Note: not always. An attack that chains to itself at 100% is good
for a berserk attack. Just make sure the 'delay' is decent... around 20-50
at least.
Never underestimate chained attacks! They are one of the most powerful
ways of making your battle system interesting, and even provide a form
of "battlescripting" where the battle follows a set course. An interesting
thing to do (and which I do in Ergintandal 1/5) is to have boss
enemies that have a specific chain of attacks (each with a delay value,
to give the characters time to attack) that is the only 'attack' the boss
has but is a varied 'program'... you can chain dozens, or hundreds, of
attacks together in order this way (have them repeat at the end by making
the last attack call the first). This is a good way to get around the 5-attack
limit of enemies. Want an enemy that can cast 50 different spells? An enemy
that will call for help at a certain time and then never again for the
rest of the battle? An enemy that will 'say something' in the beginning
of the battle? An enemy that heals every four of its turns? This makes
it possible.
Now we get to the bitsets. I'll take them one at a time for the ones
that matter gameplay-wise (bitsets like 'irreversible picture' don't matter).
Cure Instead of Harm - self explanitory. However... all RPGs
have cure spells, so yours has to have them too, right? Not necessarily.
In Ergintandal 1/5, you can't cure during battles (except in very
rare instances). Curing can only be done outside of battles (and it's free
there). This makes most normal battles more challenging than in most RPGs,
where as long as you are able to cure faster than the enemy can deal out
damage the battle is pretty much in your pocket (unless you run out of
cure). But in a game without curing in battles, this isn't an option. You
have to kill the enemy, and fast. In my opinion, bosses where you have
to hit, cure, hit, cure, hit, cure (repeat) are pretty stupid and a replacement
for intelligent boss planning. Even if you have curing, unless you want
your battles too easy, you shouldn't make it virtually unlimited, as it
is in pretty much every commercial RPG today. Another option is to have
curing cost money. If you had to lose the 30 gold you intended to spend
on a new weapon every time you cure in battle, the player won't rely on
curing too much, and will have to actually think about battle strategy
and figure out how to kill the enemy in the fastest way possible.
Divide Spread Damage - to use this or not to use this? What makes
the most sense is to use this when you have a choice between spread and
focus (aka, the 'optional spread' target). Using it when the attack forces
you to spread can be useful too, however, since a battle with a boss who
has 7 lackies standing in front of them may be more protected from such
attacks than a boss standing there alone.
Absorb Damage - useful for 'stealing life' attacks. A good alternative
to infinite healing. However, don't do what Paladus did and have
the best attack spell also heal you and cost a negligible amount of MP.
Then there is no real reason to use any other attack.
Elemental Damage & Bonus vs. Enemy Type - You get eight 'elements'
and eight 'enemy types' for your game. Use them well. Chrono Trigger had
a nice system where each character was associated with an element (Crono
was lightning, Lucca was fire, etc.), and since most of the enemies in
the game used elemental-based attacks, it was often better to bring someone
of a certain element to a certain enemy area. It also had elemental protective
and elemental absorbing armor, which you would keep around until you found
an enemy who used that element a lot, then put on the needed armor. This
isn't the invention of Chrono Trigger, of course, even the first Final
Fantasy had elements and monster types (although a bug prevented the monster
types and monster type-specific weapons from working). So as a RPG, you're
expected to have different types of enemies, different types of elements,
and etc. That still leaves room for innovation. When I originally planned
my first attempted game (a RPG based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
I assigned each 'element' as a 'weapon'. So there was 'sword damage', 'sai
damage', 'bo damage', 'shuriken damage', and the like. Each armor would
protect against certain types of weapons and less against other types.
Some enemies would be weaker against some weapon types than other weapon
types. Although the game was never finished, the system had potential.
Fail vs Elemental Resistance & Fail vs Enemy Type - These
can be very useful. Don't want an attack to work on bosses? Then have the
boss have resistence to that attack's element or have the boss be of an
enemy type if fails on (you may, as I did in Ergintandal 1/5 have
'enemy types' just be a way to tell battle system which attacks work and
which fail... one of my enemy types is called 'fail arrow' and another
is called 'fail explosion', and those types are set on enemies where I
want arrows or explosions to fail to damage.)
Allow cure to exceed maximum - Used for stat-raising and for
increasing HP (or MP) beyond max HP (or MP). Be careful not to make it
possible to raise them past 32767 too easily though, or the player may
kill himself trying to give himself too many HP.
__ ___ _ _ __ _ _ __ __
____ _ _ _ _ __ __ ____
Battle Gameplay: Balancing
Attack Distribution
Once you have the basic idea of your attack system and some example
attacks, you need to decide on which characters get what and which enemies
get what. This isn't as simple as giving them whatever seems like they
would have. Do that and you'll just have another unbalanced Ohrrpgce game.
Another decision to make is which attacks are gained from where (or learned
at what level). Gameplaywise, a character -is- his or her attacks and his
or her stats (equipment just adjusts their stats and, in the case of weapons,
primary attack).
Stats aside, the general guidelines for character balancing are simple:
1) don't give one character all the best attacks (unless they won't be
on your party for very long). And: 2) don't give an attack to most of the
characters. And finally, 3) a character's attacks should be more similar
to eachother than they are to attacks of another character.
This is easily seen in most well-balanced RPGs. Example: Final Fantasy
4 - Cecil as a paladin has protect "attack", a strong fight attack, and
a few weak healing "attacks". All the elemental attacks (fire, ice, and
bolt) go to Rydia, as do all the summons. All the strongest healing attacks
go to Rosa. It would have made little sense to have taken all of those
attacks (healing, elemental attack magic, protection, summoning) and arbitrarily
distributed them to Cecil, Rydia, and Rosa, giving some summons to each,
some heal spells to each, etc. That would defeat the purpose of the idea
behind RPGs in general (my definition of RPGs is: characters with different
and complementary roles in battle aiding eachother. With arbitrary attack
distribution, there are no real battle roles, and so I question whether
Final
Fantasy 7 & 8 are RPGs at all.
Another thing you notice about Final Fantasy 4 is that not one
character is the 'best', and that no attack is owned by more than a few
characters. Obeying all three of the guidelines above, its characters are
consequentially balanced.
Giving attacks to enemies (and bosses) is trickier work, but should
obey the same guidelines. Don't give enemies attacks at random, treat them
as characters to be balanced and given roles to play in battle. Since there
are so many enemies, these roles can be more specialized. It's alright
to make an enemy that can do nothing but heal other enemies, whereas making
a playable character who can only heal other allies and do nothing else
I would treat with suspicion. Also, enemies are more expendable, so go
ahead and make enemies that explode, or enemies that fire six times, run
out of ammunition, and have to flee the battle.
Bosses are a special case in attack distribution. Every boss should
be a challenge, and need strategy to defeat (besides the level-up and keep
healing during battle strategy). Since these battles require the most care,
select boss attacks based on how you want that battle to work. You may
want to design new attacks for each boss battle when you get to planning
that battle.
__ ___ _ _ __ _ _ __ __
____ _ _ _ _ __ __ ____
Battle Gameplay: Items
We have 255 items, and many of them will have a direct effect on battle
gameplay. They can be equipped as armor or as weapons (see below sections)
or they can be used in and out of battle. The traditional uses of battle
items are healing items and items which release attacks. You can also do
such things as connect items to plotscripts to alter stats, or have items
teach you new abilities when you use them on a character. That you know.
But items can also be used to effect battle gameplay in other ways.
How about a consumable item that when you use it calls a battle that gives
you free experience? Or an item that can be used to suspend random enemy
encounters for a few minutes? Or an item that warps you to the beginning
of the map? All of these are easily done, and if used correctly can enhance
gameplay.
__ ___ _ _ __ _ _ __ __
____ _ _ _ _ __ __ ____
Battle Gameplay: Equipment
There are four slots for non-weapon equipment. Each equipped item can
change any stat that the character has, and can alter defense against the
eight elements. Most RPGs have a progression of weaker and less useful
equipment to stronger and more useful equipment, the later ones being only
found or bought in the later parts of the game, or cost more money. This
is a highly prevalent system. The only alternative is to have all of the
equipment equally valued, equally (in difficulty, not in means) obtainable,
and equally useful, but in different ways (if they add one stat they would
subtract another, if they protect against some element, they are weak to
some other). Or you can have a mix of these two systems (there are certainly
enough equipment slots to do that).
Common prevalance tells you that equipment raises defense and perhaps
magic defense, and other stats are secondary. That isn't always important.
Perhaps you could have a robot game where each slot was a different 'part'
(head, arms, legs, torso), and -all- of the robots stats would come from
those parts (the base stats would be 0's without any parts). That would
provide more interesting decisions for the player (and as Sid Meier famously
said, a game is a series of interesting decisions). Perhaps there could
even be terrain-based parts... parts for snowy terrains would provide resistence
against cold, for example,a nd the player would keep a collection of parts
and switch them around based on what the mission requires. And perhaps
the main source of parts would be other robots who the player defeats...
(I should stop this... too much musing. I already have other games that
need finishing).
__ ___ _ _ __ _ _ __ __
____ _ _ _ _ __ __ ____
Battle Gameplay: Weapons
Each weapon is connected to an attack, and the character equipping that
weapon gains that attack as his primary one. So a weapon doesn't only work
as an equipment, it also has a primary role as an attack. Making all your
weapons attach to the same attack (or to attacks which are identical except
for the picture) is boring, the only point of changing weapons then becomes
stat changes.
Do not be constrained in your weapon choice by what other games have.
Inventing new weapons adds to the individuality of the character or enemy
type who weild them. Even if you do decide on using the conventional weapon
(read: sword) as the main weapon type, give the swords individuality. Are
you dying to see more 'fire swords' and 'holy swords'? Nor am I. When you
give your weapons interesting names and histories, special side uses
if you use them out of battle, and special abilities in battle not seen
before, you add a little more life to your game.
__ ___ _ _ __ _ _ __ __
____ _ _ _ _ __ __ ____
Battle Gameplay: Heroes
Note: this section doesn't cover who the heroes are, that should already
be known. It instead covers their gameplay role.
The idea of 'classes' is older than the (videogame) RPG genre, and goes
back to Dungeons & Dragons, in which a player chose to be a
fighter, mage, cleric, or thief (this were the first edition's classes,
others were added later). This was faithfully copied, and soon enough Final
Fantasy 1 had you choosing between fighter, thief (amazingly, they
could not actually 'steal' or do anything else thief-like), black belt,
and three types of mages. In Dragon Warrior 3, we had soldier, fighter,
wizard, pilgrim, merchant, and jester, which was a nice innovation, as
it based classes on actual (or at least fantastic) medieval occupations
of that world. But that wasn't really original, since the first four are
just fighter/thief/mage/cleric all over again, and no one ever really chose
merchant or jester (although the game sort of 'forced you' to choose these
gameplay useless classes). Basing your class system around 'fighters',
'magic users (an attacking type and a healing type)', and 'thieves' (fast,
slightly weaker, fighters) is fine for many, but just keep in mind that
you are being derivative, perhaps for no reason other than that is what
you see everywhere else. And what does a class system where people are
seemingly 'locked into' certain 'roles' mean thematically? Is it basically
any different from the Indian caste system?
A common variation on the class system is to base classes on careers.
Thus we get 'master engineer' (FF4), 'gambler' (FF6), 'bubble
mage' (Wandering Hamster), and many other odd classes which are
not traditional classes, but still lock a hero in a niche (not that this
is always bad).
One alternative to the class system is to undifferentiate the characters,
or allow the player to differentiate between them. This is seen in Final
Fantasy 7 and 8, where it didn't work well, and in Revelations:
Persona, the Saga Frontier / Romancing Saga series, and Final
Fantasy 2j (not FF4), where it does. The reason it doesn't work
in FF7 and FF8 is that any changes that are made to the characters
over the course of the game are reversable and impermanent (just remove
all the materia or all the guardian forces, and you are back at square
one (no pun intended)), whereas the changes in those other mentioned games
to the heroes are more permanent, and are based on what they actually do
in battle or choose to improve in at level-up. I believe Final Fantasy
10 uses a system similar to this, one where the player has say in how
the characters develop.
Another alternative to the class system is the class-change system,
which is seen in Final Fantasy 3j and 5, Tactics Ogre, Final
Fantasy Tactics, and Dragon Warrior 7. In this, the heroes can
change classes to whatever they wish, and learn abilites from each class,
in whatever order they wish, combining atomic abilities to create multitudinous
combinations. One can't deny the addictiveness of these types of games,
but they can fail if done unwisely (witness Seiken Densetsu 3).
Creating a class-change system in the Ohrrpgce is challenging, but can
be done (especially if you use get stat and set stat to tweak stats when
classes are changed), although it may be more trouble to make and balance
than it is worth.
Decide very early what kind of hero classification system you are going
to use, for many later gameplay decisions hinge on your choice here. If
you use the class system, chances are you want to design enemies that also
use the class system. If you use a class-change system, you're going to
want to organize many of the attacks by class.
__ ___ _ _ __ _ _ __ __
____ _ _ _ _ __ __ ____
Battle Gameplay: Enemies
Repeat note: this section doesn't cover which enemies are in the game...
that should already be planned in the design. What you need to do now is
turn those 'ideas of enemies' into enemies, with stats and attacks. If
your game is based on a progressive level-up scheme, where the game flow
is linear, the first level is the easiest, the second level is a bit harder,
the third level is a bit harder, all the way to the final level, which
is the hardest, enemy design is pretty simple: you just make a range strong
and weak enemies, and place the weak ones near the beginning and the strong
near the end. This is in fact what most RPGs do, nearly 95% I would guess.
You don't see imps or slimes in the final castle in a Final Fantasy
or a Dragon Warrior game, you see them in the beginning. And if
you do see them later, they are 'super imps' (like the trickster) or 'super
slimes' (like the king slime). I don't particularly like this system, but
since it's used so often (even in my games And& and Tilde)
I can't ignore it. This system does have the advantage of always facing
new enemies every level, but it has the disadvantage of seeming artificial
(does the real world work like that? Are challenges in real life just a
little harder than the ones you have seen before? If you see a challenge
from 10 years down the road, will it smite you unmercifully?)
If you're going to increase enemy difficulty as the game goes on, in
such a way that at the beginning there is no possible way to kill an enemy
from a few hours of play ahead of you, and there is no possible way for
an enemy you fought a few hours of play behind you to kill you, you need
to make a fairly large stat range. The first enemies will have very few
HP, less than a dozen, and later ones will have several thousand near the
end. Every enemy in the same area of the game should have around the same
HP. If you are going to use this system, don't just set stats, make the
enemies defeatable, and then leave it at that. Make the batles interesting
and 'difficult' at every stage of the game, even if that difficulty doesn't
come from stats. The enemies in Tilde usually have some way to defeat
even high-level heroes if they aren't careful; the spiders can slow you
down to very little speed, for example. Likewise, there should be some
hope for low level heroes facing high level enemies. Most importantly,
the quality of the battles should change as the game goes on. Fighting
enemies near the end shouldn't be "just like fighting enemies in the beginning,
only with 10x the stats and the spells are 10x stronger." What is the point
of leveling up at all, if the enemies just get stronger as you go to the
next area of the game? You're pretty much forced to level up, led by the
hand. In Dragon Warrior 4, for example, in the instruction manual
there was a list of 'suggested levels' for certain stages. If you were
not at that suggested level, you are pretty much doomed. Most RPGs work
the same way, and this leads to a feeling that you are under the thumb
of the game designer, you can't break out of his plan for you. In order
to progress you have to use the exact strategy he provided for you. In
order to win you have to win the way he wants you to win. That isn't a
game, it's mind control.
Compare this to a game where there is more freedom to succeed unconventionally.
There are games where every player who plays the game wins in a slightly
different way (instead of the previous model, where the only difference
is that some win better and faster than others win, based on how quickly
they are able to catch on to and follow the game designer's plan for them).
In every game you are contrained by the rules of the game, it's just that
in a freer game there is often no dominant strategy which only a fool wouldn't
use (more on this when I write an article on gameplay architecture). A
good example of this is character selection in the beginning of Final
Fantasy 1. FF1 is a mixed case freedom wise, it has dominant
strategies once you are in the game itself, but for character selection
there is no 'best party'. In other words, everyone plays FF1 the
same way, except in what party they choose at the beginning. My favorite
party is made up of three red mages and a black mage. But I've never seen
anyone else use that combination, even though I personally find it to be
the most useful (and I've gone through the game with at least 7 different
combinations). This idiosynrousity of party selection, where the player
has to think about the choice instead of just choose arbitrarily or choose
what the game designer intended him to choose is in my mind what
makes FF1 a good game. And more than that, there is an important
bit of knowledge here: gameplay elements can be combined in different combinations,
and if you leave that combination selection up to the player, more fun
is gained for the game. It doesn't only apply to character selection, it
applies to anything which can be combined or put in a particular order
(permutated).
__ ___ _ _ __ _ _ __ __
____ _ _ _ _ __ __ ____
Battle Gameplay: Enemy Formations
Getting -back- to battles (went off topic for awhile there), the best
way to make interesting battles is to make enemies which can be combined
well. Battle difficulty should not just be a matter of 'how many enemies,
and how strong they are', it should be a matter of 'is this enemy combination
dangerous?'
As said in a previous section, specialize your enemies. A good example
of this is the 48 hour contest game Grief (by Mattgamerr and company).
The battles are usually well designed (although they are few in number
and each room has only one battle formation) because each enemy usually
has only one attack, and that attack can be as simple as 'raising attack
power of its ally'. A battle with 8 enemies of that type is a cakewalk,
since none of them will attack you. A battle with 8 enemies who attack
but don't hit very strongly is slightly more difficult, but not very. But
a battle with 4 of the attack-up enemies and 4 of the hitting enemies is
dangerous, even though it's still the same number of enemies as the other
two cases. Make your battles more complex than this, of course, but this
is what battle design should involve, it shouldn't just be a matter of
sticking in whatever enemies you feel like sticking in.
Previous Page || Contents
|| Next Page
