<Untitled IAQ Project>: War Never Ends (voting over, but discussion to continue)

[AndrewRogue]

Current Popular Idea: Grandia style combat. CTB.

If this is not functionally correct, let me know.

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WE ARE VOTING ON THE ISSUES OF CHARACTER CHANGING IN BATTLE. PLEASE VOTE. IF THE QUESTION IS NOT CLEAR, I WILL UPDATE IT THIS EVENING.

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...or How I Learned To Love RPG Combat Systems.

Welcome to round 1 of the RPGDL IAQ, Attempt 2, aka, the RPGDL creates a design docket for a game, aka, we put far too many cooks in the kitchen and design an RPG.

For the sake of simplicity, at least while starting, I figured the best way to do things would be to break our topics of discussion down so we could create some skeletal concepts to work with before launching headlong into figure out the exact multiplier that strength should add to magic based physical techs from the sword-caster or exactly what color the panties of our heroine will be when the clothes start coming off in those new and popular Bioware sex scenes.

So, per Excal's suggestion (even though I think we can go either way), let us lay the groundwork of our game via discussing the combat system. It does have a large influence on certain aspects of the game (certain game systems lend themselves better to different styles of game and thus different styles of story, etc). Plus, I'm the story guy in the DL. All you other crazy are about math and mechanics. So I might as well let you all have your say before I claim a soap box.

Seriously though. Let's chat. I'll set the deadline at a week from today. I'll come up with some sort of system to decide we like an idea by later. You can all save me time by unanimously deciding an idea is good.

As for me...

Well. Let's look at this in more detail. What do I think makes RPG combat fun?

1. Interactivity: The game requires me to actually be present during combat and contribute regularly. The player is necessary, not just for decision making, but for actively doing things. This is a game, after-all.

2. Potential for Challenge: I like RPGs to be challenging. I'd like more RPGs to be challenging, honestly. You should not be able to breeze through most battles (or, at least, there should be a mode where you can't). You should have to use your brain. Mindless grinding should not be an out. Fights should take some planning and some strategy. And while the obnoxious difficulty of SMT games has some good ideas (nasty surprises, etc), a game should definitely NOT be chock full of those.

3. Depth: Kind of ties into two, really. You can put some thinking into the system.

4. Variety: A variety of PCs is always cool. And a variety of PCs with a variety if abilities (and styles to those abilities) are cool.

So what sort of systems have been good to me?

Mana Khemia: Fun, fluid, natural. Would have required thought if the game was tuned better. PCs were varied and the game encouraged you to use that variety.

Persona 3/4: 4 more than 3. System ended up hard due to well thought out bosses, obnoxious tricks, etc. Three erred on this being stupid.

Dragon Age: I've pretty much lost every notable fight at least once due to needing to approach the fight from a different angle/to better utilize my abilities/to better strategize.

Final Fantasy 3/6: Standard ATB shenanigans, but the PCs have a lot of variety in what they do and how they do it.

World of Warcraft: It deserves mention, I feel. Classes play quite differently, and fights are the upper level are all about execution.

Final Fantasy Tactics: One of the upper end SRPGs. Variety in characters. Solid play. Etc. Difficulty issues again.

Shadow Hearts: Covenant: Ring system is awesome for keeping the player involved.

Demon's Souls: More A then RPG, but a better built version of SMT obnoxiousness.

All told, I'm thinking ARPG style combat is definitely out. My ideal system for ARPG is some odd 2D Fighter/RPG hybrid, and that's a bit impractical.

I think the best bets are definitely in the SRPG or "standard" RPG styles. Ideally, I'm thinking using the Mana Khemia as a rough base (the "card" system, consider the benefits of an assist system [although something different that would better support a larger PC]) and then making some changes additions (PCs with unique mechanics, etc) might be a good launching point.

But let's hear what people have to actually say.

[DjinnAndTonic]

figure out the exact multiplier that strength should add to magic based physical techs from the sword-caster

1.337x, obviously.

or exactly what color the panties of our heroine will be when the clothes start coming off in those new and popular Bioware sex scenes.

Turquoise, to match her skin tone.

Well. Let's look at this in more detail. What do I think makes RPG combat fun?

1. Interactivity: The game requires me to actually be present during combat and contribute regularly. The player is necessary, not just for decision making, but for actively doing things. This is a game, after-all.

This is the part that makes or breaks a console game for me. For a handheld, it tends not to matter because I'm only ever half paying attention to those anyway. But, let's pretend we want our game design to be engaging. I personally would like to see some kind of combination of Grandia's turn system (IP supression and combos are fun!); and some kind of Timed Hit system (a la FF8/SMRPG, or we could go all-out SH-style Judgment Ring). I cite these two example specifically because these are really engaging systems, but they can be ignored in favor of good planning should a player not be skilled at timing-based games (it IS an RPG, after all).

Barring that, some kind of VPDS-style SRPG hybrid would be awesome. SRPG maps, but combat involves multiple units in range, ARPG-style (or we could use something other than ARPG-style, but I like the idea of combat still being team-based with any PCs that are in range). This may be a bit harder to balance.

2. Potential for Challenge: I like RPGs to be challenging. I'd like more RPGs to be challenging, honestly. You should not be able to breeze through most battles (or, at least, there should be a mode where you can't). You should have to use your brain. Mindless grinding should not be an out. Fights should take some planning and some strategy. And while the obnoxious difficulty of SMT games has some good ideas (nasty surprises, etc), a game should definitely NOT be chock full of those.

Pretty much anything we choose can be tweaked to be difficult just based on what kind of enemy AI we choose.

3. Depth: Kind of ties into two, really. You can put some thinking into the system.

One thing that I've found particularly engaging in Suikoden were the multiple modes of gameplay. Not just exploration and battles, but also a story-driven tactical RPG and duelling system. These are arguably mini-games, but there's no reason that multiple battle systems can't be present in a single game. Especially if we're just designing it, not making it.

4. Variety: A variety of PCs is always cool. And a variety of PCs with a variety if abilities (and styles to those abilities) are cool.

Lots of PCs. Lots of Temps. A world thrives on characters. This was one of the few things I really liked about FF4 - if you met a character, chances were that they'd join you, at least for a little while. I like the idea that important people in the story will join up, and then leave once their role isn't important anymore. It gives them a chance to show off for the player, but you can still have your core group of mains. I'd personally recommend about 8 permanent PCs, and 20 temps and optionals. Also, fun to draw and gives the multiple writers a lot more flexibility with adding their favorite personality types to the game. Big fan of making final bosses post-game optionals (but I'm also a big fan of N1 cameos, so feel free to ignore that).

Now, trying to make about 30 different PCs with completely different playstyles may be difficult. ...but somehow I doubt it with this group. We know more about how to make characters VERY different than most. In particular, I'm a fan of different characters having completely different growth/learning systems, a la SH2, SaGaF. Simple levelling is boring, but I'm also not too crazy about uniform Sphere Grid/Liscense Board style levelling. Mostly because even if each character gets different skills, they're still all learning them in basically the same way.

I find it more interesting if different characters have to do different things to improve. Some characters might learn skills through plot points, others might have to use old skills multiple times to learn new ones, still others might have to equip certain combinations of equipment, others might have to complete fetch quests or fight specific enemies, some characters might get larger stat bonuses from equipment than others but level much more slowly, some characters might start the game with really powerful abilities and long charge times but the get faster as time goes on, or perhaps a character whose entirely based on using a limit-break-like system. Maybe one group of characters can work on a job system and swap skills with eachother, but the rest of the cast has a different method of levelling. Maybe temps stop levelling after a certain point, but the player would still have access to them if s/he really loved that temp?

Mana Khemia: Fun, fluid, natural. Would have required thought if the game was tuned better. PCs were varied and the game encouraged you to use that variety.

Also, swapping PCs mid-battle is an awesome feature, even better when it comes with an interesting effect.

Final Fantasy 3/6: Standard ATB shenanigans, but the PCs have a lot of variety in what they do and how they do it.

I still prefer Grandia's system to FF6 ATB, but depending on how complicated it would be to implement, ATB isn't bad.

All told, I'm thinking ARPG style combat is definitely out. My ideal system for ARPG is some odd 2D Fighter/RPG hybrid, and that's a bit impractical.

ARPGs are fun to play, but they don't make for quite as easy to explain interesting IAQs. Also, probably far too hard to program/do art for should we ever decide to make something with this.

I think the best bets are definitely in the SRPG or "standard" RPG styles. Ideally, I'm thinking using the Mana Khemia as a rough base (the "card" system, consider the benefits of an assist system [although something different that would better support a larger PC]) and then making some changes additions (PCs with unique mechanics, etc) might be a good launching point.

Thinking on it, Grandia's IP supression and Mana Khemia's Time Card-delays are roughly equivalent, and MK's is easier to visualize. I'm all for this system, provided we still have G3-style combo options.

[Dark Holy Elf]

ARPGs are fun to play, but they don't make for quite as easy to explain interesting IAQs. Also, probably far too hard to program/do art for should we ever decide to make something with this.

Seconding this, toss in my dislike of the genre, but yeah. A lot of what makes ARPGs appealing lies in the exact subtle physical mechanics of different attacks, and this can't really be recorded in IAQ form.


Okay, so. The last IAQ was based on Grandia, roughly. I really like the potential such a system has (and feel that even G3 hasn't nearly tapped the potential in it, let alone the earlier games). Basically, we can have all the fun of CTB (charged attacks, recharge times, timed card-type things MK-style if we want) and also include positioning. I'd put positioning more directly in the hands of the player, maybe similar to BoF5, but regardless, I do think position adds a fair bit of depth to the possible move options (targetting ranges, attacks which reposition the attacker, etc.). The only disadvantage of such a system is that it makes party switching less practical/believable, I'd think. Unless someone has a good idea about how to seamlessly integrate the two.



Also, how many PCs are we aiming for? Are we going to do the thing where every "cook", so to speak, designs a single PC, which would create a large cast? Or aim for a smaller cast? I don't mind which, but if we do large cast, I strongly, strongly suggest we do a Suikoden 3 / Fire Emblem 10-styled multiple party approach, which ensures that more PCs get a chance to shine and be used.

[Cmdr_King]

Initial thought- unless we'd want to implement something akin to CT's double techs, I don't think ATB is really the way to go.  When you don't have a concrete gameplay reason that rewards holding a character's turn (which is what ATB does that other things don't), it's just much less elegant than a CTB system.  As well, it doesn't allow for the same level of manipulating turn order, which given the DL I have to think would be a basic character build that'll get suggested.

More personally, I'm not sure about challenge.  While good boss fights are, uh, good, in an RPG making random battles challenging often leads to frustration, at least for me.  A lot of times, one of the ways to balance various moves is making their cost prohibitive, in turn making the non-boss aspects of the game a matter of resource management rather than anything else.  As such, getting through a basic dungeon is either long and tedious (because you're loath to expend precious resources on peons) or a lot of running.  As well, sudden game overs to randoms are just rude.  There are ways to mitigate this, and indeed a lot of the games most respected for gameplay use them, but it's something to keep in mind.

[DjinnAndTonic]

For randoms, I think TWEWY's sliding difficulty scale and completely optional randoms (except for certain quests/story points) are the way to go. Then we can design randoms however we want, it's never truly offensive. The game is also then exactly as hard as you want it to be.

Now... -how- to slide the difficulty scale is really worth discussing.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Agreed with Cmdr on ATB. The point is basically to do things like double techs or take turns in any order.


I like challenge in randoms, myself, but yeah, that's a style thing. That said, a few more thoughts!

1. Resource management through a dungeon. How much emphasis do we want to put on this? My opinion is that any resources that the party -does- have (MP, whatever) need to be taxed to be interesting; it's no fun having a game where you never actually run out of MP; it just becomes a wasted mechanic. Also, do we want to tie HP restoration in here? (i.e. do we want the party to be healed after battle a la Saga Frontier or Wild Arms 4?). The advantage of doing the free afterbattle heal is that it reduces the needless grind of casting Cure a bunch of times after each fight. The disadvantage is that it removes the difference between victories in which you take a lot of damage and those in which you take none (though this can be mitigated via battle bonuses, or a WA3-style vitality system... I dunno).

2. Saving and how the party is punished for losing a battle. My vote tends towards "let the player restore to the start of battle on game over, but keep track of such restores in a counter that will niggle at completionists". That said, I dunno how popular this is. If we let fights actually kill people, then how frequent save points are becomes a notable issue.

3. Levelling (or skill-building, whatever form it takes). Can players become super-powered by fighting randoms more than intended? How easily? (My vote: hard to in general, have some very specific grinding locations for the crazy powergamers who are into that.)

Yeah. All of these are general design questions that we need to consider, I think.



Djinn: Elaborate on what you mean by a sliding scale of randoms? My vote would be to let the player control it but I get the feeling that's not what you mean.

Speaking of which: Difficulty modes. Do them. Accessible first playthrough. Why do more games not do this. Also HM (or whatever) shouldn't just be a stat boost, it should make bosses (and some randoms) have some really sick tricks.

[AndrewRogue]

Catching up on the topic, but could someone explain Grandia's system to me? I've never played a Grandia game.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I'm of the sort who finds random encounters to be a tedious way of inflating game time in dungeons more than anything else. So as far as far as levelling/randoms/grinding goes... I can't believe I'm going to say this, but Chrono Cross got something right.

In CC, your stats grow after every battle until they reach a maximum dictated by how many bosses you've killed. You can't level past these hard caps until you make forward progress through the game, which provides a way to cap player power at a reasonable level for the point you are at (unless you are playing NG+, in which case you can simply drive a freight train up any boss' asshole at any time). It also removes the need for large amounts of enemies because it's not like the player needs the ability to grind. Thus, they move at a speed where you can usually just go around them if you want.

I don't feel that a "hard mode" in a game is something you provide with bigger numbers. To use a WoW example, very few "hard modes" on bosses are simply "boss does more damage," and when they do they become rapidly trivialized. The challenging ones, like Firefighter, add an entirely new mechanic to the encounter.

[EDIT: Also the lead and the love interest should just get on with it and fuck like a third of the way through the game, rather than having a bunch of hamhanded emotional shit the whole time.]

[AndrewRogue]

On the subject of difficulty in general: Definitely agree there should be at least two modes (normal and hard), and definitely agree they should both be accessible right away. Not really sure about randoms. Maybe make them less of "randoms" and more progression fights? This way you aren't stuck with "OMG another annoying random group" but we don't eliminate them fully/make them cakewalks? Definitely agree that hard mode should not be stat boosts. As Rob says, looking to WoW is a really great example. A boss on Hard mode should be a unique spectacle that requires a different approach than beating them on normal. New abilities, new support, new gimmicks, etc.

On the subject of characters: I'm of mixed opinions on this. So I'll say what I dislike right away (sorry Djinn ;_; ). Just not a huge fan of a large number of temps in general. I perfer perma PCs on the whole.

Cast size... is a harder issue, since there are benefits to both sides of the argument. I will generally say a Fire Emblem size cast is probably the largest I want to go? Any further and it becomes strictly impossible to really do anything with individual characters. It also becomes a lot harder to balance encounters, negotiate unique mechanics, etc. Some of this could be mitigated with a multi-party system (ala S3), but then we have to start negotiating issues of length, etc. I think I want to say somewhere between like... 8-20 PCs sounds right to me? Maybe it might be worth considering a smaller cast with more temps that recur later? I think looking at the sizes of the "core" S3 parties might be a good starting place/measuring stick.

Do like the idea of sticking as many unique mechanics in as we can. Do also advise caution that we don't explode brains by having too many in though.

On advancement: Do like the idea of organic advancement (ala... CC apparently)/unique advancement for PCs (ala SH:C). Not a huge fan of being able to grind it out. I'd much perfer a system where the PCs advanced along as the game progressed. But this might also be killing a sacred cow.

On game overs: Do like being able to start the fight over. I dislike the annoying setbacks Game Overs cause. They don't really... punish per se. Perhaps having to restore battles alters the eventual outcome of the fight? Like, one-shotting the boss will net you a better plot result (and maybe some better rewards or something) while having to restore will net a worse plot result (like, evil dude is about to sacrifice your girlfriend. You win the fight in one go, you save her in time. You have to restore, she suffers some crippling wound/dies or something?). Doesn't cock-block you out of the game, but encourages success at the same time. Also emulates a game over if you absolutely want the "good" result.

On resource management: Not sure on this one. I don't want it to be tedious, but meaning something would be good too. Might also be irrelevant/less relevant depending on how we handle randoms?

On the combat system itself, since that was the main point of this: Without knowing much about Grandia... the concept on the whole sounds interesting. As far as switching PCs go, it might be doable in that sort of environment? You could have a select number of PCs as a "rear guard" and a swap out would basically be a meter based tag out or something? You couldn't do it super frequently (like lategame MK), but you could have a Rear Guard PC move in to take a hit/deal a hit and send the support out. To deal with PCs gettin KO'd, perhaps you'd just have them critically wounded so they can just leave the field? Ala...

PC X takes 800000000 damage!
PC X says, "I... I can't die here..."
PC X beats a retreat.
SELECT A REPLACEMENT: <PC Y>, PC Z
PC Y: "Don't worry, I'll pick up the slack!"

Will post more when I can get a more detailed explanation about Grandia games. >_>

On PC romance: Agreed, Rob. If nothing else, I'd like relationships to get finalized before endgame unless there  is a very good reason not to.

I think that covers everything?

[074]

One of the problems I've always had for some RPGs was the fact that, since I had to save resources for a boss, I was stuck either using basic physicals or running.  Irritating, to say the least.

Of course, one game had a solution that, while likely not something widely-desired, had use; PS4.  Skills ran off of their own individual pools, and often included ID or status of some sort.  Or MT.

...given, attacks generally running off of individual pools?  bleh.

However, Elfboy here has given an idea.  Something similar to WA3 Stamina--except it's one gauge shared between recovering both HP and MP/TP/SP/JP/whatever the hell you want to call it.  Furthermore, it could be a further means by which to differentiate characters.


CTB is in, in my opinion.  ATB has the problem of "flip through menu as fast as possible!" in most cases.  CTB doesn't, and often allows for weirder effects that are often liked.

"Hard Mode" is definitely something that should force adaptation to new tactics, not just increased stats.  A minor boost (depending on what qualifies as minor, statwise) could also be included, but the matter should relate to tactics, not merely bigger numbers and a need for more grinding.  Grinding bad, in my opinion.  In most games, it feels like the lazy way out, and really shouldn't be necessitated.  But yes, difficulty levels are very yes.


Another two issues: Items are often overpowering, doubly so when purchaseable.  But even limited-but-powerful items, in enough quantity, can essentially kill the difficulty.  (Mega Elixir equivalents are one such case in the games they show up in.  Sometimes Elixir-types, high-end healing items, or simple revival items are enough.  LFT's neverending quest to nerf the Chemist is testament to this).  Clearly, this must lead to one of two sorts of ways of regulation of items, the way I can see it here.  Related: Endgame money tends to be lol insofar as its uselessness combined with abundance.  You get it everywhere, and have nothing to spend it on.

Regarding items--1: STRONGLY regulate availability; possibly moreso in harder modes.  This goes double for revival, and anything with a MT/GT capability.  Infinite-use items (such as in DDS) should be saved for superboss reward/postgame, where, of course, you don't need them to finish the game, and their use would not matter either due to you already having killed the strongest thing there, or the impact being irrelevant to something that can easily wipe the party in one go.

2: Regulate immediate availability.  Small stack sizes, and possibly a return to character inventories, ala L:SS or ShF.  This would be fiddly and inconvenient, but it would encourage planning and discourage overdependence on items.  For extra deterrence from overdependence, only allow switching from 'stockpile' to 'active' in certain zones, say in town or (if feeling merciful) at savepoints.

...as for money, that wouldn't be too much of a problem.  Endgame relevance can easily come into play based on availability and the demand for anything you can buy with it.

...anyway, those are my thoughts so far.

re:Grandia--The system is basically CTB, with chargetimes on just about everything, a minor amount of movement (usually integrated into other actions), and the ability to delay and/or cancel an enemy's charge.  (And the same can be done to you).  Basically, light/heavy attacks, light does damage over multiple hits and might delay charge, heavy does more damage in one hit(Though less than light overall) and cancels charge, knocking the target back to move selection.  There's more details than that, but those are the basics.


Lastly, regarding PC romance: Either give an option (harder to write, but arguably pleases more), or at least don't leave anyone stuck with the damn two-bit Staff Chick.  People deserve better than that.

[Tonfa]

CTB is 1. An excellent system 2. Easy to theorycraft 3. Possible to implement if this ever goes beyond IAQ stage. Definitely in favor of that.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Another option for ability scaling is to take the FFVI approach: "You can power level now, but you'll hate yourself for it later." It necessitates difficult challenges late-game, though, which is something even the GBA port with the Kaiser Dragon failed at (thanks, Valiant Knife + Quick + Offering. Apparently you were made intentionally broken). But most importantly, it rewards keeping your level low for most of the game and thus, discourages grinding levels as a solution when you encounter a difficult boss.

As far as using resources for randoms, I've found that's a problem that pretty strongly discourages the use of pure mages as anything more than healbots and dead weight until the boss fight. One option I can think of is setting the more pedestrian, utility abilities, like a blind effect or an armor-piercing attack, on cooldowns rather than on MP costs. Basically after it's used it can't be used again for so many clock ticks. This also benefits the slower characters, who get more ticks between each turn and thus, won't run in to being "out of moves" like a speed demon will.

In addition, it limits the use of some abilities that can take an enemy completely out of a fight. Look at the FF4 sequel, where the strategy for damn near half the randoms late-game becomes "have Edge use shadowbind as his first move on that dude because it counters anything you hit it with." The focus on crowd control became part of the design as, late in the game, it was entirely possible that Edge and Rydia (or Palom, if you prefer, which I did not) would lock the entire encounter down before anyone even attacked.

If there was a limit on how much stop/paralysis you could cast, you could balance that with duration and suddenly, you no longer have to account for the possibility that the player is just locking down entire packs of enemies and meleeing them to death without the randoms ever getting a turn. Likewise, since the resource it consumes is something that doesn't need to be hoarded, that frees up the player to burn abilities on randoms to break up the monotony of combat without it turning in to a Xenogears-style "Use your best deathblow on the enemy over and over and over again."

[Also, in the rape scene, we have to be very careful on how we present that. Make sure we don't show the sexing from behind; that will make it more classy.]

[Excal]

If we were going to implement Djinn's idea of different level mechanics and possibly a different relation to the core battle mechanics, then it would make sense to pick two or three core ways of doing this, and then doing the S3/Rudra thing but have each initial/core party having their own twist on the core rules.  This would not only aid in gameplay/story segregation, but would also help make each section feel different.

Not to mention, when it's time to start merging the storylines, you'd be able to start mixing and matching the different playstyles, and getting whole new options and abilities that weren't open before.

As for randoms, I'm kinda mixed about them.  I mean, if they're going to be there, they shouldn't be trivial.  But, on the other hand, they also shouldn't feel like boss fights.  So, quick and challenging.  I also like the immeadiate HP restore afterwards, but for those who want it to matter, how about instead of the stamina meter you could instead make it so that items cannot be used in battle, however, you can freely buy items which heal status, HP, and possibly even death, and which are consumed up to a settable HP level automatically upon battle's end.  This not only keeps some value in buying items without making them broken in battle, but it also makes a difference in how much damage you take, because it's eating up cash.

Right, forgot the other thing I meant to suggest.  If you want the randoms to be anything other than speed bumps, then always offer MP/SP/whatever restoration at the end right before the boss, with maybe one telegraphed exception.  Surprise bosses when characters aren't supposed to be drained from a reasonably challenging dungeon need not follow this rule so long as the ability to save was reasonably known to be available without much hassle.

That said...  I do like Rob's idea of cooldown, a lot.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

On the topic of CC, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to having that be a certain character's specialty or something and thus, being able to lock down several randoms more or less indefinitely, as long as they're conversely bad at fighting bosses and thus, you're trading getting through trash for having dead weight against the boss.

I'd just really like to avoid the Edge/Rydia FFIV: TAY syndrome coming in to play,  cause it was kind of cool for a bit when I realized that stop and shadowbind weren't worthless in this game and they were actually really good, but then it just got tedious. And of course even if their CC didn't work, they're both awesome damage dealers, and Edge is even a healer/buffer on top of that, so it's not like I was missing out when I ran in to enemies that it didn't work on.

[DjinnAndTonic]

TWEWY's random system is thus:

All randoms are optional. You simply press a button and decide how many random fights you want to do in a row. Fighting more enemies in a row increases your rewards after battle. After fighting a chain of battles, all resources are restored.

You have 3 difficulty levels. Randoms get faster, hit harder, and can take more damage on higher difficult levels. Some randoms get new abilities. Increasing the difficulty level increases the kinds/quality of rewards you can receive.

You also have a malleable HP bar on a sliding scale. Every time you level, your max HP increases. You can slide the scale down to a minimum. The lower you make your HP, the more frequently you get good rewards.

Rewards from battles are very important for beating the game.

Interestingly enough, TWEWY also uses Rob's proposed cooldown time idea for all skills. The skills themselves even evolve individually to have shorter cooldown times and better effects.


I'm 100% behind NEB's idea to do a chaptered game, with... let's say 3 main parties.

If we don't have any temps, I'd hard cap the cast at 20, and would prefer something along the lines of 5 mains and 15 optionals.


As for different methods of growth, I'm personally fond of the idea of one of main parties being entirely based on a class system, while the rest of the cast has a more organic, individual skill-learning/evolving system. Also, certain characters should definitely have Limit meters. One of the parties can focus on team/unite attacks. It would be an especially intriguing twist to have a PC or two who has 'unique' team attacks. Meaning, s/he has individual skills that can be teamed with any generic character, but results in a different numeric result depending on the stats of which generic PC s/he chooses to team up with. Could maybe make this character a summoner so s/he can summon a partner for solo-runs!


Grandia system... It's not too entirely different from Mana Khemia, with the exception that as hypothetical Character A's turn/'card' reaches the 'activates' portion of the timeline, there is a chance that a speedier Character B's turn/'card' will reach the 'input command' point of the timeline, which could end up activating before Character A's spell goes off. This gives Character B the option of trying to cancel Character A's turn, throwing their turn/'card' much further back on the timeline.


CC's growth cap system: Not bad, but I like the idea of having the -option- to power-level if I feel like it. Perhaps make a special mode for power-levelling? Or just a special area?


Multiple modes of play: Basically, the Suikoden system of Basic battles, War battles, Duels. I'd like to see if we could make up a few different modes to incorporate into the story. I was especially fond of how Suikoden makes some characters really useful in the War battles, it gives them another avenue to shine. Similarly, XG had Maria, who was only awesome in Gear mode, which made perfect sense in the setting.


Resources: Having skills run off of different resources is a great idea. Some run off of traditional MP, some drain HP, some consume items, others work on a charges system, others are infinite but have drawbacks, and of course some skills are Limit-based.

Items: Tales does this well. Set a low immediate availability cap on battle items - 10-15.  Dying in Tales' games happens, but it's never insurmountable. You can even implement a cooking system to go with it (or alternately, give a CC-like option to heal with your resources after battle to at least cut down on the 'fight->menu->healhealheal->next random' tediousness. Individual inventories can die in a fire, I've never seen a game where this was fun or interesting (though I suppose it -could- be... perhaps if we had an SRPG-like side mode? It certainly works better in FE than Lunar).

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I think the problem with having the ability to power-level is that it renders the difficulty of RPGs more or less hollow. Having limits on how powerful the player can become based on how far they are in to the game is key in making challenging encounters, because you know "this is how strong a player can possibly be." It's all part of combat tuning, which is a very important part of a game.

If it's going to be in, it should either involve FFVI-style character growth, where you are basically slitting your own throat in doing so, or Suikoden-style where power levelling is something you do as an absolute last resort because it's like pulling your own teeth out with pliers. Basically, I don't think that, in anything that resembles a reasonable scenario (as in, you didn't run from every single encounter and have a reasonable equipment/skill setup) that "gain more levels" should EVER be a viable solution to a boss fight. The solution should be "you are doing it wrong, try a different strategy" instead of "get bigger numbers."

Also: individual inventories didn't COMPLETELY drive me batshit in EarthBound.

[Taishyr]

Okay. Everything's a bit scattered out, so I'm just tossing out my own ideas here.:

Base system: CTB, Grandia/BoFV system.

Agreeing with Rob's idea, was actually going to proffer the usual Suikoleveling system where it harshly curves off when you're at a certain level in each area.

Randoms: While Touhou Odyssey's system would -definitely not work- here, it might be an interesting jump-off point. Randoms in this are rarely "wipe your team" level challenging. Instead, they focus on eliminating one-two people or lowering everyone's HP. While HP full heals after a fight... it's at the expense of TP, which is effectively a counter of how long you can go without returning to base. IOW, randoms are a constant threat to TP and occasionally to keeping individual people in, but never a doomngloom threat.

Perhaps adapting a TP system of sorts could help, with various bonuses/penalties for full/low TP people? Would encourage character switching/use to allow more people to shine in battle, and keeping some difficulty, but not badly overwhelming the player.

Items: Honestly, what I'd say is "treat basic items as a rare, fairly potent gift". Give out healing items rarely. MP items even more so. Make the items an actual conservable resource, don't have them be purchasable (we can find other uses for money). This would also lend itself to SO/ToP style healing (% healing from items) instead of flat boosts.

Story Construction: Multi-party, multi-chapter... mmm, that'd be interesting. Allows for multiple characters. Mmm. Lemme think on this but yeah.

[Magic Fanatic]

Also: individual inventories didn't COMPLETELY drive me batshit in EarthBound.

Probably because the items were good enough on an individual basis to allow for using less items in certain situations, along with getting skills that can easily take care of the same situation while consuming a different resource.  There's multiple ways of handling things, though I do like the idea that Mother 3 (and probably many other games) had of having the generic items/equipment taking up the PC's inventory, while Key Items have their own inventory slot.  The main thing I think this happens in is...  Suikoden 2?  I don't quite remember.

In any case, items because rather...  Useless except for the stuff that could restore PP or Revive, mostly for the fact that inventories were limited, you'd find a whole bunch of stuff in dungeons, and characters had better/more effective things to do with their time.  Easily, the better items were rare, a Horn of Life, or a Brain Food Lunch.


That said, I think I'm going to have to throw my hat in for a Timed Hits system.  While I am a great fan of the Mario & Luigi RPG method of doing this, that would probably would make for a more frustrating game.  Having generic timing (ala SMRPG) for avoiding damage is great - it forces the player to pay attention during battle, reduces the amount of resources consumed during a dungeon, and gives bosses a trick of being able to go around that with everything if one so chooses.

Also, I'm one for wanting to make the player fight at LEAST one of every random in a dungeon, and make the first encounter with each scripted and unable to be fled from?  That'd mostly just get the variety out there.  I do agree with Suikoleveling as well, but one would also have to turn around and probably make fixed growth levels, as a bad level set can REALLY hurt some characters more than others, like missing out on that one point of MAG for the next L4 Charge or something.

Buffs and status: I...  Like the general concept of these, but I do hate how a ton of these usually end in like 3 turns or whatnot.

Individually evolving characters:  Dear god yes.  I love this idea SO hard.

Hidden characters:  While the core party can usually hold everything by itself, I'm also a fan of hidden characters - i.e. Gogo, FF3DS Onion Knight, etc.  These characters usually require doing way out-of-the-way things to get, or are MAJOR project characters that require certain items/levels to be good...  But when they're good, they're REALLY good.

Stealing: Of course, some games have this.  Take an item off a monster without having to kill it.  This can be similar to consumable items (which I almost want to say should have a regen/delayed effect as opposed to an instant effect - this is consumed matter we're talking about, the body has to take SOME time to break it down), new/different equipment, or just monster items like rawhide bones that a player can trade for useful things.

Physical/Magical separation:  It's...  An idea that should probably be discussed.  What should the difference between physical attacks and actual magic be?  If anyone just said it should only be different damage types, I WILL hurt them...

EDIT:  In addition to the above, any skill/spell that can actually drain resources (HP/WP/MP/what have you) from the enemy would actually be extremely powerful/useful without common items, so...  Yeah.  Look out for that.

[074]

Not too interested in a timed hits deal for fights, but I see where you're coming from.

I'm big on the Suikocurve idea, honestly.  Kills any hope of powerleveling unless you're -really- into grinding your ass off, and if it's one sort of logic I'm not a fan of, it's "levelgrind until the boss is trivial".  Defeats the point of using strategy, though the hopelessly dedicated (and brainless) would levelgrind anyway.

Battle system: Mix of elements between BoF5 and Grandia?  Or an either-or.  CTB is definitely a go, though.  Most strategic flexibility I can see there out of the options.

Party member swapping: This seems guaranteed to be in by popular vote.  Needless to say, I've seen it done well(Touhou Oddysey practically makes it part and parcel for bossfights past Youmu, and the system demands you know what you're doing with the swaps) and crappily (DDS.  Felt like a complete afterthought.).  If we go multichapter, then I probably wouldn't mind it so much, since you could easily define your Front and Reserve lines and still have room for party configs.

Stealing: Unless this was left checked in some way, players would abuse this just to get around item availabilities.  Wouldn't work so well here, I don't think, unless most of it was stuff (useless or just outdated equips) that have the sole point of "SELL AT SHOP FOR MONEY".

Physical/Magic: A lot can actually be done with merely 'different damage types'.  For example, it would be possible to throw in the damage type defining what defense it hits--and in turn, effectively having magic that can do physical damage.  Barring that, unless there were special stats or systems for magic...hard to honestly say if much would be different.

I'm iffy about hidden characters.  Sometimes they're done well, sometimes they aren't.  Gogo's an example of something in between, honestly, because he only has a full impact when you consider he's meant to be a mythology gag from FF5.  The FFT hidden characters...are really out there as far as relevance, but they work because systemwise, they're different from everything else there (although Dragoner Reis still sucks horribly).

Also, while I have a chance to shoot it down now and not deal with it later: Fuck overpowered mains, fuck "main always in party", fuck "game over if main dies".  All of those ideas can go to hell.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Also, while I have a chance to shoot it down now and not deal with it later: Fuck overpowered mains, fuck "main always in party", fuck "game over if main dies".  All of those ideas can go to hell.

This.


Anyway, as I mentioned, I'll be a voice of dissent on character switching unless someone can come up with a good way to integrate it with the BoF5/Grandia-style battlefield. It makes no sense for someone in the middle of the field to randomly switch out for someone else. So we have three choices:

-Ditch the position-based battlefield (I'm against this!)
-Ditch character switching
-Find a way to make character switching mesh with position... maybe a bit like WA5 did it, where there are locations on the field you can switch out? A "base"?
-Say "fuck it" and integrate the two in a less realistic way, because realism and RPGs rarely get along anyway.

On the realism note, character switching in general doesn't really lend itself to this. I'll leave it up to others if this is actually any sort of issue.


Powerlevelling: While I share the disdain for powerlevelling already voiced by others in this topic, it's my experience that some people really do like it, and why should we stop them from having fun? Basically this just means that I am fine with out of the way grinding (optimally a bit cleverer than just fighting things over and over, maybe something like Grow Apples) for the people who dig that. Outside that I am fine with the proposed limitations on party growth. Also I would be happy with removing the grinding spots entirely on Hard Mode.

[Cmdr_King]

I don't think anyone believes "main dies == game over" is a good idea.  Main always in the party... that I feel should be a late decision based on many other factors.  If we end up having lots of areas in which a main character has to go solo, or the like, then enforcing whatever benefits always being in the party yields is a net positive.

Overpowered Main Syndrome... *shrug*  depends entirely on the plot.  I've always felt that plot power should find some representation in gameplay performance, so if we write an overpowered main with unique abilities key to winning the plot, then they should also be awesome in gameplay.

Otherwise... the only idea I really want to comment on is items.  I always feel, in any game with highly restricted, unbuyable basic items, that the game is cheating me, trying to artificially amp the difficulty.  This also leads, not unlike Conspicuous Resource Drain Dungeons, to simply never using any items at all and having them in ridiculous supply such that I couldn't use them if I wanted to in the endgame.  So yeah, definitely think they should be balanced in some other manner than sheer supply.  Could be something relatively simple like giving you other options for your money and thus forcing the player to choose (tricky, but not impossible), could be complex things like having high drawbacks to in-battle use and thus making them more about post-battle recovery.  You could also forego items entirely and use some other mechanic to stand in for their post-battle uses.  Or there's always the Wild ARMs 3 solution, if we wanted to find non-grinding ways to allow powergaming but still allow for easily ignoring it.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

The solution came to me this morning. We do it Fallout 3 style.

In Fallout 3, each region has a range of levels. Once you enter an area for the first time, the level of those enemies are locked, so when you come back, they're still level 15 even if you are now level 17. So, we work it like this: the first time you encounter a random enemy, it scales to the player's level. Each subsequent encounter with that random, they are that level. Since all bosses are presumably unique, they are scaled to the player's level. Therefore, randoms can be quickly outlevelled, but bosses will always scale to your level, and gear will naturally be restricted by story progression, allowing for fights to be closely tuned.

As far as overpowered mains? No, a million times. Of course, I'm from the school of thought where a main character is important because of a personal role in the plot, not because of magic superpowers.

[Excal]

Sure, but sometimes part and parcel of being important is because of the fact that they do have some magical super powers.  Honestly, the issue of overpowered main, and main always in party sounds more like they should be plot considerations and not basic mechanics considerations.

I'll also toss in a vote against timed hits and character switching.  These are both features which I generally find detract from a game.  Especially since it seems like the current idea is something with a more fluid positioning style like G3 with a movement command.  Also, something which has come to mind is this.

Two/Three core parties.

Battle skills:

One party has traditional MP/SP/whatever
One party uses cooldown moves.
Possible third party has some other mechanic.  Likely MP = 0, but regenerates in battle.

This leads to your traditional battle to get used to the system, a front loaded random fighting style, and a back loaded boss fighting style.

If you want, you can also go with three different ways of levelling/gaining power, but that may be overkill.  That said...

Traditional Exp gain.  Seems a hybrid Fallout 3/Suikoden style might work well here.
CC style only bosses really count, in which case I'd suggest coding in a rule that these guys level even if dead.
And AP gain, with permanent stat growth based on item, possibly with the stats coming gradually as AP is gathered for each item in question.

These also give some options for power levelling if we choose to add them, with high level areas containing boosting equips and side bosses.  Though, FO scaling means that it's less likely that people will be able to crush the puny game if they do choose to try and do that.  Granted, I've got no issues with removing that, but it seems to be popular.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Sure, but sometimes part and parcel of being important is because of the fact that they do have some magical super powers.  Honestly, the issue of overpowered main, and main always in party sounds more like they should be plot considerations and not basic mechanics considerations.

I was more thinking along the lines of Front Mission 1, where the main character (and several other members of the main cast, like Sakata) have a special attribute that sets them apart, but it's not something that translates directly in to combat prowess, and we don't even find out about it until the climax of the game. There are ways of making your main (or core cast) special without falling back on the "Only YOU can defeat the big bad!" crutch.

[Cmdr_King]

Certainly there's ways to justify which character is the lead without just grossly overpowering them.  KotOR2 had an interesting idea there; the typical Magnetic Hero trait was codified into an actual plot power, and in turn rendered in gameplay such that anyone considered in her party literally changed alignment to match hers over time, assuming she spent any effort to secure their friendship.  While that sort of mechanic probably wouldn't work for an RPG made by the DL, the base concept could be exucuted in any number of ways and strikes a good balance between "lead character is the only one that matters" and "the gameplay doesn't remotely reflect the plot".  Still, that's all something that would come later, after the plot has been outlined.

Touching on levelling a bit, I think something closer to Persona 4 might be better than Suikoden-style experience.  That is, enemies are worth more experience if you're underlevelled, and lose value as you get more powerful, but the range is a less extreme.  Especially since I'd argue in favor of a system where all characters gain experience equally, or at least with minimal penalties for dead/out of party characters.  This does depend, however, on creating other sorts of 'experience' which still reward a character for being used.  That'd take more thought.