Inn penalty: How to balance when the player returns to an inn for healing

[kerbonklin]

So, say you went on holiday... you don't book your hotel room before you get there? And then when you do, you sleep then and there and then cancel the rest of your reservation? It serves not only as a form of verisimilitude, but means the inn can function as something more than a place where you go just so the screen cuts to black and you heal up. You die when you have a reservation active? You wake up in the inn instead of game over. It gives me a lot more options to tinker with things and open new paths.

Here's the thing. You can't just walk into a holiday hotel and expect there to be rooms open for you when you get there. Obviously that;s what booking reservations are for. But we're talking about a fictional game where a player goes somewhere because they NEED to. Unless you're making a simulation game, a player shouldn't have to buy reservations for future uses, especially if they can be cancelled due to a time restraint. The player goes there to do what they need to do, and that is to heal up. You shouldn't make them go through such complications. Especially, once again, depending on how the time restraint functions.

What you CAN do however is remove the time restriction and make the player buy special Passes maybe. With these passes a player can buy now and use later at any time without the restraint, and then give the player a reward for using that Pass service, maybe a free potion or two, or a cost discount. These passes will only be sold in limited Inn locations, like maybe every one out of three Inns you come by.  Of course normal Inn usage service will be available to heal with for maybe a higher cost and no reward prize unlike the Pass.

 

[comprisedpuma]

Every time your party engages in battle, the actors (as a whole) gain fatigue based on how "difficult" the enemies were compared to them.  Level 5 actors would become more fatigued from level 8 monsters than they would level 3 monsters.  Staying at the inn would have a greater effect on their stats based on fatigue level.  At 100% fatigue, the "restoration" is at its maximum, whatever you want that to be.  This would make it to where fighting one monster and then inn-ing would only provide a very weak restoration.  At the same time, they couldn't go grind low level mobs after each hard mob just to build fatigue quickly.  

If you wanted to make it one step more realistic, you could have the actor's battle stats decreased the higher their fatigue is.  For example, increase their miss rate based on fatigue, and at maximum fatigue, make them miss random turns or lower their attack strength.

 

[Andar]

@comprisedpuma:

that is an interesting idea.

I'll have to think about it a while - some of its aspects would fit in nicely with other game mechanics, but other parts would be more problematic to pull off.

The most difficult part would be the scaling to prevent them from clearing maps they're too low a level for - if the fatigue rises when the player is of a lower level than the monster, there might be a point where a single fight with a high-level-monster would create enough fatigue to make a stay at the inn possible.

So if the fatigue points scale in the wrong way, this would only help to prevent grinding low levels, not preventing clearing of high levels with inn abuse...

 

[Traveling Bard]

What I'm doing in Journey to Westshire is that I give the player a tent with unlimited uses. They can rest whenever they want, like in real life. However, while on their journey they cannot return to town to buy new items/weapon upgrades and when they use the tent more than three times they will not get the best/good ending. See I make it so that each time the player rests it is considered a day in-game and since the group is supposed to be delivering a package to a nearby town through the forest going back to the starting point to rest/buy items/weapons doesn't make sense realistically. They need to be moving forward. 

When it comes to resting, it's a necessary evil. If you don't give players enough access to an "inn" and they end up dying again and again because of that, the players will get frustrated and may quit. If you give players too much access to an "inn" then they will take baby steps into your dungeons and it creates a dungeon crawler or a level grinding experience. I justify my tent usage with the idea that yes they have an inn available to them whenever they need it BUT if they don't use it sparingly they will never get the good ending. Challenging without being frustrating. It's a fine line that we have to walk, isn't it? Good luck to you

 

[Daijou]

Not sure if it's been said, but if you want to limit how much a player uses an inn, the most simple way I can think of to tackle this problem is to create a day/night system within the game. It doesn't have to be visually displayed to the player (though it would be better if it did), but you could always keep track of the current time of the game. Make it so the player can only use the inn during certain periods of the day, such as only available between 6pm and 6am. They can visit during other times of the day to rent the room in advance, but they cannot rest until dusk falls.

This makes the game feel a bit more realistic while putting that restraint you want on the player.

Or if you don't want them ever exceeding the level of an area, you could just create limited encounters. Then it wouldn't matter how much they visit the inn if there's never anything new to fight until they unlock the next area.

 

[Deep Thought]

Coming from a tabletop background, I've found the best way to penalize inn abuse is to sneak surprise encounters and traps into them. If you're in a hostile town, what are the odds of the locals letting you stay the night without a fight? Odds are, they'd probably try to smother you with a pillow or steal from your wallet when you're unprotected. Or if you're in a town that's right in the bad guys' path, the bad guys' would probably set the inn on fire while you're sleeping. Basically, sleep is the best medicine in RPGs, but it's also the greatest moment of weakness. Take advantage of that weakness!

 

[Andar]

those are good ideas;-)

Of course, they are a lot more work (to give at least a minimum of possible random story option to reduce repeating), so I'll possible combine that with the other options...

 

[Tai_MT]

If you use maps with limited encounters, how do you balance that against the option of the player returning to an inn for healing?

If inns are freely available, the player could clear a map he's not strong enough yet by killing single enemies and return for healing to an inn after each battle.

Some games solve this by not placing inns or making them expensive, but that would not fit into a real society - I like my worlds to be consistent and not geared toward game mechanics.

Currently I'm considering to count the inn visits and have some monsters revive on not completely cleared maps - but that would make the eventing and scripting a lot of work. (the entire idea/game mechanic description is in my blog: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/blog/92/entry-568-encounter-system-monster-generator-and-inn-penalty/)

So I would like to know what others have done to handle these options. Any comment is welcome

My favorite way to employ the penalty of Inn spam is have monsters not drop nearly as much gold in your entire game.  No, I don't mean add a debuff.  I mean... MAKE YOUR CURRENCY VALUABLE.  Take a page from the book of Guild Wars 2.  All money is valuable in that game because you seldom ever have any, it takes a lot of work to accumulate, and a lot of the best things cost large chunks of it.

So, what you do is you limit the amount of cash you obtain from any single battle in order to make the players go, "this is a resource I need to heavily manage and regulate" so that they don't run back and heal every battle.  Say a fight gives you 10G, but healing at the Inn costs 50G.  That means you're only allowing the player to use the Inn every 5 battles.  On top of that, that's 50G the player has to decide on whether or not to spend.  Do I spend 50G on a full heal or on the new weapons/armors?

It's a strategy I'm currently employing in my own game.  Money has actual value and isn't meant to be squandered unless you want to grind a ton for some more.  In the first area, healing at the Inn costs 30 Gold.  How much money do the monsters drop?  1 Gold per enemy.  How much does a Healing Item cost?  10 Gold.  Seem excessive?  Maybe a bit...  But I also give you quest items you can either complete the quest with or sell for 5 Gold a piece and each enemy is guaranteed to drop at least one.  Lots of choices for a player to make there.  This isn't even counting the Weapons/Armors available.

 

[the Skye Mage]

Here is a different idea I had

You could always make an item like "Inn Ticket" or "Inn Pass" (that one is funny) to even use or enter the inn?

This way you could limit how many times the Inn could be visited.

Maybe make a "Bouncer" at the door of the Inn and have him ask for the "Inn Pass" and then he could deny them.

Also you could have a scalper selling fake Inn Passes too!!

Also could make the Inn cost more by variable formula

  "party leader Exp Level" x "Inn Cost" x "Number of ppl in party"

and finally make a super rare item lets call it "Inn Need"

where it automaticly teleports party to a certain Inn for those healing emergencies..

THIS! XD omg i'd love to use this it's so great!

In the game I'm working on right now, I've really thought about how to make inns different. Players have become reliant on them or expect them to work in a certain way or whatever and I wanted to do something different to something a lot players believe is a fundamental. I'm not sure if you guys think this is balanced or not, but here's what I'm doing.

1. The first change isn't really a balancing thing, but one I think is interesting nonetheless. You pay to book your room, but do not sleep in it straight away. You can go and rest immediately if you want, for a traditional inn experience but you don't have to. When you DO decide to go and rest, that's when your reservation runs out.

2. If you book a room, but do not use it for x amount of time, you lose your booked room anyway.

3. They don't heal everything. No death heals, only some states and they only heal a certain amount based on your current amount. The less you have, the more it heals.

4. I have a variable tracking inn usage. If you use inns too much, enemies get stronger. This might incite a vicious cycle, but I'm aiming for a very hardcore experience. Battle revolves around exploiting states and weaknesses and other things, much like the SMT series or Etrian Odyssey.

It's a great idea... though I think personally, it should be limited to one area, and if you use an Inn like 15/20 times in that one area before leaving THEN they should get smarter and stronger and once you leave there should be a variable to change the enemies in the next area to a suitable level that will challenge you, so on. but GREAT idear

 

[Berylstone]

If you use maps with limited encounters, how do you balance that against the option of the player returning to an inn for healing?

If inns are freely available, the player could clear a map he's not strong enough yet by killing single enemies and return for healing to an inn after each battle.

Some games solve this by not placing inns or making them expensive, but that would not fit into a real society - I like my worlds to be consistent and not geared toward game mechanics.

Currently I'm considering to count the inn visits and have some monsters revive on not completely cleared maps - but that would make the eventing and scripting a lot of work. (the entire idea/game mechanic description is in my blog: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/blog/92/entry-568-encounter-system-monster-generator-and-inn-penalty/)

So I would like to know what others have done to handle these options. Any comment is welcome

Maybe instead of "healing" at an inn you make it a place where the player can buy a limited amount of supplies to feed their group to keep them in fighting shape.  Once the supplies run out, they would have to wait for the inn to restock.

 

[Eschaton]

Perhaps resting at an inn restores hit points, but none of the really high-tier status afflictions.  Those should require higher amounts of resources to remove.  If you want to add more checks against abuse, then resource-intensive status afflictions should be pretty common.

I would use- for example- broken bones that reduce attack or defense, lacerations that cause slip damage, poisons, blindness, et al., and none of these can be recovered by simply sleeping for eight hours.  Maybe the player has to stock medicines, splints, sutures, etc., in order to be more effective in the field, or can visit a clinic. 

An argument against this is that two recovery points might be superfluous; it would add artificial longevity and/or difficulty to the game, while the developer would have more work to do.

In the end, it's personal taste.  Some hardcore types might want the former, and some casual types might want the latter.  And there's a reason why some JRPG series moved from the Inn and Clinic model to the Inn model to the "save points heal the party" model to the "party is healed right after battle" model.

 

[IMP1]

I like the solution you suggested in your OP.

Have visiting the inn reset the badguys. This shouldn't be too difficult with eventing.

This way, they can grind the first few enemies and run back to the inn until they're strong enough to take them all on in one go. This seems to be similar to how Dark Souls plays, with its campfires.

And it gives more meaning to the grinding. It's not just grinding because there might be a boss up ahead and I need to be as high a level as possible, or because battles have been a bit harder as of late. It's grinding because I know I am not currently able to get past something in my way.

 

[C-C-C-Cashmere (old)]

After sleeping at the inn, immediately when you exit the building an arsonist comes and burns it down. And the party's all like, "awww, no inn!"

 

[Mouser]

4. I have a variable tracking inn usage. If you use inns too much, enemies get stronger. This might incite a vicious cycle, but I'm aiming for a very hardcore experience. Battle revolves around exploiting states and weaknesses and other things, much like the SMT series or Etrian Odyssey.

Be careful with that one. One of the cardinal sins of RPG's is the 'unwinnable' game.

 

[Ashton]

Anyone notice this thread is 7+ months old? x_x

That being said, I think a good solution is to have a lot of "hp soak" monsters near the inn, they're not really dangerous, they dont give a lot of XP, but they take time to kill and both annoy the player trying to grind and also make heading to the inn more dangerous if your low on HP (especially if they're random encounters)

 

[Eschaton]

Here's another idea:  if complete healing is so easily accessible, cut out the middle man and have all of the characters fully healed after combat. 

 

[Ashton]

Here's another idea:  if complete healing is so easily accessible, cut out the middle man and have all of the characters fully healed after combat. 

More than a few games have actually done that. Some make the penalty that your dead characters auto-revive with 1 hp if you win, and others make it where you only recover HP and you MP is either where it was or at 0. Depending on the way the game handles it, this can actually be an interesting and very difficult mechanic (imagine your hero is at like 10% of your HP and all your other party members are 1hp - getting back to where you can heal (especially if you don't have much in the way of supplies) can become extremely difficult and frustrating.

 

[jonthefox]

Isn't the simplest solution to just reset the encounters when a player leaves the area?  That's what I do.

 

[whitesphere]

I like to prevent over leveling by using the "Enemy Level" scripts, and assigning each enemy a level.  This way, taking on a strong opponent grants rich XP rewards.  But, going after the easy pickings grants less XP.  So, if you want the player to get party members to, say, Level 10, just have a stiff XP penalty for over-leveled players (i.e. you lose 100 XP per level above 10).

I also try to balance that with a "As you level up, stronger Troops start coming out to play while the weaker ones start running before you get there."  I find it very annoying, as a player, to have my Level 50 party still have apparently suicidal Slimes attack.  And by that point, even my mage just has to look at the Slimes funny for them to die in 1 hit.

Of course, if I'm feeling sadistic, a Death Slime that looks almost like its fellows might be just the thing...(Why is this Slime in an area filled with Dragons?!?)

I think the "trek back to the Inn" plus the "Rested party members get little benefit from the Inn", plus enemy levels is enough of a penalty to discourage over grinding.

 

[Beamlight]

I like to prevent over leveling by using the "Enemy Level" scripts, and assigning each enemy a level.  This way, taking on a strong opponent grants rich XP rewards.  But, going after the easy pickings grants less XP.  So, if you want the player to get party members to, say, Level 10, just have a stiff XP penalty for over-leveled players (i.e. you lose 100 XP per level above 10).

I also try to balance that with a "As you level up, stronger Troops start coming out to play while the weaker ones start running before you get there."  I find it very annoying, as a player, to have my Level 50 party still have apparently suicidal Slimes attack.  And by that point, even my mage just has to look at the Slimes funny for them to die in 1 hit.

If I read correctly, the point the OP wanted was to discourage grinding, and this would very well do the trick. I don't think regulating or adding a penalty to inn use is what you want to go with.

In RPGs and other games with EXP, players will typically "grind" to get to higher levels if a particular challenge is too much for them. I've done this in them a lot. Its not a bad things; oftentimes i'm actually under-leveled, to be frank! The simplest solution would be to go into your EXP Curve and play around with the numbers. See how many battles & monsters it would take to get to the next level. Grab your calculator! Make some spreadsheets!

Nerfing an inn will have unexpected consequences. If players screw up or miscalculate in one or two battles and realize they have to pop back to the inn but they don't have enough "fatigue" or whatever, they're gonna have to pop a save file, and then all their progress is gone. What if they didn't save? Rut roh, raggy.