how do you inform the player of what non-typical states or abilities do?

[jonthefox]

For example, say dragons can cast "dragon flight" which give make them take significantly reduced physical damage for 3 turns, which should signal to the player that they should use magic/ranged attacks during this time.

Or let's say an enemy can cast "enrage" which significantly increases his attack but lowers his defense for 3 turns, which should signal to the player that he should prioritize that enemy during this time.

How do you let players know what these abilities and states do?  Their effects, duration, etc.?  Do you come up with excuses for NPCs to explain every mechanic to the player?  Do you let them figure it out on their own if it's fairly intuitive (i.e. "enrage)?  What do you do as a designer, and what do you appreciate as a player?

 

[Aoi Ninami]

For duration, there should be some visible change showing when the status becomes active and when it wears off. For what the state actually does, leave it to the player to work out. The player can see that one type of attack has become more effective, another less so, and adjust their strategy accordingly. To avoid this kind of experimentation becoming frustrating, random encounters should be safe enough that you can still win if you don't figure out the best strategy, and there should be a way to save before bosses so that failing the boss doesn't mean replaying the previous dungeon to reach the boss again.

As a player, I hate it when games take away the fun of figuring things out by holding my hand through everything.

 

[Andar]

1) why do you need to tell the player what each enemy ability does? In a lot of cases the player can try to guess by observation, and there is no need to tell them that.


2) If you want to tell that to the player, you have a lot of different options - like info on a monster book or a similiar encyclopedia function, or instead of talking NPCs have the event be a book in a library that the player can access or something similiar.

 

[stupid enough to like FF13]

Provided a state isn't going to cause your party to be horribly splattered out of nowhere, there's really no problem with letting the player find out what a condition does and how best to counter. For example:

Or let's say an enemy can cast "enrage" which significantly increases his attack but lowers his defense for 3 turns, which should signal to the player that he should prioritize that enemy during this time.

1. That he's punching you in the face much harder.

2. That you can now punch him in the face much harder.

In general, if the effect of a state becomes clear quite quickly, there's no need to explain to the player exactly what it does.

 

[Wavelength]