nacho_chicken
Member
I've shared similar thoughts in various topics here, but I thought I'd create a singular topic to share some of the thoughts (i.e hot takes) I have on most RPGs' skillsets and how they can be improved, as well as foster conversation about it and create a repository of ideas for anyone wanting to add some spice into their RPG project. The terminology I'll be using draws primarily from the Final Fantasy series, since just about everyone creating an RPG is familiar with it. For simplicity's sake I will be referring to everything as a "skill," even though most of these encompass what is traditionally magic.
- Make status ailments useful
Have you ever tried to use Poison? Probably two or three times and then never tried again because you realized: it never works. Neither does Sleep, Silence, Hold, Break, Death, etc. If you've played a Final Fantasy game past 3 (NES), this is the standard, and it absolutely destroys skill diversity. Why? Is it because a status effect is too powerful? I generally don't have a problem with bosses unilaterally resisting instant-win button ailments like Petrifaction or Death, but why something relatively weak like Poison or Silence? Why are ailments also ineffective against trash mobs? If you relegate the usefulness of ailments to gimmick or niche situations, they become unviable and a waste of resources. The check for powerful instant-win ailments shouldn't be RNG, it should be smarter enemy formation design. Create situations where you can instantly delete one group of enemies with a strategically placed Death. Have an all-enemy instant death skill? Have enemies that are weak to and completely resist the ailment in the same formation. Now the player must choose between a 100% chance of destroying one group with Death and leaving the other untouched, or blasting both with an AoE damage skill.
- Make buffs and debuffs useful even in random encounters
In most Final Fantasy games, there is little point in using buff/debuff skills in random encounters. Enemies are so squishy that your fighters can 1- to 2-hit kill everything, and mages can nuke everything on screen in the same timeframe for an equivalent amount of MP. The solution is simple: make de/buffs stronger and make enemies survive longer. The effects of the former should be immediately obvious, but the latter less so. The comparison can be simplified: Is it worth it to use a turn to buff instead of directly do damage? If an enemy takes 1-2 unbuffed phys hits to die and 1 hit buffed? Not worth wasting a turn on buffing. 4-6 unbuffed/2-3 buffed to die? Now it's useful. If you're worried about players getting tired of battles, first decrease the encounter rate instead of dumbing down encounters. Quality > Quantity every time. If you don't have any random enemies tanky enough to take a few turns worth of hits, buffs and support skills in general are going to only be viable against bosses. Considering boss fights only make up only maybe 20 of the 500+ fights the player will have over the game, limiting their usefulness isn't wise.
- Don't wreck your MP economy*
If you have to take away just one point from this post, make it this one. Grab your Ethers, your Elixirs, and your Megalixirs and throw them in the garbage. Toss them as quickly and as hard as you can. Yeet them if you must. Completely rethink how you're handling MP. A huge part of RPGs is managing your resources. Mages are typically able to do more damage and be more versatile than a fighter, but are kept in check by having a finite number of actions. Giving players access to powerful MP restoration items turns finite actions infinite. Combat becomes "how do I end this battle as quickly as possible," instead of "how do I end this battle as efficiently as possible?" Obtaining the answer to the former is simple: Spam your biggest nukes. The answer to the latter can take multiple playthroughs to properly suss out. Tanking the MP economy of your game also neuters dungeons. Dungeons as a gameplay mechanic can be simplified as a string of encounters with little-to-no safe areas (e.g. Inn). If you can just buy or grind Ethers, you can effectively create a safe area anywhere you'd like, including the middle of a dungeon. Limiting the maximum amount of MP restored by items and limiting the amount of MP-restoring items obtained throughout the game are effective ways of curtailing this. Keeping preservation of MP as a priority may also create interesting interplay between direct-damage skills—do you want to do more damage faster or do less damage more often?
*EDIT: This was said below and I agree with it that a broken MP economy is a symptom of a larger issue.
Once you pick up Fire 4, what reason do you have to use Fire 1? The damage disparity is so large that it's almost exclusively a waste of a turn—unless there's some kind of trade-off. What if Fire 4's potency dropped by 33% for every consecutive use, but reset if some other skill was used? What if Fire 1 boosted the potency of the next Fire skill by 125%? Even at this simple it's more interesting than Fire 4 being "Fire 1 but bigger." But why not throw a wrench into things? Make Fire 2 apply an Oil debuff that increases Fire damage taken by 50%. Make Fire 3 do damage over time instead of all at once. Add a skill that makes the next X single-target damage skills do AoE damage instead. What is the most efficient order of skills to deal damage as fast as possible? What is the most MP-efficient way of dealing with random encounters? What is most efficient when some of the enemies you're fighting are weak to Fire, but some absorb it? These are now things your player will be unconsciously thinking during random battles, instead of just "haha Ultima go brrrrrrr"
*As a side-point, please, PLEASE do not cap damage to an amount that can be easily reached. Or just in general. Damage caps in older RPGs arose from technical limitations, but some games capping at 9999 damage hurt elemental damage severely. No point in using Fire 3 over Ultima when they both did 9999 damage on a fire-weak opponent, but Ultima can't be resisted or reflected.
- Diversify healing
This one isn't really a problem per se, but it's something I'd like to see a lot more of in the future. Having healing be relegated to "Restores X amount of health" is so boring that most RPGs resort to giving healer jobs access to powerful support abilities. That's fine, but healing itself doesn't have to be so simple. What of adding healing-over-time skills? Some Final Fantasy games have this in the form of Regen, but it's typically so weak and single-target that it isn't worth using. Having HoT be more powerful than a direct heal, but over a period of time creates a niche use. What of adding proactive heals? Maybe a skill that does a big heal but only after the target drops below 50% health. Maybe a shield that absorbs damage. Or a combination! Tying an otherwise weak heal to a side effect that creates a barrier that absorbs 150% of damage healed starts an interesting dynamic. Create a shield before a big hit but waste the direct heal? The possibilities are vast.
Those are a few of the big issues that bug me with a lot of RPGs and how I feel they can be improved through a few easy steps. Do any of you have any interesting ideas for creating balance/diversity in skill systems? Keep in mind that this topic is more about improving existing gameplay systems; not creating new systems.
- Make status ailments useful
Have you ever tried to use Poison? Probably two or three times and then never tried again because you realized: it never works. Neither does Sleep, Silence, Hold, Break, Death, etc. If you've played a Final Fantasy game past 3 (NES), this is the standard, and it absolutely destroys skill diversity. Why? Is it because a status effect is too powerful? I generally don't have a problem with bosses unilaterally resisting instant-win button ailments like Petrifaction or Death, but why something relatively weak like Poison or Silence? Why are ailments also ineffective against trash mobs? If you relegate the usefulness of ailments to gimmick or niche situations, they become unviable and a waste of resources. The check for powerful instant-win ailments shouldn't be RNG, it should be smarter enemy formation design. Create situations where you can instantly delete one group of enemies with a strategically placed Death. Have an all-enemy instant death skill? Have enemies that are weak to and completely resist the ailment in the same formation. Now the player must choose between a 100% chance of destroying one group with Death and leaving the other untouched, or blasting both with an AoE damage skill.
- Make buffs and debuffs useful even in random encounters
In most Final Fantasy games, there is little point in using buff/debuff skills in random encounters. Enemies are so squishy that your fighters can 1- to 2-hit kill everything, and mages can nuke everything on screen in the same timeframe for an equivalent amount of MP. The solution is simple: make de/buffs stronger and make enemies survive longer. The effects of the former should be immediately obvious, but the latter less so. The comparison can be simplified: Is it worth it to use a turn to buff instead of directly do damage? If an enemy takes 1-2 unbuffed phys hits to die and 1 hit buffed? Not worth wasting a turn on buffing. 4-6 unbuffed/2-3 buffed to die? Now it's useful. If you're worried about players getting tired of battles, first decrease the encounter rate instead of dumbing down encounters. Quality > Quantity every time. If you don't have any random enemies tanky enough to take a few turns worth of hits, buffs and support skills in general are going to only be viable against bosses. Considering boss fights only make up only maybe 20 of the 500+ fights the player will have over the game, limiting their usefulness isn't wise.
- Don't wreck your MP economy*
If you have to take away just one point from this post, make it this one. Grab your Ethers, your Elixirs, and your Megalixirs and throw them in the garbage. Toss them as quickly and as hard as you can. Yeet them if you must. Completely rethink how you're handling MP. A huge part of RPGs is managing your resources. Mages are typically able to do more damage and be more versatile than a fighter, but are kept in check by having a finite number of actions. Giving players access to powerful MP restoration items turns finite actions infinite. Combat becomes "how do I end this battle as quickly as possible," instead of "how do I end this battle as efficiently as possible?" Obtaining the answer to the former is simple: Spam your biggest nukes. The answer to the latter can take multiple playthroughs to properly suss out. Tanking the MP economy of your game also neuters dungeons. Dungeons as a gameplay mechanic can be simplified as a string of encounters with little-to-no safe areas (e.g. Inn). If you can just buy or grind Ethers, you can effectively create a safe area anywhere you'd like, including the middle of a dungeon. Limiting the maximum amount of MP restored by items and limiting the amount of MP-restoring items obtained throughout the game are effective ways of curtailing this. Keeping preservation of MP as a priority may also create interesting interplay between direct-damage skills—do you want to do more damage faster or do less damage more often?
*EDIT: This was said below and I agree with it that a broken MP economy is a symptom of a larger issue.
- Add side-effects and trade-offs to damaging skillsI think the underlying problem is for inventory economy as a whole, if a game lets you carry an entire pharmacy's worth of potions, the only thing that can threaten you is something that can deal damage faster than you can heal it off.
Once you pick up Fire 4, what reason do you have to use Fire 1? The damage disparity is so large that it's almost exclusively a waste of a turn—unless there's some kind of trade-off. What if Fire 4's potency dropped by 33% for every consecutive use, but reset if some other skill was used? What if Fire 1 boosted the potency of the next Fire skill by 125%? Even at this simple it's more interesting than Fire 4 being "Fire 1 but bigger." But why not throw a wrench into things? Make Fire 2 apply an Oil debuff that increases Fire damage taken by 50%. Make Fire 3 do damage over time instead of all at once. Add a skill that makes the next X single-target damage skills do AoE damage instead. What is the most efficient order of skills to deal damage as fast as possible? What is the most MP-efficient way of dealing with random encounters? What is most efficient when some of the enemies you're fighting are weak to Fire, but some absorb it? These are now things your player will be unconsciously thinking during random battles, instead of just "haha Ultima go brrrrrrr"
*As a side-point, please, PLEASE do not cap damage to an amount that can be easily reached. Or just in general. Damage caps in older RPGs arose from technical limitations, but some games capping at 9999 damage hurt elemental damage severely. No point in using Fire 3 over Ultima when they both did 9999 damage on a fire-weak opponent, but Ultima can't be resisted or reflected.
- Diversify healing
This one isn't really a problem per se, but it's something I'd like to see a lot more of in the future. Having healing be relegated to "Restores X amount of health" is so boring that most RPGs resort to giving healer jobs access to powerful support abilities. That's fine, but healing itself doesn't have to be so simple. What of adding healing-over-time skills? Some Final Fantasy games have this in the form of Regen, but it's typically so weak and single-target that it isn't worth using. Having HoT be more powerful than a direct heal, but over a period of time creates a niche use. What of adding proactive heals? Maybe a skill that does a big heal but only after the target drops below 50% health. Maybe a shield that absorbs damage. Or a combination! Tying an otherwise weak heal to a side effect that creates a barrier that absorbs 150% of damage healed starts an interesting dynamic. Create a shield before a big hit but waste the direct heal? The possibilities are vast.
Those are a few of the big issues that bug me with a lot of RPGs and how I feel they can be improved through a few easy steps. Do any of you have any interesting ideas for creating balance/diversity in skill systems? Keep in mind that this topic is more about improving existing gameplay systems; not creating new systems.
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