Truly limited mana

[AwesomeCool]

I was thinking of making my game have a much more limited mana pool.  There are no mana potions and the only way to get mana back is at inns/checkpoints.

Do you think that this can be a good idea?

 

[Liak]

Skill restrictions are kind of outdated a bit as they are, and that pushes it even further. That being said, it's your game and your rules.

 

[Eschaton]

What if...

The only way to recover mana was indeed through potions instead of inns? And the potions are finite?

Maybe you could write that into your plot? Maybe the world powers of your setting are stockpiling mana potions? Maybe mana potions can serve as a metaphor for civilisation's dependency upon oil?

 

[Miss Nile]

Depends on your game and how often battling is. If encounters are too often, battles can become quite boring as the players would only keep mashing the Attack button, or end up having problems beating the game because of the limited supply and high number of possible battles.

 

[Kes]

it seems a way of encouraging the player to spam attack, as most players will want to hoard their MP "just in case".  

A possible way of balancing this out would be to give each character a few low cost TP skills so that they always have something that they can use.  This might (depending on your game) mean that you would have to allow the player to accumulate TP rather than have it start afresh and random each battle.

 

[Liak]

it seems a way of encouraging the player to spam attack, as most players will want to hoard their MP "just in case".  

Yep, I guess that's the case. I am exactly that kind of player.

 

[AwesomeCool]

it seems a way of encouraging the player to spam attack, as most players will want to hoard their MP "just in case".  

A possible way of balancing this out would be to give each character a few low cost TP skills so that they always have something that they can use.  This might (depending on your game) mean that you would have to allow the player to accumulate TP rather than have it start afresh and random each battle.

I was thinking of giving each character tp and mana skills. Mana skills are stronger of course.

I am worried about the "Just in case" problem though (leading to mana abilities not being used).  

 

[Liak]

If you are limiting MP skills, those are pretty strong, right? So therefore, they would fall into the too-good-to-use category. The Elixir category. Know Elixirs from Final Fantasy, the ultimate healing item? "Better keep this for a really tough battle". And then, the game is over with you at the maximum amount of Elixirs.

 

[AwesomeCool]

If you are limiting MP skills, those are pretty strong, right? So therefore, they would fall into the too-good-to-use category. The Elixir category. Know Elixirs from Final Fantasy, the ultimate healing item? "Better keep this for a really tough battle". And then, the game is over with you at the maximum amount of Elixirs.

It isn't that limited. (at least i think so)  Since you can refill at checkpoints instead of it being gone forever upon use.

I just want resource management to matter much more (most games are going the opposite pate).

 

[Another Fen]

I think the more important question here is: Do you think that would be a good idea in the first place and do you think this feature will add to the rest of your intended game?

For me, removing recovery items and introducing  "recovery zones" instead does more sound like  "annoy the player with backtracking when he is too wasteful"  than  "force the player to save his ressources", which I'd generally say would not be a good feature. With the option to fully recover any time at the last checkpoint, I'd not say your ressources are really limited outside of a battle.

If you are only out for ressource management in battle, you just could prohibit the use of items in combat or make the party recover after battle.

 

[captainproton]

Another option would be mp recovery items which are much harder to find than just going to a shop. Like, random-variable-related mining for Mana Gems, or alchemizing Mana Potions from ingredients only obtainable via monster drops.

 

[AwesomeCool]

I think the more important question here is: Do you think that would be a good idea in the first place and do you think this feature will add to the rest of your intended game?

For me, removing recovery items and introducing  "recovery zones" instead does more sound like  "annoy the player with backtracking when he is too wasteful"  than  "force the player to save his ressources", which I'd generally say would not be a good feature. With the option to fully recover any time at the last checkpoint, I'd not say your ressources are really limited outside of a battle.

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If you are only out for ressource management in battle, you just could prohibit the use of items in combat or make the party recover after battle.

Monsters re-spawn, so if the player backtracks, they will go back to square one.  So in a sense, there would be limited amount of resources to get to the next checkpoint.  Although it would allow infinite resources for grinding. I also believe that all forms of difficultly can be seen as annoying (the very act of losing can be seen as annoying the player).

I like your idea of disabling items in battle (and then be able to recover afterwords). And as for your question, I think it will be a good idea for the game,but I have my doubts.

Another option would be mp recovery items which are much harder to find than just going to a shop. Like, random-variable-related mining for Mana Gems, or alchemizing Mana Potions from ingredients only obtainable via monster drops.

I like this idea.  But what will prevent the Elixir problem from popping up for mana potions. :/

 

[Wavelength]

Why am I not surprised that Eschaton came in here with another "Finite Resources" plea?

I'm fine with the idea of "run a whole dungeon without restoring mana"; Persona 3/4 mostly used this mechanic to pretty good effect and I feel like some of the older Dragon Quest games did as well (to a not-as-good effect).  It's very important that you make each character relevant even when they're out of mana (or make them all equally irrelevant when they're out), so you don't have the weird thing going where mages have to save their MP the whole way through until the end and your warriors are doing all the damage to regular baddies.

Oh, and also, be really careful about making healing spells.  If they're cheap and powerful, and come with no secondary restrictions, no one is ever going to use their MP on anything besides heals.

 

[Another Fen]

I think it might be a problem that many games do not really tell you how many ressources you are supposed to have at a certain point. If you waste ressources, usually the only way to find out if that waste was critical would be to continue playing until you find out the hard way, probably losing all progress up to that point.

In boss battles, in many games you usually can usually orient yourself towards the enemies remaining HP (at least a bit, since many bosses tend to become harder during the fight), but when having to manage ressources during dungeons or even entire games, there's usually next to none indication how much you have left to endure with your ressources, which might force players like me to generally spend as few ressources as possible to stay prepared.

Respawn of enemies does not necessary nullify your progress when you can still avoid the monsters. In Ys for example, I usually just ignore all monsters to get to the next checkpoint as save as possible and then fight monsters and return to the checkpoint to make up the lost EXP.

If you make most encounters mandatory or even make the checkpoint unreachable once you entered the dungeon area this would be a different story of course (not that those would be ultimate solutions).

 

[Vox Novus]

You definitely need to find some way to balance out making mana/mp that limited; I'm doing something fairly similar although I make it that the player finds one item per dungeon that allows them to restore one characters mp to full. This gives the player some slack if they get into a bind or use skills too over-zealously and lets them  choose who they feel the best character's mp is to restore. I also made one character that can restore a single targets mp by consuming tp in a limit break like skill. Also I made it that items that revive a character from death also restore a characters mp by a small amount.

Other thoughts:

-How frequent are these checkpoints and how useful is your attack command or other skill options? If your checkpoints are too frequent you might as well just have mp restoring items but if they aren't frequent enough it can leave them in tough spots or to spam attack/other skills and will using these other options be enough for the player to get by in battles?

-If you are making limited mp like that you may want to consider other options for restoring mp or taking advantage of reduced mp. You can restore mp through skills that drain it from the enemy or you could make skills that increase in damage as the character has less mp to circumvent the loss.

-Going along with what I've said make skills that don't consume mp like tp skills or skills that consume hp or maybe even debuff or inflict some sort of negative effect on the user for having to use them (because they are meant to be used when in a bind).

-You can also make characters that can battle without mp effectively (but maybe they can't use magic as a trade off) or you can create scrolls that cast a spell in exchange for its consumption.

-It also depends on the context of your game if it was like a dungeon crawler and you could escape from the dugeon heal up and then return to a specific floor the limitation might not be as bad or hard to deal with but this type of thing can also be frustrating if not done well.

 

[Fernyfer775]

In my current project, there are no MP restoring items in the game at all.

Instead, I use TP as a way to regenerate it. Each character has a move called "Soul Tether" that allows them to convert their TP into MP.

The player can upgrade the skill to provide more MP per TP consumed so that it scales better at high levels.

Players regenerate TP by the normal methods, ala, taking damage, using their default attack, and some of their MP costing skills.

 

[bgillisp]

The sad truth is, no matter what mechanic you implement for MP, someone's going to like it and someone's going to hate it. There's no way to please everyone with what you implement. Just make sure that your system is not needlessly aggravating (what do you mean I only have 100 MP for the entire game???) and you should be fine.

 

[Fernyfer775]

I agree with bgillisp. Sometimes developers want to make their game "unique" or "challenging" but in turn, they add so many limitations to their players, that it turns out to be a nuisance or deterrent. Whatever you implement, make sure it adds to the fun of the game, not just a needless gimmick. 

 

[Lowell]

I personally hate the limited MP recovery methods used by most games since it basically limits what skills you can use at certain points. Whats the point of having a Area/Enemy Party targeting spell if you'll rarely use it because you don't want to "waste" mp.

With the kind of limitation you have in mind, there needs to be a counterbalance so that it isn't there to solely punish the player. Someone mentioned how in Dragon Quest, it was poorly implemented because of how useless certain characters became after exhausting their mana. You may want to research a few Rpg's and see how they handled the mechanic and see if it fits what you're trying to do.

Romancing SaGa reworked MP to be a self recharging resource that limited what skills you could use based on the combatants Initial MP and Recovery rates, Etrian Odyssey 4 gave each class one or more MP Recovery Options when certain conditions were met such as striking a weakpoint, and ToHeart2 Dungeon Travelers (obscure Japanese Dungeon Crawler) had a class who had overall weak recovery skills but gave them the only direct MP restoration skill of the entire cast.

 

[Tai_MT]

Since I can't link...

Go to YouTube.  Look up "Ross's Game Dungeon Revenant".

That is my answer about limited mana.   I think it's an answer you can agree with.

EDIT:  Or, if you're too lazy to look it up and wait for the answer...

Limited Mana basically leads players to never using your magic even more than they already do without the limit.  Players already ignore magic use except in boss fights when they need to nuke to win fast.  Limit mana, and they'll only use it on truly difficult bosses...  Or just ditch mages entirely.

I'd personally ignore anything magic related with such a limit.

Think of limited magic in this way.  What if you could only swing your sword X amount of times before you had to wait for a checkpoint or you used a potion?  Imagine limiting the "Attack" command to as limited as you want your magic system.  That's what you're getting.