Rules Ideas That Don’t Deserve Their Own Thread

[trouble time]

So, there's a mechanic in my game inspired by the special rules present in wargames. Every character has a stack of special rules, but they also have one special trait that only activates if they're in the first position of the party which i call their "Warlord Trait". While the characters other special rules don't really need to be balanced against each other, the "Warlord Trait" does as you can only have one going at a time.

The four so far are

Crusader's Charge: On the first turn, all party members AGI increased by 1000% and physical and magical attack power is increased by 25%. The point of it is that it lets the party get a devastating first strike and possibly remove a problematic enemy before it can do anything.

Saga of the Raven Feeder: The entire party gains a 100% grievous wounds and bleed chance on their basic attacks on the first turn. Grievous Wounds is a state that prevents the enemy from healing, and it also doesn't expire without being removed. It seems more situational than the others, but it can lead to an effect that persists throughout the entire battle and there are many enemies that can use healing abilities. Bleed on the other hand is a 2 turn 10% damage a turn state that adds some extra damage to the charge that ignores things like barrier and defense.

Stalk and Strike: decrease the party's speed 50% but increase the party's evasion 50% turn 1 and increase their critical hit chance and physical and magical attack stats by 100%. In most cases this will do more damage than the Crusaders Charge, but it won't allow them to strike first.

Fatal Embrace: On the turn 1 the entire party gains 100% counter chance for two turns. This one lasts longer than the others, as it requires you to get hit to activate it, but it has the greatest damage potential overall, it can also help defeat faster enemies that can strike before you due to most of those having low HP and a follow up strike will crumple them like tissue paper.

I'm both wondering what people think about this or if they have anything to say about the balance between the four traits.

 

[gigaswardblade]

so ive made a few changes to my characters and races. i decided to change pijami's last name to bloom brush. i felt that i had too many weirdo last names, so i decided to name her something more fitting for a dryad. balumo is going to be the name of a villain. poison is no longer its own element. its now fused with grass and is being replaced with arcane. (i should probably go over elements later on) so now ciel's element is power. also some other characters have had their elements changed as well. riano's is now fire and camino's is now metal. the ahn'tlo have a tribe that lives in the akinomori region thats based on the chinese zodiac. i thought that there should be more asian culture other than japanese in my game. i heard somewhere that japanese culture in fiction is starting to become over saturated.

they consist of all the mammals of the chinese zodiac. tiger, dog, monkey, rat, goat, ox, horse, rabbit, and pig. they're just the mammals because the egg races are still being controlled by an evil overmind, and the ones that aren't are pretty much all in hiding. ill replace them with pandas for now. (both normal and red pandas) now for something game related, i've decided to split my game into 4 different games. the first game will be following party 1, second game is with party 2, third game is with party 3, and the forth game is when they all come together and stop the final boss. i felt that maybe i should start out easy after all. and also not to overwhelm the player with a super long story with tons of characters and collectables. i might one day combine all 4 games into 1. but for now, ill just work on game 1.

 

[WallCat]

I hope this is the right place for this--the descriptions of what the various support, feedback, projects and similar areas didn't make it entirely clear to me where I needed to put this.

I need some feedback on a system for stats, leveling and damage calc in VX Ace. The stats themselves are more or less the same as in the Ace default style (ATK, DEF, MAT, etc.) and work in essentially the same way.

Stats for party members fall into 3 key stats and 5 minor stats. The three key stats gain +2 every level (unless one of those stats is MHP or MMP; they both increase by 5 each level so long as they're key stats), and the minor stats gain +1 each level (again, the exception is in MHP and MMP. When they're minor stats, MHP increases by 3 and MMP by 2). Here's an example, using the starting stats of the main character, your generic balanced melee PC (in my game, anyone can learn spells via books, but only mage classes learn them by leveling up):

PC stats at level 1

• KEY STATS
  • MHP 30
  • ATK 14
  • DEF 13

• OTHER STATS
  • MMP 10
  • MAT 8
  • RES 12
  • AGI 12
  • LCK 11

So, with that in mind, at level 2 those stats will be:

PC stats at level 2

• KEY STATS
  • MHP 35
  • ATK 16
  • DEF 15

• OTHER STATS
  • MMP 12
  • MAT 9
  • RES 13
  • AGI 13
  • LCK 13

So that's how things level. Attack damage is where the real difference lies. Here's the formula for the regular attack damage:

((a.atk + 3) - (b.def +2)) * 2

Here's a hypothetical situation between a random enemy and a different char in my game (named Faran), with a rogue-type class (the latter at level 1):

Enemy's ATK 13
Faran's DEF 12
Faran's HP 28

((13+3) - (12+2)) *2 = 4

28 - 4 = 24

Any thoughts or suggestions?

 

[trouble time]

@gigaswardblade Personally I think planning 4 games ahead can be a little much, but besides that, you've mentioned your games elements a few times, but how do they interact and relate to one another, are they mainly a gameplay element or a thematic element as well, do they resist one another, or are there only weaknesses.

@CoGDork It seems like the formula will kinda result in damage remaining similar throughout the game unless player attack grows faster than enemy defense. As HP pools get larger, battles will get longer and longer which may not be the intended result.

 

[WallCat]

@CoGDork It seems like the formula will kinda result in damage remaining similar throughout the game unless player attack grows faster than enemy defense. As HP pools get larger, battles will get longer and longer which may not be the intended result.

Ah, I see your point. Any suggestions you could make?

 

[gigaswardblade]

@trouble time elements in my game work kinda similar to pokemon. there are 12 elements in all. 1 for each character, though some characters can use more than 1 element. those elements are fire, water, earth, air, grass, metal, electricity, specter, light, darkness, power, and arcane. some elements have different uses from others. like water and light being more supportive while elements like fire and earth are more damaging. the elements that characters use somewhat reflect their personalities and cultural backgrounds. i haven't worked out all the weaknesses and resistances yet, but they're kinda what you'd expect.

water beats fire, unless its an enemy made of ice, then fire beats it because water and ice are the same element now. fire also beats grass and metal because fire burns plants and metal melts at high temperatures. water and electricity beat each other since water shorts out electricity but at the same time electric shocks are more powerful when shocking something wet. light is good against specter because undead things are usually scared of the light. light and darkness cancel each other out since you cant have 1 without the other. using certain elements against enemies that are mostly made of that element will do no damage at best or heal them at worst. you wouldn't wanna use vine on an enemy thats made of vines now would you? that's as far as i'll go for now.

 

[trouble time]

@CoGDork I'd reccomend using a multiplicative formula rather than an additive one personally, though you may have to modify HP growth to get that to work properly.

@gigaswardblade I see, its good that you have put some thought into it.

 

[WallCat]

@CoGDork I'd reccomend using a multiplicative formula rather than an additive one personally, though you may have to modify HP growth to get that to work properly.

Honestly, half the reason I came up with such a system is because I have dyscalculia (I needed considerable help from a family member to find an equation to use at all, but sadly they know zip about video games) and thus needed some formula and stat system that wouldn't drive me insane trying to balance the game with. Thanks for the suggestion--now I'm just gonna have to spend the better part of several years figuring out what the heck your post means for my game. XD

 

[Martin_Arcainess]

So, there's a mechanic in my game inspired by the special rules present in wargames. Every character has a stack of special rules, but they also have one special trait that only activates if they're in the first position of the party which i call their "Warlord Trait". While the characters other special rules don't really need to be balanced against each other, the "Warlord Trait" does as you can only have one going at a time.

The four so far are

Crusader's Charge: On the first turn, all party members AGI increased by 1000% and physical and magical attack power is increased by 25%. The point of it is that it lets the party get a devastating first strike and possibly remove a problematic enemy before it can do anything.

Saga of the Raven Feeder: The entire party gains a 100% grievous wounds and bleed chance on their basic attacks on the first turn. Grievous Wounds is a state that prevents the enemy from healing, and it also doesn't expire without being removed. It seems more situational than the others, but it can lead to an effect that persists throughout the entire battle and there are many enemies that can use healing abilities. Bleed on the other hand is a 2 turn 10% damage a turn state that adds some extra damage to the charge that ignores things like barrier and defense.

Stalk and Strike: decrease the party's speed 50% but increase the party's evasion 50% turn 1 and increase their critical hit chance and physical and magical attack stats by 100%. In most cases this will do more damage than the Crusaders Charge, but it won't allow them to strike first.

Fatal Embrace: On the turn 1 the entire party gains 100% counter chance for two turns. This one lasts longer than the others, as it requires you to get hit to activate it, but it has the greatest damage potential overall, it can also help defeat faster enemies that can strike before you due to most of those having low HP and a follow up strike will crumple them like tissue paper.

I'm both wondering what people think about this or if they have anything to say about the balance between the four traits.

balance always can only be done by other people playing it. As a Developer, you can't really balance it out until you done some very thorough test and number crunching whereas if you had a group of people say, beta testing your game they may provide you feedback on what's balanced and balancing isn't always about numbers but when you can use skills. So for example,

Skill 1 Iron Feet (prevent knockbacks and draw in)
Skill 2 Fast Feet! (increases movement speed)

depending on how you set up your fights and the situation at hand will determine how often each skill is used.

So say you have 10 bosses, all 8 of them constantly use knockback attacks so Iron Feet is the more useful skill.
whereas Skill 2 Fast Feet is good for dodging AOE's quicker and 2 boss's don't have knockbacks.


Does this make the skills unbalanced? Na, but you'll get people saying Fast Feet is worthless.

 

[trouble time]

snip

I understand that, but you have to understand, balance is a buzzword that can start discussions and my last several posts about my own game were completely ignored. So thanks for noticing.

Also on that example I'd actually say that unless push back or draw in are unavoidable in some or most cases Fast Feet will always be the superior option. Iron Feet makes mistakes less impactful and Fast feet enables you to do things you normally couldn't even if its ONLY to move faster. Even if bosses use knockback attacks, fast feet would make it easier to not be hit, and if its fast enough it can eave open up 1 more attack if it increases your speed enough. This is just me spitballing, but its an example of how even out of the full context one can talk about potential balance concerns.

@CoGDork Well for a more "conclusive" suggestion, I think you could still keep the formula simple by adding the players level to it in some way for example ((a.atk + 3) + (a.level /2) - (b.def +2)) * 2 I don't remember if you can do level by default in the line. I didn't put too much thought into this but it does help shore up your damage a bit as enemy HP gets higher. You may also want to look into increasing the number of attacks the characters get as their levels get higher (or maybe at a point in the story) since even then they'd be doing more damage per turn, and if you just have new magic unlock through books and leveling you can just make it more or less powerful as needed. I also can't believe I forgot weapons in my initial post which is another way you could power up the characters as the game goes on.

 

[Phenax]

My girlfriend and me are working on a game called "Dragon's Hope". The mother of a young dragon gets badly wounded after a human trys to slay her. The young dragon desperately tries to somehow find a way to heal his mother and so the adventure begins. We already put a few dozens of hours into the developement of this game, it is our first game. As of now there is no combat, just puzzles. So the current state of the game is that a story is being told and progression happens through solving puzzles. Maybe we should leave it at that for our first game. But we thought of a concept that might make the game a bit more unique:

The hope-concept. A bar would be visible at all times (a fancy looking one). How much the bar is filled is determined by the variable "hope". When things go right, the young dragon gains hope. When something goes wrong, he loses hope. For example: Each time the player solves one of the puzzles, the player gains hope. Whenever he fails, he loses hope. Progression in the storyline results in a gain of hope (because the young dragon gets closer to healing his mother). When the dragon's hope reaches 0 the game is over and the player has to load the latest savefile (need to consider that the player could lock himself into rather frustrating situations if the game is over when there is no hope but maybe there's a way to make it work).

We were also thinking of making it so that the dragon's hope is correlated with his strength in battle. But like I said our game doesn't yet have battle and we are unsure if we want to add it. What has been built so far was without consideration of combat and also we are lacking sprites for the dragon.

I have the following questions to the community:

What do you think of the overall hope-concept?
Which things should lead the dragon to gain hope?
Which things should lead the dragon to lose hope?
What would you change about the concept?

 

[trouble time]

@Phenax I do like the overall hope concept. Its another way to add some urgency to the puzzle solving, though it could potentially be too punishing, but I'm sure that can be tweaked. I think that there should be a relatively simple way to convert any secondary resources (such as if you use money, a way to buy say, the dragons favorite food, a good meal can make a person feel good). I'm not sure what exactly should make the dragon lose hope besides whats already presented. The only real change I'd make to the core concept would probably be rather than a game over when you lose hope I think it might be a good idea to send you back to the last place you rested or something.

 

[Martin_Arcainess]

What do you think of the overall hope-concept?
I like the idea of it. Maybe give the player some way to restore lost hope? So maybe take the Baby Dragon all the way back to see it's mother to give some like base level hope? So like 20/100 which is low but not too low? Or instead of a game over you can't carry on with the story quest until you make your dragon have some hope again?

Which things should lead the dragon to gain hope?
solving puzzles Is the best way I say but maybe stories about the Dragons mother? perhaps?

Which things should lead the dragon to lose hope?
Saying the wrong thing to the dragon? Like, can we clear this puzzle and you have a choice of options? or if you do the puzzle wrong?

What would you change about the concept?
Instead of a game over it could affect the ending outcome? So it's kinda like gives the player another reason to replay the game again to see if they can get there hope higher then last play through?

As for endings, worst = Lowest Hope mother dies.
Best ending requires almost perfect hope =, Mother lives and is even able to fly and the Baby dragon so full of job flies too?

 

[Phenax]

@trouble time
@Martin_Arcainess

Thanks a lot for the input. So far the concept would include the following ways of gaining hope:

• Solving a puzzle
• Progressing the story
• Little things the player finds by exploring the world
• (Maybe?) Make the dialogues in the story that way that you often have different choices, but only one choice will progress the story. The player would have to try to figure out which words will most likely lead to what he wants. For example the dragon runs up to the wolf, the wolf asks what he wants, the dragon then has two choices like "I need help." and "This is a very nice place to live." If the player chooses the "I need help." option, the wolf says something like "Don't we all?" Then the dialogue ends and the dragon loses hope. If he goes for the second choice, then the wolf says something like "Thank you, it is indeed. For what reason did you come here?" In this instance the player would learn that you don't just run up to somebody and ask for help but first you make sure they like you, just a small example. Which choice is the correct one should also depend on the personality of the character the player is dealing with.

I think that there should be a relatively simple way to convert any secondary resources (such as if you use money, a way to buy say, the dragons favorite food, a good meal can make a person feel good).

This is excellent input because as of right now the player in our game has pretty much no reason to interact with the world apart from solving the puzzles and progressing the story. I was thinking of adding a small potion crafting system. It doesn't have to be potions but that's sort of what makes most sense, albeit a potion crafting dragon is a bit weird. The potions would be made from resources that could be found at all sorts of places like mushrooms, certain flowers, berries. Here are types of potions I was thinking of:

• [Insert fancy name] - Potion that simply recovers a bit of the dragon's hope.
• [Insert fancy name] - Potion that increases the hope gained for a set amount of time (the player could use this when he's certain that he figured out a way to solve a puzzle.
• [Insert fancy name] - Potion that reduces the hope lost when failure occurs. The player could use this for puzzles where repeated failure is likely.
• [Insert fancy name] - Potion that completely negates any gain or loss of hope for a set amount of time.
• [Insert fancy name] - Potion that slows down time, useful for puzzles with a timer.

The potion-system shouldn't overtake too much of the gameplay. But it should actually help with progression in a meaningful way. There could be some puzzles that are impossible to complete if the dragon isn't using a certain potion (like a puzzle with a timer which is simply impossible to complete in time if the time slowing potion isn't used). I don't want the game to be a resource grindfest so it would have to be balanced well.

The player would be introduced to the system very early in the game but only with one potion. The player would then gradually learn more and more of them by book-reading.

What are your thoughts on all of this? What would you change or add?

 

[gigaswardblade]

so i was thinking recently that since i decided to split my game into 3 different games that maybe i should add a few more characters and elements to the game. each party has 12 members at the moment, but i was thinking of adding 2 or 3 more to the game. im not sure how long the games will be, but i want them to be pretty long since i dont wanna make just another jrpg wannabe that can be beaten in 2 hours. each game will have 4 or 5 chapters and 1 major dungeon in each one and you acquire less party members as the game goes on. like chapter 1 you get 5, chapter 2 you get 4, chapter 3 you get 2, and so on. you take only 6 party members with you at a time. 3 in front and 3 in reserve. though technically you only can take 5 since the main character can never be removed from the party.

what im worried about is if having 14 or 15 characters for each party is too much. i recently played through dissidia opera omnia and that game just kept on piling on all these final fantasy characters every 5 seconds. whats that? you wanna get cloud and y'shtola to level 10? too bad! here are 4 more characters for you to worry about. i don't wanna make my game feel like that. also there's the fact that maybe not every character will get enough screen time if i make too many. i might be unable to find a reason for them to join the party as well. theres also the fact that that certain characters might not stand out because there are so many. (i did make a lot of characters with red/orange hair after all)

as of right now party 1 has: 6 humans, 1 light elf, 1 dark elf, 1 orc, 1 dryad, 1 icarus, and 1 beastkin.

party 2 has: 1 light elf, 1 dark elf, 1 human, 1 tan elf, 1 human-elf mix, 4 oni, 1 dwarfling, 1 beastkin, and 1 sander.

and party 3 has: 2 oni, 6 humans, 1 cyborg animal, 1 ahn'tlo, 1 sprite, and 1 succubus.

i was thinking of adding a robot to one of the parties, another light and dark elf to party 2, another human to party 1 and maybe change someones race so there aren't too many humans, and maybe bring back a character to party 3 that i temporarily removed to make room for the cyborg animal. not sure about the last one, maybe ill figure out something later. (ps, ill explain what a dryad, icarus, tan elf, and a dwarfling is later)
so basically, what i wanna know is what you guys think about this whole deal. should i add 2 or 3 more characters to each party? and should i maybe figure out a way to make the characters more diverse? i await your responses.

 

[gigaswardblade]

a little update: i've gone on to add 3 more members to each party. some were made up just today while the rest were characters that i've already had but as temporary party members. i'm not sure i like the whole idea of temporary party members in my game anymore. they seem like such a tease to be honest. wow, look at this cool and powerful character that you can only use for 1 segment only! amazing! so now all those guys have been removed or added to the other parties.

as for the new characters, i've gone ahead and added all those guys that i mentioned i was maybe gonna add up above. plus some newbies that i really like the concept of. ive also changed the race of 1 character from party 1.

the new updated list of races and such are now this:

party 1 has: 5 humans, 1 light elf, 1 dark elf, 2 sprites, 1 icarus, 1 dryad, 1 orc, 1 beastkin, 1 robot, and 1 sahuagin.
party 2 has: 2 light elfs, 2 dark elfs, 1 tan elf, 1 humelf, 1 dwarfling, 1 beastkin, 1 sander, 1 human, 4 oni, and 1 (technically 2) dragonborn.
and party 3 has: 4 oni, 6 humans, 1 beastkin, 1 ahn'tlo, 1 cyborg jaguar, 1 sprite, and 1 succubus.

and now i've decided that each game will in fact have 5 chapters and have added 3 new elements. the 2 elements, poison and ice, were once mixed with 2 other elements in order to even things out, but now that i've decided to expand my party roster for each individual game, those 2 can now be their own elements. poison is a sort of status ailment type element and ice is mainly used for straight up damaging your foes. and the 3rd new element i've added is time, which is i havent really thought much of yet, but its a heck of a lot better than some of the other ideas i had for a 15th element. (candy and bug? oh mon dieu)

but if you guys think that having 15 party members in each of my 3 games is too much, let me know and ill see if i can tweak some things to make them all fit together.

 

[Hadesciphe]

I don't think stuff like this require an entire tread, so.... yeah.

Concept: constantly changing genre
Focus: A story that, as it progresses, changes genres from one thing to another.
EX: A Fantasy based story that pushes it's story into the direction of a Sci-Fi, by implementing Trans-Dimensional Travel.
... Or something like that...

Concept: Limited Leveling
Focus: Simply speaking, a leveling system that Decreases stats if the character exceeds a certain level.
EX: Hades reaches L.V. 50, when they should be at a fair L.V. 35. Due to this, all of Hades' stats are reduced by 13, aside from MP and HP, which are both reduced by 200.
...I thought it would be interesting to punish a person for being too prepared

You think It's a stupid Idea? Tell me!

 

[trouble time]

@Phenax I think the idea of a crafting system can help add some meat to the non-puzzle parts of the game, especially if you can find a way to represent resources on the map (like particular bushes with colored berrys and the like) because then people are likely to be on the look out for these resources and may explore for them, the advantage of a treasure chest is that you can see the reward and decide if you want to look for it (it would require some clever map design, like a cliff out of reach with a rare flower or something, people may decide they want to go for the rare stuff and just leave the more common resources alone)

@gigaswardblade I think 15 party members might be too many, its not impossible, but often you end up with characters who have little to do in story cutscenes, and their traits can generally be used to make a more devleoped set of smaller characters.

@Hadesciphe I think punishing people for leveling is a bad idea. Theres no reason that you should punish people for preparing, if that's your problem then you should simply design the game to emphasize turn to turn descision making in battles. Constantly changing genres on the other hand, I can get behind.

 

[gigaswardblade]

@trouble time i kinda have this problem where i have too many great ideas for characters but not enough room for them in my game. sometimes im worried that certain characters have personalities that are too similar to other characters. maybe one day i should go back to making character bios, except this time maybe make them shorter.

 

[trouble time]

@trouble time i kinda have this problem where i have too many great ideas for characters but not enough room for them in my game. sometimes im worried that certain characters have personalities that are too similar to other characters. maybe one day i should go back to making character bios, except this time maybe make them shorter.

If you think the characters are too similar it might be a good idea to combine characters. I originally had 8 main characters in my game, condensed it to 4 by combining and shuffling around traits I didn't think were strong enough to prop up a character on their own.