Having a passive-ability, normal attack based class or character

[mobiusclimber]

What's the point of reducing random enemies to zero HP? What's the point of grinding boring ass "mash attack" random battles over and over? How is that fun? If every battle requires strategy, but can be overcome easily with strategy, there's no need or reason to grind, battles feel like actual accomplishments, and the developer will have a better idea of where the player is, level-wise, at any given time. Rather than just doing what's always been done, stop and think about why and whether or not that's the right way to do it, and whether there isn't a better way. Because the "mash attack" games are usually grindfests, and players end up not using skills or items except for boss battles. Some skills don't get used at all. In most RPGs, there's no incentive to use status effect spells - that's a waste of a turn on something that doesn't do damage. Who messes around with Blind or Silence? Why have MP restoratives when the player just mashes attack over and over for the win? So again, rather than make the typical RPG, with it's "grind random battles by mashing attack," I make systems that encourage using everything in your arsenal, knowing what works best against which enemies, and just going through the game without a lot of stopping to grind. There's no need for long tutorials, either, since I'm not reinventing the wheel, just putting more emphasis on using magic, buffs, debuffs and status ailments.

 

[Aesica]

I think people might be missing the point of battles in these kinds of games. Are they supposed to be an obstacle between the start and end of the game? Of course, but they should also be an enjoyable part of the game. You'll have a hard time convincing me that mashing attack to get through a battle as quickly as possible counts as enjoyable, because it isn't. It's boring AF and just gets in the way of the more interesting aspects--exploration, unfolding the story, etc.

So this leads us back to complex battle systems. Why do so many people here want to use them in favor of attack-mashing? Because they're generally seen as fun by players. They get the brainworking and generally feel pretty rewarding to overcome vs NES-era Dragon Quest combat, which is just "mash attack harder!" If your battle system is complex enough and well-polished, it can actually be one of the main appeals of your game.

I think the trick is to introduce that complexity piece by piece over time:

- Start simple with really weak foes. You know, things that can be attack-mash killed, one-shot by most skills, and that do puny damage to the players. Final Fantasy goblins are a great example.
- Gradually introduce elemental weaknesses/resistances, making them a side dish at first, but gradually more and more important as foes get stronger.
- Same with stat buffs and debuffs
- Same with various states, both good and bad.

That way, the player can grow into all these things rather than getting a tutorial bomb dropped on them in the beginning.

 

[kirbwarrior]

I think the trick is to introduce that complexity piece by piece over time

To point out a game that does rely heavily on using Attack, at least early on, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest... doesn't really let you do anything else to end battles in the first 1/4 of the game. However, it follows a rule I really like in rpgs, the "Two Turn" rule, where if you learn and pay attention, you can beat any encounter in two turns with minimal resource loss, but what constitutes a "minimal resource loss" changes as the game goes on and gets more complicated. Early you'd trying to learn who to target to beat battles quickly (for instance, Ben kills most things in 2 hits, ally kills them in 1). Later you have to juggle what spells you want to use and if/when they are better than attacking.
I used this easy game to illustrate a point that many other rpgs seem to get right but I don't often see in rpgmaker games. These "trash battles" are trash because you can learn how to get through them so quickly. Spamming "Attack" without care in FFMQ will absolutely cost you turns and that's more damage. Even traditional rpgs do similar in DQ and FF. As the games go on, your choices matter more since things are more likely to incapacitate the party, including character selection and equipment selection. Having the entire party just be "choose attack>win" would be boring, but being able to choose to use a character that only does that can help, both in random encounters and bosses. I love being able to choose berserkers (Umaro, the class, etc), and being able to not use them. It can often make battles easier/quicker, even though in battle choices aren't being made (since the choice is being made beforehand).

If every battle requires strategy

The point is those games isn't that individual battles require a ton of strategy but the dungeons themselves do.

Because the "mash attack" games are usually grindfests

I honestly can't think of "mash attack" games that require grinding that are fun. Even quite possibly the simplest rpg I've played, 7th Saga, will literally kill you if you try to do that and it requires grinding.

 

[Aesica]

To point out a game that does rely heavily on using Attack, at least early on, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest... doesn't really let you do anything else to end battles in the first 1/4 of the game. However, it follows a rule I really like in rpgs, the "Two Turn" rule, where if you learn and pay attention, you can beat any encounter in two turns with minimal resource loss, but what constitutes a "minimal resource loss" changes as the game goes on and gets more complicated. Early you'd trying to learn who to target to beat battles quickly (for instance, Ben kills most things in 2 hits, ally kills them in 1). Later you have to juggle what spells you want to use and if/when they are better than attacking.

The main thing FFMQ did right was to have enemies visible on the map. The battle system was extremely boring (especially once I realized the Life spell could 1-shot almost every common enemy with minimal resource loss), however being able to see the enemies and engage them on my terms instead of randomly really helped make up for that.

I honestly can't think of "mash attack" games that require grinding that are fun. Even quite possibly the simplest rpg I've played, 7th Saga, will literally kill you if you try to do that and it requires grinding.

Oh god, 7th Saga. I don't know how I had the patience to beat that PoS back in the day. 7th Saga was a special breed in that the trash fights were arguably more dangerous than the bosses. The last stretch of the game was literally, "I just need to reach the boss without RNGsus 1-shotting me, then I'm in the clear."

 

[kirbwarrior]

The battle system was extremely boring

Sure, but it's probably the best rpg I know of that illustrated my point (probably ironically).

7th Saga was a special breed in that the trash fights were arguably more dangerous than the bosses

It and MQ are also the only two rpgs I know of where Defend is a very useful and sometimes necessary command (MQ lets you cover by "defending" your ally, 7th gives you such a large attack boost when defending that you do at least as much damage in one attack after defending as you would from two normal attacks).

 

[Eschaton]

I think there's a different between combat having a few extra steps from time to time and an overly comlex battle system.

If the player were so inclined (particularly if there was a kind of easy difficulty), they should be allowed to mash Attack to get through battle.

On harder difficulties, of course there should be a reason to use other skills. On this we do not disagree. But just as mashing Attack can get boring, working through a menu to use the "correct" sequence of skills (which may or may not have been discovered after much trial and error) can get very tedious.

 

[trouble time]

I think there's a different between combat having a few extra steps from time to time and an overly comlex battle system.

What's the difference? Defining it would help the discussion.

 

[Aesica]

It and MQ are also the only two rpgs I know of where Defend is a very useful and sometimes necessary command (MQ lets you cover by "defending" your ally, 7th gives you such a large attack boost when defending that you do at least as much damage in one attack after defending as you would from two normal attacks).

Although it's lesser known, the Epic Battle Fantasy series makes extremely good use of Defend

1. There are certain telegraphed attacks (the foes gain a visible "charged" status effect) that are pretty much "block or die"
2. In the most recent one (5), equipping certain pieces of gear that apply stat buffs or states to the user when they defend. I have one character set up to gain a taunt effect, an anti-status-ailment effect, a HP buff, and an evasion buff--all this makes her a fantastic tank for the turn she defends.
3. In past games, this same character's defend would also absorb MP from magic attacks, making it a great way to refill her MP.

Also, even if it's just "a mobile game," Final Fantasy Brave Exvius makes Defend valuable because things can hit extremely hard, especially enemy HP threshold attacks. It's a common tactic for a tank to apply their party cover and/or provoke skill, then defend to further mitigate the incoming damage.

 

[Parallax Panda]

But just as mashing Attack can get boring, working through a menu to use the "correct" sequence of skills (which may or may not have been discovered after much trial and error) can get very tedious.

- This.

Again, I think devs underestimate how many "lazy" players there are, maybe because they themselves are hardcore RPG battle-mechanic fans? I dunno. "Lazy" might not be the best choice of word though. What I mean is that the average player's attention, and will to spend time and effort on your game has gone down. And going through an in-depth tutorial learning how they must keep track of overdrive meters and a bunch of other stuff as they navigate the battle menu each turn to build up combinations can be a turn off. Even if it's so well designed that it's actually fun to begin with, at some point, it'll become tedious and boring. Octopath travellers is a great example of this.

It boils down to how much effort the player is willing to put in, not an inherent hate towards thinking about strategy.

If your game has very few battles, then you can get away with more complexity. If it has random battles with medium or high encounter rate and complex battles... Well, I think you're going to lose some players on the way. No matter how fun or engaging you think something is, it gets old.

And by just adding a little bit of complexity, you can actually make a (mostly) button-mashing battle system a lot more interesting and still very low effort. So here's what I would do;

First thing to do would be to allow for character customization. By doing this, the player will make those complex choices in between battles which is less tedious but still allows for some strategy. Secondly you could make the encounters deadlier, not allowing the player to mash attack 5-7 turns in a row without healing in between. If the enemy damage is spread out over the entire party, you'll have to make choices, not only when but also who to heal. And if your attack command also uses up resources like MP/TP (why not?) then you'll have to look out for that as well. See, we've added a bit of complexity but it's still very low effort.

Now to continue to build upon this you can make interesting troops of enemies where the battle will end quicker (resulting in you using less resources) if you target the enemies in the correct order. And here's a bonus idea, if one or two of you party members target the same enemy that turn, maybe you'll deal bonus damage or something? See, there's some strategy for you. It'll be like using a skill without actually going into the menu and selecting it! Wow! How about that!
While choosing a target requires a little bit more effort, we're still nowhere near that of what I would call a complex battle system since we're still only talking about using the basic "attack" command. And lastly, some stronger enemies could telegraph when they're about to unleash their super attack which would require you to defend or take heavy damage.

Done.

So the player has to make decisions about their equipment, stats and overall character build, when and who to heal, when to refill their MP/TP, when to defend and who to target first. There are no skills involved yet, no boost meters, no status effects of buffs, but would it be boring? Well, that's up to you to decide. I don't think it necessarily would be, if this battle system were balanced and crafted with care. And the most tedious thing about it would be to go into the inventory and grab a healing potion (which maybe could be made more streamlined somehow).

I think there's a different between combat having a few extra steps from time to time and an overly comlex battle system.

What's the difference? Defining it would help the discussion.

It's impossible to draw a line in the sand that everyone agrees upon, and you know it. What I think he meant was that there is a difference between a battle system which allows for button mashing most of the time but requires you to pay attention now and then, and a battle system where you have to choose carefully (keeping a lot of things in mind) more or less every turn. It's easy enough to see this difference I think.

Very few people would probably be fine with an entire party of auto-attacking, auto-healing robots (as I mentioned before), but you don't have to make it that extreme just because you allow some button mashing.

 

[TheoAllen]

I like a complex battle system, but at the same time, I also like attack button mashing. But how?

If your battle system requires me to think through all the times. I get tired. Maybe, if I neglected the optimal recommended strategy, I may get punished like resource loss. For the first few times, it's okay. However, if it gets repeated many times, I might drop the game. Because it always put me on the edge. I want a reward. After I managed to beat or figured out how to optimize my build, I want an easy battle, I want to breeze through because figuring out a certain battle can be button mashed by building/grinding feels like an achievement. Time to encounter more challenging battle and figuring out their pattern.

 

[trouble time]

It's impossible to draw a line in the sand that everyone agrees upon, and you know it.

I didn't ask him to draw a line everyone agrees on I asked him to define what he thought the difference was.

Anyway I'm on the opposite side, though I agree that the tougher the battles are the fewer of them there probably should be, I also think that button mashing through an encounter is boring. I'd like to feel like I actually mattered to the battle at hand and that a drinking bird couldn't have done the battle for me. But I'm a specific kind of player as are other people different specific types of players.

 

[Parallax Panda]

@trouble time
Fair enough. As a game dev you'd have to target a specific type of player anyway, and possibly try to not scare everyone else away. Therefore it's probably best to not go to extreme on your own preference and try to strike a balance. Not making auto attacking possible all of the time, but with the right character build/gear/level/difficulty, maybe some of the time.

 

[kirbwarrior]

Epic Battle Fantasy

Wow that series looks cute.

In past games, this same character's defend would also absorb MP from magic attacks, making it a great way to refill her MP.

Adding anything to Defend makes it a worthwhile skill. I love it when games make the skill that is made to help you not lose (as opposed to a skill that makes you win) actually does that. All your examples are great, but I especially love MP filling (I'm notoriously bad at using MP for anything other than healing outside boss battles).

What's the difference? Defining it would help the discussion.

To offer another point, the rule of 7 helps here. The short term mind can easily keep track of seven options. Once you move past that, people generally either start trimming the list mentally (I don't need Fira, I have Firaga, even though Fira might actually be enough for this situation) or significantly slow down processing to think everything through. I've even gotten to the point where I'll end up putting important items near the top of the list when I can (well, Phoenix Downs), and this is especially important in games with ATB, where you aren't allowed time to think through every single option you have. I love Chrono Trigger, but even it rarely has more than three skills any character would want to use in a given battle (including duel/triple techs) and each character has effectively 16 skills to pick from, in addition to attack, item, and wait.
Another point of view is setting things up so that a player can easily snip off options, either mentally or in game. For instance, maybe every character in the game has the following list of skills;
Damage specific targets
Heal specific targets and/or remove states
Apply states to enemy
Apply states to ally
Skill that require all MP or TP
Now, lets say you have it more complicated and there's actually three of each of the above. That's a ton of options, but it's set up so the player just needs a general plan (I know I want to heal this turn) and then they can look at only the healing options. Or, as has been said in many other threads, equippable skills can keep choices significant both in and out of battle without every putting the player in a situation where they are easily overwhelmed.

I want a reward. After I managed to beat or figured out how to optimize my build, I want an easy battle, I want to breeze through because figuring out a certain battle can be button mashed by building/grinding feels like an achievement. Time to encounter more challenging battle and figuring out their pattern.

Once I know how to beat a battle, then that battle is already won, even if I have to do it in the future (say, like random encounters). An overly complex system will likely have multiple menus to go through to choose actions, but with a simple set of actions I don't have to spend much time putting in the same actions over and over again. With Attack, all I have to do is press Z and then select a target. Now, if there are no meaningful decisions out of battle, then putting them all into battle can make sense, but it should still let me fight the battle at the pace the battle wants to be.
Now, I bolded that for a reason. It's always better to reward than to punish, and it's very easy to mistake one for the other, especially in more difficult games, but this situation is easy; When the player is doing the right thing and when the player is supposed to be powerful (say, from grinding exp, SP, gear, whatever), let them be powerful and glide through battles. Letting it be too easy can be it's own problem, of course, but from what I can tell, every good game is easy once you learn it and that's partly because you want to learn it. I bet FF6 would be hard if it wasn't chock full of hidden ways to bend the coding over your knee and you didn't grind (Ultima, Rages, Lores, etc).

Huh, on the note of FF6, it is legitimately fun to let Setzer attack with Dice. You are quite literally throwing numbers at the opponent and it feels good, yet it's quite possibly the simplest thing in the game.

 

[Eschaton]

Adding anything to Defend makes it a worthwhile skill. I love it when games make the skill that is made to help you not lose (as opposed to a skill that makes you win) actually does that.

I think "Defend" would be much more worthwhile if enemies could telegraph their attacks in turn-based JRPGs. It takes a lot of work to make enemies telegraph their attacks. Edit: Also, the structure of a typical round of combat in most RPG Makers don't lend themselves to allowing the player to react to enemies because all actions are selected at the beginning of combat. But because they don't telegraph their attacks, "Defend" in most games is worthless, mostly because it distracts from the core mechanic of reducing the enemy's HP to zero. A turn in which the enemy doesn't incur damage feels wasted.

So, buffing an attacker seems like a waste when that buff could just be a passive state the attacker enters battle with (BOOM! Super segue power!)

 

[kirbwarrior]

I think "Defend" would be much more worthwhile if enemies could telegraph their attacks in turn-based JRPGs.

That's part of why I like MQ's Defend, because it's either Defend Yourself (Halve damage) or Defend Ally (Take ALL damage). I can be proactive with a turn by having the low HP unit heal themselves while the high HP unit protects from a dangerous attack. It is hard to telegraph attacks in traditional turn based, so making Defend work more proactively instead of reactively seems best. For instance, combining Cover/Taunt with Halve Damage can let you direct combat more.

"Defend" in most games is worthless, mostly because it distracts from the core mechanic of reducing the enemy's HP to zero

I do agree, which is why I think Defend should have one of the two following;
The ability to do a secondary task well; Healing MP doesn't end the battle faster, but lets you live through a dungeon easier, while healing HP lets you survive long enough to end the fight, and healing TP/building limit breaks can effectively let you do more damage
The ability to do damage better; It might not make sense to have Defend itself do damage, but having it increase damage by a useful amount (such as 7th Saga's buff that makes damage at least as much as two turns of Attack) or increasing your ability to end combat better (such as in my Delve where Defend gives your next turn an extra action) can then let it do the job of ending combat without directly being a part of that goal.

So, buffing an attacker seems like a waste when that buff could just be a passive state the attacker enters battle with (BOOM! Super segue power!)

I agree... which is why passives are either usually worse (say, +10% versus a state of +50%) or stackable with buffs in a meaningful way (+50% multiplies with +50% from state). If my accessory gives me the atk+ state, then it makes the atk+ state giving skill worthless, which takes away choice.
On the other hand, if the point is to enable an Attack-er, then letting them equip fully powered state-level buffs sounds like a good idea. Super Mario RPG has some equippables that give Atk+, letting you skip using Geno Boost (Atk and Def+) on someone and start attacker quicker.