Balancing 1-4 characters in battle

[Failivrin]

Been brainstorming battle mechanics, and I've got an interesting dilemma. MV's default settings support four characters in battle. That's classic, and I don't see any reason to change it. But because of the way my game's narrative develops, characters will often have to fight solo or in pairs. As developer, I need to...
1) make solo combat challenging and rewarding
2) balance combat so that it is neither punishingly difficult nor "brokenly" easy, whether you have one or four party members in action.

Any suggestions? How would you make this work?

 

[Aoi Ninami]

The game I'm playing at the moment, Curse of Saria, has four party members for most of the time, but some sections have fewer, and there is a flashback dungeon with a solo character at a fixed low level. So, a few thoughts....

In the early game, before all party members have joined forces, it's quite natural to have fewer than four at times. But this is a quite different experience from being reduced to fewer in the middle or late game. Early battles should be going easy on the player in any case, with little serious risk of getting knocked out unless the player foolishly neglects healing. So I take it you're mainly asking about the middle or late game.

One character: You have to be more careful about avoiding cheap shots, like a really strong attack that can one-shot the character from above half his maximum health, or debilitating statuses like paralysis. Instead of risk to the player, you could flip the situation and make the challenge come from the difficulty of the solo character posing risk to the enemies. Curse of Saria does this with the final boss of its solo dungeon: Yuki and Sasha will both revive each other if you knock just one of them out. It's a puzzle boss, but a fair one, as you're given all the tools you need: Sensor Sphere (inflicts "scanned" status so you can read their current HP), Turbo Boost (one-use item that casts Haste) and Minibombs (light damage to all enemies).

Two characters: You still want to avoid the cycle where the player can't make progress because the boss knocks out one character, they have to revive instead of attacking, the boss knocks out that character (or the other) again... this feels cheap if the cycle is entered by the boss using a really strong attack that the player can't prepare for. However, with two instead of one, you have more room to use "warning, act now" attacks like poison, silence, medium damage or even HP-to-1.

Naturally, you also need to think about which two characters get paired together, and tailoring the threats to the skills they have available.

 

[bgillisp]

What I've noticed is for most games, it is a good idea to keep the number of enemies equal to or less than the number of player characters. So if you have only one character, then you should only run into enemies in groups of one. Two characters? One or two enemies now. And so on.

Also, like @Aoi Ninami says above me, avoid cheap shots too. One person party the enemies should never have instant KO skills, as that turns the battle into a pray to the RNG Goddess. Two person party, still avoid instant KO skills, as it can turn into a cycle of revive/die/repeat if you have bad luck with the RNG.

 

[Traveling Bard]

I played a tabletop game once that scaled monster hp based on the number of party members. So it was something like, this slime has 5 HP x the number of players. When it swung, it swung at the entire party. Dealing damage accordingly. Perhaps some kind of variable scaling might work. The game is Random Encounters by Regular People Gaming

 

[Failivrin]

@Aoi Ninami yes, the bulk of solo/paired combat occurs in the second quarter of my game, with a little more in third quarter.
Curse of Saria sounds like an awesome game! I think I'll look it up

 

[Aoi Ninami]

It's not quite finished yet, but the latest update (V24) allows you to play to the end of the game and the final bosses -- only some optional stuff is missing. Here's the link if you want to try it out.

 

[Uzuki]

Depends on how your handling it. If having a party is optional then you'll need to have high awards for the player for going solo, while teaming up will give the player a strategic advantage in battle and, depending on how your overworld works, allowing the player to find secrets or access certain areas that they couldn't enter without their companions. For solo rewards you have different Item Drops/Drop rates, Weapons and armour have different effects and usage, Stat/State bonuses, or access to abilities that only work when the player is by themselves. For companions you can do the same, but obviously on a smaller scale. Maybe no stat bonuses, but now you have access to skills that allow team up attacks or buff/debuff abilities.

If it's not optional to travel with a party in certain sections or forced to coop, then it'll have to rely on you balancing the game properly and being sure to keep in mind if battles are too hard when solo or too easy while teamed up. You can still do the stuff from above, but most of the work will have to come directly from you doing a lot of playtesting.

 

[velan235]

for solo fight , I recommend giving a multi-action or a lot a vairable to deal with, or its just a matter of trading damage literally. I know even with 4 party member , its still a damage trade , but at least there are diversion with action choice and risk.

if we take example from most solo games , most of them are action based , which if translated in a turn based, its like having multiple action in 1 time frame (dodging , blocking , jump and slash , use item)

in suikoden , solo fight happen in duel. its basically rock-paper-scissors. but I think its bad if its happen on every combat. duel in suikoden is more of flavor battle + because we rarely do it , the RPS part is not really repetitive.

you can take a look at thousand arms for 'not so single' actor battle. I think if people take the game battle and add it with modern formula for JRPG right now , it will be a great battle experience

 

[Failivrin]

Yeah @velan235 , I definitely want to avoid trading damage--that cycle of attack, attack, heal, repeat.

For making solo combat more interesting, I am adapting some ideas from Pokemon, emphasizing the importance of passive skills. For example, a player may choose between restoring a large amount of MP by consuming an item, or (thanks to a passive skill) restoring a small amount of MP while guarding. Applied properly, I think passive skills can be vaguely like taking multiple actions per turn.

@Uzuki, I am experimenting with having "team-up" skills activate in parties of four. How the player applies these skills is determined by their choices to switch in/switch out certain characters instead of whether to fight solo or party-style, since the number of characters active in battle is determined by narrative.

Great suggestions! Would love to hear how others might handle similar situations.

 

[Milennin]

Potential problem with 4 is that it becomes overwhelming if skillsets become too big or mechanics are too complex. Another problem is feeling slow paced if animations take too long and having to wait for 4 characters to move.
3 party members, for me, is the magic number. Can't really go wrong with that, in my opinion.

 

[jade_angel]

The game I'm designing uses a party size of five and for most of the game, you will in fact have five, or at the least four, characters. However, in the areas where you're likely to have fewer, the troops are designed to be weaker, less numerous or both. That does mean that if you return to those areas with a larger party, the encounters will be very easy. I think the way to handle that is to limit the amount of backtracking that would take you through previously solo or small-group areas, and/or to use flags to populate those areas with more dangerous encounters later on.

 

[AmazingKazuki]

While reading your first post, I thought of an idea. Now maybe you said it throughout and I missed it but there are options for it.

Like if you are forcing the player to have the 4 team members in, that is something you can play with. If not, and they are optional, you could make a variable based on party size or a conditional branch looking for a certain party member linked into looking for another and do difficulty based off that.

My game is using only two characters, so I constantly battle test to make sure but am not using any difference in difficulty levels either.

 

[Wavelength]

The question you ostensibly asked - "How many party members are ideal?" - can welcome some interesting discussion, but it's too general to really come to a right answer or even a good one. For me, three party members has usually been the magic number in turn-based combat, but four or five can be good if the party members are hyper-specialized. One or two party members tends to work better if you want very quick, choice-heavy combat, and of course one party member (at a time, at least) is usually ideal for action RPGs.

But I think there's an even better question here, hidden in the subtext of what you're trying to do: "[How do I] make solo combat challenging and rewarding [in a game where you're normally using four characters?]" And my answer to that is - you can't. I don't think there's a way to make turn-based combat equally engaging for a party of one and a party of four, because the former generally derives its engagement from choices/expression and the latter derives its engagement from synergies/composition/timing.

This doesn't mean that you should never change the party size in an RPG from its "normal" - but it's important that you only do so for quick segments rather than try to split the time up evenly between differing party sizes. Going on a quest alone where you've had a party alongside you the entire time will feel a lot different, and therefore the experience will be cool and memorable even if battle isn't as interesting or satisfying. Starting the game with one character and building up to four over an hour or two can be nice because it keeps the player's first battle experiences clean, quick, and hopefully easy. Having "Coliseums" or other battle-related minigames where the player chooses just one character to use can be really fun because it provides an entirely new experience, and even if the balance between characters in 'solo play' is awful, it's okay because it's something the player opted into. So feel free to vary the party sizes, but only for short amounts of time or single (optional) elements, and be sure to test play in order to make sure that your enemy parties aren't too hard during these "shorthanded" segments!