What do you do with elements in your game?

[Wavelength]

@Tai_MT

Your explanation does make sense, and I think the idea is well-intentioned and even cool. Not all good ideas turn into good game systems, as you seem to be aware of, given that you view it as something that might succeed or fail. Test your system out early! Once the basics are in place (even if most of the enemies, some of the skills, etc. aren't implemented yet), have people test it, and if possible, have them record themselves as they play. What you want them to demonstrate, if your system will land well with players, is fascination ("wow, it was ready for me!)", rather than frustration ("that's not fair!") or confusion ("why the heck did this enemy do it?").

There might be a bit of False Dichotomy here: the choice between clear, obvious choices that lack depth, versus surprises that are hidden or specific to certain enemies to spice things up. Persona (discussed at length earlier) provides one really good example of a systemic, telegraphed twist, which is that some enemies (and ally Personas) have a skill which completely negates their vulnerability to a single element (usually the most common one they're weak to), such as "Ice Block". You see the enemy use the skill, you know what it does, and it's very simple and generalizable in its execution. But it actually turns battle strategy completely on its head. Without this weakness in play, you need to figure out a way to quickly eliminate this enemy, while keeping the others knocked down (by exploiting their weaknesses), in order to achieve the "All Out Attack" condition.

Finally, one little idea as far as easing players into semi-hidden mechanics like "Revenge" - the first 2-3 times a player encounters any specific mechanic, turn down its power somewhat. This will ensure that it doesn't accidentally turn into a 'you lose' mechanic while the player isn't ready for it (and can't reasonably be expected to be ready for it). Once any given mechanic has been triggered 2-3 times (over the entire game, not just in a single battle), unleash its full, regular amount of power.

@Sixth

I have the usual weak/strong aspect, as expected from most RPGs.
Than I have the - also commonly used nowadays - element/state pairs (fire inflicts burn, ice inflicts freeze, etc).
And I have the "element level" system.
If a target is attacked with the same element over and over again, their element level will increase. The higher a target's element level is, the weaker it gets against the element which is strong against it (I have an "element triangle" with 4 elements, so the terms here can be confusing without a visual explanation, I guess). For example:

• [Ally 1] targets [Enemy 2] with [Fireball] continuously. [Enemy 2]'s [Fire] element level will get raised by a lot.
• [Ally 2] will now use [Earthquake] on [Enemy 2]. The damage done will be much higher now, because [Fire] is weak against [Earth] (in my project anyway), and [Enemy 2]'s [Fire] level is high.

Sounds pretty cool. What if you combined the two systems - the standard "weakness/resist" aspect and the "element levels" - into one coherent system, in order to avoid the two systems working against each other or convoluting each other?

It sounds like right now, when you use the Earth element against an enemy, the system will need to check (1) what the enemy's natural weakness/resist to Earth is, and (2) how high the player has raised that enemy's Fire level.

Instead, what if the enemy's "natural" strengths and weaknesses were represented by starting positive and negative Element values, and then the player's choice of skills to use against that same enemy will influence those same values throughout the battle? It's feeding into one unique system and allowing the player to devote more of their focus on it.

 

[Tai_MT]

@Wavelength

It's current implementation is that the enemies do "interesting" things with Revenge if they're standard enemies. They don't necessarily drop a powerful attack on you that's meant to cripple your party or drain your resources. Most standard enemies don't even have the "Revenge" mechanic (this is mostly because combat with standard enemies doesn't usually last all that long in an RPG and I would quickly run out of unique abilities if nearly everything used the mechanic). Of the standard enemies, I have ones that cast a full party heal if you've hit them with a Water skill... I've got one that casts an "immunity" skill if hit with a Piercing skill (it lasts two turns)…

However, the first real instance of this mechanic showing up is in a boss fight against either a Giant Spider or the Giant Plant (game mechanic about choice, the details are unimportant). The dungeon itself is meant to teach the player about the mechanics of Poison and being prepared to deal with it, but most of the enemies there are weak to Fire. So, the game has been also teaching them that fire is effective against bugs and plants, but less effective against enemies like lizards and snakes and rats. I'm hoping that this section is doing the important job of teaching the "these monsters are usually weak to Fire" mechanic so then the first boss ends up teaching the "Revenge" mechanic to the player.

The idea behind "Revenge" is that the player will likely trigger it with their first turn and spend the rest of combat avoiding it. As such, it's meant to temporarily inconvenience the player, with the most extreme cases requiring the player heal up afterwards. But, the idea of doing that hinges on the players learning the Elemental system and the most common weaknesses to the enemy types. In the instance of the Giant Spider/Giant Plant boss fight, the player is meant to remember, "Yep, bugs and plants are weak to fire attacks" and spend their first turn hitting them with it. At which point, it triggers the boss to hit one party member with a skill that inflicts both Level 1 and Level 2 poison on them at the same time (which incidentally is likely the first instance the player is being informed that poison can also stack). The player isn't even strictly punished for exploiting the Fire Weakness of the bosses either. They are welcome to continue to pummel the Bosses with Fire and tank the hits. It does do a lot of damage as they are weak to it. They just have this added "Revenge" mechanic on top of that weakness.

In the case of the Fire Elemental, the Water does do a significant amount of damage to it. In fact, it does take extra damage from the Water in comparison to the other enemies that teach you about the Water Weakness beforehand (roughly 15% more damage). But, the player is then hit with a "full party attack", which is extremely rare in my game (most attacks and skills are single target or self target, so anything that is multi-target is unique and powerful in its own right) that can introduce the player to the mechanics of "burn" and the fact that it stacks as well... while also doing roughly 1/4 the health of most of the characters (provided the player hasn't been playing stupidly and has been healing up as they've gone along... as well as has been obtaining equipment and stats so they're not too under powered).

While I don't want to script these things, I want them to ideally happen at the very beginning of combat so that the player has tried something, they've learned something, and they proceed forward with this new information. Maybe even the very act of them being triggered at the beginning of combat when their most obvious weaknesses are known leads me to even subvert it at some point and make the "less obvious weakness" the one that triggers "Revenge" instead.

The trick is simply designing the combat that comes before them into teaching the player about the Elemental Weaknesses in the area (or enemy types, as the case may be) as well as ensuring that the "Revenge" skill does not kill the party outright. It was initially designed to punish players very harshly, but a few playtests made that apparent that players didn't find it "fair" most of the time. I had a few simply "restart" the battles and not use the "wrong skills" on their second attempt to avoid the punishment (I don't mind that players may want to do this, no matter how well I design a boss mechanic, there are going to be players who restart in order to more efficiently take on that boss and not struggle. The issue is in players having the strong desire to restart out of feeling cheated or punished instead of out of a need to simply want to be more combat effective). I've since been trying to develop the mechanic so that it does punish, but it also teaches. The punishment is a "slap on the wrist" in most instances. An annoyance to deal with that doesn't end combat or make combat difficult to win.

At later stages, I had planned on ramping up the "Revenge" mechanic into using a single skill attack that kills one character outright (which would force a player to use a healing item), but I'm hoping by that point, the player is more well prepared and more used to the mechanic occurring so that it doesn't seem "unfair" and seems more like a natural progression.

But, it has been a lot of fun trying to tie this mechanic into the usual "these enemies are weak to X" mechanics that most games teach players. Especially if it isn't just Magical Elements. I'd designed these Knight characters that had very amazing Sword Skills. If you used "Slashing" elements against them, they would drop a buff on themselves simply titled "Finesse". It would raise their critical hit rates for 3 turns and give them 50% more speed. This would change the battle flow, but not necessarily be deadly to the player. The game (NPC's and lore) even tells the player that these knights are skilled Swordsmen, do not try to outclass them in sword play. The player can still kill them outright if their skills/stats are good enough and they use a "Slashing" element... But, if they don't die, the Knights "get serious" and try to lay the hurt back down on players.

I do sort of enjoy that as a side-effect of the mechanic as well: If the player doesn't mind taking the "punishment", they can win the combat with brute force and using a form of "risk vs reward". It's a viable tactic if they want to engage in it. I did have one person do that in my tests. The Spider hit them with both poisons, they decided that they could dedicate one person to healing that, and the other person to continuing to drop "Fire" on the enemy (at this point, they only had two party members). They spent a little more money on "Antidotes" than other players, but it was a viable tactic that in that one particular instance, the player seemed to enjoy using.

 

[Wavelength]

@Tai_MT

I won't go through point-by-point because I'd be dragging the Elements conversation too far from its initial purpose, but it does sound like you have thought this through extensively, and that you have clear sight about what you are attempting to do.

The way you're introducing it (fire has been effective, but now it triggers a relatively moderate multi-poison move) seems smart, so long as the game makes it really clear that the poison move was a reaction to the player's choice of skill, and not just an event (or random skill) that would have happened during this boss battle regardless.

There's one specific point I want to address, though:

At later stages, I had planned on ramping up the "Revenge" mechanic into using a single skill attack that kills one character outright (which would force a player to use a healing item), but I'm hoping by that point, the player is more well prepared and more used to the mechanic occurring so that it doesn't seem "unfair" and seems more like a natural progression.

So by this point the player will be very familiar with the fact that any given enemy might have a Revenge skill up its sleeve, but if I understand everything correctly, the player has no way to know whether a specific enemy will or won't have one, no way to know what the trigger will be, and no way to know what the Revenge skill will do. The only way to find out will be to use your skills against the enemy (and since the Revenge is being triggered by things that would normally be considered solid play, even players who don't want to find out, probably will!), and that's the point where your character is one-shotted by a Revenge skill. If a player is inclined to ever think that their character being one-shotted is 'unfair', then I feel like this mechanic is going to strongly trigger that feeling.

Sure, it would feel even more unfair if the player had never seen anything like this mechanic up to this point in your game, and it's good that you've exposed them to it beforehand. But with no way to know that it's coming in this particular instance, any harsh Revenge skill runs a high risk of feeling unfair anyway.

It's the "unknown unknowns" that are really risky to play with in system design. There are known knowns (certainty), unknown knowns (risk - where you know the chance of a specific thing happening), known unknowns (uncertainty - you know something is going to happen for sure, but not exactly what it is), and unknown unknowns (naivety - you don't know whether something will happen, nor what that something is). That's the territory you're in, and it's what the player is going to feel throughout the entire game whenever they haven't already used a specific skill/element against a specific enemy.

There are definitely ways you could walk it back from 'naivety' to 'uncertainty' by making the system into a consistent, systemic mechanic where the player will reasonably be able to know (the first time) whether they are about to trigger a Revenge move (but not what the move will do), and personally I think that would be a much more satisfying setup. But it also sounds like you are trying to elicit certain 'surprise' dynamics through your combat mechanics, and a mechanic that behaves too consistently probably wouldn't achieve those - so I get where you're coming from. I just hope your design gamble pays off!

 

[Tai_MT]

@Tai_MT

The way you're introducing it (fire has been effective, but now it triggers a relatively moderate multi-poison move) seems smart, so long as the game makes it really clear that the poison move was a reaction to the player's choice of skill, and not just an event (or random skill) that would have happened during this boss battle regardless.

The only reasonable way I thought to telegraph these as "reactions" to what the player had done was to make the act of hitting them with the proper element generate the message "(Enemy) counters (Element)!". In reality, each Skill has a "hidden" state on it that is inflicted 100% of the time, unless they have full Resist to it. Being inflicted with the state simply generates the message that they counter that element, and then as long as the enemy is inflicted with that state, it is instructed to use a single action from its list (priority 1 always, everything else starts at priority 5 or higher). There is no message generated if the enemy isn't inflicted with the invisible state. I thought, however, that this would be a good way to tell the player about the fact that the "Revenge" would be coming for using an elemental weakness against the enemy.

I'm not really sure about implementing the "instant death" Revenge myself, but I am operating under the assumption that the player will be reasonably well informed about the Mechanic before hand (not the death, but the Mechanic itself). Every "Boss" type creature uses the mechanic and it is typically a form of punishment against the player. It starts at mild inconvenience and scales up gradually as the game goes along. My assumption (and yes, I really can only assume at this point as I don't have 30 previous bosses yet designed to reinforce this via gameplay and do a reasonable test on whether or not a player finds it fair) is that at the point they are hit with "Instant Death" it is both at the beginning of combat, so they've only lost the "opening move" of that fight by having to expend a character action to revive the fallen ally and it comes to the player as, "I know every Boss can hit me with this Revenge thing... Which element should I not hit this enemy with?". However, I simply have no way of knowing if this will feel reasonably fair to a player. At late game, would a player feel like a sudden death of a single character is an "inconvenience" instead of at the early game when it's a potential problem? My assumption is at the point of late game, this would be an inconvenience that could then be avoided every turn of combat after discovering it. But, I simply have no way to know how a player would react in the late game to that at this point.

I dunno, maybe another dev will take my idea for an Element System and turn it into something grandiose and amazing. If I can't do it well, I hope someone else can, because I love to see when game mechanics like "Elements" do more in a game than simply extra damage or inflict a state. I like when they add dynamic effects to combat or change the entire flow of it. Makes me have to use my brain. I find that it engages me more as a player if I have to think my way through combat and learn things as I go through it.

 

[Wavelength]

The only reasonable way I thought to telegraph these as "reactions" to what the player had done was to make the act of hitting them with the proper element generate the message "(Enemy) counters (Element)!".

By a telegraph, I meant something that the player can see in advance, before they take the action that triggers the Revenge. For example, all enemies that have a "Revenge" mechanic would have a characteristic glow about them, so that the player knows to tread cautiously. Or even a visual indicator to telegraph what will trigger the Revenge skill (with the emphasis now on the uncertain decision about whether it's worth hitting the weakness, etc., rather than on the surprise of triggering it). Like I said, this kind of telegraph doesn't play into the dynamics you seem to be trying for, so I totally get why you wouldn't want anything beyond the after-the-fact clarity of "Monster counterattacks that skill!". It's just that, in general, I believe players find uncertainty to be more satisfying than naivety.

I'd really like to send you a copy of my game to try out, once I get the next stable build done! Not only would it be extremely useful to see whether someone with a very different approach to game design than mine would still find it fun, but I think you might find the combat interesting in light of many of the topics we've discussed recently, and especially through the lens of battles each bringing their own unexpected twists to the table while never outright subverting player expectations.

At late game, would a player feel like a sudden death of a single character is an "inconvenience" instead of at the early game when it's a potential problem? My assumption is at the point of late game, this would be an inconvenience that could then be avoided every turn of combat after discovering it. But, I simply have no way to know how a player would react in the late game to that at this point.

Really depends on the rest of your combat design - in my games a single character KO is crippling, whereas in some games I've played, it's actually better to let them be KO'ed than to have them under status effects and/or low health. If a single KO is going to cause your player to struggle through the combat, and the player could not have reasonably seen the KO coming, I think that's the recipe for frustration. I believe you've said in the past that revives in your game don't come easy, so be careful with instant KO's as Revenge skills.

 

[Soryuju]

The only reasonable way I thought to telegraph these as "reactions" to what the player had done was to make the act of hitting them with the proper element generate the message "(Enemy) counters (Element)!". In reality, each Skill has a "hidden" state on it that is inflicted 100% of the time, unless they have full Resist to it. Being inflicted with the state simply generates the message that they counter that element, and then as long as the enemy is inflicted with that state, it is instructed to use a single action from its list (priority 1 always, everything else starts at priority 5 or higher). There is no message generated if the enemy isn't inflicted with the invisible state. I thought, however, that this would be a good way to tell the player about the fact that the "Revenge" would be coming for using an elemental weakness against the enemy.

I'm not really sure about implementing the "instant death" Revenge myself, but I am operating under the assumption that the player will be reasonably well informed about the Mechanic before hand (not the death, but the Mechanic itself). Every "Boss" type creature uses the mechanic and it is typically a form of punishment against the player. It starts at mild inconvenience and scales up gradually as the game goes along. My assumption (and yes, I really can only assume at this point as I don't have 30 previous bosses yet designed to reinforce this via gameplay and do a reasonable test on whether or not a player finds it fair) is that at the point they are hit with "Instant Death" it is both at the beginning of combat, so they've only lost the "opening move" of that fight by having to expend a character action to revive the fallen ally and it comes to the player as, "I know every Boss can hit me with this Revenge thing... Which element should I not hit this enemy with?". However, I simply have no way of knowing if this will feel reasonably fair to a player. At late game, would a player feel like a sudden death of a single character is an "inconvenience" instead of at the early game when it's a potential problem? My assumption is at the point of late game, this would be an inconvenience that could then be avoided every turn of combat after discovering it. But, I simply have no way to know how a player would react in the late game to that at this point.

I dunno, maybe another dev will take my idea for an Element System and turn it into something grandiose and amazing. If I can't do it well, I hope someone else can, because I love to see when game mechanics like "Elements" do more in a game than simply extra damage or inflict a state. I like when they add dynamic effects to combat or change the entire flow of it. Makes me have to use my brain. I find that it engages me more as a player if I have to think my way through combat and learn things as I go through it.

I think the issue specifically with the instant kill attack is that after you get hit by it once, there’s really no interesting choice left to be made about whether you keep attacking with that element. You just stop using it, because unless hitting that weakness adds a tremendous amount of extra damage, knowingly walking into KO’s regularly throughout a fight is going to destroy your action economy. At the very least, another character needs to use their turn reviving the KO’d character. Depending on what combat system you’re using, the KO’d character may also miss at least one turn before they’re revived. If you had buffs on that character, they’ll need to be reapplied. And I don’t know if all of your revives restore a character’s HP to full, but if not, you may need to spend more actions to finish getting them healthy again. Unless hitting the weakness will be enough to kill the boss that turn, it will just never be worth it. The Revenge mechanic stops engaging the player at that point, so you might as well just make the boss immune to that element instead of weak to it. I think it’s much better to keep Revenge moves as moderately powerful skills which perhaps add new dimensions to each battle, such as the Poison skill you described above.

Bringing the discussion back to elements in general, I have a question for people here. If you have skills/equipment in your game which confer elemental resistances, do you use individual elemental resists, or global buffs which resist all elements simultaneously?

I’ve been leaning towards global resists which either have short durations or which trigger under specific conditions (e.g. a buff which changes your Guard command to negate all elemental damage that turn). My main issues with individual resists are the skill/equipment/state bloat they can potentially cause (different skills for each resist, Fire/Ice/Thunder Shields, etc.), and the fact that unless you design most of your battles to regularly feature a range of elements, the individual resists are effectively the same as global ones.

I can see a good argument for individual resists in games where party members have specific inherent weaknesses and/or where striking weaknesses is the central combat mechanic, such as Persona. It may also be harder to integrate global resists directly into equipment without disrupting game balance (Fire Shield becomes...Everything Shield?). And if implemented lazily, global resists can cause more static gameplay by letting the player effortlessly shrug off a wide range of enemy skills. That’s why I’ve tried to make them more reactive and conditional in my system.

So what other considerations might factor into designing elemental resistance equipment/abilities, depending on your system? How did you go about it?

 

[Countyoungblood]

what do i do with elements? nothing. elemental weakness/resistance is just busywork that adds little to nothing challenge wise. complicating an already dull concept makes nothing but a more complicated dull concept.

1. fight blind
2. learn weakness
3. use weakness

 

[Tai_MT]

@Wavelength

Fair point. I do implement "ahead of time telegraphing" of the weaknesses of the more baseline enemies, though not at all in combat. I like to do it through NPC dialogue or the players choosing to engage with the Lore. These are simply minor tests of "Is the player paying attention and/or playing the game?". Though, to be completely honest... This relies heavily on my ability to deliver text that would be compelling to a player. So, even with the "best laid plans", this could be a complete disaster. If a player fails in these instances, it is most likely going to be 98% my fault. Which, I honestly don't have a problem with, as it will alert me ahead of time to whether or not sections of the "Revenge" need to be reworked.

The bosses themselves just aren't telegraphed, however. I like my "Surprise!" aspect of the game. I don't know if players will 100% enjoy it as well, but my goal isn't to necessarily provide enjoyment across the board... but to, at the very least, ensure it does not cause frustration in the majority of players.

Hey, if you're advertising a battle system where I may have to actually think and work with mechanics other than "whack until dead" or "exploit the weakness", then I would be more than happy to do a test play for you. I do not, however have recording software (or a camera... or a microphone...) so if you'd like visual feedback, you probably won't get it. I could probably write up something extensive on my experience with it if you like. Just let me know when. I think it might be pretty fun to see how your design choices work. You talk a lot of different mechanics and ideals than I do in terms of game design and while I rarely agree with them, I find it difficult to mount an argument against them. I'd very much like to see how those work out for you and what kind of game they make. It might even help provide insight for me and some new ideas of my own. I look forward to it!

Finally... Yeah, I mentioned that "restoring life" is fairly difficult in my game. I don't recall if I ever elaborated on why. No Dedicated Healer class... There's a single Skill the player has access to that "Restores Life", but it's a "Limit Break" and costs 100 TP to use. Inns will revive dead characters. The only other way to revive the dead is via Consumable. The default price of those Life Restore items is 300 Gold Pieces. This is something players won't have easy access to very early in the game. Especially as most of the beginning monsters drop 1-5 Gold a kill. I do anticipate that by late game, however, these will be more affordable and the player will have more. Still, it's probably a mechanic I should keep in mind when deciding about a monster inflicting instant death upon a player via "Revenge". I may scrap the idea entirely, but for now, I'm planning to find a way to make it work. Things change though. They always do. Test. Test. Test. Retest. Test again. Test some more.

@Soryuju

Another fair point. Is there an interesting choice to be made when you know that the hit is an instant-death hit? Honestly? I really don't know. Could a strategy be built around it? I could probably construct two or three strategies around it... But, I'd only be doing that because I'm the dev of the game and I'm looking for ways that a player could continue to exploit that weakness despite the death attack. Would a player even bother trying to find a way around it? Probably not. Is there a way to incentivize doing so? Probably not. I would have to go into the design of that monster knowing that the "instant death" Revenge is a "Road Block" to the player. The reward for going the route of sacrificing a party member to that Revenge would have to be very high and very useful. "The juice has to be worth the squeeze". I'll keep that in mind going forward.

To answer your question about the revives... The consumables restore to 25% of total HP. The "Limit Break" skill restores to 25% total HP as well, but it confers buffs like "Immune to Death" for X Turns (variable turns depending on how the skill was leveled up) and "Pharmacology up by X%" so that healing that remaining HP is more cost effective. I do have a character who can regularly make himself "Immune to Death" as well, provided he has enough TP to do it. He cannot be swapped out of the party, so using him may always be an option for the player. Would that add in an interesting strategy to combat? I don't know. Might be something to design around though. Maybe designing that particular "Revenge" with the mechanic of "I'm Immune to Death" as a strategy in mind.

As for the question about Equips/Skills. I tend to use both, if that makes any sense. Armors tend to have a "universal" immunity to specific things and weaknesses to specific things. Metal Armors in general have roughly 180% weakness to any magical element (it makes sense lore wise). Chainmail in general has a 30-50% resist to Piercing in general. Things of that nature. The player is able to count on specific resistances and immunities to elements just based on what armor they're equipping. But, there are also the "individual" cases where weapons will do a specific element of damage. Fire Swords and the like. Some armors are "specially enchanted" to confer bonuses and weaknesses to some elements. I tend to keep the "specific" element weaknesses to simply Magic Types (Fire, water, air, earth, etcetera) and don't use the other elements in those cases. The "Universal" types tend to be the other elements. Scale Mail armor tends to simply confer a resist to all physical elements (including Strength and Speed) of 50%. Doesn't matter what its stats are.

I think a "global resist" would work better in a system where you have fewer elements, however. Or, any given character only has access to a few elements at a time. If implemented into a system with a lot of elements, I think it would really hinder the player. They might have issues with all of their chosen skills and equipment suddenly being useless and not knowing which elements are except from the "blanket" resist. I have 6 skills, but which ones are actually magical and which ones are physical? This one does fire damage, but is it magical fire, or a fire that I create myself to use in this skill?" Etcetera. But, if you had only a few elements, the "global resist" might work better. Anything that's "fire" or "ice" or whatever, you would just know you're resistant to, or couldn't hurt, or whatever. Because "magic resist". The more elements you have, the more "guesswork" the player has to involve themselves in when you start having Blanket Resists to a category.

The way I went about the "resists" and the "weaknesses" was simple and naïve and probably silly in the long run. But, it fit with my design philosophy. I didn't want to bog down the player's inventory with stronger and stronger versions of "resist fire" equipment or "does fire damage" weapons. I didn't want the player the run across "these are functionally identical except they resist different elements" and I also didn't want them to run across "These are different because they have different stat numbers, but they resist different elements, so the game is telling me that I should be equipping the best stuff and the resist to this element means these types of enemies are coming up soon". I wanted the elements to add "variety" to combat. This may or may not make any sense in the long run, but I just thought the idea was simple, so I did it.

The idea I had was, "No matter what your party composition, it is possible to defeat every enemy in the game, if you have the right equipment and use the right skills". I didn't want to have to rely on the player being a certain level to have the correct skills, so every character has every skill they will ever learn when you get them. Their skills "level up", but they don't change all that much on a fundamental level (mostly, you're just customizing them to do specific things in combat). I didn't want to have to rely on the player completing certain Quests, finding certain treasure chests, or making certain purchases in shops in order to have the equipment necessary for this to happen either. The elements are more to add a way for the characters to do damage to enemies that they might not necessarily be able to otherwise. With that in mind, I simply gave every enemy a weakness to 2 or 3 Elements, resistance to 2 or 3 elements, and made every other Element "neutral" to them.

To that end... I don't really care how many weaknesses or resists the player has in their arsenal. I don't mind all that much if they find a way to resist every element in the game. I mean, I don't anticipate making a way for them to do so, but a clever player may figure out how to do it. The goal is to give the player options in combat. To ensure that they can win the game regardless of party composition... provided they play clever enough.

The important part of combat for me in doing this wasn't in how to always keep the player at the "edge of death" and make combat as harrowing as possible. I didn't want them agonizing over what to equip for each dungeon. I wanted them to settle on an "archetype" of some kind, or a "strategy" they would like to use in most combat, and work around it... then, have the enemies simply throw wrenches into that strategy. I use element resists/weaknesses to help accomplish that. Enemies are more likely to throw states and weird skills at you than they are to rely on elemental attacks against you. I mean, they still will... and if you're ill prepared, they will hurt you a lot... But, the point of the enemies is to teach you mechanics, to engage your brain in strategy, and to be easy to defeat once the player knows how.

 

[Wavelength]

Bringing the discussion back to elements in general, I have a question for people here. If you have skills/equipment in your game which confer elemental resistances, do you use individual elemental resists, or global buffs which resist all elements simultaneously?

As far as equipment, I have always used general resistances to all elements, if I use any at all. I can see the very uncommon case for adding elemental resists to equipment in very specific game designs, but in my own game designs I always felt like having individual elemental resists on equip would completely defeat the point of having elemental weaknesses in the first place.

As far as skills, for resists I generally use global resists for the same reasons that you stated, whereas for inflicting weaknesses I sometimes do go for specific weaknesses, in order to create synergies between characters of two specific elemental classes.

Then, in one game where there is an entire class based around the manipulation of elements, weaknesses and resistances, I have some pretty crazy skills, such as States which give you resistance to any element after being targeted by that element, Taking on the element of any enemy you target (for your subsequent skills), and Inverting a battler's weaknesses and resistances.

 

[TheoAllen]

Bringing the discussion back to elements in general, I have a question for people here. If you have skills/equipment in your game which confer elemental resistances, do you use individual elemental resists, or global buffs which resist all elements simultaneously?

Equipment in my game is just an accessories that everyone could use. Sometimes it has a specific element resistance, sometimes it has other effect. But I designed my game in mind where having no acc equipped you could still win the game, so it's pretty much optional.

As for skill, it's various. There's one skill that cut all incoming damage regardless the elements. But the skill only last for one turn. There're other two type of shield where one another more effective against energy based damage (heat/cold/arcane) but also give resistance to physical damage (slash/impact/pierce) with less effective. And one another is the flip side of it. Both last longer than the regular cut all incoming damage.

So what other considerations might factor into designing elemental resistance equipment/abilities, depending on your system? How did you go about it?

In my new game I'm working on, it has two rows battle system where the front rows gonna get attacked a lot. i.e, higher TGR rate. So particular member could tank an incoming damage more effective. Members in the back rows are suppose to support the one in the front rows by giving them buffs like (elemental) damage cut since they could not perform a normal attack. They still have attack skill but it will spend their resources. Particular members also resist more to a specific element. So you put them in the front row for particular battle. But it doesn't mean they're immune to it. When they're at low hp, will you consider to put them on the back row to recover/rest while switching to provide support for other characters (every characters has support/offensive skills depending on row position)? or will you force them to go through and take the advantage of their specific element resistance?

 

[Wavelength]

@WavelengthThe bosses themselves just aren't telegraphed, however. I like my "Surprise!" aspect of the game. I don't know if players will 100% enjoy it as well, but my goal isn't to necessarily provide enjoyment across the board... but to, at the very least, ensure it does not cause frustration in the majority of players.

@Tai_MT I'm bringing up a long-inactive thread, but as you've mentioned your "Revenge" system many times in recent discussion, it's stuck around in my mind, and as I was wrestling with the design of my own magic system, which includes contextual triggers for spells, I had an idea that I think might work well for your own system (or provide a springboard for other good ideas). The discussion here around elements as triggers in your system makes this one of the most relevant threads to mention it.

I mentioned before that I felt your enemies' Revenge gimmicks are cool in theory, but that the element of 'Unknown Unknowns' would feel frustrating - even unfair - to the player. Well, here's my new idea: What if you indicate what the triggers are for an enemy's Revenge mechanics beforehand, but you don't indicate what the effect is until the player has already triggered and seen it?

For example, at the beginning of the battle against a boss, you can see icons on the Boss' HP bar (or visit a Status screen or whatever GUI implementation you choose) that indicate what Revenge mechanics it possesses. For example, a boss might have icons to indicate its Revenge mechanics are 'Hit My Elemental Weakness', 'Damage 20% of My HP in One Hit', 'Use 5 Healing Skills on Characters', and 'Inflict Lv 4 Poison on Me'. If the player is paying attention, they know taking these actions will do something. Probably something interesting and kind of bad. Like in your current design, though they won't know what until it happens!

(You could even include some "revenge" mechanics that are favorable to the player! For example, a Grenadier Goblin holding grenades could have a trigger listed as 'Hit Me with Fire Magic', and if hit with fire magic the Goblin will blow up, KOing it instantly and dealing damage to the rest of its troop. And wherever you feel it's really important to blindside the player - which should be extremely rare - you could simply present the Trigger as '???' until it's activated.)

I think this implementation would:

• Properly telegraph to the player what actions can result in Revenge, offering players enough agency to greatly reduce the feeling that they are being unfairly blindsided
• Maintain that sense of surprise for the player that you are aiming for, and even bring on a sense of excitement to see what triggers do
• Force players to improvise and rethink their strategies for each individual battle, based on what Triggers are present - turning your Revenge system into a powerful strategic wrinkle, rather than what I like to call "Designer RNG"

Expanding a bit on that last point, if the player doesn't know what actions will trigger Revenge, their best course of action is just to keep doing "whatever has worked so far" until they run into a Revenge Mechanic; the Revenge will feel completely arbitrary unless the player was thinking exactly the same way you were, and will feel like they were punished for an action that seemed smart. Maybe they will improvise a new strategy from there if they can dig themselves out of the hole. On the other hand, if the player can see from the start that (for example) dealing 20% Max HP in one hit and using Healing Skills are the Revenge triggers, they can devise a battle-long strategy around shielding their characters, reducing the boss' Attack power, and/or using drain attacks. Different triggers would result in entirely different battle plans, and that's enjoyable.

What do you think?

 

[Frogboy]

I'm sure it's probably been mentioned by now but monster types are useful "elements" if you want to make bane weapons (giant bane, dragon bane, undead bane etc) that do more damage to specific types of creatures.

 

[Aesica]

@Wavelength That actually sounds a lot like the evil twin of "missions/objectives" system in (my guilty pleasure) Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. In that game, you'll get bonus rewards for doing certain extra things in battle, such as "Lightning damage 3 times or more to an enemy" or "No white magic" etc. While I'm not a huge fan of the system in FFBE (nothing is more annoying than forgetting to bring anyone with lightning damage when you need to use it) the one you proposed sounds pretty good. It's almost like a sort of soft restriction system. Like sure, you can use lightning damage on the robot because it's weak vs lightning, but doing so will probably make the fight harder overall.

@Frogboy I started doing that with elements initially (use them for ??? Killer/Slayer/Bane weapons, but eventually I just made a plugin (listed in sig) to recreate those effects instead. This way, I can add varying degrees of "killerness" to weapons (or actors, enemies, classes, states, or other non-weapon equips) As in, the Dragon Poker maybe does 125% damage vs Dragon type foes, but the Dragon Slayer can do 250% vs those same foes.

 

[Tai_MT]

@Wavelength

I like the ideas. My problem is that it sort of misses the point of my system. It's probably hard to explain.

With your system, the player has probably about a 50/50 chance of what they trigger doing something "good" (I'd make it probably 65/35 minimum, otherwise, the players will likely perceive the chance of something bad happening as not worth the trouble of doing it), but an equal chance to cause something bad. I don't really feel this is enough "incentive" for a player to deliberately hit the triggers, unless they have no choice but to do so.

You would run into all sorts of issues where the player might say, "it's a boss, and there's a coin toss chance that when I hit the trigger, it puts me even further behind in defeating this boss, or outright killing me if I'm not powerful enough. It could do something good... but do I take the chance it does?" It's sort of the same discussion we've seen based on "missing an attack". In essence, if you hit the trigger, and it does something bad, then it's like you deliberately "missed your attack". I think players might find this more unfair than my current implementation. Or, even worse, choose to ignore the system altogether. It might even turn into an issue where players simply pull up a guide to see whether the triggers are worth hitting or not.

Beyond that, I think it's a good idea that could be used in an interesting way. Especially if it could trigger enemy changes, or dialogue in combat, or other neat features.

I'm not quite sure how to explain the purpose of my system in a very comprehensive way without making a massive wall of text and showing off the links to a few other systems. However, I'll give it a shot.

The Goals of "Revenge".
1. Keep the player from getting complacent in combat and relying heavily on single weaknesses to win every battle (like say, always using Water against Fire enemies).
2. Allow the player to "power through" the reaction of the boss (or enemy) if they have the stats/gear to do so as a Risk Vs. Reward mechanic.
3. Used as a means to deter certain specific strategies for certain combat encounters.
4. Provide a "Surprise!" moment where the player can have a wrinkle dropped on them for a little while, and is then never repeated, as a means to break up the monotony of standard combat and single "gimmicks" that most bosses have.

What "Revenge" is not meant to do.
1. Kill more than a single party member upon execution. It is meant to provide an issue the player must deal with for the next few turns and then never again (because they learned their lesson not to do that).
2. Deter players from exploiting weaknesses. Bosses and enemies tend to have 3 or more weaknesses, with only a single one possibly causing the "Revenge" mechanic to activate (it is almost always on boss monsters). This would leave the player a 33% chance of triggering it if they know the weaknesses, and a 66% chance of just exploiting a different weakness to curb stomp the boss anyway.
3. Result in players restarting the game/combat in order to avoid hitting the weakness, or seeking a guide to keep themselves from hitting it. It is meant to be just onerous enough that a player never does it again, but not intrusive enough that the player feels the need to restart combat or use a guide.
4. Stop players from steamrolling combat, even if they use the element that triggers the "Revenge".

Current Implementation of "Revenge" mechanic.
1. Bosses, and a few select "rare enemies" have the ability to engage in "Revenge" when a player hits a specific weakness. This weakness does 10% more damage than the other two weaknesses, but results in action being taken against the player. Players will never encounter this outside of those fights in order to prevent them having to play "guess the weakness!" games in combat.
2. "Beneficial" versions of Revenge are told to players when they interact with NPC's. I have Wolves that if you inflict "Burn" on them, they use "Escape!" on their next immediate turn. An NPC tells you this so you know to use it. The "Beneficial" versions of the mechanic are always on standard enemies. These are told by NPC's in order to maintain the theme of talking to NPC's and engaging in the story.
3. Not every enemy has usage of the "Revenge" mechanic. Most do not have a beneficial or detrimental version of it attached.
4. Weaknesses to specific types of enemies are taught to the player as they go along. These are weaknesses to "archetypes" rather than specific monsters so that the player will remember them (basically how Pokémon does it. Something like that, except visuals of the enemy and the name are the dead giveaways with less guesswork on their typing). A rabbit is probably weak to Fire, Slashing, and Magic, with a State resist of Stun or Paralyze (due to relying heavily on the Speed element). However, an "Armored Rabbit" is probably weak to Ice (if the armor is natural) or Lightning (if the armor is more metallic in nature), Bashing (to break the armored shell), and Speed (since the rabbit is more likely to be slower if it has armor on), with a state resist of probably Burn or Poison. This is a more complicated version, but early on the player learns that even though Bugs and Plants are both weak to Fire, Plants are also weak to Ice, Bugs are also weak to Earth, and Plants are weak to Slashing while Bugs are weak to Bashing.
5. In the example above of Bugs and Plants, they are both taught in the exact same area (first dungeon). The player may quickly discover that both are weak to Fire and exploit that all dungeon. In the case of the first boss (which is either a Giant Spider, or a Plant), the "Revenge" mechanic ensures the player learned at least one of those other weaknesses outlined above. If their sole reliance is on using "Fire" to kill the enemy, it will cause a lot of pain (both bosses engage in Revenge if hit with anything Fire Element). In this way, the mechanic is used to "gate keep" the player and ensure they have learned something else (or at least will learn it in this boss fight after getting hit with Revenge).
6. A boss hitting the party (or a specific party member) with their Revenge is not designed to kill the party or the player. It is designed to hinder. Granted, there is no easy way to balance this. A player who tries to fight enemies out of depth (they have not good enough equipment or have not completed enough quests to get stats... or spend their stats very poorly) will probably have at least one party member die to such a mechanic. From a dev standpoint, I don't treat this as "I've designed it wrong" or "unfair". I treat it as "an unforeseen death should spur the player to gear up, spend stat points wisely, complete more content, or at least learn a viable strategy in the future". However, this is just me talking, I'm not really a fan of trying to babysit a player and trying to telegraph absolutely everything, all the time, just to prevent some frustration. I try to be as reasonable as possible without spoiling things for the player. Spoiling surprises. Spoiling challenge. Spoiling an opportunity for the player to feel smart, on their own, without me telling them how to be (in essence, I'm trying to model my boss fights and the Revenge mechanic more like the puzzles from Portal 1 and Portal 2 in the way they make players feel for completing them, and less like challenges of power or time). What the bosses react with currently sets most parties back a few turns in combat with requirements to "undo" the mistake. Pop a few potions, maybe a couple status curing items, then back to the fight. The vast majority of the time, they work as a minor to moderate "set back" towards beating the enemy instead of a "wrong answer that could force you to lose every single time". For example: The Giant Spider will use "Maul" on a single target if hit with Fire. "Maul" is an attack that typically deals about a quarter of the Main Character's health, but it also inflicts Poison Level 1 and Poison Level 2 on the character. A single antidote removes both Poison, and a single Potion restores the lost HP. But, it requires two actions to remove the error. The Giant Plant, on the other hand, uses "Tentacle Sweep" against the whole party when hit with Fire. The skill itself does nothing special except Bashing damage, and about 15% of the HP bar for the Main Character in terms of damage. It would require probably two Potions to remove the error, two actions again. Would either of these attacks outright kill the player? Not unless you were already doing very poorly.
7. The system itself subtly teaches the player to try to learn all the archetype weaknesses and to bring a "diversified" party. Having everyone able to hit enemies with Fire is less useful than having skills that cover a dozen possible weaknesses. It also tends to teach players to utilize different equipment across characters. Many of my characters can equip "Slashing" weaponry, but having party members who also use Piercing and Bashing will strengthen the party, so it is worth using other equipment. After about the third or fourth seeing of "Revenge", the player tends to learn that the "obvious weakness" likely won't work on the boss. So, they sometimes use the base monsters to try to discover the other weaknesses. Not every player has done this, and with such a small group of people I draw from (about half a dozen of my closest friends and family), there's no guarantee it works across the board. However, seeing a couple of my players decide to try to figure out the other weaknesses of enemy types (like the bugs), has intrigued me and I've tried to encourage this behavior when I can. As in, enemy types are not as complicated as the "rabbit" example above, but it's easy enough to make at least an educated guess at one of the weaknesses that isn't "obvious". It's a 33% success rate on accomplishing this one specific thing, but it's something I'm working on.
8. The player is given hints early on that "strong monsters will sometimes seek revenge if you exploit their weaknesses. It makes them mad to be hurt so badly, after all.". Basically, a few subtle hints from NPC's to tell the player about the mechanic. It's better than someone just saying, "Bosses have 3 weaknesses, if you hit the wrong one, they'll punish you with an attack they don't launch in any other way. Be careful". Just too much "breaking the fourth wall" for me.

I don't even know if I explained it properly. I'm basically trying to accomplish a lot of things with it, and balance them all out. It will require a lot of actual playtesting and feedback quite a bit later in order for me to "fine tune" it. However, at this stage, I'm sort of more interested in what I can do with it as a dev (the crazy stuff I can get up to, or show off to the player to force them to think in combat) as well as how players would act/react to specific issues that arise in combat. If I can make a player stop playing "on auto-pilot" (basically, knowing exactly what they're going to do every single step of the way, and selecting actions within a second or two) and stop for a moment to think... I feel like I'm doing my job. I feel like I've added a small bit of "engagement" to combat at that point.

That's the ultimate goal of "Revenge". To provide that single moment in combat. The "Wait, what should I do now?" moment. The one where the player has to stop and consider their next option rather than do something "that always works". I want to snap the player out of "reverie". Shake them out of the trance every once in a while. Jolt them.

 

[Tech]

I tie a state to my elements, such as Rending damage decreasing the defense stat of an enemy to represent that it's an attack intended to rip their armor, or HP-poison/Silence and Stun to lightning damage to represent a ligering electrical effect. I also have the Morale element, which represents emotional injury, giving them a context-specific state (such as "Master's Correction" causing Charm or "Taunt" driving them Berserk) and an "MP damage" tag.

 

[somenick]

Added a few elements: Blade, proyectile, beam. Certain enemies are more susceptible to one type than the other. Most living beings are weak against fire. Machine / robots are weak against lightning. Some enemies such as reptiles and jelly are extremely weak against ice.

Also, fire may add status burn, similar to poison. Lightning may inflict an mp drain status. Ice may paralyze enemies for a while.

 

[Wavelength]

@Tai_MT
I understand where you're coming from, but I think you got overly fixated on my sidenote that positive "Revenges" could be added. This was not meant to be a true fixture of the system (I agree if it were 50/50 it would miss the point), but rather an uncommon surprising "feel-good" for intrepid players who make it a point to discover each mechanic of every enemy because they want to - the "Spade" types on Bartle's taxonomy. Importantly, you could completely eliminate the positive Revenges from the design and my suggestion to telegraph the triggers would still be the same.

With that established, I'd like to invite you to look at how my last proposal "KTUE Revenge" (Known Triggers, Unknown Effects) serves or doesn't serve your goals:

@WavelengthThe Goals of "Revenge".
1. Keep the player from getting complacent in combat and relying heavily on single weaknesses to win every battle (like say, always using Water against Fire enemies).

As in your current system, KTUE would allow you to design weaknesses that would be dangerous to exploit against a specific enemy within a larger type. In this regard, they are very similar.

2. Allow the player to "power through" the reaction of the boss (or enemy) if they have the stats/gear to do so as a Risk Vs. Reward mechanic.

The great thing about KTUE is that is actually allows the player to engage in the exciting Risk-Reward dynamic. Risk-Reward falls apart when the player has no idea what actions will bring about Risk. It would be like if both the dealer's cards were face-down in Blackjack, or if you had to wear glasses that blinded you to all of the terrain beyond 5 yards away in Golf. Without some information to inform your decisions, Risk and Reward become meaningless. You start searching for weaknesses blindly and hope nothing bad happens when you first hit one. With KTUE, you know when the Revenge will hit and it's up to you to decide whether the Reward (the action that triggers it) is worth the Risk.

3. Used as a means to deter certain specific strategies for certain combat encounters.

KTUE can do this from the very beginning of combat, instead of the player's strategy always starting out the same (naive to any Revenges that might or might not be present) - and in fact, this is the point of KTUE! Show the player what actions will be extra-risky against this enemy, and encourage them to come up with alternate strategies from the get-go and test them as they fight the enemy.

4. Provide a "Surprise!" moment where the player can have a wrinkle dropped on them for a little while, and is then never repeated, as a means to break up the monotony of standard combat and single "gimmicks" that most bosses have.

This is the one goal that KTUE falls short in (except where you hide a trigger as a "???" condition), but much further down this post I'll explain why I feel "the juice isn't worth the squeeze" for these Surprise! moments.

About your Current Implementation: I clearly understand that you are not springing "Boom! You've been one-shot" traps on your players, and that the Revenges will generally not be completely gamebreaking. I get that it's designed as a heavy wrinkle in battle, not as a black hole, and that's good. The framing is good too, with the natural way you can learn about "beneficial" reactions (#2) and Revenges (#8) by talking to people. I think your philosophies are good, but I don't think your mechanic is lining up with them properly (it might feel like it does from the designer's point of view, where you know all the elements, weaknesses, and Revenges - it won't from the player's point of view; I feel pretty confident in saying that). Among some of the things complicating it are:

3. Not every enemy has usage of the "Revenge" mechanic. Most do not have a beneficial or detrimental version of it attached.

A) The player doesn't know which enemies do and don't use this mechanic. Therefore they will actually need to play every battle the same way (in regards to this mechanic) in the early stages, going against your Goal #3.

4. Weaknesses to specific types of enemies are taught to the player as they go along... visuals of the enemy and the name are the dead giveaways... A rabbit is probably weak to Fire, Slashing, and Magic, with a State resist of Stun or Paralyze (due to relying heavily on the Speed element). However, an "Armored Rabbit" is probably weak to Ice (if the armor is natural) or Lightning (if the armor is more metallic in nature), Bashing (to break the armored shell), and Speed (since the rabbit is more likely to be slower if it has armor on), with a state resist of probably Burn or Poison... Bugs and Plants are both weak to Fire, Plants are also weak to Ice, Bugs are also weak to Earth, and Plants are weak to Slashing while Bugs are weak to Bashing.

B} In no world are these weaknesses "dead obvious". That's why I generally recommend simply telling the player an enemy's elemental weaknesses/resists upfront if you intend them to be intuitive. Because unless you're doing something like color-coding the enemies, it never is intuitive like you think it is. This has more to do with the design of Elemental Systems than with your Revenge system per se, but among the confusing elements in your examples:

• Since they're both rabbits, I would assume at least most of the weaknesses carry over between different versions
• Rabbits, associated with magic in most stories they appear, wouldn't intuitively be weak against a Magic element
• Speedy things should be harder to stop; therefore, while I sort of get where you're coming from, weaknesses to Stun and Paralyze seem at least as counterintuitive as they are intuitive
• One of the last things I'd try against heavy metal armor is Bashing it with blunt damage!
• In the real world, the only thing that will kill more bugs quicker than fire... is frost! Why aren't bugs weak to Ice?
• Speaking of which, most (all?) Bugs have exoskeletons, or in other words, natural armor! Intuitively, the weaknesses and resists should be similar between a Rabbit with Natural Armor, and a Bug with Natural Armor
• Why are bugs weak to Earth? That's their home, that's where they're comfortable! Are birds weak to wind? Are glacials weak to ice?

Really what it creates is a world of try different elements, and try to memorize the weaknesses and also memorize what weaknesses inexplicably lead to Revenge actions. It's guesswork into memorization. That's a "difficulty" of sorts (and admittedly it's better than some RPG mechanics), but it's not a deep or fun one. It's kind of like playing a simple game like Candy Crush but forcing players to keep their score on an abacus, whereas if you hand players a calculator you can make the game more strategically rich because the players can devote their attention to strategy rather than bookkeeping.

5. In the example above of Bugs and Plants, they are both taught in the exact same area (first dungeon). The player may quickly discover that both are weak to Fire and exploit that all dungeon. In the case of the first boss (which is either a Giant Spider, or a Plant), the "Revenge" mechanic ensures the player learned at least one of those other weaknesses outlined above. If their sole reliance is on using "Fire" to kill the enemy, it will cause a lot of pain (both bosses engage in Revenge if hit with anything Fire Element). In this way, the mechanic is used to "gate keep" the player and ensure they have learned something else (or at least will learn it in this boss fight after getting hit with Revenge).

C) In the end, is this a lot different than the boss/enemy simply having an unintuitive "Immunity" to an Element that they should intuitively be Weak against? You surprise them once with something that isn't particularly effective (e.g. the Revenge skill heals the damage done or cleanses the status), or is more harmful to the player than to the enemy (e.g. the Revenge skill does half the character's health and applies two levels of Poison), so the player doesn't use that element again against that enemy. Kind of the same result as if the player hit an unexpected Immunity and then found herself behind the 8-ball for a turn or two as far as battle pace goes. It's a "Weakness" that might as well not be a Weakness at all.

That's the ultimate goal of "Revenge". To provide that single moment in combat. The "Wait, what should I do now?" moment. The one where the player has to stop and consider their next option rather than do something "that always works". I want to snap the player out of "reverie". Shake them out of the trance every once in a while. Jolt them.

In fairness to your current system, I do think you'll accomplish that. You'll get the one-time jolt of surprise (and perhaps disgust), and perhaps an "oh crap!" if the player was already in a poor position when they hit a Revenge while they're already in a poor position. But consider that you'd also get that same dynamic with completely random "screws" in battle! Meteor comes by and deals damage to your party? Jolt! Random enemy falls from the sky and joins the opposing party? Jolt! Your skill randomly backfires or has no effect? Jolt! Enemy just happens to use its random Steam move instead of its normal action pattern? Oh crap! Like your system, these random screws provide a momentary surprise and setback that the player needs to recover from once, and are likely never seen again (during that battle at least). And because the player has absolutely no way to predict that either one are coming, and no agency to prevent it the first time (which you said would likely be the only time it happens anyway), I feel it's fair to say that completely naive Revenge is similar in dynamics to RNG Screws.

However, looking at it in terms of the desirable (wrinkle in strategy, moment of surprise) versus undesirable (arbitrary disadvantages, subversion of intuitive gameplay, mental bookkeeping) dynamics that naive Revenge brings to the table, I think it's hard to say that the juice is worth the squeeze. It's noble to try and prevent the player from falling into a tired strategy that always works against every foe, but arbitrarily telling your player after they've decided on an action that the action doesn't work and/or will harm them more than it helps them seems like a poor way to go about doing that. The player will simply fall back on the second-best reliable tactic and hope that it doesn't also have a Revenge mechanic in place against it. It's only when the player has a way to judge what could reasonably be coming, and makes decisions based on that information and the risk and reward inherent in it, that such a system starts to shine.

It's for all of those reasons that I suggest designing your Revenge system around having some kind of information (such as Known Triggers) that can inform their actions.

 

[Tai_MT]

Just so you're aware... I had a very difficult time reading your post without want to slap "Quote" on it immediately and reply as I read it. So, you'll have to keep that in mind as you go forward reading my replies here. I got through almost the whole thing without wanting to hit reply. Alas, my patience wasn't strong enough. I hope you understand. Some of my replies to what I quote, as a result, will likely be a little bit "knee jerk".

@Tai_MT
I understand where you're coming from, but I think you got overly fixated on my sidenote that positive "Revenges" could be added. This was not meant to be a true fixture of the system (I agree if it were 50/50 it would miss the point), but rather an uncommon surprising "feel-good" for intrepid players who make it a point to discover each mechanic of every enemy because they want to - the "Spade" types on Bartle's taxonomy. Importantly, you could completely eliminate the positive Revenges from the design and my suggestion to telegraph the triggers would still be the same.

The only aspect I chose to comment on, was the one that I had an issue with. I thought the rest was good and worked well. The two issues I had were the aspect of the "positive" Revenge mechanic you mentioned and that your system didn't seem to do what I wanted to do. It does seem to accomplish aspects of it, though it flavors it entirely differently than what I am attempting.

Does that make it better, or worse? I don't know. What I know is that if I implemented it how you had described it, it would lose that feeling that I'm trying to capture. That moment.

With that established, I'd like to invite you to look at how my last proposal "KTUE Revenge" (Known Triggers, Unknown Effects) serves or doesn't serve your goals:

As in your current system, KTUE would allow you to design weaknesses that would be dangerous to exploit against a specific enemy within a larger type. In this regard, they are very similar.

The great thing about KTUE is that is actually allows the player to engage in the exciting Risk-Reward dynamic. Risk-Reward falls apart when the player has no idea what actions will bring about Risk. It would be like if both the dealer's cards were face-down in Blackjack, or if you had to wear glasses that blinded you to all of the terrain beyond 5 yards away in Golf. Without some information to inform your decisions, Risk and Reward become meaningless. You start searching for weaknesses blindly and hope nothing bad happens when you first hit one. With KTUE, you know when the Revenge will hit and it's up to you to decide whether the Reward (the action that triggers it) is worth the Risk.

For me, that's not how it sounds at all. I think of it more in terms of "Fog of War", where your system would be akin to having a "reveal the whole map" cheat enabled and mine would be akin to revealing something on your own, and then using that information to make intelligent decisions afterwards.

You go into combat not knowing which element will cause the "Revenge" mechanic. You can go the entire combat without triggering it, in fact. Without ever discovering what it was. But, if you do trigger "Revenge", it is a key piece of information that allows you to make informed decisions going forward. Was the juice worth the squeeze at that point? Did the reaction not do much damage to your party? Was it something you don't mind dealing with in order to do a lot more damage? Could you plan around the reaction in order to continue to exploit the weakness?

The difference in the way I want to do it and the way you want to do it, is whether or not the player has all the information available immediately. In general... as a player... if you advertise to me, before I ever do it, that an action is a bad idea... I'm just not going to do it. "If you use this element, the enemy will hit you with Revenge". Why would I ever engage in it? You are telling me, specifically, as a player, not to do it. So, I'll avoid it. After all, I don't know how much damage the Revenge mechanic will deal to me. Why would I waste a turn to find out? Why would I risk unnecessary damage to find out? After all, the "Revenge" could be anything. It could be absolutely devastating. It could be a nuke. I have no way to know. Knowing which element drops this surprise on me would simply prevent me from using that element for that fight.

But, if I have no idea which element will cause "Revenge", then it has a chance to strike me once in combat, and then I can make a tactical decision going forward. It makes the combat more engaging as I now have to react to information that was just revealed to me. Rather than setting up my tactics at the beginning of combat and never deviating, I now have a chance that I will need to deviate from my original tactics once the "Revenge" hits.

KTUE can do this from the very beginning of combat, instead of the player's strategy always starting out the same (naive to any Revenges that might or might not be present) - and in fact, this is the point of KTUE! Show the player what actions will be extra-risky against this enemy, and encourage them to come up with alternate strategies from the get-go and test them as they fight the enemy.

I have found that as a video game player... this pretty much never happens. In any strategy game I've played and indeed most RPG's I've played... I tend to just adopt 3 or so strategies for every encounter. Very little deviation from these three. If strategy 1 won't work, I simply move along to the next most effective one. The next most efficient. If I go into combat knowing immediately that Strategy 3 will be the most effective, why would I ever do anything differently? I won't need to test anything. I won't spend any time testing new strategies. After all, the three I came up with at the beginning of the game have served me well since then. Even if I can't do Strategy 1 from the start of combat, I'll do Strategy 3. I've already decided my course of action from Turn 1 and won't bother changing it at all. There's no need to. No need to spend time mucking about with tactics and strategies when I've already got the three most efficient ones before midgame.

But, if I go into combat thinking I'm going to use Strategy 1, then get part way through implementation of it and discover it doesn't work... well, then I need to change what I'm doing. Consider an alterative. Especially if I'd already committed a few actions to Strategy 1 that are exclusive to that strategy. I might have wasted 4 actions and need to spend 2 more to recover from it. Then, decide how best to implement Strategy 2 when I'm down 2 turns already. Do I need all 4 turns to implement the next strategy? Can I use the remaining two in order to begin set up? Which characters do I spend the actions from in order to erase the mistake? I'm off balance for a little bit. I have to spend a few actions to enable myself to get back on balance.

This is the one goal that KTUE falls short in (except where you hide a trigger as a "???" condition), but much further down this post I'll explain why I feel "the juice isn't worth the squeeze" for these Surprise! moments.

For me... the juice is worth the squeeze. I outlined why above. For me, having to make those decisions, is a level of engagement I tend to seek in combat in RPG's. As mentioned before, I usually just adopt up to 3 strategies and steamroll the game with them. If I am thrown off-balance at some point and must consider which strategy will work when the first one doesn't... and then how best to implement that strategy while erasing mistakes or dealing with new wrinkles.. It means I have to engage my brain. I have to consider my next actions a little more carefully than I otherwise would have.

About your Current Implementation: I clearly understand that you are not springing "Boom! You've been one-shot" traps on your players, and that the Revenges will generally not be completely gamebreaking. I get that it's designed as a heavy wrinkle in battle, not as a black hole, and that's good. The framing is good too, with the natural way you can learn about "beneficial" reactions (#2) and Revenges (#8) by talking to people. I think your philosophies are good, but I don't think your mechanic is lining up with them properly (it might feel like it does from the designer's point of view, where you know all the elements, weaknesses, and Revenges - it won't from the player's point of view; I feel pretty confident in saying that). Among some of the things complicating it are:

A) The player doesn't know which enemies do and don't use this mechanic. Therefore they will actually need to play every battle the same way (in regards to this mechanic) in the early stages, going against your Goal #3.

That's sort of the point. Players will learn very quickly that Bosses tend to have this mechanic fairly exclusively. Some tough regular monsters (or the more rare ones), will have it as well. It will be something they do not expect in the field, but will expect at the end of every dungeon or questline. If they've been fighting in an area for a while and only just now encounter a monster, they may expect it has a Revenge feature as well.

But, I think it simply requires proper signposting in order to get the concept across to the player. NPC's tell them the mechanic exists, they see it in action a few times, they begin to expect it. How they deal with it, will be the interesting aspect.

Players, by nature, will use the same winning strategy in every single combat. Unless you tell them it won't work. If you tell them it won't work at the beginning of battle, then they move along to the next most effective strategy. However, if they don't know it won't work until partway through the first turn, or early on, then they have to take a little bit of time to set up the second most effective strategy while also removing the wrinkle suddenly thrust upon them.

I do not think my players will try a new strategy every single combat. I don't know of any way that any dev could ever get any game player to do that. In any game. No matter how they try to get around it. Players will spend time experimenting early on in the game, once they find the most common ways to win combat quickly and easily, they will resort to that tactic, or small set of tactics, for the rest of the game.

I am certainly not the dev to try to find a way to keep players from being as efficient as possible.

Instead, I want to let the players have their "efficiency" to an extent, but also teach them some other efficient things to do in combat... as well as how the enemy can and will counter a common tactic. If you splash water on the Fire Elemental, you will get hot steam on your party. You will not be able to rely on water elemental equipment or water elemental skills. But, maybe you consume a bit of damage first, and need to heal up afterwards. It literally forces players who aren't overpowered to adopt a new tactic to win. As well as adopt it from a newly created position of disadvantage. That disadvantage isn't likely to last more than two turns (8 actions), but it will force the player to use different tactics than their usual. It also will not allow them to quickly swap to a secondary tactic that they know will work, in order to win the fight as effectively as they would have by using the first tactic. Yes, the second tactic will be quite effective and win as easily as the first might have let you. But, you have to spend a few turns to get your second tactic rolling now. This will require you actually engage with combat rather than just go down the list of "effective tactics" in your head. You now have to make a small plan to swap over to the second tactic.

B} In no world are these weaknesses "dead obvious". That's why I generally recommend simply telling the player an enemy's elemental weaknesses/resists upfront if you intend them to be intuitive. Because unless you're doing something like color-coding the enemies, it never is intuitive like you think it is.

This largely depends on implementation. I didn't go into details, because I didn't think it necessary. I simply stated that it works a lot like Pokémon with archetypes, except I make it "dead obvious" what archetypes the enemies fall into.

So, for example:

"Shelled, Armored, Metal, Metallic" in the name generally means it's got the same weaknesses as anything else that some kind of armor on it. Likewise, if the sprite has a giant shield... Yeah, it's armored. Or, the sprite shows plate mail. Or, the sprite is literally made of some kind of armor. The "Armored" weaknesses will work on it.

Basically, just assume that the player is "signposted" on what is effective on which enemies as they move forward. They're usually given the baseline weaknesses of their archetype, with secondary weaknesses being something they can discover on their own (and most likely memorize, if they want to use those secondary weaknesses later).

I don't really see a need to side-track things with a list of my archetypes and why things work on them. But, I'll try to explain in places where you've asked questions.

This has more to do with the design of Elemental Systems than with your Revenge system per se, but among the confusing elements in your examples:

• Since they're both rabbits, I would assume at least most of the weaknesses carry over between different versions

Would you also assume that a Fire Wolf would have some of the same weaknesses as a Water Wolf?

For the sake of argument, let's say that "Rabbit" is an archetype (it isn't). If it were, then yes, they would share some of the same weaknesses. The example was merely meant to highlight that just because they seem similar, does not mean they are. Because, they have important differences in what they are.

A player may "assume" that Rabbits are fast creatures. In the case of the first, they would be right. However, once you saw a Rabbit use "Swift Blows", you know it's a fast creature. It falls into the archetype of "Speed". Likewise, an "Armored Rabbit" wouldn't fall into the archetype of "Speed" simply because it's Armored. It would fall into the Archetype of "Armored". "Slashing" in general, works on any target that doesn't have any sort of armor. This is why it works on Plants, but not on Bugs. It is weak to Fire simply because it is a "Regular" type of enemy (these are usually organic beasts. Wolves, dogs, snakes, rabbits, etcetera. Provided that the beast doesn't have some natural affinity for the Fire Element, or some way to actually resist it. Say, it isn't a Desert Wolf, that is used to heat and isn't afraid of it. Though, admittedly, the NPC's will warn you about this one, as it's an exception to this single element not working on this common creature.).

• Rabbits, associated with magic in most stories they appear, wouldn't intuitively be weak against a Magic element

In general, Speedy enemies are weak to Magic. Unless, of course, they've got some sort of natural armor. There are few exceptions to this rule. If a creature is fast, your best bets are usually just to hit it with a strong regular attack, or hit it with something that is "Magic" element.

But, this follows the established internal logic of my game. I was not trying to point out that by not playing my game, you would know all the weaknesses off hand because they "make sense" completely out of context.

• Speedy things should be harder to stop; therefore, while I sort of get where you're coming from, weaknesses to Stun and Paralyze seem at least as counterintuitive as they are intuitive

With the internal logic, these are two states that will work most of the time against enemies who's primary focus is "Speed". Likewise, "Blind" tends to work primarily on those who are primarily "Strength" enemies. "Sleep" tends to work primarily on those who are "Magic" enemies. It's a list of archetypes again. No need to really get into it.

Just want to let you know that there is internal logic within my game for it, that is taught to the player, so that they can make informed decisions without having to "guess a weakness" most of the time.

• One of the last things I'd try against heavy metal armor is Bashing it with blunt damage!

With the internal logic of my game, "Bashing" damage is primarily used to shatter armor. A sword or spear are more likely to "glance off" of an opponents armor. But, scoring a direct hit that at least dents the armor, guarantees damage nearly every time (this is my own logic, which is essentially told to the player in the game. It's a justification for why there are 3 types of physical damage as well as why a player may way to swap armor rather just hitting 'optimize' all the time.).

• In the real world, the only thing that will kill more bugs quicker than fire... is frost! Why aren't bugs weak to Ice?

Many bugs actually "hibernate" to an extent during winter, in order to survive deep freezes. Granted, a sudden freezing would probably kill them... But, ice elemental magic tends to be one of two kinds: 1. Freezes existing water in an enemy to cause damage. 2. Freezing small and localized areas on contact. Basically, it's just "Lore Consistent".

• Speaking of which, most (all?) Bugs have exoskeletons, or in other words, natural armor! Intuitively, the weaknesses and resists should be similar between a Rabbit with Natural Armor, and a Bug with Natural Armor

Yup, that's why Bashing attacks work on Bugs. It isn't something that's immediately obvious in the context of my game (it tends to be the third element players discover works on bugs, rather than Earth), so I telegraph it in a couple places. A little girl, in fact, tells you "I hate bugs! If you Bash them, they die quickly though! SQUISH!!!" in the first town.

Congrats, you have naturally intuited why my Insects are weak to Bashing attacks. I taught you without you having to play my game.

• Why are bugs weak to Earth? That's their home, that's where they're comfortable! Are birds weak to wind? Are glacials weak to ice?

Lore reasons, mostly. The short version is because of the way Elemental Magic actually works. Put simply, it's basically just pelting people with rocks. Or sand. Or dirt. Bugs may be at home in the earth, but if you've ever dropped a rock on one... Or flung a handful of sand at mosquitos... Yeah, tends to be pretty effective. Basically, "Earth" tends to work on the same principle the "Bashing" element does. But, flinging Earth Magic around can be minerals of all kinds, in many different shapes or sizes.

Plants don't have resistance to Earth magic though. They take normal damage from it. Just in case you were wondering ~_^

Really what it creates is a world of try different elements, and try to memorize the weaknesses and also memorize what weaknesses inexplicably lead to Revenge actions. It's guesswork into memorization. That's a "difficulty" of sorts (and admittedly it's better than some RPG mechanics), but it's not a deep or fun one. It's kind of like playing a simple game like Candy Crush but forcing players to keep their score on an abacus, whereas if you hand players a calculator you can make the game more strategically rich because the players can devote their attention to strategy rather than bookkeeping.

There's no more bookkeeping in my system than if you were to play Pokémon. Granted, everyone who plays that memorizes most of the chart, and most of the monster typings. I actually slim it down quite a lot by giving most creatures a "primary" attribute and two "secondary" ones. The primary attribute is always the easiest to remember and figure out. Is it Plant, Bug, Armored, Magical, Elemental, Regular, Speed, Strength, etcetera? "Not so obvious" issues tend to be covered by NPC's. Like with my "Desert Wolves" who do not run away when inflicted with Burn and who are not weak to Fire.

Essentially, the player is simply asked to remember two things: "Every enemy has 3 weaknesses" and "1 is a weapon weakness, 1 is a type weakness, 1 is an elemental weakness".

What does that look like?

Weapon Weakness
Slashing
Bashing
Piercing

Type Weakness
Strength
Speed
Magic

Elemental Weakness
Fire
Water
Ice
Earth
Air
Lightning
Nature
Life
Death

Even further, they are not required to exploit a weakness anywhere in the game. It is truly only beneficial to do it against bosses or strong enemies. The weaknesses just ensure that a party composition of nearly anything will allow you to win the fight. In fact, all of the weakness types are highly dependent on which characters you bring with you and what equipment you put on them. There may be cases where you can't exploit all three weaknesses, because you do not have diversified weapons across the whole party or you may not have brought anyone who can use an Elemental Weakness. No matter what you do, however, you'll have access to at least one Weakness.

It is very difficult to accidently cheat yourself out of all the weaknesses. It can happen, but it is sort of rare.

Still, there's no need to even exploit a weakness to win fights. Regular damage will win a fight for you, it'll just take a few more turns than normal. There are quite a lot of options here for "neutral" elements here that will inflict normal damage.

By and large, players will basically be inflicting "normal damage" for most of the game, and really only caring about weaknesses as they need them, or discover them.

C) In the end, is this a lot different than the boss/enemy simply having an unintuitive "Immunity" to an Element that they should intuitively be Weak against? You surprise them once with something that isn't particularly effective (e.g. the Revenge skill heals the damage done or cleanses the status), or is more harmful to the player than to the enemy (e.g. the Revenge skill does half the character's health and applies two levels of Poison), so the player doesn't use that element again against that enemy. Kind of the same result as if the player hit an unexpected Immunity and then found herself behind the 8-ball for a turn or two as far as battle pace goes. It's a "Weakness" that might as well not be a Weakness at all.

If that were the only aspect to any combat in RPG's, sure. But, it's not. It's not even the only aspect to combat in my own game. "Maul" is a Piercing attack. It is possible to equip armor that reduces damage from "Piercing" attacks. Say you have this armor equipped without knowing the boss will use a Piercing Revenge against you. Then, you hit it with Fire, so it does "Maul" to you. The damage is practically nothing, but you still get poisoned. Spend a turn curing the Poison, then hit the enemy with Fire again, since their Revenge was so pitiful.

Put simply "Immunity" is not the same, nor will it ever be the same, as an action in combat simply punishing the player for doing something. Immunity prevents a course of action, absolutely and entirely. "Revenge", allows the player to work around it. It allows the player to continue to take the same action and still inflict damage doing it.

Economy of actions is quite powerful.

With Immunity, you can make a boss take 0 damage from the Infinity +1 Sword. With "Revenge", the boss can still take the full damage (or more than full damage!) from the Infinity +1 Sword, but he will react to you hitting him with it and use his Ultimate Attack in kind. Immunity completely nullifies an incorrect action with zero chance to ever use that action. "Revenge" simply punishes an incorrect action, but allows you to continue making that incorrect action if it isn't very punishing.

In fairness to your current system, I do think you'll accomplish that. You'll get the one-time jolt of surprise (and perhaps disgust), and perhaps an "oh crap!" if the player was already in a poor position when they hit a Revenge while they're already in a poor position. But consider that you'd also get that same dynamic with completely random "screws" in battle! Meteor comes by and deals damage to your party? Jolt! Random enemy falls from the sky and joins the opposing party? Jolt! Your skill randomly backfires or has no effect? Jolt! Enemy just happens to use its random Steam move instead of its normal action pattern? Oh crap! Like your system, these random screws provide a momentary surprise and setback that the player needs to recover from once, and are likely never seen again (during that battle at least). And because the player has absolutely no way to predict that either one are coming, and no agency to prevent it the first time (which you said would likely be the only time it happens anyway), I feel it's fair to say that completely naive Revenge is similar in dynamics to RNG Screws.

I understand where you're coming from with this. You like everything to be telegraphed to you. You want to know what's coming before you have to deal with it. I get that. I play a lot of games with a walkthrough or guide for this reason. So I don't miss things, so I can make the best possible choices, and so I have something to fall back on when something isn't explained to me properly.

However, I do not think this way "in the heat of the moment". I get bored with memorizing attack patterns, or memorizing a single course of action for whatever the boss does. There is no skill in this. Very little thinking involved. Just rote memorization. Train your fingers to do things without your brain providing input. I've worked jobs like that. Where my brain is thinking of anything except what I'm doing, because my body and fingers know what to do from so much repetition and memorization. I do not want to do that in a video game. The moment I begin to do so, I privately wonder why the game can't just play itself. Why does it even need me? I'm doing little more than a second job for free.

But, I'll address your point anyway, rather than just my own personal perspective and bias.

There is a world of difference between something the player does to cause themselves inconvenience, and something the dev does to cause inconvenience.

As mentioned before, my mechanic works more like "Fog of War" than "unfair nuke". You may find that exploiting a specific weakness results in the enemy taking a specific action against you. Will you do it again? Probably not unless you can handle it, or it didn't do anything important to you. It's honestly the same concept that's spread across nearly every video game there is. Giving the player experience to do their own learning rather than giving the character experience so that the player doesn't need to learn anything.

Put simply, it is less important to memorize each individual weakness, than it is to simply remember that every boss has "Revenge" if you hit them with the wrong element. It is a mistake the player will likely make just once. Though, who is to say it doesn't have merits to invoke "Revenge" at opportune times? If the enemy is charging up his nuke, you could invoke "Revenge" as a means to cancel his charging, cancel his nuke, and have him use the "Revenge" attack instead. After all, if you trigger Revenge, the enemy is guaranteed to use it the next action they have. It can be used as an interruption. If the boss heals every third turn, what stops you from invoking "Revenge" to get him to skip healing this turn? In essence, "drawing aggro"?

If you advertise which elements will invoke "Revenge", you lose interesting tactics like this. If the player knows that "Revenge" interrupts any action, they will invoke it anytime they want to avoid the enemy using a specific action. The way you want it implemented, gives away the game immediately. It essentially hands the player the win. It nullifies any interesting play you might've come up with from the dev's side of thing. It destroys any possible tactic you could've employed that revolves around "Revenge".

You likely never considered that you could use my system against a boss, had you? It never crossed your mind, I'll wager. You saw it only as "it punishes the player for doing something". That's not your fault. You've likely played as many games as I have. You've been conditioned to think and act and react specific ways by so many RPG's the exact same way. No variation. No surprises. The game must have systems that have X and Y stipulations, or it is problematic and people will probably not like it. Not that there's anything wrong with this line of thinking, since it is absolutely true. But, I think there's more to be said about why those stipulations need to exist and not necessarily that those stipulations, themselves, need to exist.

In designing my "Revenge" system, I'd considered about half a dozen ways a clever player could actually exploit the system to an advantage. "Save Scumming" actually being the 6th thing on the list, and thing I was least concerned about.

I simply do not see the value in holding the player's hand every single step of the way. I do not see the value in preventing the player from learning things by themselves. I do not see the value in curating 100% of the experience the player will have in a game.

For me, these things remove my freedom. These things put me in shackles. They remove my fun. All I need is just enough to allow me to experiment on my own. Enough to figure out, on an intimate level, how things work, without having to get a lengthy explanation, or have the design team spell it out for me.

For reference: I just recently started playing "Elex". I'm playing it Blind. I have no idea what's going on. I don't know what any of the items I pick up are for. I don't know what I'm doing. But, you know what the game told me? "You can go anywhere you want, right from the beginning. Do whatever you want. Here's some baseline Quests and the bare-bones of how to use your menu and a few systems... now go nuts". That's what I've been doing. It's the sort of game I enjoy. The sort of experience I want to craft, to an extent.

Here's how the baseline of the game works. Go nuts. Figure it out as you go along. I'll throw a wrench in here anytime I think you might be getting too comfortable, just to keep you engaged and keep you learning new things.

But, that's just me. I love that jolt. That moment where I'm pulled from my reverie. Where I actually have to pay attention to the game. That moment I stop playing on "automatic".

Why? I don't finish a lot of games. Most of them, I get 10 hours in and quit playing them forever. They aren't engaging enough. I don't have to pay attention to what I'm doing. I learned everything the game was going to throw at me in the first two hours of play and it hasn't iterated on it at all since. It hasn't thrown anything new at me since. It hasn't required I be creative since.

The games I do finish? They either provide a wonderful story (this is really the only reason I play RPG's as they're all dreadfully dull for the above reasons) or keep throwing new things at me until the end of the game, so that I am engaged as close to 100% of the time as possible.

That jolt is important to me. But, it has to be the right kind of jolt. Not the kind of jolt that exists as, "rocks fall, everyone dies". The kind of jolt like, "I need to think about what I'm doing, because a piece of my own strategy isn't going to work as well as I thought anymore".

Trust me, it's a good jolt. When it's used on me, I feel pretty happy.

However, looking at it in terms of the desirable (wrinkle in strategy, moment of surprise) versus undesirable (arbitrary disadvantages, subversion of intuitive gameplay, mental bookkeeping) dynamics that naive Revenge brings to the table, I think it's hard to say that the juice is worth the squeeze. It's noble to try and prevent the player from falling into a tired strategy that always works against every foe, but arbitrarily telling your player after they've decided on an action that the action doesn't work and/or will harm them more than it helps them seems like a poor way to go about doing that. The player will simply fall back on the second-best reliable tactic and hope that it doesn't also have a Revenge mechanic in place against it. It's only when the player has a way to judge what could reasonably be coming, and makes decisions based on that information and the risk and reward inherent in it, that such a system starts to shine.

Except, the action does work. It isn't Immunity. It is the enemy doing something to counter what you have done. Nothing more. Nothing less. Is it also unfair for the player to do something to counter what the enemy has done? What's the difference?

I'm afraid, at this point, I don't understand your concern. You speak as though these things are absolute:
1. Players must always exploit a weakness to win combat. If they don't, they will lose. Thus, they will always be seeking the enemy's weakness in combat.
2. Players must memorize every single weakness of every single enemy in combat in order to secure victory.
3. "Revenge" is so onerous and punishing that players will be 100% angry with the game, turn it off, and not play it.
4. Players must be told about any and everything ahead of time in order to make good decisions. It is a requirement for players to always make the best decisions.

Those things aren't absolute by any means. As primarily a video game player:
1. I win most combat in games without exploiting weaknesses. I do it usually through Brute Force. Mostly, 'cause I don't care about weaknesses. Also, you can win most combat without ever hitting a weakness with ease in most games. Exploiting a weakness is just a means to end combat faster. It is not a reward. I've never once seen it as a reward, even when I was 12 and first getting into RPG's. If I can end combat in 1 turn without exploiting a weakness, why would I take the time to exploit the weakness?
2. This has never been true in any RPG I've ever played. Not even Pokémon. I know a good chunk of their "weakness chart", but I don't have it memorized. Especially not with 800+ monsters to memorize the typings of. It's just not feasible. It's pretty much universally better to use a weakness to the enemy if you have it, but is never a requirement. The only "bookkeeping", I've ever bothered with in the game is to prevent "It's not very effective" or "it doesn't affect X type!" attacks. Which is, currently, a lot less bookkeeping to do. You do not need to use Water against the Fire Elemental to beat it. Feel free to use standard weapon attacks if you like. I promise you, it'll still die. You may have to spend an extra 10 actions to kill it, but who cares? There's a reason the phrase "Tank and Spank" exists.
3. "Revenge" only happens for exploiting a single weakness, and that's it. It isn't that problematic. Players, likewise, aren't likely to get annoyed with something they only have to deal with during boss encounters and a few rare monster encounters. It does not kill you unless you're already doing poorly in the game in some capacity. At which point, it isn't the fault of "Revenge" killing you or hindering your party. It's your poor gameplay. Your lack of preparation. Your lack of strategy. Your lack of skill. Etcetera. It is designed so that it is only punishing to a player who is already not playing well. As in, a player who would struggle, even if the mechanic didn't exist in the first place. It does not hurt players, in the slightest, who cover all the basics of playing any standard RPG: Keep healed up, carry consumables, use buffs, remove debuffs, level properly, buy and equip the proper equipment.
4. I don't believe in telling the player about things ahead of time. It removes much of the skill and strategy involved in games. Vital information a player can't easily figure out on their own should be telegraphed, yes. But, a system like "Revenge", that merely sets you back a few turns in combat isn't really one of those things. It loses more than it gains by telegraphing what elements will trigger revenge on bosses. Basically, it strips all strategy and critical thinking skills out of combat in favor of just allowing the player to decide how they want to win combat at Turn 1, Action 1. It is more valuable and engaging to let the player learn things for themselves, rather than telling them exactly what they need to do.

It's for all of those reasons that I suggest designing your Revenge system around having some kind of information (such as Known Triggers) that can inform their actions.

I simply don't agree. So long as the goals I want to accomplish with it can be met, I'll do it my way. It'll likely require tinkering as I go forward and collect feedback, but as long as players are giving me the reactions I'm seeking... It's doing the job it is designed to do.

I highly doubt players will be as frustrated and universally "turned off" by my system as you imply. Maybe that's my own bias. I don't know. But, here's what I do know:

Nobody has ever tried to do what I'm doing with "Revenge". Not a single dev that I've ever seen. It's completely uncharted territory. The closest thing I've seen to it is a single boss fight in Super Metroid. If you use a Super Missile on the boss "Phantoon", it moves back and forth across the room very quickly and its attacks become super difficult to avoid (but are still doable if you have the skill to do so... or the energy tanks to simply tank the damage). That is the closest I've ever seen to a system that works like my "Revenge" system does.

As such, there's no "proper" way to do it that I've seen. There aren't hundreds of examples of it "done well" to draw from. I don't even know of an example of "done poorly" that I could draw from as an example of how to not do it.

That's the nature of what we're dealing with, here. Uncharted territory.

The differences between the way we would each implement it come down to how we perceive the player. Personal design philosophies.

You want to treat the player as if they need to have their hand held at every moment, and something that can happen 'randomly' is 'unfair.

I want to treat the player as if they don't need very much, if any, hand holding, and as long as something randomly happening doesn't get them killed... it's not unfair and not a big deal.

The answer, very likely, is somewhere between those two extremes. This is why I've taken to "signposting" certain things. To provide enough middle ground to get the players on board for games designed with my own personal bias of, "figure it out yourself. Attain mastery yourself.".

To that end, the player is given sufficient information to make intelligent decisions. They just aren't given enough information to make zero mistakes. They're given just enough information that they can learn the rest on their own. Enough information that a few mistakes are guaranteed to happen every so often. The mistakes are also designed to be insignificant enough to cause as few frustrations as possible. Very little memorization necessary. Information need only be retained for the current fight.

We simply seek to design games differently, in this instance.

I see nothing wrong with your system. I think it would work well in a game I could make, provided I tweaked it enough to remove the problems I see with it. I just do not think it would ever adequately replace my own system. It simply does not do the things I want it to do. It acts contrary to everything I am trying to do.

That's all.

 

[Wavelength]

@Tai_MT
First and foremost, I think I understand now how important to you the element of Surprise, and of having your player recognize that kind of "Gotcha!" moment that shakes them from what had been an easy pattern, is to you. I'd underestimated that in your design goals, and it seems like it's at least as important to you as the strategic variation and risk/reward mechanics that you believe your system will bring.

So with a very high importance on the "Gotcha!" moment in your game, it's unfair of me to argue that my ideas on how to get those other dynamics across better would trump your priorities as the designer. I can see how my suggestion could miss the dynamic you're going for, and how your original Revenge plans could fulfill it better. I pushed a little too hard in trying to get you to see my perspective; sorry about that.

The only thing I can ask as an outside guy who hasn't done an iota of work to develop your game, is that as you test this self-admitted "experiment" of a Revenge dynamic, that you keep a close eye and an open mind toward your beta testers. At the end of the day, everything you do, and everything you require of your players, is so that they will have a good time, right? If you get a lot of input that players aren't appreciating your Revenge system, and any tweaks you make don't completely solve the problem, consider giving some more information to the player - not just in bits and pieces like the NPC "tells", but in a systemic sense.

The difference in the way I want to do it and the way you want to do it, is whether or not the player has all the information available immediately. In general... as a player... if you advertise to me, before I ever do it, that an action is a bad idea... I'm just not going to do it. "If you use this element, the enemy will hit you with Revenge". Why would I ever engage in it? You are telling me, specifically, as a player, not to do it. So, I'll avoid it. After all, I don't know how much damage the Revenge mechanic will deal to me. Why would I waste a turn to find out? Why would I risk unnecessary damage to find out? After all, the "Revenge" could be anything. It could be absolutely devastating. It could be a nuke. I have no way to know. Knowing which element drops this surprise on me would simply prevent me from using that element for that fight.

But, if I have no idea which element will cause "Revenge", then it has a chance to strike me once in combat, and then I can make a tactical decision going forward. It makes the combat more engaging as I now have to react to information that was just revealed to me. Rather than setting up my tactics at the beginning of combat and never deviating, I now have a chance that I will need to deviate from my original tactics once the "Revenge" hits.

Hesitant to even clarify my idea per the above, but real quickly: what I envision with a KTUE setup is that the Revenges would generally be powerful enough to make hitting the weakness or taking the action "not worth it overall", but not so powerful that a smart player would always avoid them. Rather, a trigger such as "Heal your party 3 times" might trigger a Revenge that silences the party or a normal-strength attack that also makes it impossible to Heal further for a while. If you decide that you need to heal right now, or if you haven't used any heals yet, it's worth incurring the Revenge at 3. A trigger like "Hit my Fire Weakness" might bring on the Steam attack, but if the whole party is hale and hearty, the player might decide it's worth it to risk the Revenge right now to get the DPS out, whereas they'll make a different decision if a few members are lower in health. I personally think these are interesting, situational decisions that will only go through the player's head if they know what the trigger is.

I'm afraid, at this point, I don't understand your concern. You speak as though these things are absolute:
1. Players must always exploit a weakness to win combat. If they don't, they will lose. Thus, they will always be seeking the enemy's weakness in combat.
2. Players must memorize every single weakness of every single enemy in combat in order to secure victory.
3. "Revenge" is so onerous and punishing that players will be 100% angry with the game, turn it off, and not play it.
4. Players must be told about any and everything ahead of time in order to make good decisions. It is a requirement for players to always make the best decisions.

This is so unfair of you, Tai - all of those things are just completely false constructions (1, 4), or gross exaggerations (2, 3), of what I suggested.

You and I both know that I never said any of those things, and that I carefully weighed the benefits and drawbacks to the surprise elements of your Revenge system. To infer that I spouted those ridiculous absolutes is unfair, and I don't feel the need to spend time arguing them.

You mentioned several times that I feel like players need to "have their hand held", and I've seen you level that same argument against several other devs in other threads. I just want to be very clear about my own philosophy so you don't make this mistake about me again - I do not believe in holding the player's hand the whole way. I believe in creating games that can be Played. I believe in games that remain interesting even after the player knows all the rules. These are the games that hold up over time - chess, poker, 7 Wonders, Civilization, gridiron football - would Chess be more fun if you didn't know what moves each piece could make? Would football be more fun if you didn't know all of the rules going in, and they were sprung upon you as you played and received 15-yard penalties? I think they'd be less fun. The fun is in playing the game, in developing skills and in reacting to your opponent's move with full knowledge of what they are allowed to do. Those are the types of games I like to develop.

Would you also assume that a Fire Wolf would have some of the same weaknesses as a Water Wolf?

Absolutely yes. They'd probably have a couple of different elemental weaknesses, but I'd expect the State Weaknesses to be the same, and I'd expect their general patterns to be the same. Otherwise, why have a Fire Wolf and Water Wolf instead of a Fire Wolf and a Water Llama?

For the sake of argument, let's say that "Rabbit" is an archetype (it isn't). If it were, then yes, they would share some of the same weaknesses. The example was merely meant to highlight that just because they seem similar, does not mean they are. Because, they have important differences in what they are.

...Likewise, an "Armored Rabbit" wouldn't fall into the archetype of "Speed" simply because it's Armored. It would fall into the Archetype of "Armored". "Slashing" in general, works on any target that doesn't have any sort of armor.

The Archetypes sound smart. Do you tell the player what Archetype a creature belongs to? If not, I might have a hard time figuring out, for example, what Archetype a Fighter Jet belongs to - Speed, or Armored? Both would be in my 10-word description of a Fighter Jet, so both would make equal sense (not to mention if "Mechanical" is another Archetype I'd have to compare to them).

Many bugs actually "hibernate" to an extent during winter, in order to survive deep freezes. Granted, a sudden freezing would probably kill them... But, ice elemental magic tends to be one of two kinds: 1. Freezes existing water in an enemy to cause damage. 2. Freezing small and localized areas on contact. Basically, it's just "Lore Consistent".

...The short version is because of the way Elemental Magic actually works. Put simply, it's basically just pelting people with rocks. Or sand. Or dirt. Bugs may be at home in the earth, but if you've ever dropped a rock on one... Or flung a handful of sand at mosquitos... Yeah, tends to be pretty effective.

Surely you don't expect players to be able to think exactly (or even mostly) like you about what enemies would be most affected by "localized areas of the body being frozen" and stuff like that!

Yup, that's why Bashing attacks work on Bugs. It isn't something that's immediately obvious in the context of my game (it tends to be the third element players discover works on bugs, rather than Earth), so I telegraph it in a couple places. A little girl, in fact, tells you "I hate bugs! If you Bash them, they die quickly though! SQUISH!!!" in the first town.

Congrats, you have naturally intuited why my Insects are weak to Bashing attacks. I taught you without you having to play my game.

I have to eat my humble pie on this one. I just straight-up goofed saying it didn't make sense for Bashing to work on bugs if it does work on Armored enemies. And like you said, I sort of naturally picked up on why Bashing should work in the context of your existing mechanics, without even touching the game - so that's definitely a point in your favor illustrating that the system is learnable.

Though, who is to say it doesn't have merits to invoke "Revenge" at opportune times? If the enemy is charging up his nuke, you could invoke "Revenge" as a means to cancel his charging, cancel his nuke, and have him use the "Revenge" attack instead. After all, if you trigger Revenge, the enemy is guaranteed to use it the next action they have. It can be used as an interruption. If the boss heals every third turn, what stops you from invoking "Revenge" to get him to skip healing this turn? In essence, "drawing aggro"?

That sounds very cool!!

If you advertise which elements will invoke "Revenge", you lose interesting tactics like this. If the player knows that "Revenge" interrupts any action, they will invoke it anytime they want to avoid the enemy using a specific action. The way you want it implemented, gives away the game immediately. It essentially hands the player the win. It nullifies any interesting play you might've come up with from the dev's side of thing. It destroys any possible tactic you could've employed that revolves around "Revenge".

On the contrary, since you don't initially know what the Revenge is for any given trigger, the above dynamic would work equally well in your system and in mine.

 

[BinaryCube]

In my case, I use elements no as only elements but as many skill properties: Reach, Element, Attribute, Special Attribute and Type.

Reach can be Contact or Range.
Attribute can be Cutting, Impact and Piercing.
Elements we have Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Lightning, Ice, Nature, Metal, Light and Darkness.
Special Attribute can be Sacred, Unholy, Explosive, Corrosive.
Type can be Physical, Magic, Spiritual and Psychic.

Every skill has at least Reach and Type. I make everything with elements and the Yanfly's plugin Element Core. This because I felt limited for only Physical or Magical skills (Well, there is also Certain Hit skills but I'm still short).

With this I can have plant enemies weak to Cutting attacks and not every physical attack, or armored enemies weak to piercing skills that breaks their defenses but strong to cutting or impact properties. Or a psychic attack that consist in a psyonic blade, is not physical but still can cut thru enemies. Or magic attacks that requires to touch directly an opponent and not just cast an spell from the distance, like a draining touch skill. There is many possibilities with this newfound freedom.