KOFF'S PROFILE

the only game on that list with which i'm well acquainted is lufia 2. i don't recall ever having to turtle - but i never recall it being very challenging, either. for whatever reason, it looks like we had different experiences with the game, so i'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

i haven't spent much time with etrian odyssey, but i would expect your turtling potential to be finite unless you deliberately chose a heavily defense-oriented party. is this not the case?

it's interesting, though, that the list consists mostly of harder games: those with a reputation for difficulty, hardtype hacks, indie rpgs; and explicitly excludes those you feel provide little challenge. it's well established that in easy rpgs, the dominant strategy tends to lean toward offense (i tend to think 3 attackers and 1 healer, versus the 3 healers and 1 attacker you suggested above). but must the converse be true, that the dominant strategy in a hard rpg is necessarily defensively-oriented? i admit, lockez, at first i wasn't sure where you were coming from with this thread, but i think i have the proper framing for the issue at hand now. more consideration is due.

author=LockeZ
If you want to alleviate hoarding, one method that works is to try imposing a very low cap on the number of each item you can hold, and making enemies drop the items or treasure chests have them quite often. If the player finds one when his inventory is full, he feels like it was wasted. So if you make his inventory fill up when he's holding 3 potions and 3 herbs, that's going to happen all the time, and as a result he's going to keep using items as often as he picks them up - not because he has to, but because there's no reason not to. It also limits unlimited HP/MP recovery really effectively. Secret of Mana did this, for an example you've probably all played.

for this to work as you say, i think, the player needs to have reason to expect that any items he uses will come back to him. i can't speak for anyone else, but when i played secret of mana i had no such feeling, and so i tended to heal with magic instead of items when possible - because what if my non-healer characters need them later? of course, the hoarding instinct is not as strong as with elixirs in final fantasy. without some assurance of replacement, though, i think the low supply cap only encouraged me to hoard more. most my liberalness in consumption, in my estimation, came from the fact that since i had so much mp available for casting cure water, a single chocolate is just a drop in the ocean.

when you can have an assurance of replacement, though, you're absolutely right. this was the case in x-men legends (which allowed you a max 15 healing potions) and baldur's gate: dark alliance (which let you have a lot more in theory, but limited you by your carrying capacity). in both games, enemies dropped healing items consistently and plenty more could be found in boxes and barrels; as long as you weren't gulping them down too fast, you could count on the high replacement rate to keep you close to max. this was aided by the fact that in both games there was essentially only one type of healing potion. in secret of mana, you have candies, chocolates and royal jams, and if you don't know which type to expect the enemies will drop, then there's no assurance of replacement and so you're more inclined to hoard. this is not an issue in xml, wherein there is one type of healing potion, or in dark alliance, wherein there are three healing potions of differing strengths, but which can substitute for any other because they're limited by weight and not individual number.

i say none of this to contradict you, lockez, i think we're very much on the same page. i think we just had different experiences with SoM. i only mean to emphasize that you need both the low cap and the predictable replacement rate to encourage active item use (along with sufficient need for such use, of course). having one without the other (or neither, as final fantasy prefers) only facilitates hoarding.

more than an anti-hoarding measure, though, i think low item caps are a great way to discourage turtling. you touched on this in your post, but it merits expansion because, as both seeric and crystalgate alluded, available resources are a major factor in predicting offensive/defensive playstyles. putting a limit on these resources seems an eminently simple solution to indefinite turtling without having to implement new battle mechanics or disrupting the traditional dynamic of rpg battles. 7th saga, for all its flaws, got this point right. you could only carry 9 of each item, and healing magic was either weak but efficient or strong but expensive. you supplies could actually last you quite a while - but the bosses in that game don't kid around, and if you're not consistently dealing a certain amount of damage, you'll lose the battle to attrition. hence, you must attack whenever you can afford to, even if that means risking some defensive integrity. unfortunately, while 7th saga succeeded in making the demand for offense high, so too did it require much defense, and supplying both in sufficient quantities was often unfairly difficult (for some character pairs more than others). regardless of this, the low item caps vividly demonstrate how limited healing resources can encourage offensive play.

also, i suspect putting an upper bound on the player's potential survivability would make it easier for the designer to balance challenges. so i suppose there's something for everyone.

edit: further props to crystalgate for acknowledging that you needn't add or change game mechanics just to encourage offense, and for searching for simpler and more elegant solutions.

theory: in order to turtle your enemy into submission, you must be capable of healing more HP per turn than you lose. if you're losing HP faster than you can heal it, then you can only turtle for a limited amount of time. the less time you have to turtle, the more important it is to play offensively. thus, the key to encouraging offense is to manipulate the relationship between incoming and outgoing hit point.

the first option is to increase the amount of damage the enemy does. this is what kentona's idea of enemy damage output increasing over time amounts to, and i see no reason why it wouldn't work. i don't think it's necessary to invent new battle mechanics to accomplish this, however. monsters don't need to deal more and more damage, they just need to deal more. as long as they're dealing more than the white mage can heal, the player's ability to turtle is finite and you can effectively if loosely set a time limit on the battle.

the other option is to reduce the amount of healing available to the player. simply having weaker healing magic will accomplish this in all cases, but there's no need to be so on the nose. a subtler approach is to split the white mage's duties, say, between restoring hp and remedying status effects. if give the enemy a sufficiently powerful status-inducing skill and allow him to cast it with ample regularity, the white mage will be forced (or at least incentivized) to spend fewer turns casting curaga and more casting esuna. supposing the status ailment is threatening enough, and supposing nobody else is as well-suited for removing it as the white mage character, the player should find his defensive position compromised and be compelled to destroy the enemy before his few precious hit points are depleted. the exact effectiveness of this depends on the nature of the status ailment (some need more immediate care than others; the relevance of some such as blind or mute depend on the character's role), the frequency and accuracy with which it is inflicted, and the exclusivity of the ability to remove it (if the black mage can simply use an echo screen, the white mage needn't sacrifice a turn for esuna). by variny these factors, along with the strength of the enemy party, you should be able to adjust the demand for offense to any degree you like.

mind you, this assumes you only have one healer in your party, and that that healer also has an esuna-type move. then again, if you only have one healer, how hard can you really turtle?

(this also assumes the costs of healing are low enough that the player can turtle indefinitely. it should go without saying, but the more your cure spells cost, the less time you can turtle for.)

also keep in mind that time is a precious resource for players, and when they can, they'll fight hard and reckless to save a few seconds. i think time costs have a huge factor in determining a player's strategy, in fact. speaking for myself, the time event in which i'm most likely to turtle is when i encounter a boss and i haven't saved recently. i'll play defensively, even though it's slower than playing offensively, because it reduces the chance of dying unexpectedly and having to spend hours recovering lost progress. if my strategy is more defensive than it needs to be, i'll shift as far toward offense as i can afford to, since it's faster than straight-up turtling. conversely, if the time costs for dying are low (that is, if i just saved), my first attempt will usually be oriented toward offense and then shift toward defense as is necessary. that way, even if i'm defeated, i haven't really lost anything. i also tend to fight more offensively against unfamiliar random/non-boss encounter groups - not because i fear the time costs of losing, but because i expect the odds of facing those costs are so small enough that i can get away with trading some security for a little speed.

other costs for losing count here as well, if you have them, but time is the main one. in the absence of other penalties for losing, players will only focus on defense insofar as is necessary to minimize time costs. for this reason i might contend that turtling is not "by default, the best strategy", even if it is the one most likely to result in victory.

hahahaha god dammit space monkey i knew it but i didn't want to believe it. very well done, sir, it's about time we saw the mafia doing a good job of blending in.

i was so confident about ark, i was actually pretty surprised to see that we lost. more surprised than i should have been, given the unfavorable odds. i apologize for my hand in (mis)leading the village to its demise, hopefully next game our bodyguard lives past night 1! (yeah i am still kinda miffed about that)

i liked the idea of the narrated updated posts, but for some reason i didn't pay much attention to them. not entirely sure why. maybe it's because i haven't played policenauts and a lot of the references went over my head, or maybe it's just because the posts were long and i was impatient and just wanted to see who died. i... i confess, i still haven't read the geodude one yet. g-gonna go check it out now to assuage my guilt. :<

author=Jericho
well, this setup, I realize now, is more suited to a chatroom based game as that allows for more scumhunting.

it would be really cool if we organized some kind of real-time mafia on irc sometime. chat room or forum, though, you can count me in for the next round
!!!!

okay then, looks like the people have spoken. i vote for abstinence