Magic or ability learning system

[Caitlin]

In my world, there are beings that are near immortal meaning that they will stop aging at some point and as long as they don't do anything really dumb called live for eons. Anything that doesn't blow up their body more than it can 'fix' itself, like explosions. Each people have abilities from their ancestors that are influenced by what they eat, so in truth, many people have abilities that others do not have. Now, here's the thing, I've been thinking about how to deal with learning your abilities in the game.

1. Learning by means of buying spells - Final Fantasy
I never did like this, because you can become way too powerful and it's hard to balance that way.

2. Learning things by means of automatically getting them - Final Fantasy
I am not so sure that is entirely out, but it takes you out of the world. Yes, you would have those abilities, but I would rather another way to learn abilities.

3. Trainers - Many WRPGs
A trainer would be able to give you side quests to learn new abilities, each character might have an elder or trainer, but again, I fear balancing...

4. A mixture of learning/trainers
Some abilities you learn on your own, while others you get from a trusted elder who gives you occasional side quests.

In case, you are wondering about the people, there are levels in which people's abilities are at... In this era of my game, what you eat as well, as your genetic, with environment does play a part in which abilities you learn along with clan. Meat, vegetables or nothing at all. But the question is what sort of way sounds better to learn from the list above?
1. Avatar/Gods
2. Genius, near the Gods
3. Average
4. Little or worthless abilities

 

[Guiguimu]

Maybe learning but filling some requisites in order to learn those spells?
Like, you mentioned the power of the character is related to what they eat and genetics. Environment would be a little tricky to implement, but that can be made by having certain types of foods in only certain areas.
Now, let's suppose. The chars mom is someone that can learn healing spells, while the father is someone that can only learn buff. If the char eats meat, he learns buffs, if he eats veggies, healing. But he would have to eat a certain amount of food to learn the spells too. A person that would eat the same food but with different parents would learn another spell, like you said.
But they would need to eat like 100 tomatoes and have healing learner mother in order to learn revive.
I... This can be a terrible idea but maybe it can inspire you, I don't know. The other one I advice is learning by buying and then having to train to improve the skill with something like ap, but that wouldn't be affected by the food/genetic part...
Sorry for not be much of a help.

 

[Atomix]

The #2 option is the best one to me. But you shouldn't just spontaneously learn them.

I'd say start the character off with base moves, and as their techniques develop, they gain the capacity to learn different moves, assuming they reach the requirements.

 

[Kes]

@Caitlin Remember that 'Game Mechanics Design' is not for feedback on individual games, but is meant to be more wide-ranging. Therefore expect replies which are on-topic (methods of learning skills) which do not apply to the particularities of your game. So if it's not directly relevant, let it run, as it could be helpful for someone else. Thanks.

 

[Henryetha]

I am thinking of a system where you learn by usage.

Let's say, there are 3 abilities related to each other:

- "Cold": Inflict status effect to an enemy, lowers his EVA.

after using "Cold" a certain amount of times, the character gets offered to learn "Snowfall".

- "Snowfall": inflict status effect to all enemies, which lowers their EVA, small chance of inflicting BLIND status.

Using "Snowfall" a certain amount of times will develop the skill into "Blizzard".

- "Blizzard": DAMAGE all enemies, 50% chance to inflict BLIND status. Inflict status to lower their EVA.


Here the character develops by experience / using his abilities.
This happened in the example in 2 different ways:
- At first the character gains an additional skill, now he can cast "Cold" and "Snowfall".
- At second he develops a skill, now he can cast "Cold" and "Blizzard".

 

[Zarsla]

In my game skills are tied to equipment, and only have a limited use, before they break, and thus no longer have the skill or equipment.
So a lance could give the skill "jump". The skill "Jump" would cost 2 charges, depending on the material ie wooden(8 charges) vs bronze(15 charges) , would determine the amount of times you can used the skill and thus weapon. I still have "Force" aka mp for some skills, but this way you can build the characters the way you want them, plus adding strategy, with out being to OP.

 

[Anthony Xue]

I must say I'm not completely certain I understand your question, or rather, your lists. The source of the ability and the modus of learning it can be completely different things. You could have gods as the source (in terms of atmosphere) but as a modus, still have the abilities be purchased with money, by making donations to the respective temple, for instance.

Then the question is how many abilities you are throwing around. If there are dozens of different skills, implementing complex learning modi for each of them will be a tremendous effort. But considering you want diet, genetics, environment to play a part in this, it sounds like you want to do exactly that.

From what I can gather from your initial post, I would probably have a bunch of standard skills at each level threshold (like every 10 levels or something) that can be learned without too much effort from trainers. The more special/powerful skills could then be the subject of side quests, or learned only from an entity at the bottom of a dungeon etc., meaning that the player has to invest some effort and look a little beyond the standard routes to acquire them. If you only do this for, say, 3 skills per character class, the effort should be manageable for both you and the player, and you can make these skills feel really individual.

As for balancing skills when they are easy to come by, there are numerous ways to counter this, like making their use consume rare/expensive ingredients. This way, the player will be restricted to use the Uber-Fireball (or whatever) only when it's really needed. But that's probably a matter of playtesting.

 

[Basileus]

A word of advice: Never, EVER, put flavor text over function.

You can add in any world-building details you want after the fact, but the actual mechanics by which players should learn skills NEEDS to be based in how the game is played. This means you need to answer a lot of questions about how you intend the game to be played to find the right answer to this.

• How many skills will each character have access to?
• If all characters can learn all skills, then what is supposed to differentiate the characters?
• How essential are the skills? If a skill is required to defeat a story boss, then you cannot make it too obscure to find or too difficult to obtain.
• Is the pay-off worth the investment? Weaker skills should be obtainable earlier and with less effort. Any skill that takes considerable time and effort to obtain should be extremely powerful.
• Are players supposed to replace weak early-game skills with powerful late-game skills? Or will the player only obtain basic skills and make them more powerful and/or add new effects to existing skills?
• How does your combat system work? Are specific skills required to defeat certain enemies? Are skills optional effects to make combat easier, or mandatory effects which are required to succeed at all?

If there are skills that you plan to be used frequently and which you will balance combat around, then you need to make sure the player can actually obtain them. You also need to communicate to the player which skills are essential and which skills are "bonus features".

When skills are gained by leveling, then the player will have access to essential skills so long as they play the game and extra skills can be obtained through completing side quests or purchased from trainers. When skills can only be obtained from quests or trainers, this poses a problem when some skills are necessary but the player can't tell where to find them or how to complete challenges required to unlock them.

If the player needs to jump through a lot of "flavor text" hoops to obtain necessary skills, then you better find a way to walk the player through each of those hoops or you will have a massive problem.

 

[Richard Diaz]

Maybe learning is good!

 

[Anthony Xue]

A word of advice: Never, EVER, put flavor text over function.

You can add in any world-building details you want after the fact, but the actual mechanics by which players should learn skills NEEDS to be based in how the game is played. This means you need to answer a lot of questions about how you intend the game to be played to find the right answer to this. [...]

Careful. While generally speaking, I agree with everything you list here (those are the questions that must be answered for any skill system, after all), I don't think the "flavour first" approach should be discarded immediately. If nothing else, it may lead you to answers to the game design questions you wouldn't have found if strictly going by mechanics alone. Additionally, if you start from the flavour vantage point and manage to find mechanical solutions for the questions it poses, it will make the whole game feel that much more integrated and cohesive, which can greatly enhance enjoyment.

Of course, what should not be done is caring for flavour only, but I think we aren't there yet. Would be interested to see the OP elaborate more on what she actually had in mind and how our answers fit.

 

[Caitlin]

@Basileus

• If all characters can learn all skills, then what is supposed to differentiate the characters?

Spoiler: Answer to Basileus

Everyone is genetically able to use abilities, but let me explain. First, everyone has genetic abilities that might be very different from each other, but another influence is life. You see, in the era in which my game takes place in is a very hard period. What you eat influences how your abilities develop and that is influenced by where you live and the lives of the people around you. Some people raise animals, because they live in areas where farming isn't possible (*They develop more warrior type skills*), some people eat plants and thus, will develop a different sort of skills altogether, you have the people who are more well off will develop a more balanced skills and then, you have the people who don't eat much at all, they have no abilities. So, not everyone has abilities and then, you are, also, forgetting sometimes people won't always use something, because of a religious oath. Plus, I am sure that there would be people who would have abilities that wouldn't know how to use them or that they were there.

In my game, you have three characters from the same clan, only they are very different in abilities.
Ailena (warrior, hunter and has more attack based skills)
Her brother (turned away from the warrior aspetc of his clan and joined one of the temples has more healing based arts.. With the ability to gain holy attack later, if you so chose)
Kai (Who you have the ability to get as a party member later, has eaten from both, but doesn't really know how to use his abilities as he was trained to use a power that is in their clan: the dark arts. It's called Dark Arts, because it is independent from the normal abilities and as a result isn't influenced by the same thing that the normal abilities are. The Dark Art is purely a Clan Vye thing, actually.
The last character doesn't have any of the abilities that any of the characters do, because they are a different species and mainly, their abilities is transformation (between their real form and a humanoid one) with battle skills.

But the question is what is the best way to learn new skills, because a game would be boring if you knew all the skills right from the start of the game. I was actually torn between different learning methods in the game, from learning through levels (which I don't like), buying skills (really not sure I like), learning from items (interesting, but would not work with genetic abilities), but I was thinking of a trainer, that each character has access to and that gives them lessons, even quests.

Character personality, also, plays a part in the usage of abilities. Ailena's brother witnessed the death of his parent's and as a result, has went down a path of peace. He has access to those same abilities that Ailena has only he refuses to use them and keeps with peaceful uses of his abilities to help people.

I am thinking that I am going to use an elemental system of sorts to separate the people and a trainer for each character that is going to be in the camping area. That way, if you gain a level or two, you might check with your trainer and see if you can learn anything.

 

[Basileus]

@Anthony Xue

Exactly, the biggest issue I have with "Flavor First" is that many people try to write an entire world and narrative before even considering mechanics. The ideal is to consider both flavor and mechanics at the same time from the outset. Thinking of both together makes it a lot more likely to come up with mechanics that actually fit into the narrative, rather than ones shoehorned in after the fact.

@Caitlin

That's...certainly a lot of story world lore. But not a lot on the actual function of the skills within your combat system.

I think the best option would be to take a step back, set your lore aside for a moment, and consider the actual purpose of each of your party members' skills. Figure out how essential each skill is. Figure out which skills should be obtained early in the game and which ones should be saved for later on. Figure out if you want skills to scale in power as the game goes on, or if you want them replaced entirely with new and better abilities.

At this stage of development, it doesn't actually matter what the skill is or why the character has it.

I think you'll find a good answer for this by looking at your game from a structural point of view. For example: Consider the first boss of the game. What skills will the player be required to have to overcome this boss? If the intended strategy is to have a boss that hits hard but can be beaten by a skill that lowers the boss' attack or a skill that raises the party's defense, then it is necessary for the player to have those skills before they reach the boss. Depending on where the players are at that stage of this story, this can affect how they will have to learn skills.

Let's say the player characters' trainer NPCs are in the starter town.

If the game opens with a chase through a forest and the player will face the first boss before they ever reach the town, then it would be really bad to have skills only learned by a specific NPC they couldn't have met yet. Similarly, if sections of the story involve the party going out to places where the trainer is not easily accessible it can easily result in players not being able to learn necessary abilities and quests becoming impossible.

If the game opens with a peaceful scene in the starter town, then it would be easy to include a scripted event where the party talks to their trainers and the player gets a tutorial on how to use the trainers to gain skills. If this starter town were also a hub level that the player will be returning to after every mission, then learning skills from NPCs can be a great design choice since the player will frequently see and have access to the NPCs to update their skills.

If the game is a long journey with little back-tracking, then it would be best for the party to acquire skills on their own either by levels or by items that can be found in their travels. If the plot is mostly centered around a few key locations that the party travels between often, then it could be very good to have the party learn skills within those locations to make the repetitive environments feel more comfortable and a place the player can actually be happy to go back to.

Either way you need to consider the combat system overall, the order and pacing of boss fights, and the structure of your game world to find the style that will work best for your game.

 

[Caitlin]

There is going to be a central location, being the ruins of the city that you were born in and you are going to rebuild it (three choices of looks aka Breath of Fire 2) and you will search for people who were displaced when the attack happened, I have thought about it, deciding that each person should have 'abilities' which are influenced by genetics/food/environment and class abilities that they can learn through experience or leveling up. I am definitely leaning towards a trainer, because the world isn't one where you don't back track. (*Of course, in this era of my world, abilities are not really used, except for certain things and even then, not complicated. They have, mostly, forgotten their abilities and what they could do with them. You could say that it's the dark age of their planet*)

Each character will start out with a couple of abilities that they learned already from someone that taught them, even if most of those abilities are combat abilities. I am taking this series very seriously, as a matter of fact. (-_-') I have a little bit created story wise, merely for the demo and have spent the last bit editing graphics, working on maps, thinking of game play. Where as before I would have been *JUMP, JUMP, JUMP INTO THE STORY* and then, () OH NO, I forgot game play... lol.

 

[Anthony Xue]

There's not much I can add to what @Basileus said except my usual remark that noncombat skills should be taken into consideration as well. At times, I get the feeling that people don't even acknowledge that noncombat gameplay even exists... But especially if it makes a difference for your skills whether your diet consists of plants or animals it seems like the fitting idea to have plant-eaters develop skills that have utility outside of combat as well (pathfinding, herbalism, alchemy come to mind... maybe even the ability to talk to plants: an elder treefolk would make for a great trainer of plant-based skills, as it would not have forgotten all the skills like humans apparently did).

 

[Caitlin]

@Anthony Xue (o.o) Actually, now THAT is a good idea and it actually would work with my game. I hadn't thought of that before and it isn't because the ideas are not in the series. Reincarnation is a concept in my game, so talking to animals, and even plants is a possibility. Thanks!

 

[fireflyege]

I made each character unique in how they learn spells. I will list one of them.

Diviner is a healer which uses faith magic, but a Diviner needs to put faith into something for it to work. That can be a deity or an idea or even themselves but their magic changes according to what the Diviners put their faith into. So I made this system.

1. Diviner encounters some areas where she needs to meet that deity in person, getting its sigil after a challenge fight.
2. Diviner must simply show the sigil to the provinces of the said deity, to learn their spells one by one. They can be found in some cities.

Witch simply needs to join a coven and she can join all of them with hiding her magical aura. So she basically cheats.

1. The Witch joins a coven.
2. When the Witch's level is sufficient she can face the trainers to learn their magic in the said coven building.

Warlord simply seeks trainers and my Thaumaturge gets scrolls from magical academies, both taking some sort of test to prove themselves.

Ranger is one with nature, and she will help the seasonal spirits to unlock her skills.

Templar learns the skills in the Diviner's province via the paladins of other religions. Since they are connected with both their story and abilities I thought it would be fitting, I think some sort of mission will be included in Templar's training but not long quests that delay the progression of the story.

You see, I made many characters and I make different things for them all. It just depends on how you wiev that character. People can tell you learning from scrolls is the best way but if the character is a warrior it makes no sense, right?

 

[acidhedz]

I guess I have a different philosophy when it comes to skills. I don't care how the PC gets them, I care about how effective they will be.

The combat of my last game was all about how you used skills.
Damage was always tied to stats, with increasing costs in MP and/or SP. All the stronger skills used both, forcing the player to manage what they used, and when.
The further into the game you got, the more you needed to work on setting up combos and using status effects to stop the baddies from using their skills.
Any status effects that could do things like stun or "charm" enemies, had a lower chance of triggering, and a higher chance of being stopped by taking damage. So they COULD be very useful, but never game breaking.
Each character, and most of the skills, had special abilities. So even if they did low damage initially, they might keep doing decent DoT.

So, I guess my point, is that my solution is to make skills that stay at pretty much the same level of usefulness through the whole game. Then I worry about how they will learn them.
Considering each turn most PCs, and all of mine in the aforementioned game, can only take one action, forcing the player to make cost-effect calls for every character, every turn makes skills mean more than just doing big numbers of damage.

 

[Final_zero]

So in one of my games I have 10 charms
Clover (mainly for buffs)
Horse shoe (mainly for physical attacks)
Pixie (mainly for status effects)
Heart (mainly for healing)
Flower (mainly for debufss)
Star (mainly for magic attacks)
Globe (mainly for magic attacks)
Teddy bear (mainly for defensive attacks)
Cat (mainly for other skills)
Mask (mainly for powerful skills)

I also have 5 characters and they can find the charms In treasure chests. But you will find up to 3 of each if your lucky. Outside of battle you can equip people with up to 3 charms on there bracelet.

So my characters are

Alex
Cathy
Anna
Emma
Vicky

So if you equp alex with the cat charm he will gain the following skills
Warp (takes you to the entrance of the dungeon, in battle it garentees escape)
Slices of fury (deal physical damage to 3 random foes)
Key strike (unlocks treasure chests on the map and in battle one hit kills wandering chest enemy's)

However if you equip it to Vicky you gain the skills
Travel (warp to the last town visited, in battle garentee escape)
As swift as a cat (rase swiftness (my games agi))
Kitty cat scratch (deal physical damage to a foe and cause bleeding. (A version of poison))

So equipping characters with the same charms will give them different skills.