LOCKEZ'S PROFILE

I strongly dislike the ability to optionally make yourself retardedly strong via grind. Grind is insanely boring, and the only reason you'd ever do it is to make yourself stronger than your supposed to be. This is a mental compulsion - we want to be stronger, it's how our brain works. There are goals with rewards, so we want to do them, no matter how boring they are. But, the fact is, if you're stronger than you're supposed to be, the game is a lot less fun. All the challenge disappears, replaced by grind. It's lose-lose, and makes the game less fun in every way, but we do it anyway because that's how we're wired.

If a game has a lot of potential for grind, there are two options for me:

1) I will despise it utterly. A thousand curses will erupt from my thousand mouths, dooming it to a black eternity. I will become Loki, harbinger of doom, and the pain of all the universe's souls burning for eternity in Gehenna will pale in comparison to the rage that courses through my pulsing veins.

2) I will put up with it, because something about the prospect of collecting items and performing achievements and building my characters has hooked me. It is possible for these aspects of a game to be done so well that I will put up with any amount of boring grind - this is most common in MMORPGs, but there are plenty of console games that pull it off as well. However, I have yet to figure out the game design secrets that make these types of character building and completionism so interesting, and I've seen way too many cases where the designers tried and miserably failed. And even in the best-case scenario, it doesn't make the grind itself enjoyable - it just makes it bearable. I would vastly prefer that every battle be unique and engaging and fun, while still having this mechanic.

A question to anyone: When making battles, do you prefer choices you make during combat or pre-battle strategy?

A good game has tons of both. Customization and tactics are both vital to creating a good game. Tactics are definitely a lot closer to what this week's topic is supposed to be about, though!

that's what I want to do - make an awesome game with a great story and battles that force you to the edge of your seat. Maybe not every battle, but enough to catch you off-guard and keep you wanting more.

My opinion is that "not every battle" isn't good enough. Start with that if it's an easier starting point for you... but once you have it like that, remove all the battles where it's not true. What's the point of the other battles? Just to take up time?

Any player who says RPG battles are all easy and are a lost cause is way too used to playing bad RPGs, and doesn't seek out difficult ones. Any designer who says so should be drug out into the street and shot. If you think the entire genre is unsalvagably worthless, why are you making games for it? Don't say "story", because any game of any genre can have as deep of a story as you want. RPG is a type of battle system, not a type of story.

If people want to give up without trying then that's fine, but give up properly - don't make a novel with 30 hours of button mashing. If your plan from the get go is to never even try to make a decent game, then don't make a game at all.

Regarding your battle tweaks, I do almost always enjoy the idea of starting each battle with full HP/MP. It makes each battle feel like a real threat, instead of just one step of a 30 minute long endurance gauntlet. Adding cooldowns to items is also a great idea - cooldowns are a great way to add more powerful skills and to make sure the player has to do something different every round. They're not used in nearly enough RPGs.

The hot blood thing is similar to the limit break idea that's used in a lot of games - the Wild ARMs series is probably the closest to how you're doing it. However, I would recommend making the deathblow skills more interesting than just a critical hit. Lufia II's IP system might be something you could look into. With that system, the characters would get different deathblow skills to choose from, based on what equipment they're wearing. Some might cost less than 100 blood points, and the player would get to choose different ones for different circumstances. This also makes equipment a hell of a lot more interesting, adding a lot of customization to your game.

Yeah, you have to end the loop! Otherwise, it's like the time when Sailor Saturn used Time Stop, and then realized she forgot to ever learn Time Start.