Ryner talks about battles and combat

[Ryner]

When posting about their fancy creations, people sure like pointing out when their game doesn’t have random battles. A popular system has all battles be event based, letting you see your enemies on the map so you can avoid them if desired (like Mario RPG of FF12 in the professional realm). Of course, a lot of the time the game is still balanced with these battles in mind, so you’re stuck going through the battles anyway just to keep your characters strong enough for the bosses. Or, you have to go through these non-random battles because you need gold, or new skills. See, that’s the problem. The battles aren’t random anymore, but you’re still forced into them out of necessity. You’ve actually changed nothing.

This is made worse by the fact that most battles are freaking boring. Attack, attack, attack, attack, victory. Next battle, attack, attack, attack, attack, victory. Same thing over and over again. Boss battles are worse. These battles should be unique, yet even in professionally made games bosses are usually just enemies slightly stronger than the usual enemies for an area, and maybe they have one or two special attacks. So now it’s attack, attack, attack, heal, attack, attack, attack, heal, attack, attack, victory.

Do you see the problem? We’re being forced into repetitive battles over and over again. This is an even bigger crime with user-created games. You are not a professional, and your game isn’t perfect. We need to evolve.

What do I think would be better? Now, I use RPG Maker XP, and you can do just about anything with it. But even when we were all using RPG Maker 1 on the Playstation, we could have done a lot more with our battles than we did. For example, instead of having twenty boring battles in a dungeon, what’s wrong with two or three interesting and challenging ones? Ok, but now your characters wont get as much experience and gold? So what? Change your system. Stick some more side quests in there, give them experience for finding hidden places (exploration is encouraged even more when a player doesn’t have to go through five stupid battles just to see what’s around a corner). Who says skills should only be learned when you level up? It’s about changing things up, don’t be afraid to try something different.

Since we’re having fewer battles compared to the norm, we better make them good. How do we do that? Making them more challenging is a good start, and I don’t mean just upping the stats of the bosses. Throw some curveballs in there, make each battle unique. Maybe one boss switches your characters HP with their MP, and another boss automatically regenerates every time your characters heal. Give your players challenges and make them develop strategies. One of the things I’d love to do is create a battle that takes a long time to play, yet stays interesting. How do you do that? Tell a story within the battle. Every battle should tell a story, change the combat on the fly. Once again, throw curveballs. The demon your party has been battling the past few turns possesses one of the party members, now your party is fighting a demon plus one of their own, but it’s game over if they kill their ally. A few turns later, the possession ends and the character rejoins the party, but now all of his attacks are healing the demon. It can be done, even on RPGM1, and it’ll make every battle more fun and challenging. I just gave a few examples off the top of my head, if you use your creativity, the possibilities are endless.

We’re so used to the traditional way of things it’s like our willingness to improve has died. We have these tools that give us endless potential for creativity, but so often we stay on the beaten path when we should be exploring. I hope I’ve given you some food for thought. Whether you actually take my suggestions or not doesn’t matter to me, but the things I’ve mentioned above are the things that I’m going in my game, and I’m enjoying the creation process much more because of it.

[Valkysas]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

great post. I just hope people listen to your advice.

[Jamos]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

Those are some really good points, for a Ryner rant.

[hitogoroshi]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

Yeah. I'm trying to elminate conventinal battles, but it remains to be seen whether it will work.

[Perversion]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

Hurrah. Hear, hear. I used to think you were a cynical, sarcastic egomaniac, but in the past few months, I've been coming to respect what you say more and more. Not like that really means anything to you, but it's good to see posts like this from you. I am glad you are contributing to the "maker" portion of the forums, and are working on a game. Keep making posts like this, Ryner.

[Wavelength]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

I think you've brought up some very interesting points here, Ryner. I agree in substance--any battle that degenerates to the point where I can look away and keep hitting X for best results is going to turn me off quicker than seeing Ruben Studdard and Sally Jesse Raphael making out in bikinis.

It's worth noting that even series like Final Fantasy--once held up as a paragon of frequent and turn-based battles (although often interesting ones)--has been going in a somewhat different direction in recent years. Then you have series like Tales Series (in which poor strategy or skill will mean a lousy outcome) or Star Ocean games (in which a lapse of mind in ANY battle can be fatal). I guess these are the exception rather than the rule, but not by a whole lot. RPGs--even their battles--aren't universally boring by any means.

Great point about exploration--I think the reason I had so much fun exploring Crythania's world in Raiders of Lekunder was that once I cleared an area of enemies, I could explore it at will without interruption. It's probably also one reason that Vonwert's Whispers in the Woods has racked up such an incredible number of downloads.

I'd be careful about throwing in more sidequests to compensate for the lack of battles, unless that's your forte. A boring, repetitive, or stupid sidequest is probably even worse than a few extra boring battles.

RPGM3 in particular is not kind about making its battle system interesting. I do wonder if anyone's going to be able to pull it off--making something that's actually immersive.

I'm really trying hard to do it. I'm going to keep mum on my exact system just a little longer, but it's mostly based off of spellcasting and uses MP as more of a "charge" meter with which you can unleash your strongest spells. Moreover, each character can pursue one or more "lines" of skills that each have a sort of theme. The hardest part is getting around the ridiculous limitations on skill creation (see the middle part of the "Poison in RM3" thread), but I've got lines that focus on destroying an enemy's defenses, ones that disable their ability to take action in several different ways, ones that give your party lasting buffs, ones that deal moderate damage for very little MP, etc. Finally, there's no leveling up and you'll only get marginally stronger through the course of the game--I'm aiming to make skill, rather than stats, the main determinant of your victory or defeat in battles. I hope that at least sounds interesting.

For those of you on RPGM 2 or XP making Role Playing Games, definitely invest the extra time and thought into making a good battle system. You're already spending so much time and effort on the content and perhaps the story, so why not make sure that every part of your gameplay can match it?

I don't have XP, but I'm very much looking forward to hearing about what kinds of twists you've added to your battles, Ryner. (The possession was a very cool idea.)

[tjoris9]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

I'm hoping that Dreadlord, which even in its demo state is a unique game for the Pavilion, will be successful. In it the opponents become stronger as the game progresses, and as you build your own party, hopefully maintaining a decent level of challenge. It's something I actually doubt I could do easily and efficiently in any system other than RPGM3.

One matter of balance is that your main opponents have the same skills as you (Really, with minor exceptions, the same classes as you). Preparation is the key. Bear in mind that you may only be able to prepare your party to be a little stronger than your opposition, depending on other choices you make in the game. If you neglect leveling your party, you will run into trouble really fast. Choosing the wrong skill progressions will also potentially weaken your party (There's a class, for instance, with skills powerful against specific races).

[Ivan Rosenguard]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

I'd like to say, first of all, that I 100% agree with Ryner on this issue. And, due to the player-controlled way the characters' stats are devoloped, I can include a "Stat-tracking" system for anything from increasing the strength of certain bosses, to having an enemy that tracks your stats once defeated and relays that info to the other enemies in the area. (This can be avoided, of course, simply by avoiding contact with any of the "Security Droids" in the area). All of this is possible with RPGM3 with my ideas.

In "The God Gene" all fights are forced battles (with the exeption of certain fights which effect your ability to complete a dungeon like the aformentioned "Security Droid" system) but there are also online "challenges" you can complete online in Virtual Reality in order to obtain "Skill Points" to raise your stats. Not all of these involve combat. In addition, doing good deeds for people will also net you some valuable points. You'll never attain enough points to max out all stats for all characters, so the player should remember to spend wisely. (Skills and Magics are learned the same way).

The Skill Point system, eliminates leveling completely from the formula. Instead of spending hours "level grinding" to defeat the next enemy, you simply obtain enough points to raise the stats as you need to, and not according to what is preset for your character at every level. (The only downside is you'll have to either keep up with your skill points on a piece of paper or go into "Playtest" and check the first variable on all of the main characters to get an idea of the points you have. Oh, and that HP and MP level up at the same time--but MP costs for spells is low for those who wish to focus on spellcasting characters with lower defenses).

As for spicing up the actual combat, I've created a system that includes bosses with less HP than what you'd find in most RPGS. This is so that in the middle of fights, there can be player VS enemy dialouge to make the battles seem less removed from the actual story. Also, in these "battle intermissions" many things such as an enemy taking control of a player, tampering with the player's stats/ skill arsenal/ ect., or sealing magic can occur (or even adding a few new and more imposing skills to the enemy's repitoire). There's no limit to what I can do with this system, and, just a another poster already stated, there are a few things that went into "The God Gene" that couldn't have been done on any other RPGM than RPGM3.

[Drazus]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

This is motivating me to get to work on my RPG. The battle system I was working on was definatly unique battle system...

Still not doing anything though... Bleh...

[Ryner]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

I'd be careful about throwing in more sidequests to compensate for the lack of battles, unless that's your forte. A boring, repetitive, or stupid sidequest is probably even worse than a few extra boring battles.

You just have to make your quests as interesting as your battles. Every quest doesn't have to be "go kill enemy X to get item Y".

RPGM3 in particular is not kind about making its battle system interesting. I do wonder if anyone's going to be able to pull it off--making something that's actually immersive.

I don't know anything about RPGM3, but note what Ivan says about "battle intermissions". Remember that changes don't have to be made in the battle screen itself. Instead you could have the battle end, go back to the map, and and then make your changes before starting round 2. I assume the control you have other changing things is much higher when running a normal event on the map than anything you can do in battle.

[Red Dragon]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

In RPGM3 I have enemies that you have to use stratagies in order to defeat them. I like making players figure out their enemies more than just a slew of "Weaklings" ala Golbi

[Wavelength]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

You just have to make your quests as interesting as your battles. Every quest doesn't have to be "go kill enemy X to get item Y".

What's even worse is "use Item Y to fetch Item Z, then trade Z for X, X for A..." ...but yeah, some sidequests with actual inspiration behind them are always great.

I don't know anything about RPGM3, but note what Ivan says about "battle intermissions". Remember that changes don't have to be made in the battle screen itself. Instead you could have the battle end, go back to the map, and and then make your changes before starting round 2. I assume the control you have other changing things is much higher when running a normal event on the map than anything you can do in battle.

You make some good points, and yeah, I'm looking forward to playing Ivan's game, I'm sure it's going to be really sweet. However, I feel the best that can be done with RM3 is to make something that feels like two separate battles in a chain, rather than one dynamic one. And the flexibility in battle you have (especially over enemy behavior) as a creator is probably even worse than you're picturing, Ryner.

Pancake Bunny[/S] Red Dragon ]In RPGM3 I have enemies that you have to use stratagies in order to defeat them. I like making players figure out their enemies more than just a slew of "Weaklings" ala Golbi

Well, that does sound really interesting. Care to elaborate on it a little or give some examples?

One piece of advice I'd have for ANYONE who says this is to be careful about battle flow and time. Having players and enemies be evenly matched is great, but the battle should never degenerate to doing the same thing over and over once you've figured the enemy out, and unless you have VERY few battles, you should try to end them relatively quickly.

I'm trying to set my own battles up so that the normal monsters will only defeat you very rarely, but if you don't strategize correctly, you can expect to take a lot of damage (healing potions will be rare; food less so, but also not cheap, either).

[OrinMaxden]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

What you're talking about wanting sounds a lot like AD&D. Usuaaly you don't do a lot of battles, and you get xp for doing things like finding secrets or just playing your character well.

[The_Real_Crunk]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

Those are the main reasons Ive gotten out o playing most RPGs in the last few years.

Cool stories, but boring ass fights, and most challenges can be overcome by level grinding. Now games that make me get better at playing the game interest me waaaaaaay more. Like Godhand for example. GET BETTER OR YOU DIE.

[Red Dragon]

Re: Ryner talks about battles and combat

Well, that does sound really interesting. Care to elaborate on it a little or give some examples?

Well a very simple example would be like I had in Legend of Duke Jellyfish enemies would attack you, now you could just attack but it would do hardly any damage, instead you have to use your chicken's attack skill (that is extemely weak in other circumstances) to do any damage to it. Although it was just the beginning of the game it wasn't hard to figure out it was still there. Plus you couldn't grind in the game. Rather you have to fight them when you get to them.

---

FF12 is prob the most challenging RPG I've played in a while. Maybe that's because I avoid fights. Heck when 3 bats kill your group you know you are in trouble...

Back to grinding I go!