Naming spells that are just stronger versions of previous spells

[jonthefox]

So currently, I have a very generic/simple naming system, i.e. - 

Blind - blinds the enemy for 1 turn

Blind 2 - blinds the enemy for 2 turns

Blind 3 - blinds the enemy for 3 turns

Paralyze - paralyzes the enemy for 1 turn

Paralyze 2 - paralyzes the enemy for 2 turns

Paralyze 3 - paralyzes the enemy for 3 turns

etc.

Do you think this is poor game design and I should make it more flavorful like "Dim Vision - Blind - Sightless Despair" or something like that for each set?  

The reason I have it the simple way right now is because I figured it makes it easier for players to keep track of the different spell effects, and they can immediately tell by looking at the name which is a stronger version of another.  If I end up with a lot of spells, and each one had a unique name that was descriptive/aesthetically immersive, a pure mage who had a lot of spells could become frustrated with having to keep track of a zillion spells and which ones do what and to what effect.  

 

[Zoltor]

No, poor game design, would be making stupid unique names, because you don't want to do the typical thing.

In short, as far as naming things goes, go with what works, and makes sense.

Don't act like movie producers with their BS naming practices lol.

Yea, and that's the important thing, people shouldn't have to be expected to remember what skills do what, and what skills are the same thing, just a stronger version.

 

[RetroNutcase]

If you want to go with the 'Name is what the spell does' approach but want to avoid falling into the 1, 2, 3 scheme, another idea might be prefixes.

For example...

Lesser Blind

Blind

Greater Blind

 

[Jeremy Cannady]

I would go with :

Blind

great blind

best blind

better best blind

and so forth!

 

[RetroNutcase]

I would go with :

Blind

great blind

best blind

better best blind

and so forth!

...I...What? Why? This isn't me trying to be a smart-aleck. This is a legitimate question: I don't think the guy's aiming for a silly sounding name scheme, and "Better Best Blind" is something I can't read with a straight face.

 

[Jeremy Cannady]

It was supposed to be funny but my vote goes to the traditional:

Lesser Blind

Blind

Greater Blind

 

[Nebuerys]

Convenience wise, I'd say it's poor game design. Most especially if you have a multitude of spells to choose from, not to mention each one has its own levels of effectiveness. Imagine this, how would a person quickly spot a desired spell in a list of unpatterned names?
 
Look at this:
 

Spoiler

Dim Vision

Blind
Sightless Despair
Fireball
Flame Blast
Raging Inferno
Ice Spear
Frostfall
Absolute Zero
ThunderboltElectric Field

Lightning Storm

ect(imagine that the list goes on to cover all basic spells)

It looks too messy even if the spells are arranged according strength or relevance since a quick, simple scroll through the list won't help much unless the player knows exactly when to stop pressing the down button. I'd say stick to patterned naming or at least make each type of spell contain a root word that's easy to spot coz it's much easier to spot "Fire-" going past you three times in a row than Blaze, Fireball and then Inferno.

 

[stupid enough to like FF13]

Numbers is fine. Classic Final Fantasy did that, before they started using suffixes—for example, Fire, Fire 2, Fire 3. You could use Roman numerals if you think that might look better.

That being said, having different names for different tiers of a spell type doesn't always mean they'll be confusing or have to be overly flowery. In my current project, the basic Blind spell is called "Shadow" and its multi-target version is called "Nightfall". You don't have to go from "Blind" to "SIGHTLESS DESPAIR!!!". It's also less of an issue if you have icons for spells, and even the MP costs can help the player distinguish between the tiers of a spell.

 

[SinのAria]

I personally like how FF did things later on (the numbers were fine, personally, but trying to make a point).

Fire, Firega, etc.

Blizzard, Blizzardga, etc.

.hack also did this to an extent. (Prefix/Suffix combinations to alter a spell)

I think as long as you keep the naming to a standard, it will be easy to understand.

 

[Wavelength]

I prefer naming conventions to numbering conventions ("Lesser Blind -> Blind -> Greater Blind" sounds more evocative than "Blind 1 -> Blind 2 -> Blind 3"), and I do think such conventions are probably better than hazy "creative names" for spells that all do the same thing.

However, my bigger question would be - why do you have multiple spells that do the same thing?  When one spell ("Greater Blind") crowds out the others ("Blind" and "Lesser Blind"), I think that's where you run into poor game design.  Either have one spell that gets upgraded throughout the game (or don't even require an upgrade - I linked you just a couple days ago to my Utlity Scaling script), or make spells incomparable so that the player is making interesting decisions (for example "Migraine" deals damage to one foe and blinds it for two turns, "Blinding Light" blinds all foes for a turn, and "Steam" blinds all foes that are already Burning for two turns).

 

[Milennin]

Naw, I never liked Final Fantasy's named upgrades, they sound stupid to me. Firaga, really now? I'd rather see numbers instead. Otherwise go with lesser/greater versions. Personally I think Jeremy's idea to name something Better Best Blind was awesome (okay, maybe slightly too silly to use in a game...)

 

[jonthefox]

@wavelength - kind of a long story but I guess the biggest reason is that I decided I wanted not to not merely give the choice of: "if you invest in your magic stat, your spells will be stronger"...but the more specific: "whatever spells or school of magic you invest in, those spells will be stronger."    I feel like this could lead to interesting strategic options.  Do you go for all the high power debuff spells so you've got something for every situation (monsters might be immune to blind but not paralysis for example), or do you invest more deeply in healing/protective magic?   Or do you just go for the straight up elemental damage (which is risky because some monsters may be immune to a single element).  

I mean I guess I could just swap our "Blind" for another "Blind" with the stronger effect, but then when the player looks at his character's spells at quick glance, he doesnt' have a way to immediately identify how strong a version of the spell it is, or exactly how much stronger is the effect (as opposed to the simple idea of Blind 2 blinds for 2 turns, Blind 3 blinds for 3 turns, etc.)

 

[Wavelength]

@wavelength - kind of a long story but I guess the biggest reason is that I decided I wanted not to not merely give the choice of: "if you invest in your magic stat, your spells will be stronger"...but the more specific: "whatever spells or school of magic you invest in, those spells will be stronger."    I feel like this could lead to interesting strategic options.  Do you go for all the high power debuff spells so you've got something for every situation (monsters might be immune to blind but not paralysis for example), or do you invest more deeply in healing/protective magic?   Or do you just go for the straight up elemental damage (which is risky because some monsters may be immune to a single element). 

Gotcha.  That does sound really cool.  Do you have a way to implement such a system?

I mean I guess I could just swap our "Blind" for another "Blind" with the stronger effect, but then when the player looks at his character's spells at quick glance, he doesnt' have a way to immediately identify how strong a version of the spell it is, or exactly how much stronger is the effect (as opposed to the simple idea of Blind 2 blinds for 2 turns, Blind 3 blinds for 3 turns, etc.)

Unless there's a really good reason that a player would want to use the Blind 1 when they've already learned Blind 3 (lower costs are usually not a good enough reason to justify a bloated spellbook unless you really force players to be stingy with mana in your game), I would recommend having Blind 2 (Blind) simply replace Blind 1 (Lesser Blind) when you learn it, and so on.  The player can still identify exactly what it does, and it prevents making them scroll through 24 spells they never use anymore.  Just my two cents.

If you're using VX Ace and teach spells through the traditional Level Up system, Hime's Learn and Replace script does just this.

 

[Lowell]

In regards to the naming convention, it's best to design the skill names around the setting rather than what looks/sounds better/more awesome. The key thing you want to do is make sure the skill/effect is informative and gets the message across to the player. Whether using numbers, or a naming convention(both simple or complex), you'll want it to fit into the game seamlessly.

On a side note, you also want to keep the number of skills to a minimum so as not to overload the player with a bunch of abilities they will drop as soon as a better version pops up. A skill that blinds enemies (or inflicts some other ailment) for a single turn without an other effects or damage, will more likely than not be ignored by the player, especially if the chance of inflicting the ailment is less than ideal (which is typically anything under 80% in my personal opinion but is probably closer to 100% for others).

Slightly off topic

Though it hasn't been released for MV yet, Yanfly typically has a script that allows you to expand on the overall capabilities of a status effect. It would allow you to have say, a single status effect (For example, Blind), and allow you to custom tailor the length of the ailment using notetags, reducing the number of ailments to one, while giving that one ailment a lot of flexability in where and how it's used.

Unless there are distinct differences between the levels of blindness (such as the drop in Hit Rate being larger), it's typically better to use a single ailment of that type.

 

[jonthefox]

@Wavelength thanks, probably just going to have the player choose what spells he wants to learn from wherever/whomever in my story is what I decide where the player can learn/improve their magic.   Still thinking about it (internal consistency is very important to me) but probably just going to use the standard "no one really understands exactly how humans first began to use magic, but its been use has been studied and documented for thousands of years and be learned through intense study" type of thing.  And yeah, if someone learns Blind 2, I will am not sure whether I should just make that replace Blind1, because I probably am indeed going to force players to be somewhat selective with magic, and in some cases it might hurt the player to have to spend more mana on say Blind3 when Blind2 would be perfectly sufficient for the battle.  I'll probably decide this down the road though.

@Lowell I actually decided to use this idea of "lowest level spell does 1 turn, next does 2 turn, etc." because I figured that I pretty much needed to make the default chance of the status effect 100% (obviously some monsters will have immunity or resistance in some cases) in order to make the spell both useful and enjoyable to use.  So, since against a very run-of-the-mill enemy you're inflicting the status effect 100% of the time, then sure, lasting for 1 turn may seem kind of meh since you wouldn't take much damage from him normally - but it's the very first / lowest form of magic available, so I don't want it to feel all "1. select magic 2. ??? 3. profit"...and it also allows min-maxers or people who decide to play on the highest difficulty to get through situations more optimally or that wouldn't be tough for the average player.

 

[Volz Rocksti]

I agree with wavelength. As a player, I would rather have the spells scale in usefulness with a specific stat rather than having to navigate a UI crowded with spells I'll never use after getting a better spell. With regards to spell cost, this could scale as well, though I don't have as quick and dirty of a response for how to do that as I do with my probably oversimplified suggestion to scale the spell with a stat.

 

[SinのAria]

What I would do (I have done this before to a certain extent) is 'stances'

Essentially, you could have various skills that add stances to the character.  Example:

High power stance (more mp), normal stance (balanced), low power stance (less mp).

Essentially your Fire 1, Fire 2, Fire 3

You could also have: normal stance (single target), Chaotic stance (random targets), Nuker stance (aoe)

===

Depending on your stance, different spells are available.

 

[JetSetJayden]

I think the important thing to remember is to name spells in a way that the player can easily understand and keep track of. Regardless if you use numbers, adjectives, prefixes or suffixes, in my opinion it should be easy enough for the player to understand by the first time they see a more powerful version of the spell.

While I love the Shin Megami Tensei series, they have their unique names for all their spells... It gets so bad I forget what a spell does, its element, or even which party member has the spell I need. Maybe others don't have this problem, but at the very least it's noteworthy to mention the unnecessary confusion it might grant new, unfamiliar players. For example, "Ice" in SMT games is called "Bufu". Any spell that targets all enemies has the prefix "Ma", so Bufu becomes "Mabufu". Then, more powerful spells are given suffixes such as "-la" for a medium spell and "-dyne" for a heavy spell to create "bufula" and "bufudyne" respectfully. Now imagine this same scheme for all elements, status curing/inflicting spells, and skills. It gets to be "too much". However, I will say at the very least, it's original and suits the games well. "Agi", the spell for fire, is taken from the name of the fire god "Agni" - mythology is a central theme in all SMT games.

Here's my idea, what if when the stronger version of the same spell is learned, the older spell is "forgot" and removed and forgot. The player will understand that the spell is now stronger because the name is different, and they will not have useless spells clogging their menu.

There is a reason I do not like the idea of scaling spells, however. Now this is just a personal reason for my current project but it may be a trend I continue to employ in future projects. I set up my main party as so: A warrior who does physical damage and has buff/debuff spells, a mage who excels in magic damage, and a supportive type mage who focuses on healing, as well as curing/inflicting status ailments. The last member (or really the first), usually the main character, is a jack of all trades type of character. I like them to be a middle ground or "flex" character, so that the party is well balanced to fight enemies who have high defense or high magic defense. It also gives the player more variety in the teams general strategy. I would not want the player to face a troop that only one member of the whole party can really damage (Monsters who are only weak to magic vs a party that only has one offensive mage). I want to make enemies unique and have different strategies when facing them. Now you could point out that all I would have to do is have the battlemage-type character is to make his M.Attack scale noticeably less than the pure mage's. This is just common sense when it comes to battlemages as a class. However, by my preference, I like the idea of the battle-mage learning, say, "Ice", but not "Greater Ice". I feel like a pure Mage should know stronger versions of a same spell, rather than just doing more damage with them. It helps emphasize the Mage has superior knowledge of magic than the Battle-Mage who does not focus on just magic. I believe this would be a game design justification for having spells with different names that are stronger versions. With this, you could even use wacky names. Like Mage has "Hellfire Storm DX" while the Battlemage just has "Fire Rain". Or the BM learns "Best Blind" and the Mage learns "Better Best Blind." (Totally going to put Better Best Blind in a project as an easter egg.) You could think of unique, wacky names for the spells and it wouldn't be confusing to the player because they would most likely understand the pure mage's spells are stronger. What do you guys think of that, from a design perspective?

 

 

[jonthefox]

I don't know why but for some of the status effects it just sounds weird to me to say "Lesser Sleep, Greater Sleep" or "Lesser Confuse, Greater Confuse."   

I think I am going to replace the weaker version with the greater version of the spell though.  I actually think it could even be an interesting tradeoff that "you now have a more powerful version of this spell, but it's more costly to use."  Maybe even some more interesting decisions to make, if you're a fighter who uses a little bit of hex magic (and thus a low base MP pool) maybe you opt for the ring that gives +50 MP instead of the one that gives +10 ATK or resistance to fire.  

 

[Mouser]

I'm in the 'have one spell that upgrades as you get stronger' camp.

Unless there's a reason to keep the lower level spell (Force Whirlwind vs. Statis Field in KotOR - an example where you couldn't keep the lower level version), just have the spell upgrade. Most cases I've seen it's just a matter of rolling more damage dice or increasing the duration. Unless mana conservation is a big part of your game balance when would you NOT want to do as much damage as possible? And even if that is sometimes the case is it worth dragging an extra spell around all the time for something that occurs in actual gameplay very rarely?

If mana conservation is a big part of your gameplay it could be handled by having a single spell that you decide how much mana to power it with...