So who actually has projects in dev?

[Froofy-D]

Originally Posted by Millie

I'm actually thinking about less of a point/tree system, and more of a spell-allocating system. Almost like Final Fantasy 1's system, but with a broader selection of spells (and obviously, mana-based casting as opposed to FF1's style of spells-per-day). Under such a system, Fire X+2 is better than Fire X+1, which is unquestionably better than Fire X, and so on. The idea is to have no "wrong" choices, and hence, no crappy stuff.

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Might be cool to have an "skill allocation system" rather than just limiting it to spells. Players could literally make their own classes that way (i.e. choose specific spells, armor proficiencies, weapons proficiencies, and misc. skills like tracking, pick lock, disarm, etc.). It would be sort of like the Morrowind/Oblivion system but even better.

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Cloud9_

That would tie into enemies and their weaknesses as well.. too often you find enemies be weak against X type of spell but not Y spell, so everyone goes for X spell... and the problem stems from the fact that all the enemies that ARE vulnerable to Y spell, no one goes after because there is no compelling reason to.

If you're designing a linear style RPG, obviously which set of spells you go after would make point A in your game harder, but point B easier... would be interesting to see the results though. That would require a lot of playtesting to get the balance right.

It would definitely require a lot of forethought. I'm a big fan of linear, FF4-style RPGs. So the idea would be to have certain dungeons where the monsters are strong in fire and weak vs. water, some where the monsters are earth-based and weak against fire, etc. As long as every elemental spell has its day in the sun, and on the balance, none are more useful or less useful than the others, I think it works out pretty well.

[Zuuljin]

Originally Posted by Cloud9_

That would tie into enemies and their weaknesses as well.. too often you find enemies be weak against X type of spell but not Y spell, so everyone goes for X spell... and the problem stems from the fact that all the enemies that ARE vulnerable to Y spell, no one goes after because there is no compelling reason to.

If you're designing a linear style RPG, obviously which set of spells you go after would make point A in your game harder, but point B easier... would be interesting to see the results though. That would require a lot of playtesting to get the balance right.

In the end though its a wash. So dungeon A is hard, B is easy, and C is medium if you go with fire, but if you go with water, A is easy, B is hard, and C is still medium. At then end of the day it didnt really matter, you just chose which section you wanted to be harder than another.

IMO the skills need to be tied to different types of playstyles or effects, such as fire spells are mainly single target, water spells are AOE, wind spells are fast casting, and earth spells cause status effects. Noone really has a huge advantage, its how you combine all 4 sets that matters.


As a kind of aside, balance in games is one hell of a headache. I've done a few simple games myself, and while the programming is done fairly fast, the vast majority of my time is spent balancing. For instance I made myself one of those TD games. In my head I had a great idea for all the towers and how they would balance, but when I finally got to implimenting them, it was a HUGE pita trying to balance them against each other, and I just gave up lol.

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Zuuljin

As a kind of aside, balance in games is one hell of a headache. I've done a few simple games myself, and while the programming is done fairly fast, the vast majority of my time is spent balancing. For instance I made myself one of those TD games. In my head I had a great idea for all the towers and how they would balance, but when I finally got to implimenting them, it was a HUGE pita trying to balance them against each other, and I just gave up lol.

I think the key to balance is to do a lot of planning in advance. And not just "Hmmm, I'll sprinkle some of this here and some of that there" on-the-fly planning, but planning with spreadsheets and min/max values and all of that jazz. It's a huge PITA, but it saves a lot of headaches and unintentional screwups in the long run. Start with your least powerful monster and then your most powerful boss, and try to work your way through a logical progression between those two extremes. All of your monsters should look like rows full of numbers in an Excel document before they should look like graphics. And design your enemies before you design your heroes, not vice versa. Doing heroes and their abilities first is asking for a lot of balancing issues in the long run.

[Chrisb3]

Dungeons and Dragons' Wizard Class sounds a bit like this. Each spell level has X spells you can learn, but there are Y amount of spells. Y>X so you can never know them all.
However you can increase the amount of spells per level in D&D unlike final fantasy, could be a nice choice for the gameplay to have some way to get a few more spells.
Unlike D&D you'd want spells to be reusable right away to avoid going to sleep after each fight, manabars always seem to work fine for that.

The balance could be like pokemon, which is what i'm getting from Zul'Jin's post. Pick Fire and Gym #1 is hard, but Gym #5 is easy Pick Water and Gym #1 is easy but Gym #5 is now hard!

I can't really think of a game that has balance right. Final Fantasy generally has overpowered auto attack, Diablo 2 has useless spells as does D&D. Pokemon had the big Psychic imbalance, WoW has warlocks...
It's so important I can't belive they miss some of the stuff that gets though, like I just started replaying FF12 and all my characters ever do is auto attack. Thing is that I can cast that fire spell and do 85% damage to that flan, but I'll spent a little extra time poking it with sharp sticks and use that mana to use cure later thanks.

Another FF exampke (yawn), but FF10 got it kinda right. Each enemy was weak to a certain type of attack, so you had to train all the characters and match themto the enemies like rock/paper/scizzors. If you used the wrong person to attack you either missed or did very low damage.
Unfortunatly I managed to break that system because there was a little freedom in that the fast character could kinda kill the enemies the accurate character could if he gained a few levels, and you give him a certain kind of sword and he starts killing the enemies the powerful/magic characters usually took. Spread that over three characters and your sorted.
But it was damn fun figuring that out and playing the game designed for ~7 characters with 3. Some kinds of imbalance are great if you can think up your own strategy to 'break' the game and get an advantage. Really precise balance like Blizzard uses is a bit soul destroying when thinking out of the box is nerfed.

[Millie]

Most of the FF games (and most RPGs in general) are too easily beaten by overleveling. Level matters a lot more than any other factor in your ability to win encounters. I'm not a huge proponent of the easiest solution to this problem, i.e., having monsters level up with you. But there needs to be some way to deal with the issue effectively. I've never played an RPG that capped your levels as you progressed through the storyline, but maybe it's a thought? Or would people feel too restricted? For instance, the whole story is divided into chapters, and in Chapter 1 you can only attain Level 10 (or whatever), in Chapter 2 you can get up to 20, and so on. By the final chapter the cap is removed (or, really, set at 99), and thus, the monsters' levels and your levels will have remained relatively on par for each new dungeon you explore in a linear fashion.

The only problem I foresee with this approach is that it's very linear. Playing a game with level caps per chapter might feel too much like playing an RPG on rails. But who knows? I don't think I've ever seen it done before, so I have no frame of reference.

[Cloud9_]

Originally Posted by Millie

Most of the FF games (and most RPGs in general) are too easily beaten by overleveling. Level matters a lot more than any other factor in your ability to win encounters. I'm not a huge proponent of the easiest solution to this problem, i.e., having monsters level up with you. But there needs to be some way to deal with the issue effectively. I've never played an RPG that capped your levels as you progressed through the storyline, but maybe it's a thought? Or would people feel too restricted? For instance, the whole story is divided into chapters, and in Chapter 1 you can only attain Level 10 (or whatever), in Chapter 2 you can get up to 20, and so on. By the final chapter the cap is removed (or, really, set at 99), and thus, the monsters' levels and your levels will have remained relatively on par for each new dungeon you explore in a linear fashion.

The only problem I foresee with this approach is that it's very linear. Playing a game with level caps per chapter might feel too much like playing an RPG on rails. But who knows? I don't think I've ever seen it done before, so I have no frame of reference.

Maybe not caps for storyline, but caps in a specific instance of hte game. For example, if you're in dungeon A, your skills could only be Y useful.

Horrid idea, but i dont have a lot of time to put into the thought process of this Personally, skill based system would work out a LOT better for that, since there really are not any levels. Or, if you do have a leveling system, don't increase stats drastically (like +100 on level) and grant a lot of bonuses as you progress through the story via items and what not.

Anyway, gotta goto work so i can't really think past the first portion of this thought process, but it could work out i think.

[Mimirswell]

Having weapon durability (for fighting only, no death penalty) and extrapolating the maximum experience acquired before the collective weapons available in that chapter all degrade would allow for a soft cap. When the weapon degrades, it shouldn't become completely useless but degrade enough that the boss is challenging even when they are past the anticipated level thus little benefit is gained from overleveling. That would allow for an interesting dynamic like as followed:

Ideal Level - 3 / Normal Weapon = Extremely Difficult
Ideal Level - 2 / Normal Weapon = Very Difficult
Ideal Level - 1 / Normal Weapon = Difficult
Ideal Level / Normal Weapon = Intended Difficulty
Ideal Level + 1 / Slightly Degraded = Difficult
Ideal Level + 2 / Moderate Degraded = Very Difficult
Ideal Level + 3 / Very Degrade = Extremely Difficult

[Chrisb3]

Remove levels, make everything item based.

You can only be as powerful as the items in the dungeon, so you can't out level anything. Finding rare/hidden stuff can give you an edge of course.

Items can increase the amount of spells you have or stats or whatever you want.

You can still put in a few 'outleveling' mechanics maybe, perhaps by getting a small amount of exp in things like magic casting and combat which can give you a little boost based on time invested.

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Chrisb3

Remove levels, make everything item based.

You can only be as powerful as the items in the dungeon, so you can't out level anything. Finding rare/hidden stuff can give you an edge of course.

Items can increase the amount of spells you have or stats or whatever you want.

You can still put in a few 'outleveling' mechanics maybe, perhaps by getting a small amount of exp in things like magic casting and combat which can give you a little boost based on time invested.

That's actually a very interesting idea. Very radical, but interesting nonetheless. I must admit, as a "classicist," I enjoy time-honored mechanics like level progression and such. But making everything item-based is a very interesting idea. The idea isn't without its drawbacks, though (it's hard to make magic users item-dependent; the complete absence of natural progression without items might get boring after awhile; you'd have to create 5 billion items to keep things from getting stale; etc.).

Ultimately, as you suggest, I think a decent solution is to find a halfway point between level-based progression and item-based progression. Maybe levels don't bump up your stats all that much, but are mainly used to get more skill allocation slots? Meanwhile, equipment dictates stats to a large degree (kind of like FFT) but is restricted by base class.

Alternatively, you can always make a traditional RPG with typical level-based progression and item-based progression, and just accept that some people are going to level-cheese their way through the game. After all, you really can't stop people from playing your game the way they want to play -- even if it means cheapening the experience for themselves. FF4, for instance, is much more fun and challenging if you aren't overleveled -- but it's on you to make that decision; the game doesn't force your hand either way.

[Faille]

sounds a little like Eve but in a rpg setting and focused on pve rather then pvp. Not a bad thing of course, could do a lot worse the modelling a game after eve imo.

[Laladilya]

You could avoid using random encounters to offset overleveling. Also because it tends to be less annoying when you're just trying to get somewhere. Make the mobs wander around on the map, or even set them to chase the player, and if they touch you it goes to the battle screen. They don't respawn after being killed though. Then you can add up the total amount of exp they could get in any particular area and you'll know what the max level a player could potentially be and adjust your encounter difficulty from there.

Perhaps near the end you could respawn mobs, via a storyline element or just because. It would allow people (like me) who skipped earlier fights because they find "the grind" boring and are more interested in the storyline to catch their levels up to be able to beat the final boss, and those that want to max out their characters can do so.

A bad side is Final Fantasy Mystic Quest sort of did stuff like this, and it was probably one of the easiest games I've ever played. However, I've played a few amatuer games that also did it this way and it worked pretty well.