Skills, Many few or Action Points

[Warpmind]

i think learning magic on level up is senseless. imagine i am a mage. i defeat a monster level up and suddenly i have learned and memorized to perfection a skill which i have neither heard about nor seen during gameplay. WTH? i prefer leaning magic through books and by tutors. weapon skills that are learnt on level up are more practical. but this is just my opinion. you are the creator and the master of your game. you must do what you want and not what others want. we can only suggest but it is you that must create.

Well, now, I suppose whether or not that makes sense depends on one thing, really: does your mage learn magic from study, or is it some innate capacity, say latent powers in the bloodline or somesuch? If the former, then yes, suddenly learning magic by leveling becomes silly, but if the latter; if your power slowly develops and unlocks inherited knowledge in your mind, then it works.

Sometimes, it is reasonable to immediately learn/improve skills on leveling. Other times, it is better to learn them from a tutor or somesuch at an appropriate time.

 

[Kread-EX]

If there's one thing I hate in RPGs, it's being forced to scroll a huge list of mostly useless skills every time I need to heal or do tons of damage (of course, this only applies to games where you can't kill everything with the Attack command). This is one of the reasons why skill deprecation is terribly implemented in almost all games: Fire becomes useless and you learn Fire 2 but the old one doesn't disappear and is just here to inflate the list.

While I'm personally against skill tiers as a whole (after all, it's very possible to design the damage growth and MP growth to avoid the situation altogether), if only the lowest tier could just disappear when you learn another one it would be very nice. The Persona series did this actually, implementing a skill slot limit: upon learning a new skill, if you have too much already, you need to chose one skill to forget.

On a more general situation, I don't care that much about the number of skills as long as they are useful. Which is unfortunately not that common.

 

[The Infamous Bon Bon]

I agree with a lot here that replacing skills is necessary if you use a skill tier, but if you want to maintain some of the weaker ones it gets complicated so I would do something like this:

Learn Fire

Learn Fira

Learn Firaga and forget Fire

That way if the player wants to use a weaker spell they can, but we all know they will never use Fire again.

I'm not planning to use a skill tier system myself because I'm not a fan of it.

I like weapon specific skills and then character unique skills. It helps keep things organized especially if the skill list is getting long.

I would prefer to have skills upgrade with the charcter like Kread suggested or at the very least add a new ability to the skill when leveling up like add additional hits or inflict a state as well and not just do more damage.

If you do use lots of skills adding a memory to the cursor makes it a lot less tedious.

 

[cybrim]

Check out Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls Console Edition

The abilities are granted by level, but each ability (other than passives) have several forms (up to 5!). You can swap between skills at any time you aren't in a boss fight or Greater Rift. Equipment gives you things like reduced resource costs, reduced cooldown, specific ability bonus damage and legendary benefits!

I personally liked Final Fantasy IX's solution to passive abilities though, granting passive points that you can allocate to any passives you know, thus by knowing the areas you are in you can customize your characters to be optimally efficient without much effort. IX unlike VI, VII & VIII wasn't overpowered or screwy, but fundamentally was about balance, I enjoyed the stories of VI & VII more so, but as far as balance IX was incredible.

 

[Pine Towers]

Learn Fire

Learn Fira

Learn Firaga and forget Fire

That way if the player wants to use a weaker spell they can, but we all know they will never use Fire again.

Bad (IMHO) example? AFAIK, FF skills were just balanced that even at late game you would use Fire because of the costXdamage still being effective for mobs. Sure, you'll Firaga the Boss, but his minions could just be Fire'd because of skill leveling.

Better way to use skills are making them versatile, not just a more powerful version. Let's take the Fire Element:

- Fire Bolt: Single Target Damage

- Fireball: Multiple Target Damage

- Fire Rage: Attack UP, single Ally

If you can only slot 1 skill at level 1 and you have three options, this makes the player choice interesting. The con is having to balance each skill and each class so not to overlap too much, and make encounters that makes use of buffs instead of spam-high-damage-skill-until-kill.

 

[Fernyfer775]

For me, more doesn't always mean better. In fact, one thing I notice a lot of RPG Maker developers do (in my opinion, to their own game's detriment) is to make soooooooooo many different abilities for their game. They tend to be far too similar to each other but vary in MP cost or damage done, which to me is boring. When it comes to developing skills, I go the "less is better" route and make sure that each ability is unique, has some sort of secondary effect, and stray from just making "stronger" versions of the same spell I already have.

I accomplished this by giving my characters no more than 10 skills each, and each skill has it's uses in every type of battle. Some examples:

The Hunter Luna has an attack called "Wyvern Strike" that has a 40% chance to give her a self-buff for 3-4 turns, which allows her to use her more powerful "Frenzied Barrage" ability.

The magic damage dealer has an ability called "Energize" which will increase her MP cost by 50% but allow all her single-target abilities to be multi-target. Her basic ability gives her a self-buff that stacks up to 3 times, and each stack increases her Magic Attack by 20%, and when she's at 3 charges, she's able to use her finisher move.

To add to this, characters learn new abilities by spending AP, which they earn in battle or side-quests, and when they unlock a new ability, they then have the option to upgrade that ability with 1 of 3 possible choices, which will increase the level of customization the player has. An example of this would be the "Wyvern Strike" ability again, where one of the upgrade options either gives the ability a 25% higher Critical Hit Chance, another option increases the chance of the self-buff activating, and the third option reduces the MP cost of the ability by a large amount. In reality, there are about 50 skills PER character, but with the way my skill system works, they only ever have 10 at a time.

 

[Wavelength]

Unless there are other really significant mechanics or alterations in place to make things interesting, a wide variety of diverse skills is probably going to be at the heart of keeping your player attentive and entertained in RPG battles.  Therefore, I think it's better to err on the side of more skills over less.  If a character learns 6 skills over a 20 hour game, that's just no good.  Likewise, if a character has zero (or one) skills for the first few hours of your game, you're doing the game a disservice.

It's important to make sure that skills aren't just copies of other skills with a different name, animation, element, and power level.  This will rarely be interesting, and just create a lot of unnecessary complexity and clutter.  Design your skills so that the player will need to think through "when/why do I want to use this skill" as well as "when/why don't I want to use this skill".  Give the skills utility - reliable debuffs to enemies, heals or buffs to allies, conditional bonuses (such as extra damage if an enemy is poisoned or maybe even if you are poisoned), malus effects (an extra cost or debuff to yourself after using the skill), nontraditional target scopes (deals damage to all foes below 25% HP), that kind of stuff.

It's also best to not force the player to wade through a long Skills menu in combat.  A few ways to accomplish this:

• Have skills replace other skills - e.g. Fira replaces Fire - or, very similarly, allow the player to upgrade Fire into Fira
• Allow the player to "toggle off" skills the don't need anymore so that they won't appear in battle - or, similarly, require the player to equip a set of 6-12 skills they can bring into combat for each character
• Have each skill's formula scale directly with character stats (best if there's no "base damage" for the skill - damage is solely based off of character and enemy stats), so that all skills are useful throughout the game, and keep the number of skills to ~16 or less to keep it manageable.

 

[AMGLime]

Skill are where I'm a little stuck with my characters right now. I have 6 Characters, and I want them all to have a role, and magic is available to everyone in a materia esque system.

My main character takes on the role of a Commander, he can buff and increase the fighting ability of his team mates, but as a whole doesn't have a high physical attack.

Another character is all about delaying the enemies turns.

Another character is a hybrid of a healer and a delayer, excelling at neither but having both options.

Another character is a tank, he has the only Provoke of the party as well as a few debuffing skills.

Another character has negative status ailments, which are stronger versions of the ones you can typically get from magic.

The final character is a healer, with some debuffing.

Now, I have them limited to 4 Skills, and these skills will update as you level up. For example, my Main Character gets a slight attack increase to the entire group, it'll upgrade later to also increase magic, and then later on the upgrade will double and they all use TP. My question though, do you guys find 4 Skills too limiting? Everyone can use Magic, and that works like Materia, but the Skills are learned and updated by leveling. Do you guys think that sounds alright, limited, what have you?

 

[bgillisp]

Since my game world runs on an elemental system (where everyone is 1 of 8 elements, with very rare exceptions), what I did to balance the spells was I divided the spells into levels, and then gave each element 6/6/5/5/4/3/2/1 spells for the 8 levels. Then I had mana costs go up drastically between levels (for example, a level 2 spell might cost 10 MP, but a level 4 spell might cost 32 MP), so the player won't be able to spam the higher level spells all day. This keeps the lower level spells still useful, as the player has to decide between preserving mana or high damage but then being out of mana.

This system did force me to make a lot of tough decisions in each level, as each element buffs (or debuffs) one of the 8 attributes (HP, MP, ATK, DEF, MAT, MDF, AGI, or LUK). So sometimes it came down to deciding between a buff or a damage dealing spell? Or do I put in both, but give them no AOE spell here? Or should it be damage over time? And what about status aliments?

@AMGLime: It can work, as long as you keep them varied. I'd say stick with it initially, and if you find it too limiting in development, add 1 more skill per person, and see if that helps. If not, then add another 1. And so on. Also, excel can help. Put all your skills side by side in excel, and see if you see any gaps. That will help you decide if it is too limiting or not.

 

[cybrim]

Chorno Cross's Element System was really good as spamming abilities wasn't in the best interest of the players, and every character having a different Grid as well as a specified color that effected their attack & defense. The best feature of the game though was the ability to use healing abilities after the battle by either using consumables or just regular healing elements because you lost your element level after battle.

My idea for a spellcasting system is a threefold solution: Offense, Defense & Utility.

Spark- Lightning damage 1 foe, offense ability. Shock Barrier- Buff 1 ally, enemies receive lightning elemental thorn damage after dealing a melee attack, Defense. Jolt- Increase # of actions and Agility/Evasion of one ally, Utility ability.

 

[BloodletterQ]

Well, I have an elemental fusion system to determine my characters' magics. I have them split into tiers.

1: 1 Element (Fire)

2: 2 Opposing elements (Fire + Water = Deprotect)

3: 2 elements that neither match nor oppose (Fire + Air = Confusion)

4: 2 Matching Elements (Fire + Fire = Fire-All)

5: 3 elements where 2 oppose each other (Fire + Water + Air = Dispel)

6: 2 elements match. One opposes. (Fire + Fire + Water = Magic Down)

7: 3 elements; 2 match but third element doesn't oppose. (Fire+Fire+Air = Flare)

8: 3 Matching Elements (Fire+Fire+Fire = Meteor)

 

[Frozen_Phoenix]

The amount of skills doesn't matter much, the thing is that they should be all useful.

 

[cybrim]

Just don't do a Phantasy Star, where you have magic without clear definition or contextual meaning "Res" "Foi", where there should be information about what it does so players don't have to waste it or look it up online. Also don't pull Phantasy Star style skill costs... they don't state how much they cost, you can use them but unless you know already how much they cost, you might waste TP (mp equivalent in the original Phatasy Star series). The Shin Megami Tensei series also does the weird spell names but they are much easier to get used to and have skill descriptions.

I've been playing Phantasy Star II today... pretty much all day, there are a lack of bosses but it makes up for it with the difficulty of dungeons and since your equipment is more valuable than gaining levels it actually matters what you have equipped.

In Diablo III you have:

1. Source Generators (basic attacks with extra effects & they generate your character's specific resource, think TP)

2. Enhanced Abilities (Techniques & Skills that use your Source or have a cooldown)

3. Defensive Abilities (Abilities that protect the user by either reducing damage or slowing/stopping enemies)

4. Class Specialty Abilities (abilities that are thematic according to your Class)

5. Class Super Abilities (Same as number 4 but quite different according to each class)

6. Class Ultimate Abilities (Abilities that Truly define your class)

+

7. Rune add-ons (expansive modes for every ability in categories 1-6)

8. Passive abilities (come on you know what these are, but every class has their own)

I really enjoy Diablo 3 (Reaper of Souls) because every player gets to choose what aspects makes their character who he/she is. The Rune system allows players playing the same class to use the same ability with very different results & have unique team functions. A crusader can serve more functions than any mmo class could for example, same with a Monk & Wizard.

 

[ash55]

I'm not a big fan of having an endless list of skills either. Passives can give a lot of depth to your skills without bloating them with 3 different versions of the same spell.

For instance, if you equip a Fire gem, you get a Fire spell and can flip between the following passives before every battle:

1) Adds a chance to burn when casting Fire. 
2) Adds a chance to deal bonus Fire damage when using a regular melee Attack.
3) Grants immunity to burn debuff.

4) Fire consumes more Mana, but deals more damage.
5) Reduced power, but deals damage in an AoE.

If every skill has a similar number of passives, you essentially get 5x the skills without having lost 5x the UI space.

----

In my game, I have a small number of skills and every piece of equipment has a passive attached. So one Minion passive will allow your Melee to recharge an extra unit of battery if you have your Droid summoned. This gives a little more depth both to the Melee and Summon Droid skills, and makes both a little more useful. Another passive on the weapon, increases the healing done by my game's Regen buff which adds a little more to think about when using my Regen skill etc.

 

[The Infamous Bon Bon]

Bad (IMHO) example? AFAIK, FF skills were just balanced that even at late game you would use Fire because of the costXdamage still being effective for mobs. Sure, you'll Firaga the Boss, but his minions could just be Fire'd because of skill leveling.

Better way to use skills are making them versatile, not just a more powerful version. Let's take the Fire Element:

- Fire Bolt: Single Target Damage

- Fireball: Multiple Target Damage

- Fire Rage: Attack UP, single Ally

If you can only slot 1 skill at level 1 and you have three options, this makes the player choice interesting. The con is having to balance each skill and each class so not to overlap too much, and make encounters that makes use of buffs instead of spam-high-damage-skill-until-kill.

Holy Necro argument Batman.

But either way.  I say that based on the fact that I never used Fire later in the game because it was useless.  Now I don't know which Final Fantasy games you have played, but I'm referring to the early ones on Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and even the original Playstation.  I haven't played one since FF 10, because they couldn't keep my interest anymore.

Overall there are lots of options for good skill systems.  Personally as long as it makes sense in games world I tend to like it.  My biggest problem in most games is having to excessively grind in order to get skills I need, that tends to reduce my fun, but I have done it because other parts of the game made it fun.

Too many skills can really bother me as a player.  If done right I think Ash55's idea could be really cool or if done wrong, down right frustrating, because if I have to constantly adjust my "skill settings" just to have a chance in battle I'm going to feel like a micro manager.

AMGLime - I like the idea because it gives each character a unique quality.  I would just make sure none of the magic available to everyone makes any of the characters skills obsolete.

BloodletterQ - I've played games that had a system like this, I think it was Wild Arms or something like that, and it was quite fun.  It limited the skills you could have and allowed you to customize characters to a certain degree.

 

[Wavelength]

For instance, if you equip a Fire gem, you get a Fire spell and can flip between the following passives before every battle:

1) Adds a chance to burn when casting Fire. 

2) Adds a chance to deal bonus Fire damage when using a regular melee Attack.

3) Grants immunity to burn debuff.

4) Fire consumes more Mana, but deals more damage.

5) Reduced power, but deals damage in an AoE.

If every skill has a similar number of passives, you essentially get 5x the skills without having lost 5x the UI space.

I understand that it's somewhat of a sidetrack from what you're going for here, but I just wanted to note that these kind of effects (and gems) could make for a very cool Materia-style system, where instead of choosing passive buffs the types of gems you slot together would determine the buffs and skill-modifications granted.

 

[Riyuist]

In my case , I put levels on skills, skill exps depend on how often you use it. that way even when you're on your way to level 98 you'd still love to use your 1st skill evah~

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

In most games that I played, I rarely used my first set of skills after a few fights and I do find it bothering... Nornally you end up having this long list of skills but you only use 1 or 2..

In my current game, every skillset has a maximum of 5 usable "arts", and you could go about leveling to have a maximum of like 15 different arts. Each of those having different things that they do and their own pros and cons. These arts also have levels which increase as you use them so theyd still be really useful once you get to higher levels. I've yet to try the idea out in the long run on the game I'm making but I think it will work.