A fatigue system

[jonthefox]

Would like a mechanic whereby players slowly get tired every time they fight, perhaps leading to a very small decrease in stats...which adds up over time. So at full strength, players might be capable of defeating powerful enemies, but being severely fatigued they'd eventually start to have trouble even with weaker enemies.  In order to be un-fatigued, players would have to rest at an inn/their house/ etc.

How would you implement this in a jrpg?

 

[??????]

Not sure how I would implement such a feature personally... But your post reminded me of an old idea...

Basically, you have party members have an 'age stat' and as they get older, their age increases, which in turn deceases their stats (or increase, maybe you gain more knowledge as you get older, but become more frail).  Not quite the same, but I think it may work well with your idea. 

Just a thought

 

[Watcules]

You know...I have seen this kind of system (in RPG Maker games of course)

Basically from what I remember they're using conditional branch and a switch...Where the switch is the stamina of the characters and conditional branch is to control some event like more stamina more easy to do something.

 

[jonthefox]

hmmm...maybe I can repurpose the "luk" stat as some sort of stamina stat, and have it get lower after each battle.   I'd just need to figure out a good way to factor this into combat formulas. 

 

[CrazyCrab]

Most Dungeons and Dragons ''based'' RPGs like  Baldur's Gate and Pillars of eternity use this mechanic, not only for combat but also for travelling etc. There are also ''actions'' that you can use to interact with the environment, like climb up a particular cliff using a lof of energy or cast an exceptionally powerful spell.

You could use LUK, sounds like a decent idea to me. In those games it was usually you ''body'' skill, or in PoE everyone had separate utility skills, like lore and stealth, with something like gymnastics determining how you can interact and how much energy you had per rest.

 

[Eschaton]

A similar mechanic was used in TESIII: Morrowind. How mic fatigue you had factored into everything, whether it's if your attack hits or you succeed in creating a potion.

It was NOT popular.

 

[Fernyfer775]

It was NOT popular. 

This was my initial reaction to this. These kinds of mechanics do nothing but slow down the player and in turn actually become more of an annoyance than something that is meant to be an engaging or realistic mechanic. All this turns into is "Fight X battles, use INN, repeat" which brings nothing fun to the table in all honesty. 

 

[jonthefox]

 Fight X Battles -> Use INN -> Repeat doesn't work, because if you have to leave a dungeon due to running low on stamina and no more items that restore stamina (let's say food/potions, or spells) then...after you go back to town and rest, and come back, all of the monsters have respawned.  So how deep / long you can explore becomes gated by stamina, which gives the player another strategical consideration.

Now, this obviously is not worth it if the player finds the mechanic very frustrating and un-fun, but it does bring something else to the table.

 

[Fernyfer775]

Fatigue systems are just gimmicks that limit players and really bring nothing "fun" to the table. Strategy? Yes...maybe, but fun? Not much at all.

If the player is not having fun, then the player won't want to keep playing. Never has there been a game with a fatigue system that makes the player

go: YES, I LOVE THIS KIND OF MECHANIC! And the reason some big name games were able to get away with it was because the rest of the game

was so worth it that players tolerated it. Just my 2 cents.

 

[jonthefox]

Well I think you are generalizing pretty hard, but I respect your view.  Let me ask you this--even if it's true that no game has ever had a fatigue system be successfully good or fun, what about it specifically did you not like?  Maybe there is a way to do it differently, that *would* be fun for the player.  Obviously, this would most likely be through some strategical consideration, and the player would have to find strategic challenges to be fun.   I feel like there's potential for this in a more strategy-rpg type of game. 

 

[Eschaton]

If I would introduce a fatigue mechanic, it would affect things like skill cool downs, HP and MP regen, and maybe resistances to states. I would make the change incredibly slow and gradual; the player wouldn't notice until how slow and ineffective they are becoming becomes a problem.

I would use it a means of getting the player to take breaks.

Well I think you are generalizing pretty hard, but I respect your view.  Let me ask you this--even if it's true that no game has ever had a fatigue system be successfully good or fun, what about it specifically did you not like?  Maybe there is a way to do it differently, that *would* be fun for the player.  Obviously, this would most likely be through some strategical consideration, and the player would have to find strategic challenges to be fun.   I feel like there's potential for this in a more strategy-rpg type of game.

Read my sig. And ask yourself this: "does my game NEED this feature? Does this feature ensure the player gets the core gameplay experience I want them to experience?"

 

[jonthefox]

I wonder if a simpler way of approaching this idea is just through HP and/or MP itself.  i.e., I don't let HP and/or MP regen naturally, so players eventually run out of resources. 

 

[Fernyfer775]

I wonder if a simpler way of approaching this idea is just through HP and/or MP itself.  i.e., I don't let HP and/or MP regen naturally, so players eventually run out of resources. 

This would be a good way to go about it. Making healing items scarce or expensive as to merit them not being a major source of replenishment could help put some "fatigue" on the player's party. The goal is to not make the players FEEL like they're being limited or fatigued. Having MP is already in a way "fatigue" if you make is so that it doesn't naturally regenerate itself. Why add more to that? Balance the cost of spells so that sooner or later you will run out of MP, and viola, you have yourself "fatigue".

 

[Harmill]

Continuing off the previous couple posts, just take a look at Dragon Quest games. Their HP/MP are stamina systems in disguise -- their dungeons are less about having immediate danger on a per-battle basis and more of an endurance test of "can you make it to the end of the dungeon and STILL have the strength left to fight and beat the boss?" The key differences between Dragon Quest and other RPGs like Final Fantasy is that you CANNOT purchase MP-restoring items or Revival items. If someone dies in a dungeon, and you don't have a revive spell, that character is out until you go back to town and revive them at a church. Oh? Your Healer has run out of MP? Time to use your herbs to restore HP. Oh? Ran out of Herbs? Looks like you might have to retreat from the dungeon or risk carrying on. At this point, your supplies and stamina have dwindled, and you are not at full strength in battles anymore.

 

[Eschaton]

Continuing off the previous couple posts, just take a look at Dragon Quest games. Their HP/MP are stamina systems in disguise -- their dungeons are less about having immediate danger on a per-battle basis and more of an endurance test of "can you make it to the end of the dungeon and STILL have the strength left to fight and beat the boss?" The key differences between Dragon Quest and other RPGs like Final Fantasy is that you CANNOT purchase MP-restoring items or Revival items. If someone dies in a dungeon, and you don't have a revive spell, that character is out until you go back to town and revive them at a church. Oh? Your Healer has run out of MP? Time to use your herbs to restore HP. Oh? Ran out of Herbs? Looks like you might have to retreat from the dungeon or risk carrying on. At this point, your supplies and stamina have dwindled, and you are not at full strength in battles anymore.

And the bottom line of posts like this is that healing and resources need to be finite, because they are the things that represent fatigue. The fatigue is simulated by the stress on the player caused by resource management.

 

[jonthefox]

Indeed.  I think what I've realized is that the resource system of HP/MP itself is a kind of fatigue.  I was trying to come up with something else to determine how much resources the player would lose in a given situation, making battles more and more costly.

 

[optimum45]

Another added "bit", if you balance your system to be grueling, and the player knows that monsters often drop restoratives, you can "carrot" the player to take on challenges they otherwise wouldn't.  Such memorable victories are good for the player too, and all to rare.

 

[wallacethepig]

I bet you could use the TP meter, but in reverse. Let me explain.

So every time you use a skill or get hit, that gives you FP (Fatigue Points). When you have 100 FP (max), you can't use physical skills anymore. You could even make it so that you couldn't attack. And you could have skills like "Remove 25 FP" and stuff. You could have items that remove FP as well. It actually makes more sense to have skills + attacking + damage tire you out.

-Wallace

 

[jonthefox]

Great idea! Going to brainstorm that, thank you.

 

[Wavelength]

I have a Fatigue system in one of my in-development games but (to grossly oversimplify) it's an Azure Dreams or Rune Factory kind of game that mixes a life sim with dungeon exploration and the point of Fatigue is to ensure that the player doesn't spend ridiculously long amounts of time (and make too much progress) in the dungeons without returning to town to relax, change up the pace, and get to know the world and characters better.

The way I implemented it is to have Fatigue build up with each battle, as well as with passing time; as you get tired (~75% fatigue), your stats and regen start to drop slightly, and as you start running on empty (beyond 100% fatigue) they drop a lot.  At 150% fatigue you faint, which is a Game Over in the dungeons or costs you a lot of hours (since sleeping on the streets doesn't charge you up quickly) if you're in town.  You can use drink items (sodas, potions, coffee, slushies) to relieve a fixed amount of Fatigue, but the accumulation of Fatigue scales up - for example, the first dozen hours you're up in a row might add 2% fatigue apiece, the next few hours would add 3% apiece, and then the amount would increase by 1% per hour, so that by 24 hours without rest, you're accumulating 15%+ fatigue per hour which makes it impractical to stay up for extremely long periods.

I thought about making Fatigue a per-character stat, but decided against it.  Yes, it's realistic, but also very inconvenient for the player.  Much smoother experience to let them just think about one number for the Party than managing it for everyone.  For a more traditional dungeon-crawler with a large party, you might do Fatigue per-character as a way to encourage players to use their entire party, but for my game doing so doesn't make sense.

Anyhow, that's a fair bit of rambling I did about my own game, my point being that the system should have some kind of clear reason and positive gameplay function in your game (because otherwise it will just be an unnecessary annoyance), and that you should be careful about making Fatigue-relieving items (because unless you introduce other mechanics to prevent abuse, you might be negating the original purpose of having a Fatigue system in the first place).