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Craze's Dirty Little Secret

post=141598
<tonfa> I AM ROLLING AROUND IN MY LIVING GRAVE



Okay, might as well expand a little. An objective downside to lying in skill descriptions is obfuscating the player's ability to make an intelligent decision. By the information given by the game, the 4MP and 25MP skill do the same damage...except they don't, actually. And if the player doesn't know the 25MP skill does more damage, they just might dismiss it as a viable tool. Similar principle applies for status rates that the game tells the player to be lower than they actually are - the player will not use the seemingly unreliable status move when it is in fact more reliable than the game lets on and could potentially make the player's experience a lot easier.

Craze's Dirty Little Secret



I prefer having the mechanics knowledge but it wounds me so. See also the likes of FF9 and FFTA2 mechanics, which made me actively like the games less.

E: this post makes less sense after craze edited out the code

E2: A suggestion would be to have a "Screw you I'm playing on Hard" mode which removes the hidden training wheels

Craze's Dirty Little Secret

I cannot tell whether you're serious or not.

In case you are, I am seriously put off by it. Game straight up lying to me is Not Cool.

Why can't I just poison him a little bit!?

Status effects and buffs/debuffs are separated precisely because of the rulesets they work with

Why can't I just poison him a little bit!?

Burn is a state that happens to reduce stats as one of its effects and is handled as such in Pokemon.

E: To be clear states and debuffs have separate handling in what moves/items/methods remove/affect them. Debuffs clear on switch out while states don't, for one.

EE: Nor is it stackable, and so on and so forth.

Why can't I just poison him a little bit!?

DEMONS GATE had a pretty hilarious curve of threatening enemies actually.

- Area 2: Big damage, or a status effect.
- Area 3: Bigger damage, or MT status effects
- Area 4: jesus christ they're overkilling me
- Area 5: Now I'm taking 94368765489 damage to all and eating doomed status at the same time
- Later in Area 5: Even those guys are scrubs

post=141446
I think making status effects less powerful and irresistible is one way of making them more useful since it's no longer a question of "Will it work?" but "Is it useful here?". Maybe have a way to overcome status resistances, ex: A mage enemy who has a ring for immunity to silence. A theif could steal the ring making the mage vulnerable to silence which can shut him down (and you get loot in the process).


There's an issue to this where it's a fine line between making it less game breaking and too out of the way to even have it worth bothering with. The mage enemy mentioned in the example would need both outstanding threat value and durability to make silence better than nuking it to the ground with massive damage.

Why can't I just poison him a little bit!?

I like status effects, and designing bosses in such a way that they will be an attractive option. Usually I use the scale of inverse deadliness to figure out which immunities to leave unchecked - mildly inconveniencing/somewhat helpful states will likely be effective, while more severe effects are on case-by-case basis and what equates to complete battle skips will be rare. (But exist ~ I do love the FF5 design philosophy)

There's been a little trending towards having a status effect deal a different effect based on whether it's used on PCs or enemies, or randoms or bosses. I'm not a fan of it - I feel horribly gypped when I land a poison on a boss only to have it take off a measly 1% HP when it was taking a quarter off everything else, even if it's sound balance-wise. Just feels like the game is cheating its own defined ruleset, y'know? ('specially since the status effects menu often mentions only the most severe effect)

Edifice: The Old, Decrepit Version

And here I thought I would have an ~original concept~ to release for once, craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazeeeeeeee

oh well random encounters is still plenty different

Rpg Battle Systems

That sounds like a setup for a hiimdaisy comic

topic successfully derailed

also you should rant about games on IRC where I can see it !!

Rpg Battle Systems

post=140997
well

fuck The Last Remnant


I do not approve of this statement! (Unless you were misinformed enough to get the Xbox shitty beta instead of the PC version)

However BoF4 is really sweet, yes. I had forgotten about many of those things until Mog's writeup brought it all back in regards to clever enemy design and the like. So good.

Also I and II are the greatest random boss fight in the history of gaming. THEY ARE DICE GUARDING AN ANCIENT TOMB THAT LITERALLY KICK YOUR ENTIRE PARTY IN THE FACE FOR MASSIVE DAMAGE

post=141011
IIRC, I'm stuck in some area that looks like SNES/GBA mode 7. (I haven't played BoF4 in years.)


This is easily the worst part of the game. Try to locate smoke rising, that's where the goal is.