On the Subject of Battles

Calehay · Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 10:52 pm Post subject: On the Subject of Battles

Lately, I've been attempting to come up with an interesting battle system for my game. My original plan was just to have normal old Attack/Item/and two special attack menus, but I started to think that I could do more with the system.

And so I came up with this system. It's not original I'm sure, but I think it might be an interesting system to use. I'm not quite sure how well it will work, but I think it's worth a shot.

Each character has the stats HP, VP, and etc. Hit Points are the standard Hit Points in most RPGs, but Vitality Points (VP) are decreased on every attack that your character performs (except a move named Pass, which will be described later.) Some attacks take more than others, and some moves might lessen or even temporarily stop VP from being taken.

When characters equip weapons, they are learning the different "spells" for that weapon. Some weapons might give you a standard Light, Medium, and Hard hit, and others might give things like a status hit, speed hit, etc. To add on to the strategy, each attack takes different amounts of VP, so you have to adjust according to the task at hand.

At the moment, I'm undecided as to if I should restore VP after every battle or not. If I do, then, since potions and healing is generally limited in my game, I think to promote smart usage of VP, I will raise your HP by some sort of amount based on the amount of VP you have after a battle. (I've been throwing around the HP/2or4 =x, leftover% of VP = y, y% of x + HP, but I'm not quite sure yet.)

If the game has the pause on all Battle menus on, the pass option on the menu allows the player to just pass the characters turn. I know this is also doable by holding down the esc button, but I'm also in a bit of a bind because I have to have some attack in this place in the menu (since the fight menu is a spell menu, the OHR doesn't allow characters to not have a weapon.)

Along with the character's Fight menu that comes from weapons, I've been thinking about reincarnating some of my old battle ideas.

One character has:
Pass
Fight
Critical
PwrUp
Item

Critical is an equippable move that generally takes time. The player uses an item to equip the move (though I'm going to have to custom script the menu anyway, so it might be handled differently than items.) and then choosing Critical on the menu does the move.

PwrUp enhances the players stats by a bit. I might have it do something such as if Atk goes up, Def goes down, or something like that.

Another character has:

Pass
Fight
Strategize
Perform
(Motivate)

Strategize/Perform - This character's forte is coming up with "battle strategies" and pumping up the group. When the strategize option is chosen, the character levels up a "Strategy Gauge" which will choose which level of moves the character will be able to do when they choose the Perform option on the menu. The player is able equip different books (perhaps... I'm not sure what to make him equip.) that each hold different moves to be performed on different levels. I'm unsure if it would be too much to have random moves be performed on each level, but I think some sort of randomness might be necessary.

I don't think I explained that well, so here's an example. The player equips Book A which has the Level 1 spells ABC and DEF, the Level 2 spells GHI and JKL, and the Level 3 spells MNO and PQR. When in battle, the player chooses the Strategize option from the menu and after a time delay (and possibly a defense decrease?), they get 1 strategy point in the Strategy Gauge. This allows them to, if they choose, choose the Perform option on the menu and execute either move ABC or DEF (which may or may not be random). But, they can choose to pick Strategize again and level up to Level 2, etc.

Motivate - Originally, this menu was going to be a fall back for people who didn't want to go through the randomness of the Strategize menu. Not all of the moves from Strategize would be there (actually none of them, but these spells would have some of the same effects.) but there would be a VP cost. Since there's a VP cost all the time now, it might not be such a good idea, though I could concievably just see the menu being a VP hog, but then who would use it when Strategize took so much less and you would probably get better results anyway?

Another character has this:

Pass
Fight
Herbs
Mix
Items

Herbs - This character has the ability to put together healing herbs. She might be the only character in the game who heals, but I'm not quite sure about that yet. I thought that this menu should be on a FF1 style menu due to the limited nature of the herbs used by the character in the world, but I'm not sure if this will make the game too hard at low levels and too easy at higher levels since you'll have a large wealth of the healing spells you learned at the beginning of the game. This could be solvable by just making that spell weak, but I originally was going to try to have this game do something like Tales of Phantasia/Eternia/Destiny and have healing items heal by a % based on Max HP.

Mix - The character learns how to mix different ingredients (items) together for interesting results. While I can't do something like FFX's Mix, I think learning new mix spells either from leveling or items would be interesting. It would also have a generally low VP count.

And another character has:

Pass
Fight
Rage
Cool
Items

Rage/Cool - probably not the final names, but when performing the Rage move, the character gains a large wealth of attack and lose defense (or, if I could, change their status in the Attack Stance/Neutral Stance/Defense Stance that I will explain later.) When Cool is chosen, the character would garner a large amount of Defense and lose attack. The drawback to using these options would be that you can never return back to the homogenous state from before. I also thought about giving these moves an FF1Style Menu too, but I'm not sure. I know I need to limit it somehow.

I've also been toying with the idea of allowing characters to choose from an attack stance, a neutral stance, and a defense stance outside of battle. Doing this would give them more of whatever stat respectively. I've also toyed around with the idea of making each one an element and handling it that way (You'd be weak from Attack Stance attacks, neutral with neutral stance attacks and strong from defense stance attacks. I'd also give enemies this possibility.) With the Rage/Cool menu, if I were to allow the character to change from attack and defense stance, then I could see that working, but I haven't found a way to do that (I swear I remember playing an OHR game that had a move that changed the enemy's element.) It also would be in line with a boss battle that I'm planning.

Another thing I'm undecided about is, should characters be able to regain VP on their own? Of course, there would have to be some consequence (probably time.) but would this make things too easy? (I know Sword of Jade had the option with its defense option, but I for one never really used it since attacking the enemy raised my SP anyway. Of course VP is different from SP where if you don't have any VP, you can't do anything except pass.) I will probably have items and spells that will be able to raise it, but most of those will go to one character and the items will be limited by a system that I will explain later. Not allowing the player to raise it might cause some headaches, but will force the player to really think about what they're doing before they just plunk down commands in the keyboard.) Perhaps there could be a difficulty setting that makes pass give VP or not give VP? I'm not sure I like that idea, but it's an idea.

There may also be summons in this game. It was originally going to have 7 characters, but I'm thinking about making 3 NPCs since I don't think this game will be long enough to effectively level up 7 different characters. If I make the final decision to cut them, I think it would be a good idea to do the summons since the black magic user would be gone. Of course, this game could just not have elements, so I'm not sure.

Of course, I know this system is nothing without enemies to make it challenging, so I'm hoping that I will be able to give out there as well. I know that reading about battles is nothing like playing them, so when I finish my test file, I might post it up and show what it's like.

PAY QUESTS
Not a part of battles, but it's tied to it. One thing I've never liked about a lot of RPGs that I've played is the fact that you can simply go out in the world, fight a bunch of monsters and then go back and buy a bunch of potions or sleep at the inn and level up ad nauseum. So I thought that there should be a way to limit the money the characters recieve and I came up with the Pay Quest system which just so marvelously fell in line with the story.

When exploring towns, the player runs into many different NPCs that need a particular job done for them. These jobs vary greatly (some are fetch quests, some are battles, some are minigames, etc.) After the job is done, you get an amount of pay from them. This limits the amount of money you recieve in each town and makes you think about if you want to spend that money at the inn, buy a certain item, or spend it at the weapon shop. Then, to help the people who want to go back and buy something else, after a certain point in the game, these NPCs have new jobs for the player to do.

This would effectively get rid of the "buy 99 potions, level up 4 levels, repeat" process, but I feel that the player might feel a little cheated not getting anything but EXP from battles. Of course, I could still give items from battles. Also, it would make towns more interesting to explore, but it is a little scary that I will run out of good pay quests to do as the game goes on (there would probably be around 15 to 20 in the later towns.) I've already designed the early ones (which are mostly unfailable and very easy.) to ease the player into it, but I think I can come up with some pretty dastardly ones for the end. It will just take making sure that each one is fun and not monotonous since it is the only way to recieve money in the game. I don't know, it might not be the best idea. Perhaps if you do get gold from enemies, it's very little, but then that would encourage level busting. I don't want to discourage level busting, but I think if you plan to do it, then it should up the difficulty of the game (keep up HP while trying to gain levels with limited healing supply.) The VP system would counteract that a little, but not by much since VP goes up with levels as well.

I've also thought about giving the player a reward for completing every pay quest in the game, which makes me think some of them should be hidden or undoable until certain requirements are met or whatever. What the reward could be is anyone's guess, though. Maybe secret weapons?

Hopefully this post hasn't been to jumbled and confusing.
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Calehay

Moogle1 · Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:16 am Post subject:

Battle system: My biggest concern here is that it will be more frustrating/annoying than strategic/fun. I'd be really put off if I had a character who couldn't do anything because he ran out of VP.

An alternative system, one that might be more fun: keep the commands like you have them now, but change the VP system around. Make it so that Fight commands cause the hero's ready bar to refill automatically and the Pass command resets the hero's VP but gives a normal delay until his next turn. Essentially, this is the Chrono Cross system of attacking until you run out of Stamina. Other menu commands would also end the hero's "turn," but might or might not restore VP at your discretion.

Another idea that you could use with this: Make each Fight command add a percentage of the attack damage to the Counter stat, then include a "Combo Finisher" command in the Fight menu that costs 0 VP, greatly delays the hero's next turn, and attacks based on the Counter stat. Anything other than the normal Fight commands resets the Counter stat. This rewards the player for setting up long Fight combos. Everyone likes combo attacks.

Pay Quests: Sorry, but I don't like this idea. I'd rather receive gold and no experience than experience than no gold. It's just frustrating for the player and fetch quests don't help the fun factor.

An alternative, if you're looking to limit that behavior, would be FFXII's system of giving items and no money. You could place Fur Trader shops in various locations that aren't convenient to inns -- it makes sense for a hunter/fur trader to hang out in the forest -- and have these be the party's income source. This would prevent the hero from leaving town, fighting one bad guy, and coming back to rest at the inn.

That's my $0.02, anyway. Don't sacrifice fun for difficulty or interestingness. (Firefox says interestingness is a word.)
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design