Explaining States to Players

[captainproton]

I actually don't see what's wrong with having an NPC explain things, so long as it's done early and intelligently.  For instance, in my game, when you're given your initial quest, you're told to first go see a couple of the Shrine Dedicates before setting off.  One gives you a few healing items to start off with, and the other gives you a few antidote-type items.  She also asks if you want a "refresher" course on negative states.  If you say "yes", you get a rundown on sleep, poison, paralysis, etc.  If you say "no", she sends you on your way, but you can always check the herbology text on her worktable later on.  It also adds an entry to your in-game journal (courtesy of Xail System Quest Log) you can check when you're out and about. 

 

[Tai_MT]

@Wavelength

Why do you have to use the default states as they've always been used?  These states were invented when RPGs were new and they really only added variety to those older games.  Those states were to ensure players brought along the healing items necessary for the trek into whatever area they were going in.  Many even transferred to the world map or even into the next battle and weren't cured on battle's end.  Plenty of them were deadly enough in their own right that they would merit carrying specific equipment with you into certain areas (it tended to be a good way to gate off areas and force money grinds to obtain the equipment necessary to proceed in the game... which makes sense to do when you don't have a lot of space for content on a cartridge).

I've honestly been working on reworking the standard states so that they provide more dynamic and interesting battle combinations than the strictly "damage over time" and "disable player" types.  Likewise, I've been trying to implement these same states so that players will think of them strategically and perhaps find clever ways to use them against the enemies they face.

One of the first things I did was to add "levels" of many of the states so that some may be more urgent to cure than others.  Most RPGs hold their standard "bleed" type effects (poison, burn, bleed, etcetera) to around 3-5% of max HP, which gives you plenty of leeway in trying to finish the battle so you can cure outside of battle.  Well, why don't these have severity levels?  What if the highest level of these bleeds is 20% of max HP and it would kill a character in five turns?  Suddenly that "bleed" which isn't so dynamic becomes a priority in battle.  You could perhaps try to finish the battle before your character dies, but if they're also taking damage every turn, maybe you need to prioritize curing them instead?

The next thing I did was to make all the "disable players" states unique in their own way.  "Stun" freezes a character until they take damage.  They are out of the fight until they get hit.  Very circumstantial ability with some promise of perhaps using it against enemies in strategic or interesting ways.  "Sleep" comes in varying levels, but it has a percentage chance of being removed on hit with higher levels of it getting lower and lower chances of being woken up.  This lets you "roll the dice" a bit, but also means it might take priority to use an item on the party member instead of trying to wait for them to wake up on their own.  Likewise, it could be used to the same effect against monsters.  There is also a "turn limit" to how long the target remains asleep with higher levels of sleep granting longer amounts of time.  Then it's a "do I wait it out or use an item to cure it?" mechanic.  Next, I have "Paralyze" which just stops you from moving at all, forever, unless you use an item on the character.  No turn limit, no wake up condition.  Use an item or your character is worthless.  This state prioritizes you wasting turns on curing it.  It is so powerful that if you do not do anything about it, you are severely handicapping yourself.  Finally, we have my last states of "Petrify" and "Frozen".  These work like Paralyze except Frozen does eventually wear off...  And you take about 200% Blunt Weapon damage while frozen while you take 600% Blunt Weapon damage while Petrified.  These moves don't just immobilize you, they make you a super easy target (and an expensive to fix one as revival is vastly overpriced compared to carrying curative items).

The last thing I did was to remove all healing/curative magic from my game.  I want you carrying items and being prepared instead of relying on a "white mage".  That being said, there are also states like "Confuse" which debuff the target's magic defense while also making them attack randomly.  In this same vein, I have "Berserk" states that are Confuse on steroids.  Berserk debuffs all three defensive abilities while buffing all offensive abilities and makes the character cast spells and attack anyone at random.

This is just the short list of states I've tried to "update" to modern times of gaming as well as tried to make the flow of battle more interesting.  If you make states a viable option in battle on par with just mashing "attack" every turn, you'll find some interesting battles can be had.

One of the fun examples I've created myself involved teaching the player the mechanics of "Stun".  A boss monster is fairly powerful and he's got 4 healers with him.  He could be dispatched if those healers weren't there.  Well, you could kill them, but they have massive boatloads of HP.  So, how do I want the player to learn Stun?  Use it on the healers to take them out of the fight so you can deal with the boss and then deal with them on your own time in whatever order you desire.  States should be explained to players in absolute full detail (or under circumstances where they can observe what the state does) in order to get them to use them properly as well as react to them in intelligent ways.  I personally prefer to learn about states gradually as the game goes on and through battle mechanics...  But, sometimes it doesn't hurt for an NPC to let you know about a state they deal with in the area.  I am, however, fairly opposed to reading about the state in some kind of book in the game.  That always breaks immersion for me.  If a rattle snake bit you and injected venom into you, you wouldn't need a book to know that you've been poisoned and that it's going to kill you.  All you would need to know is that you need the antidote and fast.  It just seems very meta to read what "sleep" is in a game world.  Why wouldn't the characters know what sleep is?  They do it every night!

 

[captainproton]

Sometimes there are differences in how certain stock states work. Some games have paralysis wear off after battle, or only last X number of turns, while others have it continuous until remedied. Sometimes, it prevents you from doing anything, while in other games, like Pokemon, it's a coin toss every turn to see whether you can move ore not.

And you know what? Sometimes brand new players may be playing your game as their gateway to other rpgs! Maybe, until now, they've only ever played Mario or Tetris or Angry Birds, and are unfamiliar with RPG states.

I understand not wanting to hand-hold, but never assume the player knows everything you do about the game or how it works. This is why I think an early-on, helpful NPC is a good thing.

"Before you leave, be sure to bring some Remedy Tonics. Those woods are full of poisonous Spidraks, and if you get poisoned, you'll lose some of your health every turn in battle! Even if you survive the battle, your health will continue to drop as you travel. So, take what you can from that cabinet, and be careful out there!"

 

[Wavelength]

@Wavelength

Why do you have to use the default states as they've always been used?

You don't.

My argument was specifically against negative states that don't provide interesting decisions for the player.  If your Paralysis state (and the system around it) does provide interesting decisions for the player when one of their characters is afflicted with the state, then it's unrelated to what I'm talking about.

 

[TheHonorableRyu]

 

I don't think there's any single one "best way" to explain status effects. It depends on what your RPG's battle system is about, who your target audience is, how hard it might be for players to observe and keep track of all the information for each status effect and if it even matters for the player to be successful, under what circumstances the player is going encounter each status effect for the first time, etc. 

 

I think creativity often happens when you relate part of something to a greater whole, such as some other design aspect of your game. So for example, when is the first time the player is going to encounter the Pestilence status effect? If it were during a story boss battle with a mad scientist, for example, then perhaps you could have a NPC or party member who has a history with the mad scientist (former friend, former lover, former lab experiment, rival scientist?) comment that he's notorious for inflicting his guinea pigs with a viral "pestilence" that drains one's life over time, and weakens their strength and defenses, to see if they can survive it. In this way the player is provided with info they need when they need it, and it's also integrated with storytelling and characterization. 

 

However, players might not remember that some NPC told them once upon a time that "Pestilence" not only drains HP but lowers both ATK and DEF. Players might wonder whether "Pestilence" belongs to the Poison/Venom category and if an Antidote will cure it (it's unclear to me from your post, and it could go either way). They might also forget that "Fear" lowers ATK but raises DEF (it makes sense, but other interpretations also make sense, e.g., in Super Mario RPG the Fear status effect lowers both ATK and DEF). Rules like these are more or less arbitrary, and hence harder to keep straight, especially as the number of status effects increase. This is where it's helpful to provide an in-battle status menu or manual/compendium that the player can access anywhere. If your game's battles are fairly easy (like Pokemon story mode or something) then a status menu or manual thingie might not be necessary since the player can win without the information. But if your game's battles are fairly challenging such that knowing what the status effects do and how to cure them is really important, then players might get frustrated if they can't look up information they need or if they need to jump through tedious hoops to find it (like backtracking, trial and error).

 

 

But I want to nitpick the suggestion of using "classic RPG states" as the most common ones.  Think about these states and whether they present any kind of interesting decisions to the player:

• Sleep: Very interesting tradeoff between damage and disable when it's inflicted on an enemy, but less so when it's inflicted on a character and the AI is attacking randomly
• Poison: Interesting decision between trying to finish the battle quickly, trying to heal through it, or using the turn to cure the afflicted character
• Paralyzed: No interesting decisions to be made; the battler is disabled (and good as dead) and there's nothing that can be done about it except use the appropriate item
• Sealed / Silenced: Generally just means attackers keep attacking, and mages just hit Guard each turn
• Confused: Strategic decisions vary widely based on the situation, but in most games it just means hoping for a benevolent RNG
• Petrify: No interesting decisions to be made; the battler is disabled (and good as dead) and there's nothing that can be done about it except use the appropriate item

As you can see, less than half actually add anything interesting to the battle, and are really not worth the potential frustration they cause for the player.  I think in general "positive" statuses tend to make for a better experience, but even for negative statuses I think it's very important to make sure they add, rather than take away, from the player's set of interesting possibilities.

 

That's an interesting observation, that a lot of common status effects are merely irritants when they force the player to make one choice (using the appropriate item or spell to cure the status effect). 

 

To be fair, there usually are more player decisions involved even with the conventional status effects of an old-school jRPG, assuming the game is reasonably well done like a Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy. This is especially the case when:

1) Curative items or spells are costly or rare (Do I need to cure this status effect immediately, and risk having being reapplied next battle or even next turn, or can I let it ride for a bit? What unit/job classes should I bring into a dungeon to deal with the status effects I might encounter? How long will their MP hold out before I have to fall back on my limited stock of items? What's the bare minimum of curative items I need to buy to get me through this dungeon?)

2) Multiple status effects are applied on multiple characters (How should I prioritize curing which status effects and on which party members?)

3) Accessories that resist certain status effects are costly or rare (Which party member should I equip with this accessory? If I can purchase more of them is it worth the price? Is it worth placing in my limited accessory slot or would another accessory with another effect be better?)

 

The problem is that many RPG players are so used to these choices already, and many games copy the status effects for convention's sake without understanding what made them work at all in the first place. Like I've played RPGs where you win around 50 gold per battle, one Antidote costs 4 gold, your party can carry 99 stock of them in an unlimited inventory, and the battles are such mindless button mashers that using a turn in battle doesn't really cost anything. In such circumstances, dealing with Poison is about as challenging or interesting as stuffing envelopes.

 

[Lowell]

My solution to this is to add a "Sub Page" to skills which is basically a status screen for skills. I plan on having it give a more detailed explanation of the skills effects, including the state(s) it may inflict.

The sub page would always be accessible (in & out of battle) with the simple press of a key and would open and close that window. A bit more work on my end, but definitely not a pointless addition.

It also helps that instead of individual state resistances, Status effects are linked together in groups, and resistance is shared for any effect in that group.