RPGMMZ Skills

[moko]

I'm making a game which will have lots of skills to learn, I'm totally in love with the Yanfly Skills Plugin from MV (Unfortunately I'm using MZ). So my question is: What would you prefer?

1. A game where you have a class (In my case, as I have stated in a thread long ago, the protagonist will have a class named "Emissary" which holds Magic friendly abilities and Melee friendly abilities, trying to make some kind of balance) and you can learn the skills you like (as long as they're available for your class) and equip them (8 slots for each character) but you cannot change class.

2. A game where you can just change class as much as you want, like in the Visustella class change system for MZ.

 

[Milennin]

I always go with fixed classes because it makes more sense to me that a character goes with whatever best fits them, both physically and mentally. Like the big bulky guy who worked on his muscles his whole life wouldn't be sitting in the backrow healing his allies. The agile elf who can run marathons wouldn't be wearing heavy armour to tank hits in the front. The soldier who believes in honour and fighting for justice wouldn't use dirty tricks or steal from his enemies. And so on.
Meh, that's just my take on classes.

 

[GmOcean]

I like the idea behind #1. Makes the player more involved as it requires them to potentially plan out their skillset, for optimized game play. The trade off is they can't be super greedy or they could get punished, such as taking all damage skills and no recovery skills and then running out of healing items.

But in regards to MV Yanfly Skills plugin vs MZ. I'm pretty sure Visustella has ported over 90% of those skill related plugins already. Just now instead of using 6-8 plugins, you'd only use 2-3 to get the same effect as a lot of them have been merged under a single use.

Is there any specific reason you can't get the same effect using Visustella plugins? (They don't exist yet, or cost issues). If it's cost issues, completely understandable. If it's because they don't exist yet,

 

[Aesica]

I don't know what the visustella class change system is or does, so I can't really judge that answer.

The first option sounds mostly OK though, although I'm not a huge fan of being limited to 8 slots. Nothing says "lame" like "Oh hey, this random boss out of nowhere is weak to fire but I didn't slot my fire ability!"

Instead, why not just balance around being able to learn and have access to 100% of an actor's skills for their class if it's going to be fixed?

 

[TheoAllen]

The first option sounds mostly OK though, although I'm not a huge fan of being limited to 8 slots. Nothing says "lame" like "Oh hey, this random boss out of nowhere is weak to fire but I didn't slot my fire ability!"

This only frustrating when you need a 100% correct skill combination to win. It can be worse if the dungeon encounter does not teach you that your skill is inefficient before encountering the boss, like, ice element boss in fire dungeon, yeah no... Otherwise, I'm all for skill equip.

 

[Aesica]

This only frustrating when you need a 100% correct skill combination to win. It can be worse if the dungeon encounter does not teach you that your skill is inefficient before encountering the boss, like, ice element boss in fire dungeon, yeah no... Otherwise, I'm all for skill equip.

The way I see it, skill equipping is just more menu gameplay that doesn't need to exist in the first place, and one of my goals as the designer (for my games, anyway) is to make sure the player has more exploration/battle time and less menu micromanagement time. I'm not even really sure what type of depth skill equipping is supposed to add.

Ice boss in the fire dungeon? Okay great, I have to reset or run away, then reengage after opening a menu and changing my skill loadouts. Would it have been gamebreaking to just let me have both my anti-ice and anti-fire skills equipped at the same time?

 

[TheoAllen]

The way I see it, skill equipping is just more menu gameplay that doesn't need to exist in the first place, and one of my goals as the designer (for my games, anyway) is to make sure the player has more exploration/battle time and less menu micromanagement time. I'm not even really sure what type of depth skill equipping is supposed to add.

Again, it only frustrating if you need 100% correct combination to win every battle. Which you will be navigating the menu quite a lot. At that point, it becomes a puzzle rather than an expression. I would argue that the skill equip is not about adding more depth. It's adding a "discovery" feeling (a combination of skill to equip, "let's try this"), or customizing playstyle.

I get where did you come from as I share the same opinion, not for skill but equipment and items. The menu navigation should be "I want to navigate the menu" and not "I need to navigate the menu".

Ice boss in the fire dungeon? Okay great, I have to reset or run away, then reengage after opening a menu and changing my skill loadouts.

Yes, the ice boss in the fire dungeon should not happen. If you read carefully my sentence, it is about a dungeon design. Not the skill loadout. The encounter should be teaching you what kind of boss you're going to face. Except if it's a hidden optional boss, that is already a bad dungeon design.

Would it have been gamebreaking to just let me have both my anti-ice and anti-fire skills equipped at the same time?

The definition of "game-breaking" requires the whole context of the game and can not be defined solely by that definition.