players, use it to entertain them, by making the battlers to try their best to do what the players expect them to do so the players will feel/think that they're controlling the battles.

For example, the battler AI observed that all party members will be healed from fire elemental damages but are especially vulnerable to ice elemental damages. Then the battler AI will realize that the players are expecting their enemies to deal fire elemental damages to them frequently.

To entertain the players, the battler AI can be designed to shift among fire, ice and some other elements(making the battlers to use that element to deal damage, to be healed from damages with that element, and to be especially vulnerable to the opposite element), in the way that the battlers appear to be randomly changing elements so the players will constantly have to react to those changes. But in fact, the battler AI is written in such a way that it'll always deal ice elemental damage to the players only if the actors have lots of hp, and it'll deal fire elemental damage to them if the actors are about to die. The perceived randomness can be achieved if there are lots of elements to shift.

That way, the players will consistently experience imminent dangers, yet they're actually safe(unless the players do want to be defeated) as now the battler AI wants to entertain the players instead of beating them.

But yeah, the original post explicitly stated that it assumes that the battler AI is to beat the players lol

How to write an atb system script

DoubleX RMVXA Basic ATB has just been written. I hope it can help you better understand how an atb script can be written(later I might elaborate its implementations).

[RMVX ACE] What do you dislike in ATB Systems?

author=Magi
Yo, Grandia III's really good and it was the first example I thought of when clicking this thread. I love that game a lot, despite of its story and characters being hideously stupid. There are numerous flaws in the battle system that revolve around its supplementary features, but the core concept is a lot of fun to play with and visualizes the turn process in a way that you have to base your movements around interrupts and speed to win. I think canceling an enemy out of a devastating skill is one of the most rewarding feelings a player can get in an ATB/Turn-based system, because it feels less like the entire battle is a game of random numbers and that you can strategize your way through it.

I think that CTB is definitely a more compelling system than ATB though, because if I have to play a game in semi-real time I'd rather just be running around in an action battle system. RPGs with a lot of static elements in battle are best utilized by treating it as a deep kind of thinking game and I've yet to see a commercial game that presents a compelling case for blending the two. Maybe someone can provide me some examples?
I think a more accurate differentiation between CTB, ATB and ABS, is that CTB has no space and time(input speed) control and management(although it has battler speed control and management), ATB has time(input speed) but not movements/space control and management(those introducing movements/space can't be compared with that in ABS), and ABS has both.
Among all those 3 choices, for those wanting to manage neither, CTB is likely better; for those wanting to mange time(input speed) but not movements/space, ATB is likely better; for those wanting to manage both, ABS is likely better.
Of course the above is just an extremely vague generalization though :)

[RMVX ACE] What do you dislike in ATB Systems?

author=LightningLord2
author=LockeZ
I dislike that the bars don't fill up instantly, but more than that I dislike that my success in battle is dependant on how quickly I can navigate a menu. ("Wait Mode" in Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger is actually still active mode during the first parts of the battle menu.)

So make the battles pause as soon as it's someone's turn. And then since you're doing that, there's no reason you can't remove the waiting entirely and have the bars get filled up instantly. Oh hey guess what. You just invented CTB.
That feel when you want to post your opinion in a topic only to find someone who said everything you meant to say

I guess there's many people who just can't fathom that tactical thinking is a skill and therefore want everything to have arbitrary technical input skills.
I don't know, but it seems to me that different players have different wants and/or tastes.
While CTB can demand any tactical thinking(and hence its skill) ATB can demand, some might be unsatisfied by exercising tactical thinking alone. They might also want to challenge how quick their tactical thinking are and how quickly they can execute it, with the use of, for instance, actor, skill/item and target selection hotkeys. They might feel satisfied by being able to instantly figure out what they need to do and use those hotkeys to quickly exercise their decisions.
This reminds me of competitive RTS, where quick decision making and high APM(including hotkey masteries) are some of the necessities of being pro RTS players. Again, I don't know, but some players might want just that in turn based battles lol

[RMVX ACE] What do you dislike in ATB Systems?

author=unity
I want to chime in that I also really like the CTB solution, and am using it in my biggest current project. I like the idea that agility is really useful in that it boosts how often you can take turns, but without having to wait between character turns for their bar to fill up.

I'm sure that there are people out there who are fans of the ATB style, but I think that for practical purposes, CTB is a superior choice. Just my two cents ^_^

May you please elaborate more on "practical purposes"?
For whether CTB is superior, I think it depends on the game's targeting audiences. If they include ATB fans and/or speed chess players, ATB might be preferred over CTB. But again, I think it's a game specific decision :D

[RMVX ACE] What do you dislike in ATB Systems?

author=LockeZ
CTB is suspiciously close to literally being just a direct upgrade of ATB. If Chrono Trigger didn't exist, I wouldn't even hesitate to say that ATB was completely inferior to CTB in every way.

Chrono Trigger is the only menu-based game where I ever felt like ATB was justified. The moving enemies, the attacks that hit a geometric area, and the dual techs and triple techs all worked together to make the ATB system actually be meaningful. ATB added to the game instead of just existing within the game.

There have been other ATB games that used one or even both of those systems but they were not key dimensions of combat like they were in CT. You can hit a region of enemies with certain attacks in FF13 if you time them right, for example, but the interface is too shitty and the difference is too minor and the result is too un-fun, so it doesn't really matter. It wasn't worth adding an ATB for.

Technically speaking, a CTB system can be regarded as an ATB system with the fixed atb wait condition(always wait when the player can input actions) and fixed base atb fill speed(always instantly).
For players wanting to play speed chess, CTB probably won't meet their main demands, as action input speed means next to nothing in CTB; For the others, CTB's likely a better choice, as they don't need(and likely don't want) action input speed. So unless speed chess players are included in a game's targeting audience, it should stay away from using ATB :)

[RMVX ACE] What do you dislike in ATB Systems?

author=LockeZ
I dislike that the bars don't fill up instantly, but more than that I dislike that my success in battle is dependant on how quickly I can navigate a menu. ("Wait Mode" in Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger is actually still active mode during the first parts of the battle menu.)

So make the battles pause as soon as it's someone's turn. And then since you're doing that, there's no reason you can't remove the waiting entirely and have the bars get filled up instantly. Oh hey guess what. You just invented CTB.

So it seems to me that the entire ATB concepts won't work at all for players sharing your view. In this case, maybe CTB is indeed better :)