Money is everything!

[Narcissus]

A few years back, an anime was released called "C the Money of Soul and Possibility Control". In this anime, characters would engage in battles were their financial lives and future were on the line... literally. Every action a character's "Asset" performed required money in hopes of taking the opponent's money, the one with the most money at the end wins. After seeing this, I wondered, "How would an RPG with a similar concept turn out?"

What would you think of an RPG where currency is also you HP and MP, and every attack is a "vampiric" attack? Naturally, this would make spending money on an upgrade a very serious decision, but also encourages efficient play in battles. I also think it would open up some interesting battle strategies, given that enemies will also at least share their MP and HP bars. A player can play defensively, vastly reducing the effectiveness of enemies attacks for their costs, allowing them to die trying to overcome defenses while being whittled down by cheap cost-attacks from the player, who would be recovering from enemy attacks thanks to the vampiric effects of attacks. Or a player can go fully offensive, bashing through enemy defenses while healing huge chunks of life.

What do you all think of such a system?

 

[wildhalcyon]

I've thought about a similar system. The biggest disadvantage to the system is that it encourages farming, which can make it hard to balance. Maybe by having a growing limit to the pool of resources that can be drawn from it would be easier to design the system, but then you'll still have players treating the limit as "full hp" and be done with it.

A system I toyed with treated special power as a positive and negative trait. So if you wanted to have fire magic you would sacrifice a certain percentage of your max HP. If you wanted earth powers on top of that you would sacrifice another portion of HP. The player would be able to control (to some degree) how much power they wanted at the cost of max HP - a finite resource. Fire cost 10%,for instance, but Fira cost 20%. So it sort of forces the character down the road of "glass cannon" towards the end of the game and I never really got it to work right. So I nixed it but kept the plot elements around it.

 

[byronclaude]

Both ideas (from the 2 above posts) seem awesome to me.  The same old pattern used by RPG's for ever is (let's face it) boring.  I am even a fan of vintage style play (the repetition, the farming, all of it)...  but I think when you can take vintage style play and integrate some new form of sacrifice for skill aside from simply MP cost (or TP cost)...   it breathes new life into a classical game structure.  

In my soon to be complete project, I have magic users like any other game...  but my Mystics actually sacrifice current H.P. to be able to perform certain types of spells magic users simply do not have access to.

I think the keys to making alternate systems a complete success is: consistancy (the alternate system should not be a thing that transforms throughout the game...) and the presence of a simple guide or tutorial explaining the system to a new player.

I am glad there are others who enjoy venturing into the realm of alternate systems such as these

 

[Narcissus]

I've thought about a similar system. The biggest disadvantage to the system is that it encourages farming, which can make it hard to balance. Maybe by having a growing limit to the pool of resources that can be drawn from it would be easier to design the system, but then you'll still have players treating the limit as "full hp" and be done with it.

A system I toyed with treated special power as a positive and negative trait. So if you wanted to have fire magic you would sacrifice a certain percentage of your max HP. If you wanted earth powers on top of that you would sacrifice another portion of HP. The player would be able to control (to some degree) how much power they wanted at the cost of max HP - a finite resource. Fire cost 10%,for instance, but Fira cost 20%. So it sort of forces the character down the road of "glass cannon" towards the end of the game and I never really got it to work right. So I nixed it but kept the plot elements around it.

I could think of a few ways to combat the farming, one of which can be that outside of battle, the resource/currency is limited based on, say, a rank or level, but mid-battle the limit is pretty much infinite. That way, a player can feel some progress but during battle feel the need to acquire as much of the currency/resource as possible (It may actually have the side benefit of purchases being a means to deal with hitting the out of battle-cap, adding a permanent reward for a temporary set-back.) Of course, limiting the number of enemies a player can encounter also does this, but also rises the need to be efficient to extreme levels where the player can be brutally punished for a single foul-up.

That system you thought of sounds interesting, but surely the player had to have had the means of recovering large amount of HP quickly for it to work properly, or else all battles would end very quickly or the player would ignore the risk and rewards of the system all-together.

My own system posted above does not have an infinite resource, at least not mid-battle, as, in a way, both the player party and the enemy party share the exact same resource, it is merely a matter of who controls it all at the end of the battle.

Both ideas (from the 2 above posts) seem awesome to me.  The same old pattern used by RPG's for ever is (let's face it) boring.  I am even a fan of vintage style play (the repetition, the farming, all of it)...  but I think when you can take vintage style play and integrate some new form of sacrifice for skill aside from simply MP cost (or TP cost)...   it breathes new life into a classical game structure.  

In my soon to be complete project, I have magic users like any other game...  but my Mystics actually sacrifice current H.P. to be able to perform certain types of spells magic users simply do not have access to.

I think the keys to making alternate systems a complete success is: consistancy (the alternate system should not be a thing that transforms throughout the game...) and the presence of a simple guide or tutorial explaining the system to a new player.

I am glad there are others who enjoy venturing into the realm of alternate systems such as these

Indeed, changing things up can be quite exciting. Using HP as an alternate resource can add some spice to most battles, so your system sounds interesting.

Also, what are you referring to when you talk about consistency, and how the alternate system should not be changed throughout the game? Do you mean that new gameplay elements should not be introduced after a system has already been established?

 

[byronclaude]

Also, what are you referring to when you talk about consistency, and how the alternate system should not be changed throughout the game? Do you mean that new gameplay elements should not be introduced after a system has already been established?

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes when an alternate system (for any purpose) is created...   it can lack a certain type of consistency throughout the course of the game.  It is hard to explain what I mean...   let's say that at the beginning there is a tutorial explaining how the special system works especially in battles, and that tutorial defines the basic setup of the system.  But then just a little way into the game, the basic setup changes into something completely different and the rules given in the tutorial no longer apply because the system has morphed into something entirely different.  That is what I mean by a lack of consistency.

It is rare...   ...but when it happens, I find it to be a terrible quality in a game.  I am not saying the alternate system should not be flexible...   flexibility adds to a game (in my opinion)...   but an alternate system should have some kind of basic framework that remains the same throughout the game.

Imagine if in FF9, you made it to disc 3, learning skills from equip etc...  then all the sudden the game introduced materia (from FF7) and equip was no longer a focal point.  That would have been tragic.

 

[Narcissus]

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes when an alternate system (for any purpose) is created...   it can lack a certain type of consistency throughout the course of the game.  It is hard to explain what I mean...   let's say that at the beginning there is a tutorial explaining how the special system works especially in battles, and that tutorial defines the basic setup of the system.  But then just a little way into the game, the basic setup changes into something completely different and the rules given in the tutorial no longer apply because the system has morphed into something entirely different.  That is what I mean by a lack of consistency.

It is rare...   ...but when it happens, I find it to be a terrible quality in a game.  I am not saying the alternate system should not be flexible...   flexibility adds to a game (in my opinion)...   but an alternate system should have some kind of basic framework that remains the same throughout the game.

Imagine if in FF9, you made it to disc 3, learning skills from equip etc...  then all the sudden the game introduced materia (from FF7) and equip was no longer a focal point.  That would have been tragic.

Ah, I see what you mean now. That makes sense. Completely changing the system on someone can ruin a perfectly good game. For a moment, I thought you didn't like it when new concepts are added unto what has been introduced in a system.