Gameplay question - using Pm...

[Nantas]

Hello maker friends !

I've been thinking of my game's gameplay lately, and I have a question.
In fact, I prefer asking you, because I don't consider myself as the biggest reference and asking players
is a good way to make your game accessible, and enjoyable for everyone


There are only three actors. They each have 1000 HP, and 100 MP. It's the maximum, there is no way to exceed that.

I've thought on two different combat system about magic and MP.
Time for some description ^^


FIRST :

Skills, magical and physical, cost regular MP. For example, a simple fire magic skill costs 6 or 5 MP.
You do not recover MP at the end of battle. You have to find a crystal (saving crystal) to recover your MP, or
use a potion for that.

That kind of system is similar to most of the games out there.


SECOND :

Skills cost more MP. Like the basic fire magic skill costs 24 MP.
Crystals recover all the MP. There are no potions anymore.

In this system, every actor has a skill (replacing the guard skill).
This skill recovers all MP of the user (actor 1 can use it only for himself).
This skill has a cooldown : 2 turns.
It costs 1 MP.

The player would have to look carefully at his MP's consumption, because if he falls to 0, he
cannot recover all his MP and cannot use skills anymore.

At the end of battle, actors recover all their MP (or maybe not ^^ I have not thought of it ^^)




What do you think is more enjoyable for the player ? Is the second version too difficult ?
Maybe you have an idea about it ?

Let me know what you think ^^

 

[Alexander Amnell]

I like the second version more just because I've never been a fan of having to horde items to chug all the time in games, but I'd scrap the "no skills for the remainder of battle if mp hits zero" part just because it seems a bit...trollish I guess. Maybe instead of having all mp restored through that one skill have a small % like 3-5 recovered automatically at the end of each turn and let the skill restore a larger amount like 25+ in exchange for having to spend that turn storing up mana.

Or give the mp heal skill a different cost, rather than a nonsensical mp requirement in order to restore mp; such as having it increase that character's likelihood to be targeted so that constantly trying to cast the most powerful spells as frequently as possible makes that character far more likely to get ganged up on and taken down.

I just don't really like the idea of painting yourself into a no win situation like that, seems counter intuitive to players having fun. It's one thing to be outplayed and lose a fight fairly, another entirely to have your hands tied behind your back and pummeled for five rounds into a loss because you weren't paying enough attention to the math five rounds ago.

 

[Nantas]

Thanks for the advice

In fact, I did delete the mp cost on the skill immediatly when I created it

Recharge (it's the name of the skill) costs nothing, and affects only the user. It has no cooldown.
But it does boost your threat (thank you very much for the idea )
It recharges the same amout of MP as the player's luck stat, with no variability (in my game, you can each lvl up only boost two stats, with an amount of +3)

Does that seem good for you ?

 

[Basileus]

The first one is pretty straight-forward. I prefer combat systems of that type since it creates more tension between battles - especially if you have a save point system and end up low and have to decide if its worth it to press on or double back. Maybe not as "action-y" as some people like but perfectly serviceable and easy to get help with.

The second one confuses me. Why can the heroes just restore 100% of their MP by waiting a turn? Is that mechanic actually going to be part of the story and/or world lore? Because if they can just fill their entire MP bar at the drop of a hat...then why do their skills cost MP in the first place? MP is generally used to represent magic power as something like stamina - if you run 5 miles you will be very tired and will have trouble doing physical activity afterward. So casting a really big spell is draining in a similar manner and the player has to decide if they want to pace themselves by using low-cost efficient spells or exhaust themselves casting huge flashy ones.

If restoring all MP is a borderline free action, then you might as well remove all spell costs since they won't really impact gameplay significantly anyway. It's not like the player can't just guard the turn before they want to unleash their massive nuke spell. Remembering to periodically guard to restore MP will just become a tedious chore that the player will be conditioned to do every X turns or so depending on how you implement spell costs and how often different spells are actually needed.


Good game design should strive to be interactive. If you are choosing to get rid of long-term resource management, then you are removing a critical element of decision-making and battle strategy since the player won't ever have to think about battles ahead, only the one they are currently in. By focusing everything on the present moment you become obligated to make each turn active and dynamic to compensate. Making the player wait a turn guarding every now and then breaks up the action which goes against the principle of designing an active game. I see two options that can make things make more sense or at least keep the action flowing:

1. Design the enemies to have attacks which require guarding and use them periodically based on how often you think the player may be getting low on MP. Attacks that do massive damage or cause dangerous status effects can train the player to guard to avoid them (this also means making some kind of "windup" action the previous turn to actually give them a clue). This adds a skill-check element that rewards the player for avoiding big hits with MP to retaliate with while punishing players that ignore the windup and take big attacks to the face. However, while this can making the guard-restore action more organic and feel more like the player chose to do it rather than being forced to stop doing what they want to do it...it still prompts the question of why MP exists at all. A good player will be guarding a big hit around the time they run low and thus never have to worry about MP, so in effect it may as well not exist. A bad player that didn't guard because they still had high MP from the last time they guarded and just took a big hit might feel the system is too punishing or un-intuitive.
2. Remove the MP restore from an idle action like guarding and move it to something more action-oriented. Possible methods are to restore MP from combo-ing certain abilities, from inflicting status effects on enemies, from defeating enemies (including defeating each individual enemy within a particular encounter), from hitting elemental weaknesses, etc. This style can actually encourage strategic thinking and gameplay decisions organically - i.e. the player knows Enemy A is weak to Fire but doesn't know Enemy B's weaknesses yet, so the player chooses to use a massive Explosion spell on Enemy A to try and one-shot it in the first round and get most of the MP back to use on Enemy B next round. In this case MP still has a purpose since the player will have to expend quite a bit testing out enemy weaknesses and there will be a real danger of running MP down before killing the enemy to get the MP back.

Just some ideas for you to consider. Hope this helps!

 

[Nantas]

Thank you for your advices !

Seems like it's though to think about a battle system
From the beginning I used the first one and when I used Vx Ace before MV, I used the second one.

I'm not really sure wich is the best to consider : the first one has the strategic thinking you talked about, but it
is the same as many rpg maker game out there
I was thinking about the second version because I wanted to make my game original.

Lore based, the skill has no implication at all : it's just for the gameplay I've not thought of it (the implication in the lore).

I will think about it...
If someone has an idea, just propose me ^^

 

[Wavelength]

I agree with literally everything that Alexander and Basileus said, so I won't rehash that too much - but it seems to me like you need to spend a lot of time thinking about what kind of play experience you want your players to have during battle, and what mechanisms you want to challenge them.

The answers to this have an enormous impact on what kind of MP regeneration system you should set up - for example, if the challenge lies in strategic resource management over an entire dungeon, you only allow MP to be refilled at infrequent save crystals, whereas if you want every battle to present a potentially lethal threat, it generally pays to fully restore MP (and HP) after every battle. If you expect the player to select skills every turn then it might pay off to allow larger MP pools, whereas if you want the player to only infrequently select skills to make them into a "highlight" of the battle, you may want to make the MP restoration skill much weaker (so that players will only consume MP when it's really worth it).

Don't add mechanics to a combat system for the sole purpose of making it more unique - add those mechanics because they make the experience more fun, visceral, and/or strategic. Players will always appreciate a tight and enjoyable but derivative system, over an unintuitive or imbalanced original system.

 

[Nantas]

Finally, I've decided to use the first system

It's obviously the more balanced one So I will use it and try to make it as fun as possible