Avoiding Ability Bloat

[lianderson]

As someone who has over 700 abilities in their game with only 3 main characters, no one has ever complained about there being too many of em.

The secrets are to communicate what they do, let the player choose what they get, and make it extremely hard, if not impossible, to learn them all.

 

[kirbwarrior]

The thing is, I gave Valden a bunch of abilities I find really unique, including a personal favorite of mine, “Attack Rush” which gives the entire party an insane buff to their physical attack and speed that only lasts for the next turn and forces them all to attack one enemy. Really, only useful when the entire party consists of front-row physical attackers.

Those do sound really cool and fun. Note you don't have to be balanced about the number of skills between characters, that's only something for making a pattern. It's not an MMO, some units can just have less options without being less useful.

The secrets are to communicate what they do, let the player choose what they get, and make it extremely hard, if not impossible, to learn them all.

If there was some sort of prerequisite system, skill tree, etc. that makes it so there are tons of skills but the end result is still small enough, then I think that works. At an extreme example, if a character has 1000 skills to potentially pick from but you can only have four (what is this, pokemon?), there's still a sense of decision-making and niche roles. In your example, with only 3 characters that is an unchangeable party and it sounds like it's set up to allow changing.

 

[lianderson]

Changing your skills, or respecing, is a good option, and I recommend that for most games. However, I don't use respecing due to design reasons that would require its own thread. In short, I'm more of a permanent choices kind of guy.

 

[Maliki79]

I did a quick count, and I have 83 skills that for the most part, each of my 4 main characters can learn.
The methods to get those skills as well as the way to access them differ for the different skill sets.
I have 20 weapon skills that are themselves divided into 4 weapon categories. 2 categories of magic: 1 set that can be used regardless of weapon and one that requires a specific weapon type (that does NOT use weapon skills) to be equipped. there are 39 magic skills total with 15 or so in the anytime use category.
Then I have character specific skills.
There are 16 0f those. 4 for each other the main characters.
Finally, I have defense skills.
A character will be granted 1 defense skill based on the combo of weapons they have equipped.
(All chars can dual wield and some weapons are two-handed, limiting the available combination of weapons and thus skills.)
So, as @Redeye said, my skills are split up mainly by weapon equips.
My intention is to give my players a great amount of choice when building the characters throughout the game.
It bears mentioning that my game is planned to have well over 40-hrs of playtime, so the skills can be well spread out.
While it isn't a major issue, I do want to work on a few of the different "anytime use" spells as many of them are in fact upgrades.
For example, 3 fire spells and 3 healing spells are just stronger upgrades of each other and I do want to inject the upgrades with a bit more but the damage output might be enough. (Testing, testing...)

Bottom line: You can have a ton of skills so long as there is lasting utility in each of them.
If not, you should find a way to phase out the obsolete ones so the player doesn't have access to them once the new ones are learned.

 

[Prescott]

Use a spell equip system. That way you can limit the amount of skills they have at any given point, so players have to be strategic in which ones they want to go into battle with. For instance, if they know they are going into a frozen area, equipping fire spells and spells that can overcome the freeze state would be the most beneficial.

With upgrades included, I have almost 70 skills in my game. 18 are for the physical fighters, the rest are for mages. That's a decent amount I suppose, but forcing the player to equip stuff instead of having this huge list of spells to choose from definitely makes them strategize a bit more instead of just blindly walking through the game mashing their spells at whatever comes their way.

 

[Seirein]

Similarly, we have four different status-inflicting skills: Silence, Stasis, Berserk, and Flirt. Why inflict Berserk or Silence (which still let them attack, and in the case of Silence use Feats) when you can simply Paralyze them (allowing them to do nothing)? Perhaps these are "easier" to inflict, but you shouldn't need to rely on the RNG anyway, and really what's the difference between a 50% chance at an 80% shutdown (Silence) vs. a 40% chance at a 100% shutdown? Nothing, really. Flirt's Confusion may have a reason to exist since the enemy might attack you or might attack their own allies (the latter being better than a Paralyze). Remove Silence and Berserk from her kit.
Skill Count: 22 -> 19

3) In a Party-Based System, Gaps in Utility Lead to Clear Identity
As I discussed before, Autumn's kit provides far too many different types of utility. She can do too many things, so she will step on the toes of other party members (and they might step on each others' toes as well). It's up to you what kind of utility you think feels the most appropriate in her kit, but from your description my take would be that healing, buffing, reviving, and status removal, in addition to a couple of damage skills (because everyone deserves the chance to kill a few dinky monsters, even the party healer). Disables definitely seem like a good candidate to scratch in her kit (allow another party member to focus on disables), as does party-wide resource boosting (this seems like good utility to add to a more pure DPS-style character). Remove Stasis, Flirt, and Cheer from her kit. I would normally recommend moving Persuade as well, but if this is an important element of gameplay, you can leave it in.
Skill Count: 19 -> 16

4) Not Every Stat Needs Buffs and Debuffs
A common "skill bloat" mistake that many neophyte designers make is to have versions of de/buffs for every single stat when, in practice, several end up doing the same thing as each other. There's some room to prune your kit here.
Temper increases an ally's ATK; Aura increases their MAG. Whoever the target is, there's most likely going to be one right answer for which one to increase, and once you do, using skills that rely on the other stat will be a waste. Combining them into a single skill that increases both ATK and MAG accomplishes the same purpose without limiting strategic decisions, and it reduces skill bloat. Combine Temper and Aura into one skill.
Protect (DEF) and Barrier (MDF) are less of a slam-dunk to combine because there will surely be some battle against troops with mixed damage types, and while one might be better than the other, there's a reason to cast both of them. However, it's not always obvious whether enemy attacks (like an electric sword or an acid attack) are physical or magic, so the existence or two different stat boosts partially serves to offer an opportunity to screw the player. Don't screw the player. Combine Protect and Barrier into one skill.
In addition, there's an argument to be made that skills like Cloak (increases physical EVA) serve the same purpose as skills like Protect (increases DEF) - reducing physical damage. Yes, Evasion also increases your chance to avoid ailments from Physical attacks, but unless you get the numbers beautifully balanced, or ailments are such an important part of your game that the player is making a conscious decision to avoid them instead of avoiding damage, one of these skills will probably dominate the other. It's your call, but my suggestion would be to remove Cloak and Mirror, and replace them with a skill that either fully protects the target for one turn, or fully negates a single hit. Replace Cloak and Mirror with a single short-term full protect.
Skill Count: 16 -> 13

So, let's summarize this advice:

• Multiple status effects are useless, because no good game would ever have different enemies be vulnerable to different effects.
• Characters should be shoehorned into RPG cliches, with no deviation from those cliche classes.
• Players shouldn't have to think about whether physical/magical offense/defense is more valuable for a battle.

The important thing to keep in mind with all advice like this is that every single person who tells you how to manage your game's skills has absolutely no problem with the games they like defying every single "rule" they set forth.

 

[Wavelength]

So, let's summarize this advice:

• Multiple status effects are useless, because no good game would ever have different enemies be vulnerable to different effects.
• Characters should be shoehorned into RPG cliches, with no deviation from those cliche classes.
• Players shouldn't have to think about whether physical/magical offense/defense is more valuable for a battle.

The important thing to keep in mind with all advice like this is that every single person who tells you how to manage your game's skills has absolutely no problem with the games they like defying every single "rule" they set forth.

Hmmmmm... no.

You're full of bull, @Seirein, and I don't appreciate how you walk into GMD topics to intentionally twist and misconstrue good advice that vets are giving. It's very childish and contributes nothing to the discussion.

So, let's summarize this advice:

• Multiple status effects are useless, because no good game would ever have different enemies be vulnerable to different effects.

No one said that. Multiple status effects are useful, and are supposed to compliment each other, not dominate each other - especially in the same kit.

So, let's summarize this advice:

• Players shouldn't have to think about whether physical/magical offense/defense is more valuable for a battle.

No one said that. When the choice is obvious (target is a knight with no magic), or there is no basis for making the choice (the enemies' attack types are not obvious), it's not something the player will think about in the first place.

There are games where it makes sense to buff them separately. For example, in MOBAs, good players specifically build DEF or MDF based on which opponent champs are getting ahead, and you specifically build one type of penetration based on whether the opponents are building lots of DEF or MDF. But in most (though not all) RPGs, it's skill bloat.

So, let's summarize this advice:

• Characters should be shoehorned into RPG cliches, with no deviation from those cliche classes.

No one said that. Characters' battle identities should not overlap, and no one character in a party should be able to do everything on their own. The fact that you are petulantly equating that to "characters must never deviate from cliches" makes it very obvious you intend to add nothing productive to our discussion.

The important thing to keep in mind with all advice like this is that every single person who tells you how to manage your game's skills has absolutely no problem with the games they like defying every single "rule" they set forth.

Let's get this straight: @Seirein has never played one of my games, she has never seen my skills and spells (which in fact do fit into the advice I explained earlier, and have been well-received by players), and yet here she is accusing me of being a hypocrite who "defies every single rule I set forth".

((EDIT: I just realized, on my fourth read of the message, that she is talking about "games they like", not "games they make". This is even worse, as she is trying to hijack this topic to dredge up arguments she had with other users besides me, from a thread where she was specifically instructed by moderators not to post anymore, and she is contorting my advice in order to use it as a springboard to rehash that argument. If that's the case, it is really despicable.))

This isn't the first time she has barged into a topic and flung baseless accusations at other members, offering nothing but jealous (and unprovoked) slander toward the people who know what they're doing.

@Seirein, perhaps you could give some useful advice of your own rather than radically contorting other peoples' advice to disrupt the topic.

 

[Milennin]

I like to follow the rule 'less is more'. To avoid ability bloat I follow these guidelines for my games:

-No tiered skills.
-No skills with the same effects, but under a different name.
-No skills with the same effects, with only difference in cost/target etc.
-Give skills secondary effects to cover more utility while taking up less space on the list.
-All skills must fit a character thematically, or their personality, and that support their assigned role in combat.
-Conditional skills that only show up once certain conditions are met in combat (either through skill swap, stance change or other means).
-Merge attack and m. attack buffs into one. Same for defence and m. defence buffs. Take out Agility and all other invisible stats.
-Remove elemental/weapon damage, and only separate between physical (auto-attack damage) and magical (skill damage).
-Cut out as many unnecessary States as possible. The only State overlap I tend to keep is Burn/Poison/Bleed to support degen stacking strategies.