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Penalties for leveling up
having enemies level up with the player makes sense in games like FFT where the opponents are characters with classes that give them the same or similar skills as the player has access to, in this regard it keeps the playing field more or less even between player and cpu. In fact, it helps the player to learn more about how the game works by allowing them the chance to observe how the ai uses those classes and skills. More powerful enemies also make skills that charm, confuse or outright recruit opponents more effective.
Where FFT fails in this is that non-human monsters gain literally NOTHING from leveling up except beefier stats, but those stat gains are beefy enough that if you are behind in the equipment curve (which is mostly based on plot progression, the only way to skip ahead is by stealing gear from the few random encounters that have human opponents) that your more gear-dependent physical attacker classes can become outclassed by random encounters (and 1 particular plot encounter, Finath River, aka. Chocobo Hell).
SAGA Frontier is a good example of scaling because the monsters don't scale, just the encounters, so you always face monster groups of an appropriate strength for your party (more-or-less). As encounters scale up, the monsters also become more and more visually threatening, helping enforce the feeling that the party has become more powerful.
A poor example of scaling would be something like FF8, where each area has the same 2-4 groups of monsters, forever (I think maybe some new monsters show up after the Lunatic Pandora event, but It's been a long time since I played it). They may have higher tier magic to draw out, or better item drops, but neither of those things make them any more interesting to fight at level 99 then they were at level 1.
Where FFT fails in this is that non-human monsters gain literally NOTHING from leveling up except beefier stats, but those stat gains are beefy enough that if you are behind in the equipment curve (which is mostly based on plot progression, the only way to skip ahead is by stealing gear from the few random encounters that have human opponents) that your more gear-dependent physical attacker classes can become outclassed by random encounters (and 1 particular plot encounter, Finath River, aka. Chocobo Hell).
SAGA Frontier is a good example of scaling because the monsters don't scale, just the encounters, so you always face monster groups of an appropriate strength for your party (more-or-less). As encounters scale up, the monsters also become more and more visually threatening, helping enforce the feeling that the party has become more powerful.
A poor example of scaling would be something like FF8, where each area has the same 2-4 groups of monsters, forever (I think maybe some new monsters show up after the Lunatic Pandora event, but It's been a long time since I played it). They may have higher tier magic to draw out, or better item drops, but neither of those things make them any more interesting to fight at level 99 then they were at level 1.
Stand-up Character
Elizer Yudkowski (Fellow of the Machine Intilegence Research Institute, author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality fanfic/rewrite), has a compelling theory of character development based around the following premise; Every character should be awesome, and one way to help you create awesome characters to imagine an awesome destiny for them, and reverse engineer character traits from that.
He gives an example in his blog (http://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/post/59810615510/to-create-an-awesome-character-envision-an-awesome)
but the relavant exercpt is here
Let’s say your hapless protagonist tossed into a magical universe is going to eventually - not in this story, but eventually - going to end up as Empress of a magical country. Or conquer the entire world. Or convert her new world to a democratic society. Or go toe-to-toe in magical power with Cthulhu.
Maybe someday you’ll write that sequel, and maybe someday you won’t…
…but just knowing that this has to happen someday will color your imagination of where this character starts, and what has to happen to her in the current novel.
If your protagonist starts out with a character deficit in Continuation - well, clearly she must have some awesome other qualities if she’s going to end up as Empress someday. She’d better be a keen observer and manipulator, and we should expect that over the course of the novel she’ll manage to insert herself into the flow of great events and get some powerful people in debt to her. Or she’ll be taking Very Advanced Math at a nearby university, which is how she gets her hands on all the magical power she’ll need.
The reader will never be told that you’re imagining her as a someday-Empress; that’s not going to happen in the current novel, maybe not for another 10 novels, none of which you’ll actually write. Talking about Empresses would just make her actual in-story accomplishments seem to pale in comparison.
But we’ve set her up to be a much more interesting person coming in, and your brain will be thinking of more exciting and vicariously powerful events to happen to her… now that you’re not just thinking about a high school girl who learns Continuation, but the high school girl who remedies her Continuation deficit on the way to becoming an Empress in her new world.
He gives an example in his blog (http://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/post/59810615510/to-create-an-awesome-character-envision-an-awesome)
but the relavant exercpt is here
Let’s say your hapless protagonist tossed into a magical universe is going to eventually - not in this story, but eventually - going to end up as Empress of a magical country. Or conquer the entire world. Or convert her new world to a democratic society. Or go toe-to-toe in magical power with Cthulhu.
Maybe someday you’ll write that sequel, and maybe someday you won’t…
…but just knowing that this has to happen someday will color your imagination of where this character starts, and what has to happen to her in the current novel.
If your protagonist starts out with a character deficit in Continuation - well, clearly she must have some awesome other qualities if she’s going to end up as Empress someday. She’d better be a keen observer and manipulator, and we should expect that over the course of the novel she’ll manage to insert herself into the flow of great events and get some powerful people in debt to her. Or she’ll be taking Very Advanced Math at a nearby university, which is how she gets her hands on all the magical power she’ll need.
The reader will never be told that you’re imagining her as a someday-Empress; that’s not going to happen in the current novel, maybe not for another 10 novels, none of which you’ll actually write. Talking about Empresses would just make her actual in-story accomplishments seem to pale in comparison.
But we’ve set her up to be a much more interesting person coming in, and your brain will be thinking of more exciting and vicariously powerful events to happen to her… now that you’re not just thinking about a high school girl who learns Continuation, but the high school girl who remedies her Continuation deficit on the way to becoming an Empress in her new world.
Survival in RPGs: Hunger, ammo, sleep and porn withdrawal.
I'm not sure, but I believe that Tales of Phantasia had a food system that basically functioned as free after-battle healing so long as you had supplies left in your bag. Each unit of food you bought would provide a certain amount of supply points, up to your current maximum, and after each fight, your supplies would diminish and your characters would recover hp/mp (for food/drink), once your supplies were gone, you were stuck with the much harder to come by potions and healing spells (until your mp runs out too!).
So based on this, we can come up with a system like the following;
Party has two meters tracking the supply of food and drink, respectively
After each battle, both meters will be consumed at the rate of 1 point per 1% of total hp/mp healed per character in the party (makes sense, as more people would eat/drink more). Food supply recovers hp and Drink supply recovers mp
there is no penalty to having empty supplies, the party will just stop recovering after battle, you are still free to use potions and spells to heal manually until those resources too are depleted.
As the player progresses through the game, their maximum supply capacity increases.
So based on this, we can come up with a system like the following;
Party has two meters tracking the supply of food and drink, respectively
After each battle, both meters will be consumed at the rate of 1 point per 1% of total hp/mp healed per character in the party (makes sense, as more people would eat/drink more). Food supply recovers hp and Drink supply recovers mp
there is no penalty to having empty supplies, the party will just stop recovering after battle, you are still free to use potions and spells to heal manually until those resources too are depleted.
As the player progresses through the game, their maximum supply capacity increases.
Discussing Original Classes
Another way of creating class combos is fusion units, where two units can combine into a single unit that gains boosted stats and new abilities in exchange for less total actions per round and the loss of specific abilities from the base units. Examples would be a Knight (defensive physical attacker with skills to mitigate party damage) and Unicorn (speedy but weak healer) combining into a Crusader (powerful and fast unit with single-target physical nukes and offensive holy-element magic, but loses the healing and barrier abilities of the Knight and Unicorn)
Averting level grinding
systems where the greater part of a character's power comes from gear/equipment rather then levels serve nicely to limit the benefit gained from grinding, even if Last Town Equips +1 are available via random drops. You either make do with storebought/found equipment for the standard level of challenge, or you can grind a little while for better equipment, stop when you have enough, and go on your way.
Is modular story based game content the way to go?
@Avee
I think what's being suggested here is more along the lines of this;
The game will present the player with various different sub-plots that they have the option of tackling in any order they choose, but each plot will involve mostly or entirely different characters. Given that, the idea is that advancement will revolve more around some resource the player accumulates rather then the individual characters (who may only be playable for a single sub-plot). As mentioned above, a good example of this kind of approach would be SaGa Frontier 2, which weaves two initially completely separate timelines past, over and around each other before finally bringing it all together at the end, with the twist that you don't have to complete scenario's in chronological order if you don't want to.
I think what's being suggested here is more along the lines of this;
The game will present the player with various different sub-plots that they have the option of tackling in any order they choose, but each plot will involve mostly or entirely different characters. Given that, the idea is that advancement will revolve more around some resource the player accumulates rather then the individual characters (who may only be playable for a single sub-plot). As mentioned above, a good example of this kind of approach would be SaGa Frontier 2, which weaves two initially completely separate timelines past, over and around each other before finally bringing it all together at the end, with the twist that you don't have to complete scenario's in chronological order if you don't want to.
Is modular story based game content the way to go?
Based on these descriptions, i'm envisioning the player as taking on the role of some sort of time-trancendent entity, who is watching and/or interacting with the timeline at various points on what may initially be seemingly unrelated events, but eventually tie into a greater overarching storyline, similar to the game Live a Live.
This is completely awesome.
This is completely awesome.
Inventory hoarding
When I was younger, I was just as bad about item hording as the comic in the OP, nowadays though, I'm quite liberal with my item use in most situations.
I think the paradigms I've enjoyed the most regarding items have been where;
1) Items that scale with stats or that have effects that are equally effective at every level.
Potions that heal a % of max health, bombs that scale with INT, status inflicting/buffing items, ect.
2) Clearly-defined character roles regarding magic/skills, with items intended to cover the gaps that those innate skills/magic do not
pretty self-explanitory, I think
3) Combining a limited 'stack size' with more frequent refill opportunities
This allows the designer to make items with more powerful effects easier to acquire, while at the same time prevents players from spamming those better items for easy wins. Stack size could even vary from item to item, like so
Potion: stack up to x9, heals a single target for 30% of max hp
Hi-Potion: stack up to x5, heals a single target for 50% of max hp
Elixir: stack up to x3, heals a single target for 100% of max hp
Mega Potion: stack up to x1, heals the entire party for 100% of max hp
4) Items as alt-mp
I've seen this used a few times, such as the party having a first-aid kit with a limited number of charges, which can be spent to heal, revive or remove status effects. Another example would be the Estus Flasks from Dark Souls, which are functionally identical to healing spells except they don't scale with stats (but they can be upgraded, so they DO scale over time).
I think the paradigms I've enjoyed the most regarding items have been where;
1) Items that scale with stats or that have effects that are equally effective at every level.
Potions that heal a % of max health, bombs that scale with INT, status inflicting/buffing items, ect.
2) Clearly-defined character roles regarding magic/skills, with items intended to cover the gaps that those innate skills/magic do not
pretty self-explanitory, I think
3) Combining a limited 'stack size' with more frequent refill opportunities
This allows the designer to make items with more powerful effects easier to acquire, while at the same time prevents players from spamming those better items for easy wins. Stack size could even vary from item to item, like so
Potion: stack up to x9, heals a single target for 30% of max hp
Hi-Potion: stack up to x5, heals a single target for 50% of max hp
Elixir: stack up to x3, heals a single target for 100% of max hp
Mega Potion: stack up to x1, heals the entire party for 100% of max hp
4) Items as alt-mp
I've seen this used a few times, such as the party having a first-aid kit with a limited number of charges, which can be spent to heal, revive or remove status effects. Another example would be the Estus Flasks from Dark Souls, which are functionally identical to healing spells except they don't scale with stats (but they can be upgraded, so they DO scale over time).
How would you handle multiple learned languages?
How are you planning on coming up with these languages? Some real-world but niche language like Lojban? Or some sort of cypher-speak like Al Bhed?
A time travel system - To the past and present.
I really love Time Travel as a concept, because it embodies one of my favorite philosophical arguments, Free Will vs. Fate, either
A) Free Will exists, therefore you can change the outcomes of events via time travels
OR
B) the universe is deterministic, you can't change events by going into the past, because it already happened that way. Free will is illusion.
So long as you pick one or the other, and remain internally consistent, you should do fine. Note that it's entirely possible that the characters believe time travel to work in one way, when it actually works in the other way.
I very much recommend that anyone aspiring to write a time-travel story read up on the various articles on the subject, particularly this; http://chronocompendium.com/Term/Principles_of_Time_and_Dimensional_Travel.html
also, as an addendum to Snodgrass this; http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotHole
is what most people recognize as the definition of 'plot hole', and it is markedly different from whatever definition you seem to be using.
As far as Time Travel and any relevance to plot holes, a well-written time travel story that remains consistent in the way by which it handles time travel WILL HAVE NO PLOT HOLES. Paradox, on the other hand, IS inextricably linked to time travel because it allows one to mess around with the basic nature of cause-and-effect event progression by 'tying knots in the timeline'. HOWEVER, the existence of paradox DOES NOT make plot holes any more required or welcome, and can be resolved in a variety of of ways such that the plot remains undamaged.
A) Free Will exists, therefore you can change the outcomes of events via time travels
OR
B) the universe is deterministic, you can't change events by going into the past, because it already happened that way. Free will is illusion.
So long as you pick one or the other, and remain internally consistent, you should do fine. Note that it's entirely possible that the characters believe time travel to work in one way, when it actually works in the other way.
I very much recommend that anyone aspiring to write a time-travel story read up on the various articles on the subject, particularly this; http://chronocompendium.com/Term/Principles_of_Time_and_Dimensional_Travel.html
also, as an addendum to Snodgrass this; http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotHole
is what most people recognize as the definition of 'plot hole', and it is markedly different from whatever definition you seem to be using.
As far as Time Travel and any relevance to plot holes, a well-written time travel story that remains consistent in the way by which it handles time travel WILL HAVE NO PLOT HOLES. Paradox, on the other hand, IS inextricably linked to time travel because it allows one to mess around with the basic nature of cause-and-effect event progression by 'tying knots in the timeline'. HOWEVER, the existence of paradox DOES NOT make plot holes any more required or welcome, and can be resolved in a variety of of ways such that the plot remains undamaged.
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