Features every RPG should have

There's a lot of debate on viability of cooldown and resource really...Dungeons Of Dredmor has separate mana/cooldown abilities and other than some odd Game-Breaker (that are mostly nerfed already) it's pretty ok...

On consumable items, you might want to take a look on Tales Of Maj Eyal, which nearly eliminated consumable items entirely (except for wands)...

Both are roguelikes, but still...

edited 16th Jan '12 8:31:12 PM by onyhow

That was actually the example I had in mind when I said all that. That game is exactly what I'm talking about. I never said there was only "don't use" and "spam strongest". I said MP is designed around efficiency for long-term dungeon crawling. So you use the right spell at the right time, and don't waste MP casting a more powerful spell than you need. In SMT that generally means taking careful advantage of elements and using spells that are one rank lower than your best.

Except on bosses who rarely have true weaknesses and you just try to get as much dps out as possible with your strongest spells that they're not immune to. MP becomes less relevant on bosses.

MP is not "MP" in that example. It's not a long term resource that you run out of. It's something that goes up and down and you can never truly run out. That's certainly a form of resource, but it's not nearly the same "MP" that the discussion has been about, which is generally pretty difficult to get back. The names are of course less important than the systems. It's closer to something like Force in the Wild Arms series, or perhaps a mini-Limit Break. It's a short term limiter rather than a long term one.

I have nothing against resource systems in general, that'd be silly.

It's easy to eliminate consumable items. Just eliminate them. The fact that when they're gone you don't even notice is my entire point.

edited 16th Jan '12 8:46:39 PM by Clarste

I never said this was my ideal dungeon setup, but that's how it was implemented in the game with the best one I've seen so far. I don't even dislike Random Encounters, the game simply didn't use them.

I'd say Last Scenario is a good example of a game balanced for getting you to actually use your consumable items, and not all at once on the final boss or something. It's manifestly possible.

Also not impossible to balance. The game I was just talking about in my last post manages this by providing no heal points whatsoever, aside from the game's only Trauma Inn, and making it near impossible to get to bosses in the first place without first getting through large numbers of encounters that are challenging enough to wear down your MP. The efficiency of your tactics in combat determine how much of your MP you can take to the boss; if you ever make it to one with full MP, you've been doing some really outlandish level grinding. Plus, if you don't fight strategically in the boss battles themselves, just spamming your strongest spells will get you killed.

That said, I think there are plenty of challenge promoting setups that could be done without an MP meter that simply haven't been tried yet.

Okay, I think I see what you mean and why you said it was balanced in the long term.

I still don't get how the MP system in Sequence isn't MP. While it can be restored at any time in battle, its restoration is entirely dependent on the player actively doing so, whereas Limits and(at least from what I've read, since I've never played any of the the Wild Arms games) Force are filled passively while the player is doing other things.

Ah, my bad. And same. I love them. Honestly, you can't expect to go through a game and avoid every fight with ease. I do understand that having visible ones can be beneficial depending the design. Maybe I'm just an old-school gamer.

As for restoring MP outside of battle, I think it depends the type of game. If you have tons of characters, you probably don't need this nearly as much. But when you're stuck with one guy, or the spell costs way too much and aren't super easy to restore(Shining Force, for example, the Grid-system versions, but being out of battle gets everyone that isn't dead to full), or, more directly, is an Action RPG hybrid(or even turn-based like Pokemon)... actually, I don't know where I'm going with this. Long story short, some games can make the idea work. Dragon Quest Monsters, Quest 64, Lagoon, Shining Force. They all restore MP outside of battle. Various ways, although the first two are the same. Some don't.

• Random battles should be replaced with the enemies being visible and moving around on the screen like in Earthbound, Paper Mario, ect. Having random battles can be very annoying, especially when you face the scenario where your health's low and you run into a really powerful enemy before you can get to an Inn. Even if you choose to run, you can keep on enountering more foes, and what if you fail to run away or the enemy goes first? When you make the enemies visible, you can avoid battles easily if you don't want to fight, and (as is the case with the aforementioned games), can get a preemptive attack on the enemy (whether this means facing it's back when the battle starts or attacking it with your weapon on the overworld).
• Be able to save anywhere you want to! I have no idea why some RPGs still have Save Points. It's very inconvenient to have to find a place to save your game, especially in the "low on health/dead party members" scenario. It seems a lot like a downgrade compared to the much quicker, much more convenient "menu save" option.
• Equipment shouldn't just be linear increases of power and usefulness should depend on the situation/your style of play, there should be no "most powerful" item. We already have linear power progression in the form of a little something called "levelling up". And besides, it's much more interesting to think about your choice of weapons depending on what the situation calls for than to just "find stronger item, equip, repeat". This doesn't have to mean Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, just make it so that the equips are varied and equal.
• If your main character is dead, let the party continue without him. Unless there's a plot-related reason why we can't bring the hero back from the dead/his death ends the game, this should not apply to your game. I mean, if we can revive our party members, why is the lead's death the only one that matters? Have you ever noticed how, when an enemy is about to cast a spell that's a OHKO, you usually think, "Please don't hit the hero, please don't hit the hero..."? It's unnecessary and fridge logicy. Again, unless there's a plot-specified reason why the leader's death ends the story, this should not be in your game.
• When a party member dies in the story, have it make sense why we can't revive them. This one is probably one of the most complained about, and it kind of speaks for itself, so I don't need to say any more.

Mother of God, yes. I hate feeling anxious in my limited play time because the game is stingy with save points. To be honest, this issue is not limited to RPGs.

I say it depends in the game and whenever it is realistic or not maybe, but, yeah, in general its a bit annoying, lol.

How would it depend on whether or not it's realistic?

Saving anywhere. For the most part, yes. Although it can lead you into unwinnable situations. Which is why I like the save points system. They should appear about as often as Final Fantasy VIII. Or have soft saves just in case you need a reset.

In some games, I don't mind them. But there are also a lot of other games where I just think, "Why couldn't I just save the game in a menu?" whenever I have to backtrack to a save point.

I'm okay with save points, but I find that I generally don't like the concept when you implement it in a portable game; you should be able to stop playing at your convenience.

There's always quicksave for portable games.

I could understand save points on older consoles with memory cards or otherwise limited space, but on anything with a hard drive(IIRC all this gen consoles have that) you should be able to save anywhere and at anytime. If you are worried that the players get stuck then just use autosave in addition to normal saves, because really outside of space limitations there is no reason not to allow saving anywhere, unless you claim that it enhances "atmosphere" in horror games which is a YMMW thing.

Even Persona 2 on the PSX had save anywhere, even if you could only fit like 3 saves on a memory card.

edited 17th Jan '12 3:23:16 AM by mahel042

I'm not sure what quick save you're taking about, but on FFI and II iOS version the quick save feature isn't reliable at all. It can glitch and cause you to lose your progress. On the other hand those still have menu save options anyway.

Quicksave: you save anywhere outside of battle, but you must access the file the next time you play. Otherwise, it's deleted.

FFI quicksave on the PSP was perfectly reliable. As is the one in FFDD.

Ah. The quicksave on iOS is similar, but it's automatic, and saves whenever you return to the home screen or turn the device off. But it doesn't always save, which is why it's better to just menu save.

Well, how does it work in that game?

You're now talking about a game which doesn't separate the bosses from the dungeon, in which case MP is still not balanced for the short term. So it really doesn't have anything to do with my point other than that it's possible to design games to work around the limitations of the MP system. Rather than solving the problem I mentioned, such a game gives up on it entirely, not to say that's inherently a problem.

It's not "true" MP because you can't run out. That's really all there is to it. We're talking about the challenge inherent in endurance dungeons and whatnot, and that's a completely different system. The game itself is kind of odd so the comparisons may not be perfect, but the basic function of it is entirely different from the MP we've been talking about, which is the kind that steadily depletes over a long period of time and marks the limits of your ability to function at all. Your example sounds like the kind of thing that fills up over battle given proper gameplay.

Well, bosses aren't balanced so that if you spam your strongest attacks at them, they'll die before you run out of MP or slightly after (also each character can carry a very limited number of "spellcards," which each have one spell or effect and one Limit Break, so your combat abilities are customizable but there's a lot of tradeoff, and a character may have no offensive spells at all,) they're balanced so that if you don't use your powerful consumable items, you will probably die before the boss does.

If you level grind heavily enough that you can beat the regular bosses without using them, then you become strong enough to beat the bonus bosses with them. You can't possibly become strong enough to beat everything in the game without having a use for them, because at max level the strongest bonus bosses are still almost impossible without them.

In that case I don't think I understand what you mean by "balanced for the short term."

I think I might have some idea of what you're talking about, so let me try and come up with an example. Would you say that a boss with considerable Healing Factor, which forces you to use some MP so that you're actually accumulating damage against it, but will outlast your MP if you try to use your most powerful spells, which are not as MP efficient, is balanced for the short term?

I think that in games that make MP restoration readily available, it's usually problematic. In nearly every game with healing spells and buyable MP restoring items, for instance, you can get a lot more healing for your money by using magic and restoring your MP with items than you can by restoring your HP with items, effectively rendering healing items obsolete. Usually, either MP restoration is so readily available that there's little incentive not to fight full blast all the time, or combat is so easy that you can save MP use for special occasions without encountering problems.

Star Ocean 3 had a creditable attempt at avoiding this; you could be killed by reaching 0 MP as well as reaching 0 HP, and physical skills cost HP while magical skills cost MP, essentially giving you two separate Cast from Hit Points functions. Additionally, since it had a real-time battle system, with spellcasting taking time, healing with items was often preferable to healing with spells. The downsides were that in ordinary gameplay, enemies that deal MP damage were too rare to make the MP kill mechanic come into play much, and aside from healing, spells in that game mostly sucked anyway, so you didn't have much incentive to use them. Good idea, weak implementation.

edited 17th Jan '12 7:23:28 AM by Desertopa

Running from battle. If you bother to include it as an option, for all that is holy, *make it useful.* I hate how nearly every game in existence, the only enemies you can run from are ones so weak they are no threat. . . and running from them still takes up more time than just killing them.

"Short term" in this case means "what is most effective to do on this turn?". Essentially ignoring resource efficiency and focusing on time efficiency. On bosses you're unlikely to worry about overkill, so spending more MP on a more powerful ability is generally acceptable, unlike previous battles where you're always saving up for the next battle. Assuming that you don't care how much MP you have after the boss is dead (ie: you can go back to town afterwards), it's simply the case that your attitude towards MP will be different.

And while I suppose it's conceivable that your more powerful spells are less MP efficient, if that's the case then barring special considerations there's absolutely no reason to use them ever. If casting your big spells does more damage but makes you run out of MP faster, and running out of MP is a concern at all, then why would you ever cast them given that presumably you end up doing less total damage once you're empty? What reason is there for them to exist? I can't call that acceptable either. Other than special circumstances such as having a time limit, there's simply no reason to have such a spell.

As for the Healing Factor, I don't think that makes any kind of difference. It either extends the boss's effective health or they expect you to counter it in some way given the other game mechanics (anti-healing mechanics, if they exist), which falls into the category of "don't cast ineffective spells". Well, I suppose that imposes a time limit such that MP inefficient big spells might become useful.

I don't think MP restoration should be readily available either. I don't like MP much, but at least it has a point.

Something like this may have been mentioned earlier, but here's my idea for how saving the game anywhere could work: when you load the save, you have the option of continuing right from the location you saved at or returning to the start of the dungeon. Or just have an ability to return you to the start that doesn't cost MP.

Getting back to this point, you didn't provide me with what I thought was the relevant information, which is how often you get these items, how many you can hold at a time, etc. Based on context, I assume you mean that you get just about enough for each dungeon whereupon you start the next dungeon with nothing? If that's the case, then it's just a variation on MP, or more generally the concept of limited use spells (D&D style). It serves the same function, but could be more elegantly streamlined. Well, if you find the items in the dungeon I suppose that's different from starting with all of them (having recharged in the shop), in the sense that it encourages exploration a bit more than otherwise.

If it's not the case that you start each dungeon essentially "fresh" on consumables, and as you say the bonus bosses are unbeatable without them, does that not encourage you to save them up whenever possible? Don't the bonus bosses become easier if you have extra items? Or would they have become obsolete by that point, essentially punishing you for not using them? Either way you're breaking one end of the scale. If you can save them up, the early bosses are too easy and the mechanic serves no point. If you can't save them up, then there's no practical difference from MP. If you have to save them up, the bonus bosses are too hard, in that it's possible to have an unwinnable save.

edited 17th Jan '12 9:30:04 AM by Clarste

If you just extend a boss's health, then you can defeat it using the same strategy over more time, provided your resources persist. If a boss has 100,000 hp, and you deal an average of 15,000 per turn, you'll win in seven turns. If the boss has 100,000 hp, 18,000 hp of damage regeneration per turn, and you deal 15,000 per turn, you'll never win. But you could still win in seven turns dealing an average of 15,000 per turn, if, say, you had a way of spending six turns buffing your characters and preparing charged attacks, and dealt all your damage on the last turn. Against a regular boss, you can spend turns restoring a mostly wiped out party, replacing buffs, etc. Against a boss with a Healing Factor, every turn you're not dealing at least as much damage as it regenerates is lost ground.

There are plenty of ways to use a Healing Factor to force the player to significantly alter their strategy, which is why it pisses me off how often it's only used as a case of "Remove this enemy's healing factor and then kill it!"

Suppose you have separate people for healing and attack magic, and against a powerful boss, your healing character will run out of magic before your attacking character will? Then you'll want to output damage as fast as you can, because if your attacking character has remaining MP after your healing character runs out,then you'll die before you have the opportunity to use it up.

Obviously this situation is broken if you have plenty of MP healing items you can use in battle.

Or you can implement turn or time limits in battle, such as the fight against Margaret in Persona 4 (although in that game there is one move, Hassou Toubi, which is totally broken compared to every other one both in terms of damage output and cost efficiency, so there's a lot less incentive to use anything else in that fight,) so finishing the battle quickly is as significant a concern as budgeting your resources.

Or suppose you're playing a tactical RPG like Final Fantasy Tactics, where a battle may or may not last long enough for a character to run out of MP, but if anyone dies, other characters may not have the ability or opportunity to revive them, so you have to balance your need to conserve your resources with your need to do damage when and where you can.

I could probably think of plenty of other mechanisms to promote usefulness of high power, low efficiency spells. Probably even a bunch that could be implemented in one game. But I'd have a hard time coming up with examples of games that actually use any of them, because not many RP Gs these days are concerned with being tactically challenging.

Of course, a lot of games implement high power, low efficiency spells, and they seem to exist largely for Rule of Cool and to alleviate players' patience.

If you're not grinding much, you will probably clear out most of your consumables against bosses. If you grind more, or once you're far enough in the game to have much leeway to do so, optimize well, then you can save more.

If you're not defeating the regular bosses easily enough to save items, you're essentially in no position to go fight the bonus bosses. If you can't save any against the bonus bosses, then you're probably not in a position to fight the harder bonus bosses. You're nearly always in a position where you have both an incentive to use (you're likely to be unable to win without them) and an incentive to save (because you'll be disadvantaged in later fights if you use them all up.) In other words, when and where you end up using them depends on your play style and what content from the game you intend to challenge.

In addition to its potential to make some games Unwinnable, this limits some of the features and challenges you can meaningfully implement. Some games have used this quite badly, such as Lunar 2 Eternal Blue, where the ability to save anywhere combined with a potentially high stakes game of chance allows you to accumulate obscene riches early on via Save Scumming. Or Brigandine, where the ability to save in battle allows you to use risky but powerful spells like Dimension (teleports a unit to a completely random hex, probably very far away from the action, on the very large battlefield,) without ever having to worry about missing. Plenty of games would be as or more breakable if it were possible to save anywhere.

edited 17th Jan '12 1:11:58 PM by Desertopa

You still haven't told me where the items come from, or their technical limitations, which is what I asked for.

And it sounds like a game I wouldn't want to play. I hate it when they punish you in the late game for early game decisions.