Useful, useless and too many skills

[Tai_MT]

@Kerbonklin

The point I was making wasn't "keep Ember around".  The point I was making was "You're incorrect about Shedinja's Ability and all it takes to kill it is just to land a super effective attack of any kind".  Shedinja is part bug, therefore any Fire Attack instantly and easily kills it, regardless of what level it is and what level you happen to be.  Imagine Trick Room being activated, then you drag out a level 5 mon against a level 50 Shedinja and then you just use "Ember".

But, again, I wasn't making the point that "Ember" is good to keep around (I'm not sure where you got that idea).  I'm just saying that even an Ember is enough to kill the weak-as-crap-worthless-Shedinja.  Which, is a reply to someone else's mention of the Pokémon and how they thought its ability worked.

 

[hian]

All skills in my main project are based primarily on percentages relating to base stats, in a combination with elements and status effects.

This means that all skills you learn will always be useful, but only in specific instances, against specific enemies. This means that I can introduce new enemies to create an incentive for players to get new skills, but without rendering older skills redundant since they'll still be useful against the older enemy archetypes.

Most skills also have specific costs that effect the flow of battle - so while one skill might be more powerful on the surface, using it might lower certain elemental defenses for a number of turns, hence rendering your caster weak to the attacks of the enemy you're fighting, which means that the player might want to opt for a slightly weaker spell, that doesn't handicap them in that specific battle.

All this put together means that all skills have a purpose throughout the game, and means that the player can never just scroll past all the early-tier spells and skills and pick whatever newest and flashiest stuff they have to get by.

 

[EternalShadow]

Zendir 2 had skill replacement - if you found a better one, it replaced the older, worse one.


However, debuffs sound like an interesting concept.

 

[omen613]

For games that like to have tiered abilities I like it when they combo with each other.

Example:

Fire 1 - does 1x fire DMG, does 4x DMG if foe is burned

Fire 2 - Does 2x DMG and has a chance to burn the target. 20% or so

Or the other way.

Thunder 1 - does 1x DMG to a single target and adds a static state on them.

Thunder 2 - Does 2x DMG to target, if target has static it is removed and the caster gains X MP

or completely require the old skill

Blizzard 1 - does 1x DMG to a single target then adds an AoE chilled state to all foes.

Blizzard 2 - does 2x DMG to all foes with chilled state (does nothing if no foes have chilled state)

Or hell cross over other skill lines

Water 2- does 2x DMG to target. if target has static state on them, consume the state and dispel buffs off that target.

Just make all new skills build off the old ones...not replace them completely.

 

[Maliki79]

In my project, I try to make skills as unique as possible while throwing in some negatives to the more powerful ones.

Firstly, my game has a feature where any character can learn any spell in the game.

However, if they aren't proficient enough, the spell can backfire and harm the user is various ways.

Now back on topic, the simple spells, do not backfire as often as the more advanced spells.

Also, the advanced spells take more time to cast (stamina system).

Add to this the fact that enemies can stun a user and cancel spells, that time may not be available.

So yes, while there are several spells that are simple upgrades of previous spells at first glance, there are minute differences that (should) keep them all as viable choices throughout the game.

 

[Evalis]

Some notes to keep in mind:

Feature creep is pretty common in rpgs; espeically online ones. Don't add a skill just because you didn't get one in a while.

It is NEVER good to have a duplicate skill that just does more damage. Replace the old skill, or scale abilities from stats.

Remember that characters have the ability to guard or use items. Try to refrain from skills that can already be accomplished.

Don't use elemental skills just for finding weaknesses. Rotating through 4 abilities is wasted time.

Add damage to debuffing skills so the player doesn't feel like they wasted a turn if it doesn't work.

Make sure your skills are tied to the correct stat (mag for mages and str for fighters). 

Balance skills so that the player isn't just waiting to spam that one really big one.

Choosing to 'attack' should be a strategic choice, not just as filler. 

To Site some examples:

Dual wielder attacks 3 times normally or spends TP to Poison, Bleed, Blind, Weaken

Bow wielder crits normally or uses TP to Confuse, Paralyze, Pierce

In both cases there is good reason to use regular attacks, while skills are used for specific purposes or strategic moments.

And Finally, feel free to ignore everything I just said XD

 

[Oddball]

Not really good argument material in this case. Nobody is going to keep/have Ember on their pokemon just for the sake of multiple sheninja removals, especially since you will never encounter a sheninja until mid-late game progression.

At the same time you really don't want to use a lv5 pokemon with Ember against a ~lv30 sheninja, it'll go first always (unless you have that hold item) and one-shot the lv5 with like any attack.

What about fear strategies?

 

[ArcaneEli]

I have skills replace older skills (fire II replaces Fire I), Cause it's just a better version of the skill and I don't want the menu to be crowded with like 30-40different skills 20 of which you will never use cause the upgraded version is better in everyway except mana cost.

To half-remedy this. I still give the Actor like ~15unique skills. Such as:

Dealing damage based on your speed, while raising your speed everytime you hit a foe

Deal damage based on their maxhp while slowing them.

etc...

There is also a cooldown to prevent the spamming of that OP-Skill we all know all characters have.

 

[kvk]

Nice reading there, always nice to know about the though process of others about skills creation.

As for me, I'm still exploring and iterating.

 First, I write down some kind of general gameplay for each character, so it highlight some personnality traits of the character, and skill ideas around it. 

 Then for each skill, I think of three to four situations where the skill really shine. 

 In the same way, I try to found one or two situations where the skill become really useless, so I can "disable" them and force the player to use other skills.

 When I have enough skills defined, I check with skills from other characters to create a bit of synergy. Using a Player A skill put on the enemy a state that improve Player B skill. I make sure that both of these skills have different "useless" situations, so I can break a rotation by making Player A skill useless but Player B still usefull.

 This process help me a lot to define my enemies, because at the end they are those who make a skill usefull or useless. And when I'm working from the enemies side, it also help me to improve again the skills.

 I still meet a lot of snags, but I'm fine with this way of working for the moment.

 Still looking for more opinions of these subjects, though !

 

[Eschaton]

It seems that the consensus is:

1. A limited skill pool with,

2. Wide utility.

 

[Blinn]

I like to make each spell unique, even if they share similar uses. For example, I have three spells that heal the player and they are:

First Aid

Vampiric Claw

Leech

First Aid heals the most HP and is guaranteed to work.

Vampiric Claw drains the most HP from an enemy but can miss. On it's own, it's a powerful attack since it combines both Attack and Magic Attack. It's best used to keep your health in check and to weaken enemies.

Leech drains less HP from an enemy but unlike Vampiric Claw, it's guaranteed to hit, making it useful if the enemy is low on health and you need a buffer against further damage from the other enemies.

I use First Aid if my health is really low and I can't afford to miss with Vampiric Claw, I use Vampiric Claw if my health is reasonably high (about 60-80%) and I want to hurt the enemy to keep the flow of damage under control, and I use Leech if I need to take out an enemy before his next turn and my health is down near 50%.

 

[Fernyfer775]

I personally go the X skill turns into Y skill at Z level. This helps keep skill choices to 6-10 instead of 20-30+ per character.

In my game, most skills have sort of secondary effect, such as "deals more damage to burning enemies" or "reduces enemy X stat by Y amount for Z turns" or "applies X state to target".

There are abilities that are clearly weaker in damage output than others, but they make up for it in their effects.

My game also utilizes skill cooldowns, which stops the player from just spamming their best abilities every turn.

I personally dislike having to scroll through 40 abilities, 35 which are useless, just to find and use the one I want, so I made sure to avoid that in my game.

 

[Tai_MT]

@Eschaton

Well, in all honesty, isn't it better to have limited skill pools with wide utility?  I mean, the other end of that spectrum is Final Fantasy 6 with almost a hundred (or more) spells of varying usefulness and utility, which means a fair number of them go unused for large swathes of the entire game...

Or, you get games like WoW with super massive move pools where they're all "useful" in some way during a fight, so you're spamming absolutely everything as often as possible and creating these huge macro chains so you can focus more on movement and dodging instead of having to focus on when and where to use your myriad of attacks, skills, buffs, blah blah blah.

Both systems basically render the skills themselves fairly "useless".  Final Fantasy does it by making you hold onto severely obsolete spells or outright worthless ones (why would you ever need Death if anything worth using it on is immune to it?  Or Petrify?  Or many of the other non-lethal state inflicting attacks?) and WoW does it by making players completely remove human input altogether (which also removes strategy and only ever generates a single optimized usage for your abilities and skills).

Personally, I like 8 to 10 spells/skills per character that have a wide variety of uses in battle so that I can decide what kind of strategy I want to use.  As a player, I don't need a lot of skills to get the job done.  I just need a few skills that are versatile enough to handle all the roles those missing skills might cover.  I don't need to scroll my menus and try to figure out what might work best out of 20 or 50 skills.  Give me 10 good ones, and I won't need any more than that.

Besides, it's much easier to balance for fewer skills (as well as make combat more fun and interesting instead of spammy!) than it is for massive amounts of skills.  Limitations breed creativity.  The same applies to your players.  Limit the amount of skills they have to a small number and they will come up with all sorts of interesting ways to use those skills in combat.  Give them every skill in existence though...  And they'll just hammer the strongest possible skill on each turn and never once think about it.

 

[Wavelength]

@Tai

I'm a fan of the Guild Wars approach, where you have an absolutely massive move pool (well over 100 skills on any fully-built character) but you can only "equip" eight skills at a time, and nearly every skill has a cooldown period (or some other limitation like a high mana cost or activation time) so you can't just pick a powerful skill and spam it over and over.

It's still a limitation, but this time it's a limit on the number of choices you can make instead of the number of choices you have to choose from.  I tend to find this extremely fun and rewarding.

 

[Tai_MT]

@Wavelength

I play Guild Wars 2 and it's 10 skills you can equip at a time from a large pool of I think pretty close to 80.  The first five skills are determined by what weapons you have equipped and the last five are racial/class specific including an "ultimate".  These are all on cooldown, as well.  It's a good system, but I don't really swap out any of my moves or equipment that often.

In fact, the only time I ever swap out any of my skills/abilities is when I go into PvP game modes where I trade my last 5 skills for "trap" related skills in order to avoid and counter melee classes (like the thief).

The way those skill systems seem to work is just to let you equip what works best for your play style and your build.  There really doesn't seem to be a lot or even very much swapping of your skills around.  And really, that's fine.  It's like that because you can basically brute force everything to death in PvE and then set up your character differently for PvP.  The game is more about movement than it is about what skills you're using anyway.

I mean, everyone gets one healing skill, but they can choose from like 6 or 7 depending on what they prefer.  Everyone gets one Ultimate, but they can choose from like 5 or 6.

Guild Wars 2 provides you with a ton of options, to be sure, but it's more options for your build instead of options for your strategy.  Especially since Exotic armors/weapons are difficult to come by, Ascended versions even moreso, and Legendaries nearly non-existent in the game...  It's a game where there are so many options in order to allow you to build your class the way you want.  It's not really intended for some grand strategy where you switch skills around all the time depending on where you are and what you're fighting.  I'm not saying it's bad.  I like the system myself.  I'm just saying that it's not really about providing strategy in those games.  It's more about trying to accommodate as many players as possible and let them build their classes however they want.

EDIT:  My personal choices for my ranger were to run her as a Crit Conditioner.  Very high Critical Hit rate and lots of different conditions I could apply often.  For this purpose, I equipped a longbow and a shortbow that I swap back and forth depending on what I'm trying to inflict on enemies.  I threw runes into my armor to provide higher critical hit rates, a 10% bonus to damage from the side/behind, and higher condition damage.  I threw sigils into my weapons that provide versatility for me.  The one bow steals health every 5 seconds on a standard hit as well as can heal allies nearby on a critical hit every 10 seconds.  The other bow has a 60% chance to inflict "cold", which amounts to "walk slow and cooldowns are longer" on critical hit as well as a chance to inflict an aoe fire on critical hits.  My other skills grant passives, inflict states, or draw aggro.

Game lets me build my char how I want, and the skills are very accommodating to that.  They're just... not strategy oriented.

 

[HumanNinjaToo]

I have found that keeping things simple can result in skill usefulness. Each character in my game only has five weapon-type skills that all operate very differently and are class unique.

I've also made an assortment of 'magic' skills that can be equipped or learned by all the characters. They are all unique except for 10 elemental spells. There are two spells for each of the five elements. The first is a basic spell with a basic status ailment attached and the second deals more damage and has a different kind of status ailment attached. In addition, two of the elements 2nd level spells deal damage to all enemies. All damage is based on character stats mixed with base damage. All spells have a twist in the damage formula to deal some kind of extra damage to an enemy if that enemy is afflicted with state x or y. All elemental spells deal more damage depending on the environment you use them in which is achieved by incorporating switches and/or variable in the damage formulas (For example: In a fire cave? Fire does more damage and ice does less; Outside in a rainstorm? Lightning does more damage and Fire does less).

There are an infinite number of ways to keep skills relevant if you learn the ins and outs of the formula box and take advantage of what it's capable of.

 

[literarygoth]

Great discussion rolling here so far. Everyone has had some really great ideas, and I like that each of us has put a lot of thought into this for our own projects.

With my game, it's a linear storyline and the characters all have pre-determined classes, so I wanted to make combat interesting, fun, but not overly complex. The main point I really wanted was to make elemental affinities useful, instead of just a background thing that doesn't really come into effect because you can spam attack and win. So I took a multi faceted approach.

First, I love the idea of combo skills: certain skills only activate once the previous skill has been used, or a certain status ailment has been inflicted on an enemy. The latter is the case in my game. So this gives the player the first level of skills to use, which are intended to put an ailment on the target. Once the enemy has been inflicted with that ailment, their combo skills open up. The combo skills typically hit harder, and multiple times. One or two of these combo skills, will inflict a status ailment that will actually benefit the enemy, while hindering it at the same time (like severely crippling their defense to raise their strength and sending them into a frenzy where they constantly attack), but in doing so, the highest level of combo skills will open up, and these ones hit the hardest. The status ailments are always inflicted, very few enemies will have resistances for them, so your combat is rarely crippled.

On top of this, I'm using a turn based combat system that rewards the player (and enemy!) for exploiting elemental weaknesses. Hit a Fire enemy with a Water spell, it'll deal double damage and reward you with an extra turn. Critical hits will also reward extra turns.

As for the skills themselves, the first level I've also made upgradeable by 3 levels which will affect things like damage, energy used, cast time etc.

I personally prefer fewer, useful skills. Whether they get trained/upgraded etc later in game that's fine. I just truly despise having a list of skills a mile long that takes forever to scroll through each time you enter combat. FF is bad for this

Firaga /rawr

 

[Kvich]

Personally I tend to increase the cost by 150% for every 100% damage or healing increase.

So a heal 1 heals a.mat * 4 and cost 10 mp, where a heal 2 would have a formula looking like a.mat * 8 and cost 25.

It makes the balance a little easier, and consistent.

Most of my spells also gives a state of some sort or another, like a water spell will add a state that increase lightning damage, which if struck by a thunder spell, will increase damage to ice attack. Making it possible to chain spells for higher efficiency.

But personally I don't mind the players using a stronger attack 85% of the time, because they are there to be used.

Taking a good example from D&D, if the 13 lvl cleric is using cure light wounds (a level 1 healing spell) there is often something wrong, either your encounters are to weak and/or easy and they don't need a higher level healing spell, or the encounter is to strong, and they are down to the last resources. (Not always a bad thing, but everything in modesty)

I have a few boss fights designed to have the players using lower level spells, because it last a long time, or there is a lot of weaker enemies, and the damage output round to round basis aren't so high, that the healer needs to dig deep.

But again, as a player I don't mind getting stronger versions of the same spell, it's like new toys, and I have kind a the same viewpoint when making a game, one of the coolest things, I think, when leveling up, is getting new spells/skills/abilities.

But giving say 6 tiers of spells for different spell elements, I don't see as an issue, of course if those ~30+ spells are in the same group, like all magic in FF7, then it gets overwhelming.

But having it nicely sorted in groups I find much easier.

 

[orphen89]

I'm sure this was suggested already (sorry didn't want to read so many lengths of text) so I'll try and be short and concise on a couple of ideas.

In my current project, all spells are based on pure magical attack power so of course higher levels mean the spell's power increase. This eliminates the need for higher tier level spells and allows me to create more creative spells instead that are supportive or indirect. 

Another idea I had as well could be to use a skill replace script and a magic spell counter so that when Spell X is cast so many times it turns into something more powerful (i.e., Fire cast 5 times turns into Fira). 

Hope it was useful. 

 

[Lowell]

Been working on my project for a while now and I've hammered out most of the kinks related to my skill usefulness.

My primary thought process when creating skills is basically if the user or another party member can combo/link into it. See I've been playing Etrian Odyssey for a long time now and I noticed that a lot of classes share synergy with one another, such as the Highlander and Alchemist in Untold. The Highlander has a skill called Spear Assist that allows him to launch an attack that would share the element of the last elemental skill used.

While my game probably won't have something as fancy, each skill typically can be supported by another skill to increase the overall effectiveness it has in battle.

Additionally though, you could take an example from games that limit how many skills you can take with you. Games like Sonny 2 or Romancing SaGa allow you a certain amount of slots when equipping skills but lets you keep them all so you can freely change them up if certain situations call for it. Pokemon on the other hand has you limited to four skills and forces you to abandon certain skills, forcing you to make a conscious decision on what kind of build you want. While it's not so important in the standard game, these kind of decisions are critical in the meta game and spawned the current competitive field in the games.