Most RPGs these days have an MP system where abilities cost MP & MP can be restored by resting at a safe spot (like an inn) or use MP recovery items. Occasionally, you’ll see variants on the traditional MP system like having a certain number of uses per ability (Pokémon) or MP for each ability LV (FF1, Suikoden) or having MP shared by the party (Super Mario RPG) but usually each character has their own MP pool.
Traditional MP creates a game where conservation is key. Since the player never knows how long they have to go until their next free refill, they’re encouraged to use as few abilities as possible during most battles so as to not run out when they really need it (like in a boss battle). Items are even worse – since items can only be used a limited number of times (usually once) and they don’t refill at all, players often are so afraid to be out of items when they really need them that they end up never using items at all other than maybe revive items.
Some games seek to avoid the problem of the player being afraid of running out of resources, by instead reducing or even outright eliminating the need for long-term resource management. Resources (HP & MP) either regenerate constantly or between battles. Rather than focusing on conservation, the game then becomes a matter of determining how best to tackle each individual challenge. However, this approach is not without its weaknesses either. Without longer-reaching consequences, non-boss encounters can feel like more of a waste of time than they do in a more traditional RPG setting.
With Cosmic Star Heroine, we want to combine what we’ve learned from both approaches to resource management to create our best game yet. Here’s what I have in mind so far.
Each character has their own MP. At the beginning of each battle, they start out with a certain amount of MP and they gain additional MP with each new turn. Both the starting amount & the MP/turn amount can be increased via passives & equipment. MP doesn’t carry over from battle to battle so the player is encouraged to use abilities rather than save them up for later encounters.
In addition to the individual character MP values, the entire party also has group MP that works in the same way. Party MP is used for special combo abilities that require more than one character at a time to use (like we did in Cthulhu Saves the World & Breath of Death VII and as also seen in games like Chrono Trigger, Phantasy Star IV, and the Suikoden series). Maybe limit the player to using each combo only once per battle to encourage variety.
To help make each battle more meaningful, I was thinking of adding a par system (ala Golf) where each battle would give you an additional reward if you beat it within a certain number of turns. Typically, these rewards would just be bonus XP & money (which we could do since we wouldn’t have a limited number of possible battles like we did in Precipice 3 & 4) but for some special battles we might spice things up by giving the player unique items or equipment for beating the par.
Items would be handled a little differently than we have in the past. The player will have a backpack with X number of slots that they can equip with various items while at their base or another designated safe spot. Items used in combat would not be replenished after combat, however all items in your backpack would be restored (or restocked) upon returning to your base. This system would allow us to include far more items (and more interesting & more powerful items) than we have in previous games so it’d make for fun decisions on which items to equip before heading out. Players would be encouraged to use items since they eventually regenerate for free (unlike traditional RPG item systems) but would also be encouraged to use them wisely (since they only regenerate at set points). And when combined with the Battle Par system, this new item system would provide an interesting dilemma – do you use more items in regular battles to gain more rewards or do you try to save those items for the tougher battles?
Hmmm… on the Par system, I think Exuno has a point on the effect that would have (Once you get rolling, you’re ‘Really Rolling’) and I love Pyro’s thoughts on “Battle Objectives”, as it’s similar to what I was thinking. You mentioned that the “Cannon” has her as a secret agent with cool gizmo’s who’s been outed. I was thinking a “Social Missions” feature where one of her gizmo’s allows her to see the local area’s “Challenges” or whatever it would be called. Basically, a series of ‘Cool / Strange / Etc.’ things that the people ‘In the Area’ (As the ‘Story Way’ of handling having different challenges for different enemy groups) want to see / have seen / dare someone to do.
(Ex. Story Text: “I remember a story about the three little bears my grandmother used to tell. I would love to see a photo of these bears.”
Challenge: “Scan” [Which happens to be a “Device that Scans Creatures, doubled as a Camera for this missions purpose] three enemy bears [Either as a group if there are skills that would allow you to manipulate their positions in the field, or independently if not] in a single battle without dealing combat damage.
NOTE: “Bears” are exceptionally powerful creatures at the point in the game that the battle bonus would be the most useful.)
Woo! A lot of cool ideas around here, naturally.
Par system – A nice idea in theory, but the description put forth has a few subtle issues. First is that killing things fast is something you’re already going to be doing, all the time (especially if you retain your standard enemy growth rates). Incentive systems are more fun when you make a decision on how best to use them. So, as has been mentioned, varying up the goals would be great. I’m pretty specifically thinking of the Glitz Pit in Paper Mario, here, but the FFTA2 Laws are on a similar vein. Since you’re moving to repeatable encounters, having the two or three utterly randomized challenges might help make battles a bit more dynamic rather than straight up grindy.
There’s another separate issue with it, though, in that you posited getting bonus XP for doing better. While it’s pretty intuitive – XP is a great reward – there’s an underlying issue in that if you’re overleveled, the challenges will be much easier. And you’ll get more bonus XP, thus springing you even further ahead. If you’re underleveled, then you’ll be struggling to win fights at all, let alone achieve bonus objectives. So you’ll keep lagging behind. In that case, it’s really hard to get into that sweet spot where the difficulty is just right. Basically, the reward for doing well shouldn’t be that the game gets easier. At the same time, making it harder is counterproductive – it makes the ideal spot just under “too good”. My first instinct would be solely item drop rewards – a la Battle Network (the Tales Grade shop is also an option, but generally feels too far off to meaningful), but the fact you ditch standard inventories hinders that. Solving that, I’d go for… a crafting system? Tie it into the base development stuff you had planned? I dunno, some kind of perpendicular rewards tree.
MP sounds pretty similar to Precipice, except perhaps more granular, which I’m fine with. It was a good system. Party MP is… interesting. The way it’s brought up it sounds a bit too similar to each individual character’s resource – emphasize a difference there a bit. I’m imagining something like Skies of Arcadia’s… “meter that you use barriers from and then pull down the moon when it’s full”; or Wild Arms 4/5’s force gauge. Would combination arts not use individual MP in addition to it? That could be neat, in terms of switching back and forth between combo and single attacks in order to give the other a chance to refill.
Does combination attacks mean you’re moving back to a round based system? Precipice’s turns were almost perfect (the visualization was just barely under ideal – guessing if an enemy had enough speed to eclipse you on the bar was a kind of fun I could do without; and there probably could have been more actions that had different speed coefficients besides Defend) but there’s a lot to be said for variety. I’m not sure if I’ll miss or be glad to be rid of Speed’s overwhelming dominance in importance. As long it’s not ATB I’ll be fine! One thought for if you are sticking with individual turns: combo abilities might have variable MP costs depending on how long the partner characters have to wait? So if you can coordinate your speed so that two paired character’s turns are right next to each other, using the first character save you some MP. Alternatively, use their turn, and then blow all your saved up party MP to let them act again without waiting.
“non-boss encounters can feel like more of a waste of time than they do in a more traditional RPG setting.”
Huh. I always felt like it was the opposite. Without regenerating health/mp, random encounters are uselessly easy (Final Fantasy) or frustratingly grindy (Etrian Odyssey). It’s only when I actually can blow everything on every fight does it feel like they can all manage the right level of challenge. In essence, it cuts down on the distinction between boss and normal encounters. The actual problem with that is one of pacing – “When every [fight] is special, no one is.” Precipice 3 and 4 feel a bit more like extended fun blurs rather than having many specific memorable points.
I’ve always wondered why games don’t use the actual party members as a resource more often. Especially in Zeboyd games where there is a large cast of characters, and several (all?) of the games allow member switching in combat.
Perhaps, as a fanboy opinion, instead of “Group MP” for players to keep track of, using a combo attack could provide a powerful effect with the drawback of losing those involved members for a period of turns (reducing the party size), or requiring them to be replaced in combat with other characters (probably abusable). This way people would get a strong effect from their preferred members and get to experiment with characters that they may not otherwise.
1. Par system sounds fun, but make sure every battle is replayable. Missable items are one of my pet peeves.
2. Your thoughts on MP remind me of chrono-cross’s spell/element system.
3. I almost never use items because spells usually do the same things better. It might be cool to make all healing/boosting item-based and all damage spell-based. This would be easy to justify in-game and would make item management feel incredibly meaningful in your proposed system. To make it work, you would probably need: a) HP refill after each battle. b) a free exit dungeon + refill items option. c) Save but not refill points before each boss.
As far as mp goes, have you ever thought of possibly making it so you have to do something like meditate in battle to build it up and only special gear allows you to regen it in combat?
Also, you can make it so there are no mp items in the game and only focus on interesting potions, such as stat buffs, group heals, or elemental damage in both spell or weapon imbue form. Could even possibly add in potions that summon monsters in each dungeon that you can’t see otherwise, like a “find a potions 2/3 of the way through the game then go back and explore every dungeon for new monsters using the potion” scenario. Can also make infinite potions that, this is an example, heal you for 4 percent of your hp but are reusable as many times as you want. Potions like that can offer alternatives to only taking big boss killing potions by letting you balance your exploration helping potions with your boss killing potions as a 4 percent heal is mainly only useful on monsters leading up to a boss.
Well that sounds like it could be a genuinely engaging battle system and I look forward to it or something like it.
1. Par systems are a lot of fun, but by all means include more goals than just “finish battle fast”. Vary up the goals, like “Kill enemy with fire damage even though they resist it” to make the player explore fire damage options. “Win without letting the enemy get a turn” to encourage interrupt abuse. “Inflict 6 status effects in battle” to encourage the player to use status. These different goals will lead to a wider variety of strategies being explored, which is always good. It also forces players to test out things they might otherwise have missed.
In PA4 I found myself utilizing the same 4 Endgame monsters and crushing enemies with buffed MT damage ASAP, with little/no incentive to swap out party members and try different strategies even though there were a lot of cool strategies to try. A par system with VARYING goals can do a lot to mitigate this kind of problem! And people who just want to smash things ASAP can ignore it and go on their merry way. A turn-count only par system would just make it worse.
2. If you have more PCs then you have party slots, SWITCHING MECHANICS ARE AWESOME! I think the best example I’ve ever seen of this is Mana Khemia, which you should try out or watch to get an idea from it. The Switch item in PA4 was cool about this, but I didn’t use it much for the reason listed in ‘1’ up above. Perhaps I should have in retrospect since it had the MP bonus on switching (and brings in a healed mons). Expand this and encourage the player to explore it through some Pars and you have something that can be a lot of fun.
3.Make your mechanics more transparent. I believe most people want to know HOW MUCH an “increase water elemental damage’ equip is going to give them without having to spend time testing everything. Maybe in a game with a very few equips/skills, but in a game with dozens, just tell us please.
Careful there on that par system! It might invalidate any defensive builds the players might want to use. For example, if the par system were present in PA3, I would never ever use my favorite class — the Crabomancer. Specifically because being effective with that takes too long! So, keep that in mind I guess.
Also that backpack system sounds really neat!
MP – I always disliked the MP not being a pool that you have to manage. I prefer saving or blasting it when I want. The thing I hate the most is when I have to wait to cast my “uber” spell until my MP reach the cost.. One possible solution would be to fix that with gear but still…
Combo Abilities – The 1 each by battle seems good. We wouldn’t save it and would use it if useful.
Item System – The idea is good but it would limit grinding ALOT. The problem of management wouldn’t be solved because you still don’t know if you should use them now or wait because the dungeon is big and it would be useful later on. Consummables aren’t that bad. I never ran out of the consummables i wanted in any games but yours (Played almost all SNES RPG). If I need more I’ll just buy some…
I’m really happy to see that you are planning to do an encounter system à la Chronos Trigger!
I saw some discussion on stealing, so I thought I would contribute my thoughts there too.
Personally: I hate it, usually. It typically feels to me like you either have to use a guide, or else spent the game stealing from everything for fear of missing something good or stealing from nothing and definitely missing something good. Not to mention that stealing in itself is often a tedious act with a low success chance.
The only game that comes to mind where I didn’t mind stealing is Final Fantasy Tactics. You always know just by looking at somewhat what they have to steal, and more to the point you can target exactly the item you are looking for (ie steal weapon, steal accessory etc). What’s more, stealing that item also puts the opponent at a disadvantage, and against certain enemies can prove to be a pretty useful tactic even ignoring the item acquisition.
It sounds interesting, but I’m honestly a little skeptical on some of the points. The mp system sounds fine, I liked what you did in RS 3/4. I was never really crazy about the combo attacks in BoD/CStW though. The par system is a neat idea, but if MP is ultimately free it seems kind of counter intuitive. If you aren’t saving MP going for fastest kill possible is the norm anyways. Unless items do some pretty awesome things.
As far as the items, I’m not really sure I’m a fan. I personally don’t see myself doing anything different than I would any other RPG – hoard all the items for the boss. Sure you can replenish your items for free, but that doesn’t feel significantly different than restocking on potions when you get to town. The cost is typically not the inhibitor there.
That said, all this stuff will ultimately come down to tuning and making interesting abilities/items. If combo attacks are enticing enough to use but not significantly stronger than 2 separate attacks, that’s an interesting choice. If items are both good enough and plentiful enough that you want to use them often to shoot for the “par”, but not so awesome that you just hoard them for the bosses, that’s an interesting choice. I think you will have a pretty hard time striking that level of balance. But truth be told, I’m more impressed with the balance in RS3/4 than most RPGs.
That’s my 2 cents anyways.
I’m torn on stealing systems – on the one hand, yay new items! On the other hand, stealing just adds an extra level of tedium (gotta make sure that you steal from everything that might have something useful).
I think stealing works best in games where you’re not guaranteed to have someone who can steal at all times. Then it becomes a trade-off between whether you should use the thief character who may be weaker at fighting than the rest but could end up getting you cool items that you can’t get otherwise.
For the most part, I liked how the Level 5 PS2 games had the special battles with some sort of challenge to them. (ie – only do regular attacks, only use items…) The only thing I didn’t like with them, was that since their IPs were RTwP, and you usually and a couple of CPU controlled companions – the only defeat enemies with a certain character challenges were stupid tricky if you didn’t have a spell or ability handy to wipe out everyone at once.
I like that Parasite Eve II-ish style items system.
little off topic but I’m curious what are your thoughts on stealing/mug systems. I recently replayed FF9 where the main char is a thief so its somewhat important in the game.
stealing is mostly pointless in a regular battle as its mostly healing/status effect items you get which can mostly be bought cheaply from stores.
stealing from bosses on the other hand tend to reward equipment, usually ones that aren’t available tell 2-3 towns down the road, so they can speed up your game by giving you stronger attacks, but trying to steal an item tends to slow boss battles down significantly. there were quite a few boss battles in FF9 were I’d taken the boss down 70-90% of its HP and was waiting for the thief to finish stealing that last item. which looking at it the bosses were relatively easy to kill, but I made it harder for myself by lengthening the overall battle.
overall I think I’d scrap stealing or try to make it more interactive or meaningful.
also the par system for finishing battles quickly sounds like a decent system for easing level grinding, not doing so well go back to the previous dungeon and grab some quick xp/money.
I agree that the second bar for group attacks seems a bit cumbersome, but when I think more about it, if certain characters had passives that increased the group mp more each turn than others, it could give reasons to include certain characters in battle, and you need not have enough mp on each individual, so that adds a level of cooperation between characters that I really dig.
the backpack system, that lets you create slots in the backpack as rewards for side quests and such as well, i like that.
I can’t say anything about the Party MP system (I liked how FF7 did it where Ethers were common enough to not have to worry about MP too much), but the Battle Par system sounds good. I think that FF13 did this and there was at least one other RPG (I think it was one of the later Star Ocean games) that gave you a “rating” with bonuses at end of a battle depending on how quick you were and how little damage you took.
Will this be released on the xbox 360 as well as steam 🙂
Resource conservation isn’t necessarily a bad thing for certain types of games. Old-school dungeon crawlers are made for a heavy focus on resource conservation with the expectation that in any one dungeon, you’ll be making multiple trips and seeing how far you can get each time.
I think the combination of having some resources (MP) regenerate after each battle and some resources (items) regenerate after each “scenario” will help to retain some of that resource conservation feel while still encouraging the player to use their abilities & resources frequently.
These are all brilliant ideas. You could do a LOT with your MP concept I’m not sure how much Magic: The Gathering you play, but there’s a strategy called mana ramping that players use to gain insane amounts of mana for themselves. You could have some unique items/bosses/scenarios that hasten or disrupt mana production for players or enemies. Can’t wait to see what you guys do with all this!
I think what you did with the PA games (re: items) worked okay, but they ended up feeling like spells – and not even great spells, often healing or dealing less damage than all of the other options. This could, in theory, be fixed by making them temporarily limited (as outlined in the article) and increasing their effectiveness, though this could also end up encouraging the same “What if I need it later” approach most other games tend to have.
So ideally we have items and feel good about using them, without making them gamebreakingly powerful. This could possibly be done if the ‘base’ you described was visited pretty frequently.
Joel:
Bill here (art/assets). Making a game of this nature will, of course, require a lot more sprite work on my part for a system like this. Additionally I plan on making all of the assets for detailed and interested. However, I’d say that stuff like the X-strike example you gave, requires as much of a versatile game engine as it does more sprites/frames. In other words we’ll be needing some substantial upgrades in our new Unity engine compared to our previous games as well as a bunch more frames/anims for sprites. Anyway, we’re planning on doing all this – just a matter of time to spend working on it all! 🙂
This backpack system intrigues me. I’m guessing that rarer items will be rarer in that the backpack will be able to stock fewer of them?
As for Battle Par, are the encounters going to be repeatable? If so, it encourages you to put powerful items on monsters earlier in the game, encouraging players to come back and try the fights again after they have advanced, and gives the player a clear sense of progression.
I like the Precipice games, for example, but beyond having more abilities as I progress, I don’t really get the feeling of that progression because the monsters are harder as well. Similarly to how I have felt about the old D&D arcade games — my “character” gets “stronger”, but the enemies get stronger as well, so I am using the same (or more) hits to down the enemies. Without that return to easy stuff, I’m just progressing through the game, and the bigger numbers aren’t really meaningful.
I really like these ideas. Whenever I play an RPG I always end up saving one-time use equipment, spells, items for “when I need them” but then I end up beating a major boss or even the whole game without using them because “I needed to save them just in case there’s another boss after this one.” Your proposed systems sound like they’d help get rid of this problem.
I like the replenishing backpack at safe houses in particular.
Sounds good, except for the party MP mechanic – seems bloated. The advantage/disadvantage of party skills is supposed to be the fact that you’re spending MP on multiple characters in order to use the skill, which is supposedly more powerful (than two or three spells on each individual). Seems redundant to have a second MP bar just for dual/triple techs.
I like the new take on items, I always thought that the PA games made items trivial. Since you could use them x times every single battle, they ended up being balanced just the same as a 1 or 2mp skill and that made them generally useless. Which brings me to conservation…
The argument that item and MP conservation is somehow a bad thing boggles me. You’re exploring uncharted, dangerous territory with limited resources – you’re SUPPOSED to be on edge and worried about running out. Having infinite items (or mp) takes the challenge of spelunking out of the game and turns it into a game more on the level of a board game, without any thought to resource management, the way the PA games felt. If you want to create a game world that feels like a game “world” and not a puzzle-battle simulator, then think twice about auto-replenishing every consumable resource.
As far as battle pars go, the Tales and Star Ocean games occasionally do a good job of rewarding you for clearing a battle skillfully. Star Ocean 3’s battle bonus bar in particular was quite addicting – completing certain goals in battles would give different bonuses after battle, allowing even a bit of customization to how one plays the game – and if you screw up, all your bonuses go poof. How about something akin to that?
The backpack system sounds really cool. I’m guessing it was partly inspired by Paladin’s Quest? I really enjoyed some of the “belts” like the bomb belt tradeoff — less healing ability traded for better offense against some monsters. I’m looking forward to seeing how it changes item-use philosophy, since I always fall prey to 20-megalixers-at-boss syndrome.
The Final Fantasy Tactics Advance series has something similar on a character level, where individual characters have individual MP pools that start combat at zero or some low number. As combat continues, they generate MP. The end effect is that combat becomes about early positioning and surviving long enough to bring your big abilities to bear, which I think is great compared to the “conserve your resources for the inevitable boss” approach of classic RPGs. The team MP pool idea is very intriguing. I also like the constraints on items, giving a player a good reason to check in with home base or a safe spot. I look forward to seeing more of CSH!
I know you guys said that you’re doing on map battles ala chrono trigger (which is great), any thought on unique attack animations (also ala Chrono Trigger) for different attacks? I always enjoyed seeing them hop around, and having X strike look like an actual, uh, X strike. I realize you only have one art guy (before the kickstarter anyway) so it might be tough to make so many unique animations. It would be pretty awesome and make battles more dynamic though.