We The Brave Combat System (advice plz?)

[FlamingMage]

Alright.

Well, We The Brave has event based battles and doesn't have level-ups. But I also want to spice my battles up in some way.

So far, my plan is to make status ailments a big part (and cure them after every battle) and to instigate a "Reflex Point" system. (RP's)

Before each battle begins, depending on the circumstances, you'll be able to allocate a set amount of Reflex Points to any of four things.

Observation: Knowing what you're up against will help you allocate your other points, but using too many points here will make your characters underpowered .

Preparation: This lets you choose abilities for your party to learn, from general categories. If your observation shows that you're up against four enemies, you may want to prepare a group-target spell. Conversely, if it reveals your enemy to be a magic user, M-AT debuffs suddenly sound real good.

Adrenaline: Pumping yourself up results in higher physical stats across all your party members. This will increase your Health, Strength, and Defense. I'll track this with a variable and reset your stats at the end of the battle.

Planning: Focusing your party beforehand results in a heightened mental state. Your MP, Magic, and Magic defense will all increase. This will also reset after the battle.

With the RP system, battle will flow like this:
1. Be informed that a battle is about to occur. This is when you find out how many points you have.
2. Be shown a list of all four options simultaneously.
3. Choose where you want to spend your first point. If Observation, receive update on enemies. If Preparation, be shown a list of possible skills and choose one. If either stat boost, receive message telling you the magnitude of your stat increases.
4. Choose where you want to spend your second point.
5. Repeat until you are out of RP.
6. Battle begins.
7. Assuming you won, all stats are reset and all learned skills are forgotten.


Any other ideas for a spicier battle system? Or perhaps improvements on my ideas? I later hope to make a game that makes random battles as fun as possible, but for now any ideas for diversifying an event-no-leveling system are much appreciated.

[Draygone]

You won't have to make this decision before every battle, will you? I guess it's no big deal if battles are few and far between, but if they're frequent enough, I'd rather have a spot I can go to to change this stuff when I feel like it.

[FlamingMage]

But of course it's before every battle! After all, if it wasn't the info would be wrong ever time but one :)

But battles are pretty rare. The way it's shaping up, you would have to work pretty hard to fight more than, say, 20 battles in the whole game. And I'm sure you could beat it with, oh I don't know, maybe seven? Just a rough guess. I'll post those stats for realz when I finish the game.

[Draygone]

But of course it's before every battle! After all, if it wasn't the info would be wrong ever time but one :)
Well, if they were frequent enough, I'd rather have a spot I can go to to change this stuff when I feel like it.

But if they're not frequent, then it's no big deal.

[FlamingMage]

Okay, thank you. That option is duly noted.

[Big Rick Cook]

So if I understand correctly, you have reflex points, and two levels to use them in. Observation first, and then you learn about the enemy and can use the rest accordingly?

I kinda like the idea, but the combat system in any console RPGM is pretty flawed and trying to "spice it up" only goes so far cause you're spicing up a turd.

On the other hand, though, having battles act more like a mini-game than the real focus of gameplay would mitigate a lot of that battle system aggravation since we'd do it very few times considering the length of your game.

And what's to stop the person playing through from maxing out Observation points to learn everything about the next encounter, resetting and ignoring Observation points altogether in order to further beef up stats for an encounter they already have the info on?

[FlamingMage]

You're pretty close, but a little off. There is only one time that the player is given to allocate Reflex Points; you have to choose how to divide them among all four at once. Heck, if you want you could dump all your points into stat bonuses and not even use Observation once. But you'd be screwed if the enemy was status-ailment based or something. Its just a strategy thing.


And yes, someone could blatantly abuse my system. I don't care. They're the ones that have to live with their own ineptitude :)

[Big Rick Cook]

So take me through the scenario of getting into a battle and how the reflex point system works, because I think I'm missing something here. Step by step from the time the entire engagement would begin, given what you've told me, I'm led to believe it goes something like this:

1. About to engage in battle.
2. Allocate points into all four reflex stats at once.
3. Get info based on your observation points, and hope your other three point allocations work to your favor given that information.
4. Fight.

When what I was thinking was more like this:

1. About to fight.
2. Given a set pool of points for all four Reflex stats, it asks you to first set Observation points. Say you had 10 points at this juncture, and you use 2 here.
3. Based on your two points, you're given hints that the enemy uses strong physical attacks, but is also good at defending against magical attacks.
4. So given this information, you'd be led to believe that with your remaining 8 Reflex points, you should stack Adrenaline almost exclusively, and as many points in Preparation as you think you'll need to ensure you have the correct spells/skills to use against this enemy.

Which version is correct?

[FlamingMage]

They both have elements of the truth. I apologize for being unclear, the actual order is:


1. Be informed that a battle is about to occur. This is when you find out how many points you have.
2. Be shown a list of all four options simultaneously.
3. Choose where you want to spend your first point. If Observation, receive update on enemies. If Preparation, be shown a list of possible skills and choose one. If either stat boost, receive message telling you the magnitude of your stat increases.
4. Choose where you want to spend your second point.
5. Repeat until you are out of RP.
6. Battle begins.
7. Assuming you won, all stats are reset and all learned skills are forgotten.


Hope this clears things up...I'm going to move this order into the first post as well.

[Big Rick Cook]

So you're given information every time you put a point into Observation, kind of like doling out hints until you feel like you have a good enough idea about how to point yourself out the rest of the way?

[FlamingMage]

I've decided to cut the Reflex point system, for several reasons. mostly because it didn't really do what I had intended. It was nearly impossible to make it so that you couldn't just spam the same order of allocation for every battle; for example, you would do just fine in every battle just by using info once and then powering up your defense or magic defense correspondingly.


With that gone, but still with no leveling in the game, I've decided to have skills be a reward for some missions. So that you'll end up with a different character every game through.

Thoughts?

[Perversion]

Blech. Just caught this thread now, and the reflex point concept sounds WAY more interesting that a quest-based method for gaining skills.


Exactly how is your system not working? Maybe there would be ways to make it work that you're not thinking about. Please explain in a bit more detail what makes it not work.

[Valkysas]

yeah, I have to say, the reflex point thing is what made me follow this game. no one has done anything like that before, and I was really looking forward to it.

if you dont use it in this game, hopefully you'll use it in the future, because it's an absolutely great idea.

[Big Rick Cook]

Those things that Perv and Valk said? I say them, too.

To offer a suggestion, perhaps instead of offering info for points, you give an increasingly vague idea about the encounter and just let us allocate points based on that. So like, you'd start off by more or less blatantly saying where points should go, and by the last encounter you say something oblique and decidedly unhelpful.

[Perversion]

A few suggestions:

1) Make it so the player cannot dump all their points into one category. Possibly have 4, 3, 2, and 1 point to drop into any of the categories, but only one allocation for each. You know, 4 points being the priority and having the most impact, and one having the least impact. This would make balancing the battles a LOT more difficult, as there would need to be at least a few battles where it would be worthwhile placing the most emphasis (4 points, as an example) into observation.

2) Possibly keep a system similar to what you posted, where observation gives you base stats/info on the enemy, but each time you allocate points in one category, the enemy will increase in a different stat. Meaning, if you throw everything into spells, the enemy's physical damage output would increase accordingly. If you only placed a small amount into spells, the enemy's damage output would only slightly increase.

[FlamingMage]

Wow, thats a lot more feedback than I expected. With such an upswell of positivity, I don't mind reevaluating my RP system.


The main "problem" comes from the way that I want my battles themselves to flow. They are very fast. They feature a lot of status ailments that players will have to deal with or play around. The idea is to create battles that require the player to realize that they have all the tools they need to win at their disposal, but that the actual act of winning will be a difficult one.

The most obvious problem is that none of the four options are "bad". If any was, it would obviously corrupt the whole system. And yet, as it is, this makes the strategic elements of battle too easy by far.

Possible revisions? I can think of but two directions that I want to take this, but feel free to speak up.

1. Make the option-tree that lets you allocate points "smarter". Make options change in cost as you choose them more times. Make the option of spreading the points more tantalizing simply by making it more efficient than the alternative. The downside is that the player will be able to give themselves a 'general boost' on the cheap, which will for obvious reasons also undermine the strategy.

2. Focus the system almost entirely on skills. Make skills that do pretty much everything; with a three person party and assuming only a few 'base' skills that you always have, I can cover a lot of ground. Give each skill a point "cost", so that the player can pick up weaker skills in droves or one big finisher. This will of course increase the value of information. Perhaps I could have the player be forced to spend on information first, then give them a limited selection of skills from the larger repertoire. Without knowing if their personal favorites will show, the player will be forced to constantly gamble on the amount of points they "waste" on information. But boy won't they be glad when faced with six status-fixing skills and one attack skill to know that the enemy has no status attacks.

That's all I've got. Any ideas?