LIGHTNINGLORD2'S PROFILE

author=El_WaKa

author=zeello
I thought of using HP, MP, and TP. Im not sure how TP works exactly but I like the idea of a regenerating resource. I wanted MP to regenerate so I may have to use TP instead and call it MP. (Derp, there's my solution. Why didn't I think of that)

For instance my black mage might have 30/100 MP at the start of each battle, you could use it up right away, or wait until you have more, in order to cast a more expensive spell.

In a standard rpg I might choose to never use MP against normals while just spamming spells against bosses, I don't think I want that. Magic should be relevant all the time.

Meanwhile I'd rename MP to GP (gunpowder) and use it for standard attacks. My original idea was that every time you use a normal attack it costs 1 bullet and bullets would be a finite resource that is not replenished at inns or save points, can only be acquired as loot or by purchasing it. So, an item. The GP idea is merely another way of doing bullets. I wanted for each character would have their own bullet supply, which is possible through GP but not possible if bullet were an item.

What I want is for the in-battle sprite to change to show that I'm damaging the enemy or making it angrier. For example an egg that begins to crack more and more as you keep hitting it. (And maybe then the egg is replaced with a dinosaur at 50% HP, and I can set this enemy to never attack until it has 50% or less HP) Not saying my game will have dinosaurs, the dinosaur egg is an example to show what I mean.

But I guess if that isn't possible its not a big deal, I only needed it for a certain boss and could make do without.

IIRC the only problem with TP is that the maximum amount possible is 100 without using scripts, but don't worry, you can change how you gain TP (So you don't gain TP for attacking and defending)

About the egg, like I said, just use the enemy transform command, for example, create two monsters, the egg without attacks and the dinosaur, when the egg reaches 50% HP just use the command to change it to a dinosaur, and even make it regain his life if you want

You know what's even better? Give every form of your enemy other than the last one the "Immortal" state (either use a script or a battle event to stick it on), which means it won't die if its health reaches 0. Make a battle event that checks every round if it's at 0% health, at which point it transforms. This way lets you ensure you can rotate through the forms without getting it killed via excessive damage and also protects it from being locked into a form via status ailments (enemies need to spend one of their turns for manual transforming).

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 see you're not really building up on a pre-planned plot - to be honest, I recommend you to find a map you want to start the story in and then continue writing as you make more maps, events and database entries. It's a terrible way for making a great narrative, but the best way to get a story down in general.

I'd recommend writing the characters in the story and what the end goal is - then, you could think of some places that the characters visit in the story. Around that time, if your characters are deep enough, the story will basically write itself as it really feels like the characters are making the decisions in the plot and not you.

I recently played Lords of Xulima, which has a metric ton of things I hate in RPGs:

-Class Forcing
If there's a party building game where you have a class system, people never bother to keep in mind you should never be forced to pick a class. It would heavily stunt your party customization as you have one character less to pick. The classes in question in that game are the Paladin (one of the best tanks and starts with a multi-target heal) and the Rogue (only one who can pick locks and disarm traps, though your main can do the detecting). Better RPGs make the units a little more flexible in how to skill them. In EO, you also need certain classes for certain tasks, but since the group is interchangeable, you're not required to drag a ranger around at all times to farm materials. By the way, you're also forced to carry Gaulen around with his special Explorer class, but he's fine (like Mario in SMRPG).

-'Open' World
The game is just as bad as Oblivion, even if it does Level balancing in the exact opposite - you have to follow an exact path encounter-by-encounter or else your group gets slaughtered. I haven't seen this system yet, but I'd like to do it that most areas in the game are very low levelled but quickly grow in levels as you go deeper. This grants you quite a bit freedom of exploration while still preserving the feeling of powerful enemies you can't defeat yet.

-Luck-based Combat
The encounter problem is magnified by the complete lack of skills and only having few consumables, meaning that you can't overcome the more powerful enemies by having either a well tweaked team or a sound strategy (the enemies don't have more than 2-3 moves either). Evenly matched battles, however, are purely determined by RNG - either your blows land or they don't. Either the damage is spread so that your group can take it or a less beefy character gets ganked to death (revival is so expensive that it heavily strains your finite resources). Even the default database in the RPG Maker does this better.

-Critical Failure
Closely related to the above. Do you enjoy random tripping in Brawl? Do you think it increases strategic depth? This is what it's basically like. Performing ANY attack or skill may cause your character to fail completely and take damage (thankfully, it's not much). In many moments where this happens, this can mean you get casualties, but the enemies can get it too. It's an okay mechanic if you want the player to have a shot when fighting suboptimal, but why that's in a game for hardcore players is beyond me.

The story is uninspired, but that hardly bothered me compared to all that.