Trying something different.

[FleetingInfinity]

So I've played RPG Maker games and loved them since not long after people started making them with RPG Maker 2000.   Since that time I've tried a few times to make a game of my own, but things have always got in the way and it never really got far enough along that I was ready to show it to anyone.   That's true here, too, which is why I'm posting in the Game Mechanics Forum rather than an actual project board.

I've started working on a game with a slightly different mechanic.   There will be no actual MP, no TP, no skill points of any sort.    Instead the skill and magic system is a little more on the in-depth side than that.

For skills, characters can choose from abilities with different effects, they don't lose the ability to use them or have to have certain points in order to use those abilities.  Why would you not be able to do a skill you know all of a sudden?  Instead, to keep you from just spamming certain abilities there will be ways to open certain abilities.   For instance if you're playing a thief and your opponent is wearing armor, you'll have to spend a turn and use the "study" skill in order to find an open spot on your opponent.   At that point you would open the ability to use skills like bleed attack or poison.  That's just one example, it goes deeper than that but it gives the general idea.

For mages, things are even more different.   In order to cast magic you have to be able to draw on an element that is present in the environment.   Are you near a river?   Good, you can cast water magic.   Now, of course the drawback to this is that nature is not an unlimited resource.   If you cast magic, while you don't have magic points yourself you do deplete the resources around you.  If you're casting near a river that's really not too big an issue, at least not if the rain in the area has been steady.   Say that you're casting near a small creek, or in just a small irrigated area near a farming community though.  You could very easily deplete the resources there and damage the environment and the livelihood of either animals or people in the area.   Again, just one example of many.

What does everyone think of the scope of this idea?   Does it sound interesting, would you want to play a game with a system like this?

Right now it's still in the beginning stages of development and likely will be for a while given that I'm a programmer and not an artist.   So character art, maps, and the like are definitely not my strong suit, but a system like this?  That's something I could pull off.

 

[HumanNinjaToo]

I really like the idea of mages depleting their mana sources by way of over-consumption.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

that mage sounds more like a bender from Avatar

 

[FleetingInfinity]

that mage sounds more like a bender from Avatar

I can definitely see how you would make that inference, hahah.   Though in my idea it would be more that they are not actually pulling it from there, but it is actually being taken and then formed into their spell.  In the sense that it would just disappear from where it was previously, rather than being moved and then directed in the manner that the mage wanted it to.   So it does draw on the element to fuel the magic, but not in the same manner that a bender would.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Just make sure it doesn't make battles too tedious or utterly hard (like having an area with only fire enemies and the only magic resource you have is also fire)

 

[FleetingInfinity]

Just make sure it doesn't make battles too tedious or utterly hard (like having an area with only fire enemies and the only magic resource you have is also fire)

Yeah, that's where some of the other intracacies of the system come in.  Since obviously you'll end up in areas where there will be no resources that you can tap into, or very limited resources.   That or the completely wrong type of resources for the enemies that you run into.   Will make it very strategic for some of the battles, but I want it to be something different so that every battle does not feel the same.   Make it more interesting so that battles are not something you just have to get through in order to see more of the story.

 

[Wavelength]

I feel a little bad about throwing cold water on your nifty-in-theory idea, but I think you need to consider the practicality of this long and hard before you spend the long time that will be necessary to implement it.  I'm not so sure it's really better than the default MP/TP setup, as you've described the system.

I've started working on a game with a slightly different mechanic.   There will be no actual MP, no TP, no skill points of any sort.    Instead the skill and magic system is a little more on the in-depth side than that.

For skills, characters can choose from abilities with different effects, they don't lose the ability to use them or have to have certain points in order to use those abilities.  Why would you not be able to do a skill you know all of a sudden?  Instead, to keep you from just spamming certain abilities there will be ways to open certain abilities.   For instance if you're playing a thief and your opponent is wearing armor, you'll have to spend a turn and use the "study" skill in order to find an open spot on your opponent.   At that point you would open the ability to use skills like bleed attack or poison.  That's just one example, it goes deeper than that but it gives the general idea.

Be careful.  By removing the resources, you've effectively lowered the number of "incomparables" available to make the player's choices more interesting.  Which is better: an attack that does 100 damage, or a spell that does 200 damage but costs 30 MP?  The answer isn't always clear.  But which is better: an attack that does 100 damage, or a "study" that deals no damage but lets you deal 150 damage on all subsequent attacks?  That's very easy to figure out: will that enemy take more or less than 300 damage to knock out?  If so, use the "study".

So you need to be very smart about making all the skills incomparables themselves, or adjust enemy behavior so that if the player doesn't take advantages of skills like study, they will be able to use moves themselves that can, for example, massively reduce the damage they take.  The practicality of your system will float or sink based on how well you design these skills.

For mages, things are even more different.   In order to cast magic you have to be able to draw on an element that is present in the environment.   Are you near a river?   Good, you can cast water magic.   Now, of course the drawback to this is that nature is not an unlimited resource.   If you cast magic, while you don't have magic points yourself you do deplete the resources around you.  If you're casting near a river that's really not too big an issue, at least not if the rain in the area has been steady.   Say that you're casting near a small creek, or in just a small irrigated area near a farming community though.  You could very easily deplete the resources there and damage the environment and the livelihood of either animals or people in the area.   Again, just one example of many.

This is a reasonably good idea, but the implementation could be a nightmare.  You plan to start keeping track of every area's mana, every area's livelihood, just to add a limitation to your magic system?  Yikes!  This is going to take you dozens of hours to program, and hundreds upon hundreds to event the consequences of the player's decisions.  Are you sure you want to do this?  It would also be a gigantic balance problem for bosses - unless the bosses are within spitting distance of an ecosystem the player cares about not screwing up, their mages are probably going to completely overshadow the other characters in those boss fights.  Even if you do find a way to avert this, mages are going to run very hot-and-cold in their battle usefulness.

You could probably make a very good game based around a single mage that could draw on the elements in such a fashion, but as "just a feature" in a much larger game, it's not going to be worth your while.

Again, the ideas are nifty, but if you're not the type that's really good at just churning stuff out, it will be a shame when the overcomplexity of your ideas ends of sinking any chance of people actually getting to see or play your game.

 

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

This sounds so similar to Magnacarta's mechanic, in that game there are no MP or TP, just elemental resources known as Chakra. The resources split from Fire, Water, Air, Earth and Light (Might be missing one) and every area has a stronger elemental resource than the other, if you are near the mountains the Earth resource is stronger so any of your earth abilities will be stronger than the other or if you are in a Fire Cavern or whatever, the fire chakra is stronger and since there is so little water around your water chakra will be very weak so any water spells in the area will be very weak, also everytime you use a specific element recourse the element itself will slowly dim down meaning that the more you are using it the more weaker it will become unless you leave it alone for a few turns so it can replenish itself.

Not sure if you are going for something similar like this but it sure does sound like it, check out Magnacarta's mechanic gameplay it is very entertaining.

 

[FleetingInfinity]

I feel a little bad about throwing cold water on your nifty-in-theory idea, but I think you need to consider the practicality of this long and hard before you spend the long time that will be necessary to implement it.  I'm not so sure it's really better than the default MP/TP setup, as you've described the system.

Be careful.  By removing the resources, you've effectively lowered the number of "incomparables" available to make the player's choices more interesting.  Which is better: an attack that does 100 damage, or a spell that does 200 damage but costs 30 MP?  The answer isn't always clear.  But which is better: an attack that does 100 damage, or a "study" that deals no damage but lets you deal 150 damage on all subsequent attacks?  That's very easy to figure out: will that enemy take more or less than 300 damage to knock out?  If so, use the "study".

So you need to be very smart about making all the skills incomparables themselves, or adjust enemy behavior so that if the player doesn't take advantages of skills like study, they will be able to use moves themselves that can, for example, massively reduce the damage they take.  The practicality of your system will float or sink based on how well you design these skills.

This is a reasonably good idea, but the implementation could be a nightmare.  You plan to start keeping track of every area's mana, every area's livelihood, just to add a limitation to your magic system?  Yikes!  This is going to take you dozens of hours to program, and hundreds upon hundreds to event the consequences of the player's decisions.  Are you sure you want to do this?  It would also be a gigantic balance problem for bosses - unless the bosses are within spitting distance of an ecosystem the player cares about not screwing up, their mages are probably going to completely overshadow the other characters in those boss fights.  Even if you do find a way to avert this, mages are going to run very hot-and-cold in their battle usefulness.

You could probably make a very good game based around a single mage that could draw on the elements in such a fashion, but as "just a feature" in a much larger game, it's not going to be worth your while.

Again, the ideas are nifty, but if you're not the type that's really good at just churning stuff out, it will be a shame when the overcomplexity of your ideas ends of sinking any chance of people actually getting to see or play your game.

See, I don't feel like you threw cold water on my idea at all.   I was hoping for some responses at all, I want to hear the thoughts and reasons why people think it wouldn't work.    The fact that it would take a lot of time is obvious, it does not really dissuade me though.  Obviously it might not be a great idea to take something of this grand of a scope on as my first actual solo project in RPG Maker, but I would still like to do something with a system like this.

Going back to the issue that you brought up with MP/TP though and the value of using an ability versus just attacking.    I look at it this way, if you're fighting an enemy in plate mail for instance, what is the real chance that weilding daggers you would actually hurt them with those daggers?   Very little, unless you aimed for specific points.  Points that you would not see without examining your enemy closely.   "Studying" them.  It would open up the ability to attack weaknesses and use abilities that could hurt enemies in ways you otherwise could not hurt as much if at all with normal attacks.

This sounds so similar to Magnacarta's mechanic, in that game there are no MP or TP, just elemental resources known as Chakra. The resources split from Fire, Water, Air, Earth and Light (Might be missing one) and every area has a stronger elemental resource than the other, if you are near the mountains the Earth resource is stronger so any of your earth abilities will be stronger than the other or if you are in a Fire Cavern or whatever, the fire chakra is stronger and since there is so little water around your water chakra will be very weak so any water spells in the area will be very weak, also everytime you use a specific element recourse the element itself will slowly dim down meaning that the more you are using it the more weaker it will become unless you leave it alone for a few turns so it can replenish itself.

Not sure if you are going for something similar like this but it sure does sound like it, check out Magnacarta's mechanic gameplay it is very entertaining.

I have never actually played Magna Carta and did not know any of that about the system, so I was not going for anything like that to be honest.   I do realize however that no matter how unique or interesting I try to make something that there will always be something that can be compared to it, something that someone else will see as similar.  I might take a look at Magna Carta's system, but it still does not sound exactly the same as what I'm going for.   Since it still uses elemental resources that the character has and not elements in the environment itself.   Elements that are admittedly strengthened or weakened by the environment, but not completely dependent on an element being present such as mine would be.

That said though, thank you for pointing it out.   I'll check it out.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Just think about what you want the game to be and what kind of players you wanna get... I guess people like me who play games for fun and for story will just find it tedious of a mechanic, while more daring players might find it nice.


maybe for the magic, you can still use magics that don't have a nearby resources, but they will take a few turns since the source is far away or something like that...

 

[whitesphere]

It sounds like an interesting idea.  But, although the depleting resources idea is intriguing, it would REALLY be difficult to do. 

For example:  Mage starts depleting water resource.  How do you show it?  Well, the lush green grass starts turning brown and yellow (now you're changing the map tiles in game), the trees start to die (changing a different layer of map tiles), then the river starts shrinking (you're changing map auto-tiles again!), then it dries up.

Then you need to track the amount of, say, "water mana" in a Region and trigger these effects.  And, the far easier but more tedious fact that to effect the NPCs, any significant dialogue will need to be re-written, quests changed or bypassed (there's no need for the "get sword from a lake" quest if the lake is dried up).

And, since there would be multiple mana types, you get the thrill of trying to make ALL significant changes and permutations overlap each other.  What if I pull Earth mana?  Would that hurt the crops?  Probably.  If I pull enough of any type of mana would it change the world's climate?  Probably.  So, if you want to do that realistically, it gets ridiculously complex.

And does mana regenerate over time?  Probably (slowly), so you need to then reverse the above changes as the mana replenishes.

If I wanted to do limited resources, I might have monsters you can literally hunt into extinction.  This is far easier with the right script (tweak encounter rates per enemy) than changing the entire world map.

Or, perhaps, make the player have a finite lifespan, and each spell cast takes from that lifespan (i.e. The Covenant), eventually aging (and degrading the attributes of) the player, and eventually killing him/her. 

Or have the mage permanently lower his MHP or MMP when a powerful spell is cast.  This case would need some way to replenish these, potions perhaps, unless magic is ultra-rare, or if that attribute is reserved for nearly game breaking spells.

That is far easier to implement than a huge meta-change.

 

[Wavelength]

See, I don't feel like you threw cold water on my idea at all.   I was hoping for some responses at all, I want to hear the thoughts and reasons why people think it wouldn't work.    The fact that it would take a lot of time is obvious, it does not really dissuade me though.  Obviously it might not be a great idea to take something of this grand of a scope on as my first actual solo project in RPG Maker, but I would still like to do something with a system like this.

I'm glad that I'm not killing your dream.   But just think it over really carefully, where your efforts will be best spent.  Whitesphere just gave you a pretty good description of the kind of stuff you'd need to do in order to do your idea justice.  And honestly, that game that whitesphere is describing sounds really, really awesome.  But you're talking hundreds, maybe thousands of hours just to pull off a single feature.  If you've got the patience (hours each day, for years) to make that work in the context of a bigger game, much respect to you.

Going back to the issue that you brought up with MP/TP though and the value of using an ability versus just attacking.    I look at it this way, if you're fighting an enemy in plate mail for instance, what is the real chance that weilding daggers you would actually hurt them with those daggers?   Very little, unless you aimed for specific points.  Points that you would not see without examining your enemy closely.   "Studying" them.  It would open up the ability to attack weaknesses and use abilities that could hurt enemies in ways you otherwise could not hurt as much if at all with normal attacks.

Logically, you're completely right.  But don't ever let logic get in the way of designing interesting gameplay.  If there's an interesting, situational "study or don't study" decision for the player to make as they figure out how to dispatch enemies, you have a winning system.  If the correct answer is for the player to always spend the first turn of battle using the "study" command, then all you've managed to do is waste one turn of the player's time in each battle.

Does that make sense, or am I missing some wisdom that's inherent in your system?

 

[whitesphere]

Personally, I wouldn't dream of tackling such an ambitious idea for my very first RPG Maker project.  To do this idea well would require a great deal of skill with how pretty much everything in RPG Maker works, because you'd be changing a lot of things in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that show the mana drainage.  But I agree, if it were done well, it would definitely be a unique and compelling feature. 

However, it would probably mean this one game could take years to develop, and from the "Completed Games" threads, it seems full length RPG Maker games routinely take years to develop, so this would take even longer. 

I would start by making a fairly simple game, perhaps with a few easy already made scripts in it, just so you get the hang of creating maps, how autotiles work, how to use the features in the game effectively. 

Then try tackling the mana drainage on a very small scale first.  Maybe make a single test town with a single mana type, and when you have scripts (map tile management most likely) that create a convincing effect, then gradually work that into a larger game.  Along the way be sure to fully test each individual type of mana, in a small scale area first.  These small areas would also serve the player well as "Here's a new type of mana and how it works" areas.

 

[FleetingInfinity]

A big thank you to both Wavelength and whitesphere for your comments on the game.   I'd like to preface this by saying that while I am new to making games in RPG Maker, I have finished a few games in other systems.   Made one in XNA, and few using the Unity Engine, nothing RPG-based unfortunately.   The reason working with RPG Maker interests me though is because of the fact that I myself am not a talented artist, I work much more on the coding end of the spectrum.

You're probably right in this being too ambitious a project for my first game though, but I would still like to do it.   It'll probably just end up taking a backseat to something simpler at first.   Might even try to help out some other people with their games and get some more experience with the system first.

 

[255]

Why does the map actually have to change?

Just allow/deny the use of certain magics basing on your location and that's it. You've saved yourself months of useless work.

If you want an element to "consume", then just show some indicator for that and you're done.

You have a river. You draw the water element from it. Then let's say some indicator/number goes down. You cast the magic. Then you draw again, etc

When the number is zero, it means e.g. that you have no more power to draw that specific element. Then after some turns you can do it again, or you have to do something in particular in order to draw again. The tiles of the river doesn't need to be changed at all. For every map or battle scene you simply set some switches to make the game know which elements are present in that area.

Unless I've understood your idea wrong, this imho is the simplest way to go and it's still quite interesting.

For what concerns non-magic abilities, after you use one ability one or two times the enemies can avoid it / absorb it / nullify it with some defence status. This allows to:

-avoid spamming a single ability repeatedly (your goal in the OP);

-create decent strategy instead of FF-like fights.

Example:

Fire is your strongest magic; you draw it from the environment and you start using it against your enemy; you damage the enemy; you use fire again; the enemy casts a status which makes him absorb fire; you then draw thunder because you can since there's a strorm; the enemy sees you're casting magics of various elements so he casts reflex to himself; you then start using physical skills; you mainly use XYZ skills because they are the most powerful; after 2 or 3 attacks the enemy sees that and so it casts an XYZ sigil so those skills do nothing to him. So you start to use other type of skills; after some turns, the potection against fire goes off so you cast reflex on yourself and you cast a bouncing fire spell which greatly damage the enemy; then the enemy tries to draw fire too but he can't because you've already drawn all the fire for that environment. Etc.