No levels, no gear grinding, turn-based chess like battles

[Kurdiez]

How about a story driven RPG game with no level ups and gear drops? I know these give the sense of rewarding experience as you progress through the game and that they have become the most essential part of RPGs. This could be a disaster if you don't get it right. Some of the most surprisingly fun game experiences I had was with very simple strategy games like Highgrounds where there was no levels or gears involved. I think this could work well with RPG games that narrate the overall story to keep the game immersive while slipping in these fun battles in between the stories. I was thinking maybe this could be achieved by using traditional turn based battle systems such as the one developed by Lecode Tactical Battle System. We are all familiar with these kind of game play as it all originated from board games like Chess. Here is my take on how I want to build the initial prototype. Let's see if you guys feel it's worth building and would like to try it out.

- No healing, no reviving
- 4 player pieces (4 main characters of my story)
- weapon types: sword/shield, 2-hand, dual wield, bow
- class based: warrior, rogue, ranger, engineer
- your character stats such as str, agi, stam, all differ based on your class but they are fixed
- here are the stats

Warrior
max hp: 100
max stamina: 100
defense: 7
damage: 12 - 18
agility: 50 (smaller the better)
luck: 30% (trigger block only when sword/shield is equipped)
weapons: sword/shield, 2-hand

Rogue
max hp: 100
max stamina: 100
defense: 3
damage: 7 - 13
agility: 34
luck: 15%
weapons: dagger

Ranger
max hp: 100
max stamina: 100
defense: 5
damage: 10 - 30
agility: 60
luck: 7%
weapon: bow

Engineer
max hp: 100
max stamina: 100
defense: 6
damage: 8 - 12
agility: 43
luck: 1%
weapon: all weapons

Damage Calculation
- Everybody has equal hp and stamina (enemy units share the exact same stats and classes)
- defense is used to straight up reduce the incoming damage. (ex. enemy warrior does 16 damage to our warrior, our warrior receives 16 - 7 = 9 damage)
- agility is used to rotate turns. smaller agility will have more turns than the larger proportionately
- luck is used to mitigate incoming damage. other than the warrior all other classes straight up dodge the incoming damage 100% if it procs. if warrior is equipping the sword and shield it will block and reduce the damage by 20%.
- The numbers should be tweaked so that all classes ideally die after about 10 attacks towards them roughly.
- only rogues in the game are able to do critical hits when attacking enemies from the side and back

Resource Management
- in each turn you are free to move as much as you want and attack as many times as you want. but moving will cost certain amount of stamina per tile and attack will also consume stamina.
- once the stamina is depleted you are only allowed to move once. you are able to move as many tiles as you want still but consume twice as much stamina per tile. your stamina can go negative indefinitely.
- once you desperately flee from the battle with negative stamina you are forced to take rest.
- at the start of each turn character always gains certain amount of stamina by default. this will allow you to always make a small move and a single attack. if you choose to just take rest at the beginning of your turn only, you gain even more stamina back next turn.
- for default stamina gain per turn, rogues generate slightly more than other classes.

Skills
You are only allowed to take 1 weapon skill and 1 class skill per character to each battle and this has to be determined prior to the battle start. As you progress through the game, you will be able to collect many weapon skills and class skills. (this will be the monster drops in the game) certain skills will be only available by killing monsters in hidden places.
* there is no taunt. absolutely hate that skill which makes no sense.

Overall Class Designs
Of course a prototype has to be built and tested to tweak the numbers but here are the general design overviews of the classes.
- warrior: utility or dps
sword/shield (utility, get in enemy's faces and do skills like "rend" to drain their stamina), 2-hand (dps)
- rogue: dps
supposed to move a lot and attack from sides and back
- ranger: dps
sharpshooter, slowest turn rotations but has the potential to do the most 1-shot burst damage
- engineer: utility or dps
can set up different types of turrets to be utility or dps

Other
- just like the game of chess, once you make a move there is no un-do, you can forfeit the round anytime and re-try the same battle

 

[Kes]

This looks interesting.

However, do bear in mind that this particular forum is for discussing questions from a general perspective, and therefore not all the replies will be, or should be, directed specifically to your game and the particular framework you have established. Inevitably the discussion will range more widely than that.

 

[Kurdiez]

I am not trying to promote or discuss anything about my game. I am not sure where you got that from, maybe because of the first sentence I said? The plug-in or the game I mentioned were to visually demonstrate what I meant by "simple games" and "turn-based battle system" because it is such an ambiguous term. This is just to explore such game mechanics with the community to see if they think it is a good idea or not. I am going to edit my original post to take out any mentioning of my personal goals since it seems to bother you.

 

[Kes]

Doesn't bother me, I was just mentioning it as you are a relatively new Member of the forum, and it can come as something of a surprise to some new members when the discussion veers away from what they thought was going to be a very specifically focused feedback thread.

And I thought it was information drawn from your game because of this sentence
"Here is my take on how I want to build the initial prototype."
There is no problem with using your own game as an example to get the discussion going.

 

[bgillisp]

Personally, I think it will be a nightmare to get right. The reason is, with no leveling and no gear drops, the only way then the player has to proceed is to figure out how to win the battle the way you (the developer) win the battle. Plus, with no healing, I'd also remove all luck then, otherwise the game is going to be one big pray to the RNG goddess (see tvtropes if you aren't familiar with that reference).

 

[Kurdiez]

Randomness is put in place to give the game a bit of life. Because a bit of randomness allows you to take gamble, riskier moves. However I agree with you on the fact that if the percentage is too high (this is to be tested with real players) like you said, you are praying to the RNG god.

Levels and the gears are a funny thing. In other games, if the player is under-geared, you are not gonna have fun. If the player is way over-geared, you also won't have fun. So how much is just right? I do agree that there is fun in collecting gears and nice to feel rewarded for the gears you earned. But I see balancing all that is much tougher task than just not having them at all and be like the simple games I mentioned earlier.

... the only way then the player has to proceed is to figure out how to win the battle the way you (the developer) win the battle...

Isn't that always the case in all battle oriented games? You have to find out their weaknesses and solve the "puzzle" to win? What I am interested in is how to create this interesting puzzle that is really dynamic and doesn't become boring. Take for example the game of Chess. When one piece is moved it creates possibilities for many other moves and a player must weigh his risk exposure to each those possibilities. What I have created up there is an interesting combat mechanics which are the basic "damaging rules" (ex. in Chess you just take out 100% of enemy units HP in one shot with 100% accuracy) but I can't seem to figure out how to create an environment that allows players to deterministically craft strategies on the fly.

 

[bgillisp]

In a way, yes. However, in most games, if you can't figure out how the developer wants you to win a battle, then you can always go level up or get better gear (or sometimes both or just one). If you take that away, and the player cannot figure out the exact way you want them to win the fight, they have no other options.

In short, you will have just turned the game into a puzzle game, not an RPG. Now, it can still work, see the Lost Vikings for an example of a puzzle game with battles that people still loved. But, you just have to be really careful with balance if you do decide to go down this route. Otherwise, all you are going to do is get a lot of rage quitting.

 

[Kurdiez]

I keep going back to talking about Chess because it is quite similar to turn-based games. Assuming our battles are all just game of Chess, you are saying if a player is not able to beat a certain AI and gets stuck they will just rage quit... That is definitely something I haven't thought about. So then I must give ways to always have a counter during the fight but they must figure this out in mid-battle. One thing I used to hate pokemon was how once you find out what type of pokemon gym leaders have it requires no effort to just counter them because they will always be carrying the same pokemons all the time.

 

[Milennin]

certain skills will be only available by killing monsters in hidden places.

They better not be required to beat certain strategies or give a huge advantage, then.

* there is no taunt. absolutely hate that skill which makes no sense.

This is the only thing that makes no sense to me. In chess, you can give pieces taunt by placing them in front of others to protect other, more valuable pieces.

 

[Basileus]

I just want to begin by reiterating that the game you are describing is, by definition, not an RPG. It's a puzzle game, possibly an RTS depending on how much their is to do besides fighting. An RPG strictly needs some kind of class/level system or other progression system that allows for some delineation of "roles" that allows for getting better at said "roles" over time, usually by giving different units different jobs in combat since video game RPGs are heavily combat-focused. I feel this needs to be pointed out because it's a bad idea to go into a project without understanding your target audience - if you want to make a game that appeals to the RPG crowd then this would not be the best idea. If this is the idea you feel passionate about and want to make no matter what, then just be aware that this kind of project is better suited for the Puzzle game or possibly RTS crowd.

Regarding the system you laid out, well I feel some questions seriously need to be answered here:

1. Where is the incentive to do anything if there is no level or gear system? Quests seem utterly pointless since there is nothing to spend gold on and no sense that your various do-good-ing actually benefits you in any way since you never get stronger over time. Fights seem like a waste of time since there is nothing to gain from fighting, so you may as well skip every fight except the plot-mandatory bosses. Every fight that does not directly advance the story is now worse than pointless - they directly inhibit progress and consume the player's time while offering nothing of substance to justify their existence.
2. Why does smaller Agility mean faster? How would a bulky Warrior have higher Agility than a light Rogue and why would the less agile Rogue then get more turns for being slower? Makes no sense.
3. Why should the player care that there are multiple "classes" of units? If everyone has fixed strength and can equip basically the same skills them there is no point to having different unit types. Even if you create class-specific skills, have you given any consideration to making each unit unique so there are all balanced and viable?
   
4. What is your idea of utility? Since damage and health/defense are basically static, then the non-damaging skills have to carry the entire weight of keeping this combat system fun and engaging. But do you have any ideas for things the player can actually spend their turn actions on besides damage?
5. "There is no Taunt"..."Absolutely hate that skill which makes no sense"...Yes, that hatred is quite irrational. Also WHY? You've already shot yourself in the foot. Taunt is a vital element of managing aggro in combat-oriented games and serves the purpose of protecting injured and squishy units by acting threatening enough to divert enemy attention to someone that can actually take the hits. This is because having "jobs" or "roles" in combat is engaging and gives a reason for multiple unit types to exist. It also allows the player to save themselves from a bad situation in a way that expresses good knowledge of the game and tactical thinking.
6. How do you plan to address the "lose harder" nature of this type of system? No healing, no revive, no leveling up to get stronger, no getting better gear to get stronger, completely static strength with all units having basically equal stats. This is the kind of system where just one tiny mistake will make you restart the game because once you are losing by even a fraction you are absolutely screwed. You have no safety nets and no fallback strategies. Just going into battle with a sub-optimal skill setup will likely be guaranteed defeat unless your game is also incredibly easy.
7. How many different battles will there even be? Your units do not progress so you cannot make more challenging enemies since the player will not scale to match them. This severely limits how many possible enemy types you can have. With fixed resources (static health and no healing) there is also a hard limit on the number of enemies you can put into each encounter. Combined this means there is a finite and terrifyingly small number of possible combat encounters you can present the player with and very few things for the player to actually do during them. Since there is 0 progression that also means that once the player has figured out the "puzzle" to a combat encounter there is 0 need for the player to ever see that encounter again since there can be no variation and the same "solution" of actions will have to be done over and over again every time that encounter pops up. Unless you plan for a very small amount of battles where the player will only see each one once or twice, then you have a critical problem.

Modeling a video game combat system after Chess seems like a very, very bad idea to me. Video games are an interactive medium and Chess is one of the most infamously boring games of all time. I don't mind playing Chess but watching it is like watching paint dry. And playing the exact same game of Chess over and over again is just torture. The fixed power of each Chess piece only works because a game of Chess isn't actually supposed to take that long. Unless this is a very short mobile app game you are making, then you would be far better off going by more modern standards of game design to make something fun, interactive, and engaging for multiple play sessions across 10+ hours of gameplay.

 

[Reapergurl]

I can only say this about this kind of Puzzle-RPG:

It is quite flawed, however, it does have potential, if one were to adjust certain parameters.

For example, the inverted integers for Agility would make sense to one in maybe a thousand players. Also, the idea of having a negative integer value for Stamina doesn't even make sense for an MMO.

If I am imagining this right, it's a map turn battle system, no battle scene, much like games like Zelda, Ys, and others.

If you're not going to have leveling, equipment, or items, then my advice is to have all characters have a 1% Health Regen.

You mentioned 'resting', but never really elaborated on what that feature does, nor did you elaborate on all the things Stamina does (other than allow you to attack or to move).

I think it could be something great, but the whole thing needs a bit of work.

But if I am reading this correctly, this is a mere concept, am I wrong?

 

[Pierman Walter]

The main issue I see with this battle system is that, just like chess, players can discover a way to cheese themselves to victory by repeating the same sequence of moves over and over again against weak opponents. With no new skills or stats, players would not have to adapt to new play styles if they figured out that every enemy dies to the sequence of, "Rogue to e2, Warrior to f6, Ranger to a4, Engineer to h5, everyone attack." A way out of this is to be like Megaman Battle Network and have lots of board-affecting attacks, such as dragons setting a half the board on fire, or the edges of an ancient temple sundial slowly fracturing while you fight. The characters should all have ways to deal with some stage hazards, but not all of them. For example, the rogue can be like the knight piece and be able to jump over obstacles, and the engineer is fireproof.

 

[LaFlibuste]

The issue I see with this is if there is no progression, how do you make the final boss feel more epic than the handful of giant rats you killed in the inn's basement as a first quest and make it so that first quest is still somewhat of a challenge early on and the final boss not being absolutely nightmarishly unbeatable? How do you keep battles interesting and worth fighting throughout the game if there's not real reward for it? Wouldn't players just try to avoid them as much as possible (I'm talking about dungeon-filling random encounters here, mostly)?

 

[bgillisp]

I think the only way this system can work is honestly if you make the first 10 - 15 battles a complete joke, whereas they mainly exist for the player to figure out the game. From there, slowly up the difficulty curve, to where the final battle is at the appropriate level of difficulty.

And on another note, I've noticed you've compared this to chess a lot. Chess isn't an RPG. It's a puzzle/strategy game. So if you wish to make a game like chess, you are no longer making an RPG at all.

You are only allowed to take 1 weapon skill and 1 class skill per character to each battle and this has to be determined prior to the battle start. As you progress through the game, you will be able to collect many weapon skills and class skills. (this will be the monster drops in the game) certain skills will be only available by killing monsters in hidden places.

I echo the concern about this. If you make it so that those skills are mandatory to proceed through the game, then they are not side quests, but mandatory quests. I often call games that do this games that have mandatory optional zones, or zones that appear optional, but in reality they are not, and if you don't do them you have 0% chance to complete the game. And incidentally, the average player hates that kind of move by games from what I've seen.

Overall though, I think the big problem with this system is it almost feels like you are too afraid of the player getting powerful. I've seen way too many developers on here who think a game should fix the levels to a rigid standard, but the reality is, when those games are played, they are not fun. In fact, they are about the opposite of fun. Why are we so afraid of the player getting powerful in a game? Why do we want to gimp them so badly? Sure, some players find being overleveled boring, but I find those players are in a sharp minority. Most others honestly would rather be overleveled though. After all, look at how successful Disgaea is. Those games don't restrict your levels or gear at all, so if you put in the time, you can curb stomp the final boss in one hit of 10,000,000 damage! And players flock to those games and love them! So, maybe we need to stop worrying so much about players getting powerful and instead focus on making the game fun. And to me, what you propose is the opposite of a fun game in my opinion.

 

[Wavelength]

So I think for a game like this, where you seem to be keeping the classes very simple and putting a lot of emphasis on innate stats rather than character progression, you would want to use a game like Tactics Arena Online as your inspiration.

Sadly this game shut down last year and I can't find a decent strategy guide to link you to, but the basic design idea was: You pick 10 units from a set of about 20 units (in about 10 classes), arrange them on your side of the grid in whatever formation you want, and then each turn you pick one unit that is allowed to move and act. The game continues until one side is completely wiped out; the player with units remaining is the winner. Physical units (knights, lancers, assassins, rangers, golems, etc.) tended to attack one enemy or a small area (each unit had a different attack pattern), and had a chance to be blocked unless they attacked an enemy's backside. Magical units (pyromancers, witches, dragons, etc.) tended to attack large areas and couldn't be blocked, though they also tended to be very easy to kill with low Block chances and low HP. Special units had actions that were not attacks: e.g. Cleric could heal all of your units, Furgon could summon impassible shrubs, and Enchantress could permanently paralyze nearby enemies (the effect being nullified if she moved or was damaged). Once a unit acted, it was usually subject to a Cooldown where it couldn't move/act again for a couple of turns - this avoided letting players spam the same unit over and over and forced them to develop deeper strategies and worry about leaving powerful but squishy units deep in enemy territory.

I can't emphasize how important this "one unit per player turn" mechanic is if you want Chess-like strategy - a lot of people probably miss this, but "pace" is one of the single most important advantages you can have in Chess because you have to pick and choose between which pieces to move, and it's what makes Chess an interesting game. If you go the FFT/Disgaea approach where each unit has its own designated turn, and you try to implement that into the kind of design you described above (with simple classes and very little character development), I foresee your combat system being boring. You will either have enough raw strength to defeat the enemies when everyone is grouped up attacking each other, or you won't.

Also, keep in mind that games like Chess or TAO tend to be compelling because they are played against human opponents (or very refined AIs) who have very divergent strategies, and against an opponent of similar skill there is a very good chance (around 50%) that you will lose a game and you know that it's okay to lose. If you are handing the player a Game Over or forcing them to retry if they lose a battle (it would certainly be possible to make a game where neither happens, e.g. the Pokemon Trading Card game for the Game Boy Color), you want the player to be winning most battles, meaning you have to keep the difficulty rather light and therefore the combat becomes a little less engaging. Therefore, I highly recommend keeping the battle count low as well as making enemies very diverse in their abilities and patterns to keep things fresh, and/or creating a structure and narrative for your game where the player goes against enemies of equal strength and isn't expected to win each battle in order to progress a narrative.

 

[Kurdiez]

@Basileus First, thanks for taking so much time to criticize. I will answer all your points in order to answer all the rest of the posts as well. I feel like I haven't explained what I was trying to design here well enough and just jumped right into the battle designs too fast.

I just want to begin by reiterating that the game you are describing is, by definition, not an RPG.

You are some what correct. I did not want to make a traditional RPG. But my combats are still some what role based since it is divided into classes and classes move, and do things different from each other, thus taking on a role.

1. Where is the incentive to do anything... so you may as well skip every fight except the plot-mandatory bosses...

Where is the incentive in playing mobile games like Candy Crush? I see people enjoying these games so much everyday in subway commutes to work. The incentive is not so much in the character progression for these people. It is in the excitement of tackling the next challenge. Humans love challenge by nature. You just need to give them something that is beatable in their own power and they will feel thrills beating it. What I am really trying to achieve is maybe with the rise of these kind of mobile games that we didn't see before, we can some how create a new genre where the traditional RPG is mixed with these puzzles and the combats are still the familiar role based but feels like you are solving a puzzle rather than leveling up and gearing up to be over-powered. You are probably right about plot only combats. I will have to think about this. Plants vs. Zombie mobile game has a story and they only have combat that is related to the story.

2. Why does smaller Agility mean faster?

This is my fault for not explaining in more detail. All the stats are fixed in the game because there is no character development. So there is no point in showing the stats at all. Smaller Agility just makes the math easier for me when I calculate who should take the next turn during turn-based battles.

3. Why should the player care that there are multiple "classes" of units? If everyone has fixed strength and can equip basically the same skills them there is no point to having different unit types. Even if you create class-specific skills, have you given any consideration to making each unit unique so there are all balanced and viable?

Maybe I didn't explain well before.
- There are 2 skills you can take to battle. 1 weapon skill, 1 class skill
- Each class are limited to only certain weapons.

4. What is your idea of utility? Since damage and health/defense are basically static, then the non-damaging skills have to carry the entire weight of keeping this combat system fun and engaging. But do you have any ideas for things the player can actually spend their turn actions on besides damage?

So far the only utility mechanics I thought about adding is resource related. This battle system heavily relies on managing your stamina well. Utility skills will allow you to either apply debuffs on enemies to force them to consume more stamina making them tired faster or you perform shouts for the party to consume less stamina to buff them. If anyone else has some ideas on some new utility ideas I am completely open!

5. "There is no Taunt"..."Absolutely hate that skill which makes no sense"...

Here is my take on the taunt skill. I absolutely despise it. In any kind of battle environment from the simplest Chess board to real-life battle fields, you prioritize your targets in terms of their threats to your team. Which one is causing the most annoyance. If the enemy tanker is protecting his teammates so well he has to be taken out first. If I am programming my AI and I will command my trash dps mobs to target their squishy DPS characters. In each turn I examine how far have you gone in achieving this goal? If the players' tank keeps slowing the trash down or physically blocking the path and you are not progressing at all, there is no point in pursuing the players' DPS first. Now it's time to take out the tanker first. This naturally becomes "the taunt" not based on spamming some taunt skill, but based on player's ability to play the role of tanker. I have seen so many games where the tanker does not even need to worry about moving side ways to block enemies. They just simply move to the location where they want to attract the trash mobs and hit that AOE taunt skill. Enemies magically turn to him and go towards him. I feel like this is equivalent to DPS class has this "invulnerability" skill where for like 5 seconds you are immune to all damage and put out as much damage as you want just standing there mindlessly spamming damage skills. I disagree with this. If you are playing the role of DPS you should always be making decisions regarding the trade-offs between avoiding danger vs. putting the dps for the team.

6. How do you plan to address the "lose harder" nature of this type of system? No healing, no revive, no leveling up to get stronger, no getting better gear to get stronger, completely static strength with all units having basically equal stats. This is the kind of system where just one tiny mistake will make you restart the game because once you are losing by even a fraction you are absolutely screwed. You have no safety nets and no fallback strategies. Just going into battle with a sub-optimal skill setup will likely be guaranteed defeat unless your game is also incredibly easy.

Again going back to mentioning the mobile games like Candy Crush. People feel up to the half way into each round, they know they are on a good roll or this one is just a throw away. But sometimes when I see my mom plays it, she has this spark of hope by making one or two right decisions, crashing so many candies in a row and earning some special candies that just destroy everything snow balling so hard and eventually beat a round that she thought she would not be able to beat. I think there is a lesson to be learned in games like these from the traditional RPG battles. Not everything has to be predictable and should go according to the player's strategy from beginning to end. There is some excitements to be felt during the course of each heated battles. People will also feel the progression when battles themselves are simple in the beginning. You will only be fighting on mobs on flat grounds with no obstacles. But just like candy crush, as you progress to later parts of the story line and the battle fields will evolve to have blocking obstacles, global debuffs on stamina regen, and... well I would need some help on this but you get the main idea.

7. How many different battles will there even be? Your units do not progress so you cannot make more challenging enemies since the player will not scale to match them. This severely limits how many possible enemy types you can have. With fixed resources (static health and no healing) there is also a hard limit on the number of enemies you can put into each encounter. Combined this means there is a finite and terrifyingly small number of possible combat encounters you can present the player with and very few things for the player to actually do during them. Since there is 0 progression that also means that once the player has figured out the "puzzle" to a combat encounter there is 0 need for the player to ever see that encounter again since there can be no variation and the same "solution" of actions will have to be done over and over again every time that encounter pops up. Unless you plan for a very small amount of battles where the player will only see each one once or twice, then you have a critical problem.

I disagree with this. You will have access to different weapons and they offer different skills. For example, if you choose to wield 2-hand weapon, you will be able to take 1 skill out of the let's say 10 weapon skills it offers. As soon as you change that to sword/shield, now you gotta choose 1 skill from a whole new 10 weapon skills that offers. Also for being a warrior class you will have to choose 1 skill out of I don't know 10 class skills this offers. I mean, I haven't got into the skill designs yet but that is the idea. It would have to be designed such a way that skills are very situational and not one of them over powers other completely so others never get picked. Enemies are subject to exactly same skill mechanics as well, so when I am designing the enemies, I can create different combinations of battle style as a whole. Some battles, you gotta kill the weakest link and enemy units will lose their synergy and fall apart. Some battles individual enemy unit can sustain themselves pretty well so it is just a matter of protecting your dps and taking them out one by one just like the good old mmorpg.

Video games are an interactive medium and Chess is one of the most infamously boring games of all time.

I am not trying to create something modeling the Chess game. I'm sorry about keep mentioning Chess to you guys. I chose Candy Crush for this post instead. Next post I might be talking about some other game I don't know. But I hope everyone here understands what I am trying to get at. The main idea behind all this is to create and find something that lies between the traditional RPG and modern mobile games that are simple but highly addictive. Especially the RPG Maker games. I see huge flaws in many RPG Maker games and I asked myself there has to be a better way than this...

Well now that I think I explained myself better, I wish to have a constructive discussion that goes forward with my idea. Not keep being dragged backwards. I understand this idea could be utter crap to some. I politely ask that those can just hit the back button and leave this thread alone. I want to see if there are any people who think the same way as me. See if we can come up with some battle mechanics that could keep people engaged and be addicted with the battles. RPG Maker is a great tool. But its battle system has been played out since the days of our fathers. Maybe we can #saltbae that stuff with modern stuff a bit.

 

[Kes]

Actually no, you cannot determine who posts here, nor can you say that only those who agree with your basic premise can join the conversation.

Those who disagreed with you have made you explain yourself better. That is a service both to you and to every reader of this thread. Those who agree with you will post anyway. And as I said at the beginning of this thread,

this particular forum is for discussing questions from a general perspective, and therefore not all the replies will be, or should be, directed specifically to your game and the particular framework you have established.

A mature conversation will include divergent views and be stronger because of them. You ask for "constructive discussion". Constructive also includes pointing out weaknesses so that they can be addressed. If we only listen to people who agree with us, our ability to learn is severely limited.

 

[Kurdiez]

@Kes, what you have quoted from the forum rules is too broad. I say that because I interpret that differently than how you did. Seeing as how the moderators here love to pull out the rules all the time, you should just put in place more detailed constitutions or laws not some 10 point rules. To me, that quote (the rule) alone can't dictate how this particular discussion should be carried out including how I wanted it to be carried out, since I am a member of this thread. How a discussion develops in a thread is something organic and it is done by the people who are in the discussion. I threw in my 2 cents at it. What you should have said is instead of bringing the rule out, just simply tell me you object to my views on not suggesting people to write unless they agree with my idea. Then that's fine, I will let the opposing views of my initial game idea take on its own discussion branch in this thread. I will probably just not participate in it. By bringing the rule out though, you are essentially acting like a judge interpreting some ambiguous law you got there and applying it in a certain court case. If you want to be that judge right now and exercise your authorities then well it's a pretty authoritative culture you have going on here in RPG Maker Forum. If the people involved in a thread do not even have this kind of flexibility to drive how the discussion should be carried out, I think it's pretty ridiculous. I was just suggesting them not to debate on the core idea itself because I wanted the discussion to go more a constructive route in the sense that something literally builds out of the idea I presented in the original post. Not in the sense that I want to be "constructive" and willing to debate on whether "mixing RPG with modern mobile like games" is a good idea or not. I don't think that kind of broad topic can come to a constructive conclusion. That kind of stuff can only be proven by building a game, putting it out in the market and letting the general public decide whether they want to accept it or not. Plenty of people thought AirBnB was utter crap idea. The idea of sharing your own apartments.

 

[Kurdiez]

@Wavelength

I can't emphasize how important this "one unit per player turn" mechanic is if you want Chess-like strategy - a lot of people probably miss this,

Gosh... that is absolutely true... I absolutely missed that you could allow people to do that because I was so hung up on using that Lecode Turn Based Battle plugin which forces you to have all your characters to take a turn.

I am thinking of incorporating the snow ball effect like in the game of Candy Crush. In that game, if you crush many candy's in just one turn you earn a special candy that can take out like the entire screen. I am thinking if say a rogue lands a critical attack, rogue's next attack have higher chance of landing another critical and so on. You will want to use that rogue until his stamina runs out to do as much damage as possible. Something similar could be done for other classes: warrior, ranger, engineer. This kind of mechanics can completely turn the battle in your favour quickly.

Unfortunately RPG games usually have small number of main characters, typically 4 in RPG Maker games. This is because there is a story behind the game and it would be weird to suddenly have 20 units at your disposal and you get to choose which one to take with you to battle. That's why I thought about the skills the way I suggested. Taking only the limited number of skills to battle out of a pool of skills you acquired throughout the game.

 

[bgillisp]

I actually thought of making a puzzle like RPG for IGMC2016, which didn't happen, so here are my thoughts of how it *might* work. I'm still skeptical, but maybe you can prove me wrong (in fact, I honestly hope you do, so take my critique of the system as bring up issues players may have).

-Start off by a slow introduction to the system. As in, maybe the first couple battles they only control one unit, and use it to solve the 'puzzle'. Maybe have 4 different battles, one per unit, so the player gets used to the flow.
-Then, do a couple battles where the optimal move is a combination of two units. You can either make the other two decoys, or somehow make it obvious the others will have no effect (for example, maybe the map has an obstacle only the rogue can get past, then you need the warrior to KO the unit on the other side).
-From there, up it to puzzles that take 3 of 4 units, then ones that take all 4. Once the player has had a couple easy ones requiring all 4, up the difficulty from there.

-Edit: I read your other post, it looks like you have the gist of this already in planning. Just be sure to gently introduce the player though!

I also agree with wavelength for it to be fun you may have to do move one unit, they move one unit, not you all go then they all go.

Also, I think you may have more luck with the tactical turn based script (which I think is being ported to MV). Then you can set up more puzzle like battlefields. Though I have little experience with Lecode's system so maybe it does what I suggested (if so, ignore this thought).

However, I do think for this to succeed you will need to accept the fact that this is a puzzle game as described. If you market this to an RPG Player, they are going to pan it (more than likely. Again, you may prove me wrong and I hope you honestly do). You may wish to read the articles on how some games used psychology to addict the player to the RPG game to see what I'm talking about, as it turns out they did it by...leveling and loot. Yep, they played to our desire to get more and more powerful stuff. Specifically, what they did was they let the player earn 10 - 15 levels very quickly, so they got addicted to the thrill of powering up, then they slowed down the speed of level ups. So if your goal is an addictive RPG game, you're going against research, and you do have to realize that. But, there is a market for puzzle like games, so look there, and cross over your RPG elements. I think if you do that, you will succeed.