Scavenging for Skills

[Fuzzydice]

Good evening RPG Maker Fourms. :3

I'm racking my brain designing my equipment and stat system and it's come to a point where I'm stumped.  I'm hoping some fresh eyes looking on it and some opinons will help me flesh it out better.

My idea is that it's a two member party, and they have no skills as baseline.  Instead Skills are granted by the equipment you put on.  My reasoning for going with this is the hero is a self proclaimed "Adventurer" and accidently stumbles into a province that's been pretty much wiped out by undead.  So no merchants, no inns, no safe towns with walls around them.  So the hero has to scavenge for equipment and items to survive and to get out of this nasty place.  Want to play as a slow, hard hitting character?  Equip all that heavy armour and biggest stick you can find!  Want to be that mage that nukes?  Hunt down wands and robes that increase casting ablities and elemental skills!  Want to mix and match? Go ahead and see what you can do.

My issues I'm having trouble with, is how to go about the stats and how they interact with skills.  Each piece of equipment increases different ones.  "Magey" items up Int and MP as an example.  So to make your elemental skills hit harder you hunt down "Magey" type items.  But If your skills come from the equipment, now upgrading your equipment becomes a different matter.  If you switch out your weapon for better stats, now you've lost that skill you may have based all your other equipment around on.  Since equipment stays with you for the game since there is no shops to sell to, I'm stumped on how to go about that "progression" feeling.  Have a small pool of equipment you switch out depending on what foes yer facing?  Have "teired" weapons anyways, which would create clutter?  Does doesnt even address the leveling system.  I figured when you level up its a flat increase to every stat so you feel the hero getting more powerful. 

I hope this idea sounds for interesting gameplay and any feedback on this would be welcome.

 

[hiromu656]

This idea sounds very interesting. Using equipment as a means for skills can become difficult to balance if you're looking for creating an "End Game" type scenario for the game. Perhaps you can try to have the equipment level up, or maybe the skills themselves (Hoping that removing a piece of equipment will not revert your skills to their original experience level).

Maybe you should have items or some other system in the game that can be used to increase your stats alongside your equipment. The only reason I suggest that is because you mentioned mixing equipment (like Warrior Armor mixed with Magey armor). It just seems to me that without any other ways to increase your stats, you'll never really find an efficient "build" by mixing equipment, since you have clashing stats. So, going a Pure Warrior or Pure Mage will always be better than mixing, unless you can increase stats some other way. For instance, in an ARPG called "Path of Exile", sometimes you want to mix your equipment, so that you may be in heavy armor but you're using a staff that happens to boost your fire damage, which could in someway boost your total damage if you're using a Fire Based Melee attack.

So, what I'm saying is that either you implement some other way to boost stats so that being "Hybrid" is actually viable, or you can create "Hybrid Equipment" for the players that want to effectively mix the spells that they use and actually do as well as the Pure players. But then again, I'm pretty tired and may just be rambling. Hopefully this helps just a small bit.

 

[HumanNinjaToo]

There are scripts that both: 1)Allow you to change classes and 2)Allow you to learn skills that are assigned to weapons/armor through an AP type system.

Sounds like you'd want to use both of those types of scripts.

As far as finding the equipment and such: I suggest allowing the player to find random things throughout the world via chests and enemy drops but, it would be nice to have a choice of what type of 'special' equipment you might receive for completing a quest or defeating a powerful boss. For instance, you complete a quest/kill a boss and get the option to choose 1 of 3 pieces of equipment: Warrior's sword, Mage's staff, or Rogues bow.

 

[estriole]

Nice concept. You could slap some crafting system there. And it would be better if it support alternative ingredient (ex: can use magey armor or warrior armor to create same thing). Also don't unlock all recipe. But need to do something to learn it. Ex: reading books, seeing enemy making one. Dismantle the equipment several times. Etc.

 

[Berylstone]

Good evening RPG Maker Fourms. :3

I'm racking my brain designing my equipment and stat system and it's come to a point where I'm stumped.  I'm hoping some fresh eyes looking on it and some opinons will help me flesh it out better.

My idea is that it's a two member party, and they have no skills as baseline.  Instead Skills are granted by the equipment you put on.  My reasoning for going with this is the hero is a self proclaimed "Adventurer" and accidently stumbles into a province that's been pretty much wiped out by undead.  So no merchants, no inns, no safe towns with walls around them.  So the hero has to scavenge for equipment and items to survive and to get out of this nasty place.  Want to play as a slow, hard hitting character?  Equip all that heavy armour and biggest stick you can find!  Want to be that mage that nukes?  Hunt down wands and robes that increase casting ablities and elemental skills!  Want to mix and match? Go ahead and see what you can do.

My issues I'm having trouble with, is how to go about the stats and how they interact with skills.  Each piece of equipment increases different ones.  "Magey" items up Int and MP as an example.  So to make your elemental skills hit harder you hunt down "Magey" type items.  But If your skills come from the equipment, now upgrading your equipment becomes a different matter.  If you switch out your weapon for better stats, now you've lost that skill you may have based all your other equipment around on.  Since equipment stays with you for the game since there is no shops to sell to, I'm stumped on how to go about that "progression" feeling.  Have a small pool of equipment you switch out depending on what foes yer facing?  Have "teired" weapons anyways, which would create clutter?  Does doesnt even address the leveling system.  I figured when you level up its a flat increase to every stat so you feel the hero getting more powerful. 

I hope this idea sounds for interesting gameplay and any feedback on this would be welcome.

I think it was Final Fantasy 9 that made it to where you learned skills by equipping different gear and gaining experience points while wearing it.  So that may be something you would want to consider.  Though I confess I didn't really like that system from 9 (I didn't like much about that game period). 

I guess I have never seen the point in linking gear with abilities.  I feel the class system works better.  That way players can learn new abilities independent of gear choices, and don't feel constrained to wear this type of weapon/armor or that.  In the end, I ususally find the best solution is often the one that gives the player more choice - and as many independent systems as possible for doing so.

 

[Fuzzydice]

Oh hurray replies! :3

So far what people are suggesting is using a class system or items that level up so the character learns the skills permanently.  I was orginally going to have a class system where you start out as a basic class and branch out.  While designing skills for the basic class who was an idea of "Adventurer's are shumcks who just use whatever is around them to survive."  Which then got me thinking "Well if he's hacking away yet finds an old golem core and sticks it on a rod to make a cheap yet functional wand, why shouldn't he use it?  It's point and shoot"  Then I thought of the old games of D&D I played with friends and how anything could be used as a weapon and when yer deep in an anicent dungeon sometimes you have to improvise.

I wanted the feeling of the player is someone using his wits to find and create tools to survive, and having him get back to base camp labeled as a knight and then going *POOF* ok I'm labeled as a thief now *POOF* ok I'm labeled as a wizard now *POOF* ok I'm labeled as a knight again might break that immersion. 

I think it was Final Fantasy 9 that made it to where you learned skills by equipping different gear and gaining experience points while wearing it.  So that may be something you would want to consider.  Though I confess I didn't really like that system from 9 (I didn't like much about that game period). 

I guess I have never seen the point in linking gear with abilities.  I feel the class system works better.  That way players can learn new abilities independent of gear choices, and don't feel constrained to wear this type of weapon/armor or that.  In the end, I ususally find the best solution is often the one that gives the player more choice - and as many independent systems as possible for doing so.

I liked how you mention giving choice to the player.  That's exactly what I wanted to do, choice being what equipment you wear into an area, and having independent systems to do so.  Which is why I'm getting frazzled trying to come up with how equipment will interact with the characters stats and be not be far into the extremes of underpowered or overpowered.

This idea sounds very interesting. Using equipment as a means for skills can become difficult to balance if you're looking for creating an "End Game" type scenario for the game. Perhaps you can try to have the equipment level up, or maybe the skills themselves (Hoping that removing a piece of equipment will not revert your skills to their original experience level).

Maybe you should have items or some other system in the game that can be used to increase your stats alongside your equipment. The only reason I suggest that is because you mentioned mixing equipment (like Warrior Armor mixed with Magey armor). It just seems to me that without any other ways to increase your stats, you'll never really find an efficient "build" by mixing equipment, since you have clashing stats. So, going a Pure Warrior or Pure Mage will always be better than mixing, unless you can increase stats some other way. For instance, in an ARPG called "Path of Exile", sometimes you want to mix your equipment, so that you may be in heavy armor but you're using a staff that happens to boost your fire damage, which could in someway boost your total damage if you're using a Fire Based Melee attack.

So, what I'm saying is that either you implement some other way to boost stats so that being "Hybrid" is actually viable, or you can create "Hybrid Equipment" for the players that want to effectively mix the spells that they use and actually do as well as the Pure players. But then again, I'm pretty tired and may just be rambling. Hopefully this helps just a small bit.

I never actually considered other ways to increase stats and now with your reply I'm thinking I might have too.  I was going to have Hybrid equipment along with Pure. Rarely will equipment will just raise one stat, I was leaning to each item till boost one stat a bunch and then 1-2 others to a lesser degree.  Having passives on equipment to boost like your fire example is great idea.  I do worry about bloating my game tho. @_@

Nice concept. You could slap some crafting system there. And it would be better if it support alternative ingredient (ex: can use magey armor or warrior armor to create same thing). Also don't unlock all recipe. But need to do something to learn it. Ex: reading books, seeing enemy making one. Dismantle the equipment several times. Etc.

A crafting system would fit into the feel I would want to create in my game, something like Dead Island did, it feels too daunting for me to attempt.

 

[Berylstone]

I liked how you mention giving choice to the player.  That's exactly what I wanted to do, choice being what equipment you wear into an area, and having independent systems to do so.  Which is why I'm getting frazzled trying to come up with how equipment will interact with the characters stats and be not be far into the extremes of underpowered or overpowered.

I'm not 100% sure I understand what you mean here.  If it's an issue of balance, you could always condition the equipment to give certain abilities depending on the character's level.  That might work - I think - though like I said I'm not sure I'm following what you mean correctly. 

My concern with basing skill gain from wearing equipment is it can sometimes have the negative impact of forcing players to equip gear they don't want to just so they can learn certain abilities.  That would probably be less of a problem if it was implemented right.  But that has annoyed me on several games in the past I have played with mechanics like this.

During the process of designing my game every time I try to construct systems around needing to do that or needing to wear this to get certain stats or skills it always ends up being scrapped in favor of a more direct and open approach.  I guess what I'm trying to say is I would just let the player choose which skills they want to use without any strings attached.  If you have to limit the choices to preserve balance that's understandable.  But I would try to make it as independent a choice as you could and not risk making it dependent on doing something the player may find to be a nuisance.  If that makes any sense. 

 

[Fuzzydice]

I'm not 100% sure I understand what you mean here.  If it's an issue of balance, you could always condition the equipment to give certain abilities depending on the character's level.  That might work - I think - though like I said I'm not sure I'm following what you mean correctly. 

My concern with basing skill gain from wearing equipment is it can sometimes have the negative impact of forcing players to equip gear they don't want to just so they can learn certain abilities.  That would probably be less of a problem if it was implemented right.  But that has annoyed me on several games in the past I have played with mechanics like this.

During the process of designing my game every time I try to construct systems around needing to do that or needing to wear this to get certain stats or skills it always ends up being scrapped in favor of a more direct and open approach.  I guess what I'm trying to say is I would just let the player choose which skills they want to use without any strings attached.  If you have to limit the choices to preserve balance that's understandable.  But I would try to make it as independent a choice as you could and not risk making it dependent on doing something the player may find to be a nuisance.  If that makes any sense. 

I think I'm understanding what you are trying to get at.  Having a section of the game where you have to use this one ice skill or equip this one weapon to even have a chance to damage monsters would be a pain, or having to keep switching equipment out between every fight would be tedious.  That would be poor design for sure and would turn many people off.   Believe me I dont want the player feeling that he MUST use this specific piece of gear or he'll never get anywhere. 

Isn't one of the goals of RPG battles to not become stale?  If the player could just always pick whatever 4 skills and make it to the end of the game, would that be bad design?  How much nudging can you do to the player to change tactics or try something new, until it becomes forced?  I guess that comes down to how the combat system is designed as well.  I was going to have different damage types, blunt, slash, lightning, fire, etc, etc, and each damage type can put a debuff/state on the enemy, then another skill would be improved because that state is there.

Say you zap a mob with lightning and now he has Shock debuff, then you could use an ice skill which would do more damage and add "Chill" State, then finish up with a Blunt Skill that would consume Chill to do more damage (Shattering ice sort of thing.)  This could apply to helpful states too.  Your other party member is a mechanical Golem and he gets inflicted with Shock  So you use this heal which will consume Shock and add an offensive Buff (Powering him up into overdrive.)

I guess I just wanted a way for players to see these items collected and what combos can be performed with them.  Hunting down that new item unlocks different ways to engage in combat and build your characters.  With this in mind, you could essentally force weaknesses on what you're fighting, or discover what the enemies in such and such area are weak against and exploit it with the classic "Oh its a lava lizard, Ice the sucker!" 

Maybe I'm just trying to reinvent the wheel here   

 

[Berylstone]

I think I'm understanding what you are trying to get at.  Having a section of the game where you have to use this one ice skill or equip this one weapon to even have a chance to damage monsters would be a pain, or having to keep switching equipment out between every fight would be tedious.  That would be poor design for sure and would turn many people off.   Believe me I dont want the player feeling that he MUST use this specific piece of gear or he'll never get anywhere. 

Isn't one of the goals of RPG battles to not become stale?  If the player could just always pick whatever 4 skills and make it to the end of the game, would that be bad design?  How much nudging can you do to the player to change tactics or try something new, until it becomes forced?  I guess that comes down to how the combat system is designed as well.  I was going to have different damage types, blunt, slash, lightning, fire, etc, etc, and each damage type can put a debuff/state on the enemy, then another skill would be improved because that state is there.

Say you zap a mob with lightning and now he has Shock debuff, then you could use an ice skill which would do more damage and add "Chill" State, then finish up with a Blunt Skill that would consume Chill to do more damage (Shattering ice sort of thing.)  This could apply to helpful states too.  Your other party member is a mechanical Golem and he gets inflicted with Shock  So you use this heal which will consume Shock and add an offensive Buff (Powering him up into overdrive.)

I guess I just wanted a way for players to see these items collected and what combos can be performed with them.  Hunting down that new item unlocks different ways to engage in combat and build your characters.  With this in mind, you could essentally force weaknesses on what you're fighting, or discover what the enemies in such and such area are weak against and exploit it with the classic "Oh its a lava lizard, Ice the sucker!" 

Maybe I'm just trying to reinvent the wheel here   

I didn't mean to imply I thought you should just give them a set of choices at the beginning of the game.  What I meant was when or however you decide to give them these choices, I would try to do it as independently of other game mechanics as possible. 

For example: let's say you gave the player a choice rather to learn a fire spell or an ice spell.  If you add an extra layer to that, and said you have to use a wand to use the fire spell, or a staff to us an ice spell - you run the risk of alienating the player if they wanted to use fire magic and a staff.  So the choices start to compound on one another.  That's why I think it's just best to keep the customizable features of your game whole and not integrated.

I like the idea of being able to force weaknesses on the enemy and exploit them.  I really enjoy strategic gameplay, and there isn't enough of it these days in video games.  So that sounds cool to me. 

 

[Fuzzydice]

I didn't mean to imply I thought you should just give them a set of choices at the beginning of the game.  What I meant was when or however you decide to give them these choices, I would try to do it as independently of other game mechanics as possible. 

For example: let's say you gave the player a choice rather to learn a fire spell or an ice spell.  If you add an extra layer to that, and said you have to use a wand to use the fire spell, or a staff to us an ice spell - you run the risk of alienating the player if they wanted to use fire magic and a staff.  So the choices start to compound on one another.  That's why I think it's just best to keep the customizable features of your game whole and not integrated.

I like the idea of being able to force weaknesses on the enemy and exploit them.  I really enjoy strategic gameplay, and there isn't enough of it these days in video games.  So that sounds cool to me. 

Now I didnt think of that at all actually.  I was caught up in imaging skill combos that I didnt think about if the player wanted to build a character to look or feel a certain way.  I wanted the game to feel like you're hunting down whatever you can find to survive and "beggers can't be choosers." 

Going back to the drawing board it looks to see if there is another way to present that feel in the game.  Thanks for the discussion. ^_^

 

[CWells]

Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne did something like this. You would ingest these demon larvae or something and they would give you different skills and abilities. WIthout them you couldn't do much at all. If you're going to go this route, make sure that the changes are dramatic enough so that they are noticed.

 

[omen613]

How about making your character have flat stats...like

10 HP

10 MP

10 TP

10 AGI

10 INT

10 STR

When you level up you don't gain stats at all....just make gear have level requirements to equip.

Now gear changes those base stats... 

Heavy Armor +HP + STR 

Mage Armor + MP + INT 

Leather Armor +TP + AGI

And can lower other stats as well depending on the specific gear....

So the player can mix and match stats based on the gear.