DoT and HoT effects.

[Dark_Metamorphosis]

So currently working on implementing a mechanic in my game that hopefully will spice up the battles a little bit.

A Mechanic where you can use gadgets to combine spells or make them have new features:

Example: 

You soak the enemy with water, opening up the ability to electrify them with Lightning spells or freeze them with frost spells.

You throw sticky oil at the targets, opening up your fire spells to ignite them.

So first off I want to discuss what you think about using craftable items to change the effects on skills, or combine spells to add different effects.

But mostly I want to see your take on HoTs (Healingovertime) and DoTs (Damageovertime) and how you set up the damage for them.

Do you use different statuses for Actors and enemies?, and how do you work with the damage that the status effects will do? 

I started off with a % of the hp, but that seems to work pretty bad since the amount of hp determine how much damage it will take.

So what's your take on all this?

 

[Fernyfer775]

I personally like HOT and DOT mechanics in games. In my current project, I use a script (I believe it's Yanfly's Lunatic: PUNISHMENT Scrpt) that changes the damage they do to reflect off Attack power instead of doing a flat % of the enemy's HP. Using craftable items is fine and dandy as long as they're easy to acquire, otherwise the player will most likely not even bother in most cases.

Having the DOTs or HOTs provide secondary effects is a great way to spice up battles. For example, making a target take X more damage if Y dot is on them can help party members combo up on a target.

In my game, I have an ability called "Fester" which does damage based off of how many DOT effects the target has on it.

 

[Shaz]

I've moved this thread to Game Mechanics Design. Please be sure to post your threads in the correct forum next time. Thank you.

 

[Probotector 200X]

I like " " over time effects. I don't like being stuck with just HRG without scripting, as it's somewhat limiting, doesn't tell you how much damage it does, and really doesn't let you do some cool stuff. I've seen some cool scripts that change this, I just haven't used them yet. Like, I want damage-over-time effects to be elemental. So, when combined with an elemental absorb script...an Fire Djinn type character would still be affected by Burns, but would be healed instead of hurt! Regen effects are fun too. (especially with twists as I said, imagine an undead character getting hurt by Regen!)

A normal DOT in my game would be HRG -5% to HRG -10%. Rarer ones are more like -20%, with the occasional -50% (remove it ASAP!)

I like the elemental combo setup being related to DOTs.

 

[Kes]

I like DoT and HoT, but I have to admit I've got to the stage where my heart sinks when I read "craft the item".   I can't remember for sure, but I don't recall crafting being part of your project before, which means that there is no integral story related reason for it.  In which case, please, let me find the item, buy the item, do anything other than have to craft the damned thing.

 

[Matseb2611]

Yeah, I like to use DoT and HoT as well.

HoT can be good for some very tactical gameplay. For example, if you have only 1 character in the party, having them to do a HP regen spell on themselves in good time can save them lots of turns on healing. You can also have items, skills, and equipment synchronize together and achieve larger HP regens. For example, an accessory might grant the character a 5% HP regen, then a skill used on themselves will give them another 10%, and perhaps a consumable item another 10%, and now they have a 25% HP regen for several turns.

Lots of stuff can be done with DoTs too. In my current game I have 4 different types of DoTs (one for each element type), so I have a burn, a frostbite, a plasma burn, and an acid burn. Each one only does 3% HP damage per turn, and (aside from acid burn) only lasts 2 turns, but inflict them together in the same turn, and you've taken a big chunk of the enemy's life (especially useful on bosses). In addition, each DoT status also reduces the enemy stat. So a fire based burn will also reduce their Def by a small %, whereas a frostbite will reduce their Agi, and so on.

Putting the above two together, you could have some bosses with an automatic HP regen, which means the player will have to inflict DoT types of effects on them to balance out that HP regen, which can make for some interesting battle strategies.

 

[Necromus]

Someone seems to have played some Divinity : OS huh?

Those are decent additions to a battle system, just rather hard to balance properly imo.

Doesn't matter if its healing or doing damage, it simply needs to be worth it, meaning you have to spend enough time in a battle, to profit from those mechanics.

If there are flat damage attacks, that simply do more damage/healing in the long run, then having dots/hots is pointless imo.

 

[Dark_Metamorphosis]

I like DoT and HoT, but I have to admit I've got to the stage where my heart sinks when I read "craft the item".   I can't remember for sure, but I don't recall crafting being part of your project before, which means that there is no integral story related reason for it.  In which case, please, let me find the item, buy the item, do anything other than have to craft the damned thing.

Yeah... This is why I'm having such an awful time in developing my battle-system. The thing with gadgets is that I want to combine it with the personality (story-wise) of Clem since she's very talented in mechanics. I have tried to fit something in with my overwold abilities and she will be able to fix broken machinery and what-not and since I wanted her ability to level up, I thought about having the gadgets craftable as her trait. Then again I have thought about it a lot, and tried to work around it but I just don't know how to implement it in any other way. Maybe I'm overthinking it, but I just want to add some sort of different mechanic to the game to spice up the battles a bit. It's really tough to get something going though, and I have most of my battle-system planned out but I still feel that it's lacking.

As for the crafting I had in mind that the player can do it wherever they are in order to get skillpoints to level up Clem's mechanics skill (different levels are needed to fix different machinery or what not), and this is where all this came to mind. It's to the point where whatever I come up with doesn't work that well in the end... 

I personally like HOT and DOT mechanics in games. In my current project, I use a script (I believe it's Yanfly's Lunatic: PUNISHMENT Scrpt) that changes the damage they do to reflect off Attack power instead of doing a flat % of the enemy's HP. Using craftable items is fine and dandy as long as they're easy to acquire, otherwise the player will most likely not even bother in most cases.

Having the DOTs or HOTs provide secondary effects is a great way to spice up battles. For example, making a target take X more damage if Y dot is on them can help party members combo up on a target.

In my game, I have an ability called "Fester" which does damage based off of how many DOT effects the target has on it.

 

Yeah, I have been looking a bit into that script myself. Just need to understand it a bit since it would solve the issue with having to use percentage on the status effects. Then again, I need the DoTs to have a efficient damage overall to make them worthwile. I also need to take all my skills into consideration and make sure I can find some interesting tweaks to them when dots and hots are applied. 

 

 

Someone seems to have played some Divinity : OS huh? 

Those are decent additions to a battle system, just rather hard to balance properly imo.

Doesn't matter if its healing or doing damage, it simply needs to be worth it, meaning you have to spend enough time in a battle, to profit from those mechanics.

If there are flat damage attacks, that simply do more damage/healing in the long run, then having dots/hots is pointless imo.

 

I have yes, but it works a bit different than Divinity in that regard that my spells will be tweaked depending on what status effects or DoT's/Hot's are on the target. Divinity used a similar combination of elements but just increased the chance of x to happen, damage output, or aoe effects (As long with enviromental mechanics). So Yes I have taken some inspiration from Divinity, but it will work a bit different

Yeah I agree that it can be hard to balance, that's why I need to find a way to have the effects and DoTs make a pretty significant difference in damage and what not. But since my original spells will tweak into applying new status effects or DoT's I can't see why it would be pointless. You use the same kind of damaging skill, but now it will add a DoT or effect as a bonus.

 

[Fernyfer775]

Yeah I agree that it can be hard to balance, that's why I need to find a way to have the effects and DoTs make a pretty significant difference in damage and what not. But since my original spells will tweak into applying new status effects or DoT's I can't see why it would be pointless. You use the same kind of damaging skill, but now it will add a DoT or effect as a bonus.

Typically the best way to handle these sort of spells is make said spell do initial damage and then make the DOT portion of it tick for damage that makes it worthwhile.

For example:

"Mangle" will do, let's say: ~500 damage upfront with no secondary effect. 

"Body Slam" will do 300 damage upfront, then an additional ~125 bleed damage a turn for 3 turns, which makes it a total of ~675 damage. 

So, for normal fights where monsters die in a few turns anyways, Mangle will be the better option since it kills things faster, but Body Slam will have it's time for use during boss fights where the DOT portion could tick enough times to warrant it's use.