Being conservative with your skills/stats/resists

[CWells]

I have a plan that I'm slowly working out with all of my skills and status-effects. But I wanted to ask about how some players might feel about smaller skill sets and low resist gear.

What do you think about gear that gives some resistance to status effects but no pure immunities? Gear that just makes it much more difficult for things to hook on to you or the enemy? I'm trying to avoid pure resistance except for where absolutely necessary.

And about skills, how do you feel about smaller skill sets, with the option of buying equipment that will allow you access to extra skills? And what about skills that are assigned specifically to a certain set of characters and only those characters unless of course you buy such equipment to sneak in some limited use of a certain class of skills?

From what was done so far, everything looks highly spread out but it all looks balanced. Nothing appears to be overriding others in certain areas. But I want to allow people some flexibility, which explains the equipment with extra skills.

If you're an earth mage and want holy spells you can buy some gloves that grant you a little holy magic for example.

 

[Andar]

It can be done this way, and no matter what you choose you'll always have some players liking it or others hating it.

More important is the implementation - be sure that there are no combinations that might break the game balance, as that is the true reason why many developers go for pure-type actors instead of mixed ability-actors. Those are simply easier to balance compared to actors that can theoretically gain any option.

 

[orochii]

For the resistance stuff, I think it's just about not making the resistance bonus something like 5%. That's just nothing. 50% is half-time so it's still plenty of gambling. 75 is fine, 80% is a lot. On high ratios, just that extra 5% is a lot of difference. And much more when talking about 90s...

So it's pretty much testing, finding the exact amount you want. I really like it, not immune but resistant. You have to take into account, though, that there are more statuses, so if this glorious thing gives resistance to X, Y Z and A will still work on you, AND X too but rarely.

For the equipment that gives skills, yeah, I like that too. I'm using that kind of strategy too. I have a skill tree, and characters have certain skills whose give them pretty much either 1-2 possible roles. So the "extra skills" are supposed to give all characters more flexibility, and can be exchanged freely between all of them.

So, yeah, I like both things,

Orochii Zouveleki

 

[Tai_MT]

With resistances...  I think that's going to be tricky for you.  You have to balance your resistances against the chances of inflicting the states very carefully.

What I absolutely hate about "low levels of resistance" in an RPG is its seemingly lack of understanding in the process.  If I have 3 items equipped that only give me something like 80% resistance to sleep...  That means 20% of the time, I'm still going to be hit with sleep.  Which, if an enemy is lucky, can happen on every single cast.  Or, if I'm unlucky and get hit with it, it can actually kill me depending on what limits you have on the skill to begin with.  If Sleep can only be cured by a physical hit and the enemy is a mage who just casts spells at me...  Sleep has just effectively murdered me in the cheapest way possible because there is no way to get 100% resistance against the skill.

I would say you should offer resistances against SOME status ailments up to 100% with full equipment, and with others, just keep it at decent chances.  Things that could result in party wipe or really massive amounts of damage should have the ability to give the full 100% resistance at the cost of having 0% resistance against anything else.  So, things like Sleep and Death and maybe Stun...  These would be good examples for which to protect 100% against.  Burns, Sleep, Silence, Confusion, Blind, etcetera...  these should only be able to be resisted.  Or at least, that's how I'd do it with your idea.

Are you going to have equipment that offers multiple resistances, or is it only a "one resistance per equipment" kind of deal?

 

[orochii]

I would say anyway that Sleep/Stun and the such are things to be limited, even without special equipment to counter them. A monster with the chance to spam stun as he likes for example haves a "very high" (in annoyance terms -?-) chance of killing you of boredom wiping all your characters with occasional weak hits.

One thing to do, for example, is making stun last N number of turns. Then the enemy will use the stun at least each N+1 turns. You can also balance that with chances of it actually using the skill (rating) AND natural/equipment resistances.

Something like that,

Orochii Zouveleki

 

[CWells]

With resistances...  I think that's going to be tricky for you.  You have to balance your resistances against the chances of inflicting the states very carefully.

What I absolutely hate about "low levels of resistance" in an RPG is its seemingly lack of understanding in the process.  If I have 3 items equipped that only give me something like 80% resistance to sleep...  That means 20% of the time, I'm still going to be hit with sleep.  Which, if an enemy is lucky, can happen on every single cast.  Or, if I'm unlucky and get hit with it, it can actually kill me depending on what limits you have on the skill to begin with.  If Sleep can only be cured by a physical hit and the enemy is a mage who just casts spells at me...  Sleep has just effectively murdered me in the cheapest way possible because there is no way to get 100% resistance against the skill.

I would say you should offer resistances against SOME status ailments up to 100% with full equipment, and with others, just keep it at decent chances.  Things that could result in party wipe or really massive amounts of damage should have the ability to give the full 100% resistance at the cost of having 0% resistance against anything else.  So, things like Sleep and Death and maybe Stun...  These would be good examples for which to protect 100% against.  Burns, Sleep, Silence, Confusion, Blind, etcetera...  these should only be able to be resisted.  Or at least, that's how I'd do it with your idea.

Are you going to have equipment that offers multiple resistances, or is it only a "one resistance per equipment" kind of deal?

That's always the problem with percents. I've tested skills with 20% rate atk state not actually go through until the 7th or 8th hit.

And I don't see why sleep would only be disturbed by physical attacks. I'm not going about that route. No, I'm building everything from my own logic. I'm not really going to be mimicking many things. It's all as "original" as I can get it to be. I'm also taking note of stun and how that would be applied in game. But with percentages, it's always a gamble. You can't expect to have 80% resistance to something and think that you're going to get the worst throw of the dice in a fight every time you go in. If 80% isn't enough security on its own, That's just you.

I have ways to help increase resistances. Couple that with armor and you have your temporary immunities. There are protective wards/states that can be applied to grant dramatic resistance to many states. I tried to lump the protective wards into classes of states.

Physical states like poison and blind are blocked by one protective state while magical ailments like confusion or silence are warded off by another.

I don't like to use one skill per state cleansing/blocking. It's clunky and can overcrowd player skill lists.

The only real danger I see is how I'm tying Wind magic to Stun. But the costs for such spells are high  and I keep my percentages rather low on the states applied to magic strikes. And Stun only lasts one to two rounds. But even so, the chance of chain-stunning will be very low.

 

[Clord]

Don't worry too much about the balance. One of fun factors in single player RPG games is that you get those awesome super powered skills in the end.


That said. It is good to have some balance in the game but don't try to overdo it. Also the players typically like when their gear's resistance stats are reliable. So chance to not get stun vs a gear with a bit better stats brings many players to go with the one with an overall better stats.