Disquiet (Working Title) - Currently Assumed System Information

[MC50]

I haven't really read all of these topics yet, but it's kind of interesting, and I do have some RPG Maker experience.

It's probably good to make TP something different than the default. Otherwise, it's just different coloured MP. Djinn's idea is good. Anything to make a battle system more interesting is good.

I'm not sure what scripts you plan on using, or what you've already got planned, but I find a turn order display incredibly helpful in an RPG.

Anyway, just throwing an idea out that I always wanted to use, but never really got working right. I like Wild Arms FP. I also like that it is a resource shared by the party. I must have seen this battle system somewhere before, but back when I was messing around with making a VX game, I wanted there to be two resources. I'll go over it now, just for the sake of it.

MP, which had your normal skills, which were less powerful, and Elemental Skills, which used points taken from a global resource.

A fight started out with an equal amount of all elemental points available. There were four - Fire, Water, Wind, and Darkness. Most attacks used only one of these, but some could use multiple. At the end of every turn, every element would increase a small amount. (Let's say the fight started out with 20 in each element, and the end of each turn, it increased by 5 or so). In addition, using an attack would cause the next element in line to increase by half. For example, using a 20 Cost Fire attack would increase Water by 10.

These points were shared by both you and the enemies. You could select to use the move even if not enough points were available at the time - if enough were created by the time your turn came up, then the move would be executed. Otherwise it would fail.

The point is, combined with being able to see whose turns were coming up, it was interesting to plan ahead. In addition, it let me come up with some neat skill ideas, and balance weaker skills in a way that might make them useful. (I had one skill that used a lot of one element and spread it out to the others, for example.)

I've never been a master scripter, so I did this mostly with in battle stuff. It did work, though it needed a lot of fine tuning (IE: Showing the amount of elements available on the screen, probably with pictures).

Honestly, the game never got far at all, and a lot of the skills didn't work, but I really liked the idea of it. Enemy scripting was a problem here, too. It wasn't impossible, but it took quite a bit of effort. That being said, if you know the fact that "This enemy has a really dangerous Black attack" then you would try to limit the amount of Black available. At least, that was the idea.

Anyway, I kind of went off on a tangent. But from what I've seen VX lets you do a fair bit of unique stuff. Even something like Lufia IP can make a battle system a lot more interesting. Anyway, I'll probably be reading through the rest of these topics in a bit. Probably post a bit more.

I've messed with RPG Maker a fair bit over the years, but I've run into two problems

1 - The game is in progress for too long, and I would come up with a "cool new idea" that I wanted to put in. This happens a lot. Then my games plot became a complete mess.
2 - Lack of motivation. This goes off and on to be honest, but unlike a game hack, an RPG Maker game can basically be endless. Which is scary!

Anyway, it looks like you guys are planning a lot better than I ever was, which is definitely the right way to go about it!

As a side note, my mess of a plot in my RPG Maker 2000 game is why my FF6 hack has a joke plot, and the Fire Emblem one is like it too. (Not saying the RPG Maker game didn't have a sense of humor, but it tried, and failed, to be serious.)

[AndrewRogue]

Proposal for TP:

It is Wild Arms FP. It increases by varying amounts for different actions - when receiving damage, avoiding attacks, dealing single/multiple physical hits, dealing critical hits, using specific skills, or having an equipment/status that regens TP per turn.

It decreases when using skills that use TP as a resource, when using a "Limit" if the TP gauge is full, upon death/KO, or from attacks that deal TP damage.

The amount/frequency of TP increasing/decreasing can vary dramatically between PCs, depending on their TP needs and how powerful their TP skills are.


Uses for TP:

Most physical-based damage skills. Physical-based HP healing skills. MP-healing skills. Limit Breaks for characters who have them. Passive effects when TP is high (for Mirek/Guardians). Possibly we might want to make it necessary to use these for using Items, too, to keep their usage under control (a la Hi-Item).



Erastus: I still think he should have a spell or two that rando-targets damage or hits all units on the field with status or damage, just for some flavor in the sense that high-level magic is hard to control, particularly for a mentally unbalanced person like Erastus.

Sounds generally reasonable and in the neighborhood of what we've been sliding towards.

[DjinnAndTonic]

First Dev Meeting highlights:

Broad view decisions:

RPG Maker VX
-Main scripters are more familiar with it, no large benefits to using VXA over VX. Limitation breeds creativity anyway.

Episodic Releases
-No save carry-over.
-In the end, this style best reflects our talents and keeps us focused. There's little benefit vs. effort to save carry-over

Design Elements to Highlight:
-Dual Resource Interplay
-Limited Healing
-Broad CTB/Turn Manipulation System
-In-Battle Weapon/Character Swapping (Minor?)

Aesthetics decisions:
-Archipelago-setting map, limited Tropical setting
-Musical naming/conceptual theme for Magic/Flow

On-screen Encounters a possibility
-Lower number of encounters a plus to increase balance and challenge of each individual battle
-Fewer/Smaller maps

[074]

Important testing/implementation update:

Implementation of some aspects of the MP/TP interplay are now possible, as follows. 

*As of Yami's revised take on YEM, multi-cost abilities are now possible.
*Individual Rage(TP) modifiers on skills are viable, having specific ones raise or lower it regardless of its cost.
*Rage(TP) can be set to reset between battles.  Hooray.

Due to YEM being the way it is, however, there is a number of notetags that have not been properly implemented; either causing bugs (such as the Target All script crashing the game), or simply not working (Rage Boost tag for statuses)--this specific instance is the most notable because it doesn't have as many easy workarounds, and is fairly integral to a few of our PCs' setups as-is.  To be precise, Mirek's, Erastus', and Eirwen's (and possibly Katarine's) all have some degree of regen or degen that could be simulated with a Rage Boost tagged status of some sort--if it did anything.  As-is, it does nothing, and unless either NEB can code something or one of us can find a fix for it, we may have to change matters.

[AndrewRogue]

New big question for folks:

Are all the stats we have necessary and could the game be improved by reducing stat bloat somewhat, or by reallocating some stats to equipment and the like? Here they all are, for a reminder.

Stats:

-HP: Lose these, you die. (Default)

-MP: Resource. Functions as you think of it. Tends towards magical skills. (Default)

-Focus: Resource. Functions similar to WA FP, though for individual PCs. Tends towards physical skills or specials. (Default VXA, Script VX)

-Strength (Str): Increases damage dealt by physical attacks. Typically linear. (Default)

-Dexterity (Dex): A higher Dex stat allows the character to swing more often when making physical attacks, and also causes enemies to swing less often when attacking him or her. (Doable via Scripts in VX, unsure VXA)

-Vitality (Vit): Reduces physical damage received. Divisive. (Default)

-Intelligence (Int): Increases damage (and healing) dealt by magical attacks. Typically slightly quadratic. (Default in VXA, merged with Spirit in VX thus requires scripts)

-Spirit (Spi): Reduces magical damage recieved. Divisive. (Default in VXA, merged with Intelligence in VX thus requires scripts)

-Speed (Spd): Increases how quickly the character gets turns. Linear. (Default)

-Accuracy (Acc): The higher this is, the higher the character's chance to hit with physical attacks. (Default, Requires Scripts to function as modifier vs Eva VX/VXA)

-Evade (Eva): The higher this is, the higher the character's chance to evade (take no damage from) incoming physical attacks. (Default, Requires Scripts to function as modifier vs Acc VX/VXA)

-Magic Evade (MEva): Like Eva, but works for magical attacks instead. (Default VXA, Doable via Scripts in VX)

-Attack (Atk): Stat that determines physical damage (equipment only) (Requires Scripting in VX//VXA)

-Def (Def): Stat that determines physical defense (equipment only) (Requires Scripting in VX//VXA)

-Magic Defense (Mdef): Stat that determines magical defense (equipment only) (Requires Scripting in VX//VXA)

[Dark Holy Elf]

The ones in particular that I think -could- be gotten rid of (not that I am necessarily supporting any of these):

Vitality: The main thing that got me thinking about this is that we currently have six different defensive stats, which could be considered quite a lot. Of those, HP is necessary, and Defence/Dexterity are core to the battle system (I'll deal with magic in a moment). Vitality is the one that could possibly fall under question. Currently, Vit stats allow some PCs to be naturally tougher against physicals than others, even if they use the same armour. Do we need this, when we also have a differing HP stat?

Magic Defence or Spirit: We haven't pegged down the magic formula 100% for sure partly because there's still some debate about skill progression (though with the episodic structure I have little doubt that any system can be made to work due to the ability to tweak spell powers between episodes). Currently, MDef works like Defence and Spirit works like Vitality. Again we have two separate PC stats for magic defence, one from equipment and one as an innate PC thing. Do we need both?

Accuracy, Evade: To be clear, I am not suggesting doing away with these entirely; different weapons having different accuracies is crucial to weapon balance, and it's already been suggested that different armours and weapons (e.g. quarterstaves) give more evasion. The question here is does each PC need to have a separate base stat in these?

Magic Evade: Do we want this at all? If so, does it need to be a separate stat from evade? Even if we keep it the same comments regarding evade could apply, and PCs need not necessarily differ in it before equipment. If they do, what is the flavour logic for someone being good at avoiding physicals but not magic and vice versa?

I'm not opposed to any of these stats, but if we keep them all that does give us a lot of them (15) which can be quite cluttering for players to keep track of.

[074]

I don't like doubleposting, but it feels like the most efficient way to go about this.

Anyway, everyone mathy is on the issue of who should keep what, and reviewing the old equations.

As it stands, the general agreement is on keeping the following stats: HP, MP, TP, STR, DEX, MAG, SPD, ATK, DEF. (and arguably critical rate and counter rate)

By extension, the following are what are being debated: VIT, SPI, MDef, ACC, EVA, MEV (the last three as character stats as opposed to equipment stats.)

I'm not going to say anything in favor or opposition to taking or dropping any of these stats, but instead simply describe what would occur or be required if one or more stats were missing.


--VIT: One of two possibilities here.  The first is that DEF gets moved to a character stat, or defense is entirely equipment-based.  The results are largely the same, however.  Armor access becomes that much more significant, with the heavy armor users becoming that much better at taking hits overall--and those who can't have to increasingly rely on both DEX and Evasion to not get splattered.  Naturally, formulas will need to be changed, but that's easy enough.

--SPI, MDEF: These are lumped together because the debate is not whether or not both should stay, but one or the other.  If SPI is removed, well, see the above argument, only that DEX doesn't factor and that it pertains to magic rather than physicals.  If MDEF is, then equipment in general matters that much less for magic resilience, and it becomes a very character-specific thing.  See above about formula changes.

--ACC:  ACC being removed from character stats would render weapon choice much more significant, as aside from possible accessories, it would be the -only- way to affect physical accuracy--which would more than likely have to be carefully balanced to avoid cases like axes and dark magic in varied FEs being so inaccurate as to be unusable.  If it were removed entirely, the assumption would be that EVA alone affects evasion.

--EVA: EVA being removed from character stats makes it so that armor choice and possibly accessory choice would be the primary determinants of whether or not you could dodge something.  If these values are lowered to the point of low significance, DEX would be the primary non-soak defensive stat, and mitigating hits would be less a matter of dodging them and more a matter of reducing their count.  If removed entirely, either ACC is the sole determinant of evasion, or if both were removed entirely, we get Labyrinth of Touhou.

--MEV: See EVA when it comes to removing it from character stats, with the corollary that there's no second non-soak defensive stat for magic.  If removed entirely, one of two possibilities occur; Magic evasion and evasion are merged into one stat (ala Disgaea, Fire Emblem, so on) or this game goes the way of so many that decide that nobody can evade magic.  Ever.  No need to point out how many games follow -that- route.

Anyway, that's my summary of the likely possibilities of what'd happen if each was removed/removed from PCs.

[AndrewRogue]

Currently angling towards moving Acc modifiers to weapons (logic: low accuracy is inherently unfun and a bad idea in non-strategy games).

From a logic standpoint, favor merging Eva/MEva, but that may overinflate the stats value significantly.

Unsure on the other defensive stats. Still considering them.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Personally in favor of merging Eva/MEva and then just making all magic spells have inherently low/high/ITE accuracy, depending on how accurate we want magic to generally be.

[TranceHime]

I am in agreement with combining Evasion with Magic Evasion, it seems kind of redundant to separate them; if you can evade physical attacks then you're just about as capable of evading magical attacks, I think? The latter is typically telegraphed or AT LEAST you can anticipate it coming out? I mean, the magic in question has to be highly focused and/or specialized for it to be specifically difficult to evade (see: ITE). Basically, see Elfboy re: "Should we separate Eva/MEva and if so why?"

Unsure about defensive statistics myself apart from "this looks like a lot to keep track of."

[Talaysen]

Well you can always flavor MEva as just blocking the attack or something similar if you're worried about that...

[DjinnAndTonic]

Dev meeting results:

*EVA/MEVA are merged to just EVA, with spells having various accuracies/ITE to balance. Unanimous decision.

*ACC on weapons. Unanimous decision.

*VIT kept. SPR dropped, possibly merged into VIT. DEF/MDEF still exist on armors/enemies as separate stats.

*Magic Formula is getting retooled by NEB.

*Focus to be shortened to FP? (Suggestion, call MP "SP"... since these two resources seem to be flavored "Stamina" and "Focus", then just give their acronyms the appropriate letters?)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Okay, so here is my proposal for magic damage:

(POW + Lv - MDEF) * hits * INT / VIT

I'm still not 100% happy with this formula. Here's why I'm proposing it anyway:
-It mirrors the physical formula somewhat in that spells with low power and high hit count struggle more with magic defence.
-It causes spell damage to be linear with INT. I tried some formulas where it wasn't but didn't like the result; it meant that INT buffs were either more or less potent than corresponding STR buffs which seemed unintuitive for the player, as an example.
-The "level" in the formula allows spells to scale. I tried experimenting with functions of INT here but it resulted in spells which grew wildly differently depending on the INT of their caster which seemed weird.

Now, the one odd thing about the formula, and the only reason I have some misgivings about it, is this: spells age differently depending on power. In particular, spells with low power age better than those with high power. Here's an example to illustrate this:

All stats start at 60. Defences start at 30. These stats double by endgame (Level 50)

Assuming STR, INT, and VIT are equal:

Basic physicals: 60 + 30 per extra swing -> 120 + 60 extra per swing
50-pow magic: 20 per hit -> 40
60-pow magic: 30 per hit -> 50
90-pow magic: 60 per hit -> 80

Let's say the 50-power spell hits 6 times, while the 90-power spell hits twice. Both will then do 120. However, at endgame, the 6-hit spell has aged perfectly and does 240 damage, while the 90-power spell does only 160.

Is this okay? I... actually think so, it doesn't bother me too much. But it may bother others, so speak up if you don't like it!

(As always, usual disclaimer that episodic format lets us cheat and have spell powers change between episodes, so ultimately any scaling flaws wouldn't become -that- big a deal.)

To summarise, for Nama/anyone else thinking of raw spell design: 50-power spells (which is probably on the low end, such spells will need 4+ hits to be competitive) scale just as well as physicals, while higher-power spells scale relatively less well and will need to be replaced / maintain utility uses / get cheaty power upgrades between episodes. Lower-power spells will scale extremely well and we should be cautious with them.

[074]

Hm.  Not the biggest fan of the formula if only due to level involvement and moreso how VIT ends up playing double-duty here.  The former is more for the reason that I'm not sure if it can be implemented as a stat for enemies (and if so, how), whereas the latter...well, I guess we were dropping SPR but I admit I wasn't expecting VIT to be factored into the standard spell formula.

Well, time to change stats to match, or whatnot.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Don't change anything yet, this isn't set in stone.

It's very easy to give enemies levels so that part isn't an issue (in fact, depending on what we use for an Exp-gain formula, it may be necessary just for that). The VIT thing was based on what was tossed around in chat last night, but that's still very open to debate.

We could, for instance, replace VIT with SPI and go back to having separate stats there. That's certainly cool by me. The formula ended up needing a PC defensive stat so if you want separate SPI and VIT stats we can certainly go with that. And we could still have earth spells (or whatever) use VIT instead of SPI in the calculation.

Honestly, I think that's what I'm proposing at this point, having had some time to think about it.

[AndrewRogue]

So generally speaking you think it is worth keeping Spi around? (Just want to make sure things are clear)

[Dark Holy Elf]

That's my current inclination. I'm sorry for going back and forth on this!

[Grefter]

Suggestion, split spells by element and have two formulas.  Make say Fire and Earth hit Vit for example.  Replace the Vit check for double dipping MDef on more arcane spells.

Physically oriented spells check the general bulkiness of a character while "magicy" magic checks how well they are against the arcane.  Also gives you further ways to differentiate character effectiveness on a given fight and gives you a way to make people hit the three defensive stats you have in more variation (without making them have 2 different physical attack types or just Magic and Physical).  Also I like this thematically in that it makes arcane spells more consistany performing enemy to enemy because they only check one stat.  Fire on the other hand is all over the place depending one Vit.

[DjinnAndTonic]

We don't really have any "Arcane" element types apart from Disquiet, which is supposed to rare.

I think our elements all create physical phenomena... Earth, Fire, Cold, Lightning, Poison? I guess Lightning and Cold are more "Energy" at least if you really want to split the damage formula based on elements?


As to the formula, I'm not sure I like Level itself as the growth mechanism. Perhaps averaging Level and SpellPower together would give a less strange growth to the spells? That way if we give something a higher power value (and matching higher Resource cost, I would assume?), it won't get outdamaged by a low-resource skill in 10 levels?

Something like:

(POW + [Lv+POW]/2 - MDEF) * hits * INT / VIT

And then just use lower base POW values than you were intending since now POW is being counted twice?

[Hunter Sopko]

Would say Lightning is on the end of Energy, Earth is on the end of Physical. Fire I'd actually call more energy, depending on how it's conjured. Cold would lean towards Physical as well, depending (the difference between, say, hucking ice blocks at someone- pure phy, and using energy to freeze their blood- both phy and mag). Poison would probably fall smack in the middle in all cases, if it's magic poison. Poisons attached to physical skills would be straight Vit.

[Grefter]

If you wanted a reasoning behind any split other than it being fun mechanically and flavoursome for algorithms, point of origin for the spell.  Fire and earth you throw things at people.  Poison you magically inflict upon them.  Cold and Lightning are formed from an arcane manipulation of the energy surrounding the target (either unnatural dispersion of heat or changing flow of electrons to form a discharge).  Boom.  Done.

If you wanted some symmetry you could even flip a coin on one and have some moves hit either Vit or MDef depending on the kind of spell it is.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Well, Earth, Fire, Cold, Lightning, Poison refers to how the spells would "look", their technical elements are from the Chinese system, respectively Earth, Fire, Water, Metal, and Wood, all of which seem pretty solidly physical instead of arcane (barring, oddly, Fire).

 At least in the case of Wood (which is supposed to encompass Poison and Healing spells), I imagine it's based on a physical agent such as Pollen afflicting the target.

Water/Cold I suppose could still be "Energy", despite Water itself being a physical substance.

Metal/Lightning, I'm still not quite sure how that works, but I'm not picky.

[Dark Holy Elf]

(POW + [Lv+POW]/2 - MDEF) * hits * INT / VIT

Well, that formula can be rearranged and better understood as:

(POW*3/2 + Lv/2 - MDEF) * hits * INT / VIT

And since MDef, as currently conceived, grows faster than Lv/2, this means the same spell will actually do less damage as the game goes on. I don't think that's especially desirable.

[DjinnAndTonic]

It's not, but I didn't intend for it to be a finalized formula. The idea was for POW to modify Level in such a way that it mediates the effective growth that a straight-up Lv modifier would have on Damage. The exact method to achieve this, I haven't actually come up with yet.

Although, we could just rework the MDEF scaling to make it accommodate a Lv/2 modifier.

[Dark Holy Elf]

The issue is, as the rearranged formula shows, you aren't actually modifying Level with the spell power. There might be a way to pull it off with multiplication though...