LOUISCYPHRE'S PROFILE

LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
I am also called Rasalhage these days.
Essence Enforcer
An Enforcer's duty is to protect the city and the people. But what, exactly, does that mean?

Search

Filter

How do you balance skills/monsters/items/chests/equipment?

author=Milennin
author=Craze
why have defense when you could just have hp ;V
To make enemies strong against physical attacks and weak to magic, or vice-versa?


You say it like it's so simple, but it's not.

Whether or not you even need to make that distinction will depend on other factors in your game. Are you operating on a system of elemental resistances, or simply not playing up the "matching game" aspect that enemy defenses often give? You might find those sufficient for your needs. SMT IV is a solid example of a game with no defense stat. Armor gives HP and modifies your elemental resistances, rather than just subtracting some value from damage taken.

Whether or not you want more or less stats is typically a function of the length of your game. The more gameplay segments you have, the more mechanics you'll want to provide variance and identity to those segments. Many MMOs and SRPGs, for example, have lots of stats and rules so that they can use them to differentiate dungeons or maps. You might have dungeons with many fast, frail foes that take reduced damage from Crits to encourage you to use area spells. You might have enemies that ban certain elemental spells; causing tactics to change.

Essentially, decide the ways you want to challenge the player. Then, include only the stats and rules you need in order to make those challenges.

screen3.png

Slick sprites!

RMN Tagline Thread

http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/18525/?post=674644#post674644

That said, I'm talking entirely out my ass as I haven't played either of them. I'm just going from what I've heard.

How do you balance skills/monsters/items/chests/equipment?

Start with your pacing: How long do you intend your game to be? How long is each gameplay segment (classically; a dungeon or level, though it's muddier these days)? Is your difficulty gradual, as in conserving resources throughout a dungeon, or concentrated entirely into bosses?

The answer to these questions and more is usually "somewhere in between." Your first task is to figure out where in between. The rest of the decisions of your design will follow.

For stats, I typically start in very specific point -- HP -- and arbitrarily decide how it'll scale. The rest of the game's stats and scaling bows to serve this arbitrary decision. I consider the length of your stats to be a graphic design decision, since it influences how you set up your UI and how visual elements are spaced. Smaller numbers better suit tightly-balanced games, whereas larger numbers better suit games in the vein of Diablo or Disgaea where the goal is to allow the player to become ridiculous. Again, your tonal decision here will be influenced by the overall mood of your game.

Balancing challenge and hype

The conversation can happen concurrently, too.

Gonna jump ship for a bit! No, it's not you!

Bad Manners

mfw I realise I'm Maya Amano's age

at least your room doesn't look like hers

screen11.png

Pixelate your portraits! It wouldn't be that hard to reduce the image files themselves to 50% size, and then you could use contents.stretch_blt to "upscale" them into your window at 200%, producing a wonderful GBA/DS look!

Balancing challenge and hype

There's a few clever ways to make a fight pretend to be harder than it actually is.

  • Have the boss attack only occasionally, but for massive damage. Bonus points for dealing a percent of the party's maximum health (say, 80%). This makes the player feel the pressure of the big, impending hit, without actually being in danger of a loss due to the periods to heal in between. Most memorably, this is the precise attack pattern of Magus of Chrono Trigger
  • Have the boss resist their efforts to deal damage, rather than putting out a large amount of damage themselves. Making the boss difficult to kill--and tasking the player with destroying various barriers and nodes, etc.--can create the impression of "dismantling" the boss without giving the player serious odds of losing.


It's important to re-evaluate your pacing around the battle, as well. Why is there a long cutscene before the fight? Offload some of that plot into the fight itself. Banter with the boss every 10% HP, every few turns, or whatever suits your game. Build hype as the battle progresses and you can circumvent a large amount of the issue. Do you have your cutscene before the boss because your game needs one, or just because "that's how things are done?"

SchoolVest.png

You always did have a great command of colors!