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

[Excal]

Why do we want to reward character use, though?  I mean, as it stands, all that does is encourage people to use just one party of core favourites, and it means that any challenge we design cannot require challenging anyone whose skills are needed, because they might not be necessary.  Compare this to a party where there are no drawbacks for not being used, and you can trust that random person X who has the trick that really helps with this boss will not need to be caught up.  This means that you can design challenges a lot better as you'll have a better idea of what the party is capable of.

[Taishyr]

Clearly use should just unlock alternate outfits! </semi-sarcastic>

Seriously, I'm not opposed to Excal's note; if there's to be a benefit, make it small/non gameplay related?

[Cmdr_King]

*shrug* Playstyle bias.  I tend to think that people should be able to build parties around who they like, rather than being forced into using the best characters or otherwise browbeaten into using some niche character at certain intervals.

That said, it depends a great deal upon how you go about it.  I mean, we're already talking about trying to differentiate how people learn skills (comparisons to Shadow Hearts 2/3 being apt), so a straight system akin to Chrono Triggers, where if you don't use a character they don't have skills, is already out I think.
So what I've been envisioning is a skill upgrade system a bit like Grandia II's.  Basically, while you'd have to go through whatever other system to add skills to the list, you can also expend some alternative experience to beef up your skills (faster, stronger, more cost effective, additional effects... you can do a lot with this).  So, if you have such a system in place, a well used but sub-optimal character will make up some of the gap through having well levelled skills, but if a particular skill is effective in a particular dungeon/battle, you can bring in the requisite character and still get milage out of them, even if it's not so good as if you'd been using them regularly.

Edit: And of course, if you were married to the idea of gimmick bosses built around using particular skills, then simply telegraphing such a bit in advance, so you can quickly build such up, would work well.

[Nephrite]

For what it's worth, I like the idea of "big pool of points to spend on abilities" and then something akin to either the Sphere Grid of FFX or the License Board of 12. I like the idea behind them (big open fields where you can choose abilities for characters) but I'd much prefer more unique options, so some kind of hybrid of the Sphere Grid and License Board in that options (more options than the sphere grid had, less 'make all characters the same' than the license board)

[Anthony Edward Stark]

For what it's worth, I like the idea of "big pool of points to spend on abilities" and then something akin to either the Sphere Grid of FFX or the License Board of 12. I like the idea behind them (big open fields where you can choose abilities for characters) but I'd much prefer more unique options, so some kind of hybrid of the Sphere Grid and License Board in that options (more options than the sphere grid had, less 'make all characters the same' than the license board)

Frankly, not keen on it anything remotely reminiscent of it. It just means that at the end game there is no reason to use anyone but your core party, since you will have completely homogenized your party. I'd rather see as little ability customization as possible, but if you're going to use it, it should be a WoW-style talent tree, where there are roughly four times as many options as you could possibly have points for.

[Bardiche]

I'd vote for not differentiating the three parties too much... suppose you really, really, hate the way one party plays, you'd be forced to 'suffer' that part of the game just to play with the party you do like. It's always good to have a main line live through, and not arbitrarily make one party rely on a completely different mechanic just for the sake of having variety.

I feel Suikoden 3 pulled this off decently, actually. Hugo's party were mostly quick fighters, Chris had the armoured knights, whereas the mercenaries had a lot of synergy. The three didn't play entirely the same, after all: Hugo had heavy reliance on good Runes, Chris could skirt by on physicals and just wanted healing, whereas the mercenaries well, synergy zing.

On limited items: I think Tales of the Abyss did this great in the start of the game. Basically, recovery items are %-based and ridiculously expensive so that you have to choose between buying 2 potent HP-restoring Gels or that better armour you need.

On resources: I'm a heavy forestander of resources not meaning, "conserve juice until boss". Not a forestander of solving this with "HP/MP restore before bosses!", because you end up still being conservating with your juice JUST IN CASE the developers pull a jackarse move and give you a surprise boss.



Final note: it'd be interesting if this could actually be programmed. Might be worthwhile to keep this in mind and try to keep mechanics programmable for potential programmers among the DL group.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm not really a big fan of conserving resources for bosses, because it means you balance a boss around a random guess at how many resources the party has left. Also leaves open the possibility that the player reaches the boss with too few resources to win and has to redo the whole dungeon, which... well, may or may not be that bad but I imagine some players will be steamed by that, judging the reaction to people having to redo FF3 dungeons.

So yeah, either have random-fighting and boss-fighting stuff run off different resources generally (see PS4) or give a restoration before bosses big and bad enough to require deep resources (most modern games).

[Random Consonant]

Pretty much in complete agreement with using a Suikoden-style levelling system, though I'd also like to see some means of avoiding random encounters entirely through some non-abusable method.  Ideally the whole "move x steps, get into fight" would be scrapped entirely for a system that lets you see monster groups and avoid them entirely but doing so may be more trouble than it's worth assuming this moves beyond the theorycraft stage.  Alternatively, reducing the frequency of random encounters based on your levels relative to theirs might be a neat idea, though likely difficult to work out.

As far as the acutal resource issue comes in, sure, randoms shouldn't be "just mash attack button" but at the same time the calls for scarce MP healing items make me wonder on how this is going to be handled without accidentally creating a "horde MP for boss" mentality.  Sure, you could just place a heal spot somewhere but the notion strikes me as less-than-ideal unless measures are taken to prevent the kind of abuse that it creates (namely money/item farming, especially if some sort of synthesis/item creation system sees the light of day and requires monster drops).  The idea of attaching cooldown to some things instead of making them cost MP is a neat idea, though.

As far as items go, I'm largely in favor of handling them like Tales/SO does; make them percentage based and impose a non-trivial restriction on how many of each item you can have.  Furthermore, I'd further limit the more powerful kinds of items, so for example, you'd be able to have 20 of your garden variety 25% HP healing item, 10-12 or so of your more potent 50% HP healing item, 2 or 3 Elixir-type items, and 1 Megaelixir type item.  Make them so that they're worth having, but so that you can't farm them like crazy.

Character customization and skillset depth is something that largely depends on the cast size, but I'm against anything that would lead to character homogenization.  Job systems I'm cool with but only to a certain extent.  Character switching in battle is... something I'm cool with but something that I'd only actively approve of if someone got rid of the whole "current active party dead == GAME OVER even though there are still people in the back that can be brought in" bullshit.  Ideally the game would force the player to take advantage of this in multiple ways (sorta like how Touhou Odyssey does, but then again, TO also has the aforementioned "current active party dead == GAME OVER even though there are still people in the back that can be brought in" bullshit, so... yeah).

Also, a giant hell no to overpowered mains.

[Excal]

Bard, that's a danger of any trinity system like this.  Especially since if you're not differentiating them, then what's the point.  The thing is, I like this idea since it's not something that's been done before, and it will give opportunities to play around with it at a later point.

Re: Cmdr's comments.  Honestly, the main reason why I like not giving bonuses to the people you use as a player (as opposed to considerations of designing stuff) is so that you can, actually, freely use whoever you like.  Then again, I also like to try and keep party levels even, even when level is the God stat, so, that's part of it.  More to the point, I don't see what the benefit is in giving these bonuses.  I mean, all it does is encourage picking one select group of characters and then nothing else ever again.  All it really does is punish people for not wanting to, or being able to, stick with one party.

[AndrewRogue]

On encouraging PC use: PCs level automagically to allow easy swapping. I actually had a thought about this otherwise, though. Some sort of support system might be nifty, where, not only can the PCs fight better together, but there are unique rewards for various supports. This might encourage using different PC combinations, especially if we encourage variety for bosses (especially on hard mode and what not).

On powerlevelling: I... guess I could support it if it was a serious, obnoxious grind to do so. I definitely want there to be a clear, "general" range you should be in for plot encounters that is hard to be above or below.

On resources: The cooldown concept is certainly interesting and definitely bears some thinking on it. If nothing else, this mechanic should definitely be used on some PCs, at the very least. Otherwise, see the next bullet.

On character mechanics: I think we should avoid a fully party being based on a specific mechanic for the reason that Bard brings up. If you really hate certain mechanics, playing that chunk of the game will suck. Keeping individual mechanics spread out so the player always has some options is probably best. Don't homogenize, but don't force a full thing. Trying to avoid sharing mechanics would be a good deal, though, for reasons Excal brings up.

On OP mains: Should be avoidable if we're going with a more ensemble game style anyway.

On items: This is a toughie. No comment currently.

On skill development: I generally prefer characters have unique skillsets, which plays into characters playing differently from each other. The idea of levelling being used to buff the skills you gain is an interesting concept though, and bears some thought.

[Pyro]

Just a few comments.

- CTB is the way to go. Grandia-3 style works for me, but I honestly don't care that much about movement/position. In fact I feel that overemphasis on this will make it a wannabe SRPG, which would slow it down significantly. I believe that a faster flow of battle is better. If you want to go with a straight up SRPG than that is fine. BoF5 style would be problematic for larger parties, and I would like to see larger parties due to the increased gameplay options that provides.

- A level curve where you are 'forced' into a certain level range by the randoms you fight makes perfect sense to me. If people want to powergame there are ways to incorporate that, but it is difficult to balance things when levels can vary wildly.

- Character switching in battle is something I liked in MK because it let you use more PCs, not really just because of the switching. It was an interesting mechanic but mostly it just helped to avoid my like #3 hated thing about RPG casts. Too many games force you to use 3/10 PCs or some such ratio, which honestly feels retarded most of the time. If the game is fast-paced enough then it can support using a reasonably large number of PCs at once, or you could split the parties up and have them work independently/together. Either way having a bunch of spare PCs sitting around doing nothing is dumb.

-Skill advancement/setup should have some customization in it. It adds to the interaction and usually makes for more tactical gameplay. Personally I would favor a skill tree that had a method of restructuring it (say at a save point or other 'break'). That is to say, you can go *back* on the skill tree and take a different path. Kind of like how you could move abilities around in WA4 by giving one up and going for another. Generally agree that each PC should be unique and have their own style.

-On items: Cheap and powerful items are always silliness because they make PCs copies of each other in skillset. Limited  items (via expense, availability, or just kind of sucking) all work. Actually, items being good early and then tapering out rapidly past a point is a fairly effective way to manage difficulty during the learning curve.

[Talaysen]

Few things.

Regarding resources (MP): I've never been a fan of traditional MP, since it does tend to stress that "no I should save this for bosses or tough enemies" mentality.  One way I've seen it work is in Magical Starsign's system.  In that, every character regenerated a certain percentage of their MP each turn.  Because of this, they could make MP costs high so you can't spam things, but since MP regenerated, there's nothing wrong with using powerful moves on randoms.

Regarding powerlevelling: One thing we could do would be to scale the rewards of a battle based on the level difference.  Not only EXP, but cash and items.  One problem with doing this is that "accidentally" overlevelling causes problems, so I'd suggest there should be some way to lower levels, either permanently or temporarily.  In fact, I think the latter should be in regardless, because I definitely know I've overlevelled trying to get items and then had boring boss fights.  It's just a good feature to have.

Was going to comment on other things but had to leave in the middle of reading thread and forgot so whatever.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Something like the WA black market which saps your exp is pretty cool, yeah.

On reflection I'm just going to come out in favour of not having in-battle party switching at all. It can be done, but I'd rather have multiple, reasonably large parties, and you can switch what few PCs you aren't using out between battles (or even between dungeons/etc.). Avoids the "active party dead = game over!" nonsense as well as the problems integrating switching and positioning. Like Pyro, I feel that one of the main reasons to have switching is that it lets you use more PCs; we're doing this via other ways.

[Excal]

The thing about items is, it's hard to balance them.  I mean, if they're weak, then why have them, they're never used.  If they're powerful, then they're either plentiful, in which case they overwhelm the system, or they're rare and get horded.  I mean, outside of CT, I can probably count on my fingers the number of Elixirs and Megalixers I've used in RPGs.

Again, part of why I like the idea of items which can't be used in battle, which are auto used after battle in order to heal lost reserves.  Hell, you could make it a limitation on the traditional party that they get the best moves, but they also have finite resources in a fight barring someone else having a power specifically to power them back up again.  This way, you can have the cheap/powerful items, because you're still running on a limited battery for each fight that can run out.

And yeah, backing up the elf.  Given our PC range, it feels like we're going to end up with enough for either multiple parties, or character switching, but not enough for both.  And so should use that as a focus.

[074]

Hm.  Tal has an idea there on the MP regen.  In fact, we have a wide variety of 'restriction types' we could use, come to think of it.

1: At-will abilities.  Self-explanatory.
2: Standard MP pools.  No explanation needed
3: 'charges', either ala Suikospells, or PS4 skills/EP everything
4: Recovery time, as proposed by Rob
5: MP pools with some sort of natural recovery, either by attacking (Tales), some sort of 'charge' action(Touhou Oddysey), or automatic (as per Tal's statement--could be by turn or by clocktick)

[Yoshiken]

Oh jesus christ i didn't realise how long this would be. Sorry guys. Quote-post, since everything's probably been said a few hundred times already.
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Levelling:

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.

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.

Either of these. Both of these ideas are pretty damn awesome, and allow for grinding if you're happy to while still discouraging it. Leaning towards Rob's suggestion more, personally.
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Resources: Skills:

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.

On skill development: I generally prefer characters have unique skillsets, which plays into characters playing differently from each other. The idea of levelling being used to buff the skills you gain is an interesting concept though, and bears some thought.

I'd go for a low resource pool and full healing after every battle, personally. Make the randoms challenging, but make the bosses run on tricks and gimmicks, as opposed to just sheer strength/abilities like the randoms.
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Resources: Items:

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.

This. Make it so that the items have a huge charge time or something. Make them easy to get, not -too- useless, but just... really situational in battle, and useless outside of it (unless we include some kind of fusion/alchemy thing. Then they at least get another use!)
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PCs:

BoF5 style would be problematic for larger parties, and I would like to see larger parties due to the increased gameplay options that provides.

On encouraging PC use: PCs level automagically to allow easy swapping. I actually had a thought about this otherwise, though. Some sort of support system might be nifty, where, not only can the PCs fight better together, but there are unique rewards for various supports. This might encourage using different PC combinations, especially if we encourage variety for bosses (especially on hard mode and what not).

I'd say the best approach would be SRPG with huge parties/multiple parties. Maybe make it so that you can choose party size, but the enemies match your numbers? The more you choose, the tougher the enemies get as well, so that things like having more combo attacks available can be balanced by harder enemies appearing.

[Talaysen]

Oh, character switching.

Two ideas.  First, just have a range on the outside of the battlefield where a character can move to switch with someone else.  Simple.

Second idea, allow switching anywhere, with the restriction that if there is an enemy between the character and the border of the battlefield it won't be allowed.  Less simple but a bit more flexible.  Also makes positioning more important.

Of course if you can encourage more PC usage some other way that's fine.

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Regarding level scaling: No.  It's hard to balance well and just not really a good idea in the first place.  Levels should be a benefit powerwise and if you just scale everything people might as well just run LLGs.

[Yoshiken]

What about scaling randoms while bosses have set levels? Means you need to fight the randoms to level up, but also slows grinding, so that it isn't just "level up if you're struggling."

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Regarding level scaling: No.  It's hard to balance well and just not really a good idea in the first place.  Levels should be a benefit powerwise and if you just scale everything people might as well just run LLGs.

Again, going back to the FO3 example, you become doubtlessly more powerful as you level in FO3. For one, places you currently are or have been in the past become less powerful relative to you. Also, as you level, you unlock new perks. Neither of these are a direct function of your level but are instead new abilities being gained (Grim Reaper's Sprint, for example, absolutely breaking the game). Likewise, everything doesn't have to scale straight to your level (as FO3 does, where there is a minimum level enemies have to be, and they are also often locked in at "player's current level + X").

If you do it Oblivion-style, you are absolutely correct, but not even Bethesda considers that a good idea anymore.

[Talaysen]

Levelling makes newer areas harder.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Within a certain range, yes. There's a ceiling on how high the scaling goes. You will never meet a Deathclaw pack on your way to Rivet City, no matter how high your level is. You might, however, encounter raiders with actual assault rifles instead of zip guns and lengths of pipe, though, which actively benefits the player as ammunition is a consumable resource. Since there is also a floor, you can't simply wander in to anywhere you want at level 5, because you won't have the skills, durability or firepower to take on your opponents.

[074]

Going to have to agree with Tal here.  LLGs thrive in a situation like this.  Doubly so when equipment is likely to scale up faster on a well-planned LLG.  So we have still low-level enemies...versus low-level you with your awesome new equipment.  Basically, the further you get in with lower levels, the easier it gets under such a scaling system.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

How are you going to tune a boss, then? The way I see it, if you're going to have genuinely challenging boss fights, which is to say, something that is more than "Has big numbers" you need to cap the player's power. You can either have strict limits on level and gear, or you can have abilities and health totals that are on floating scales that match the player's advancement.

[Yoshiken]

You can either have strict limits on level and gear[...]

This. Nama, you're saying the equipment makes you too powerful? Well, have a minimum level for equips. Problem solved, game remains challenging, promotes fighting for new equipment, etc, etc.

[DomaDragoon]

RE: Character usage

If you want people to consider using more than just the so-called "best party", would it be viable to let each character have a passive bonus to the game if they're used enough? EX: A character who's a blacksmith in-game would give a bonus to physical attacks with weapons based on the number of fights you've used him in (with declining bonuses as the numbers go up, like Barb find skills in D2).

Of course, if the cast size is small enough (and I don't think we got any discussion on that yet besides an Elfboy comment), it won't really matter too much. I'm sure that's going to be a topic for another round...