The RPG Duelling League
RPG Debate => RPGDL Discussion => Topic started by: AndrewRogue on January 25, 2010, 06:17:48 AM
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...wait, oh no, oh no, OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
</universe ends>
Welcome to Round 3 of the <Untitled IAQ Project>. I will be leaving Round 2 open for the sake of continuing plot discussion, since hopefully some of it will be inspired by this.
Here in Round 3, we're going to start working out some of the games mechanics. I actually have an agenda for this round! Exciting, huh?
1. Establish the primary stats we will be using.
2. Establish how these stats work out in relation to game factors.
3. Work out some more of the battle mechanic quirks (equipment, specials, etc).
4. Put some of this into practice and start getting some rough character cheat sheets worked out.
So, uh. I'm not so useful here. Generally speaking, though.
HP
Resource (whatever the character uses for their specials, if anything)
Atk (Physical and Magical category)
Def (Physical and Magical category)
Evasion
Accuracy
Speed
These are all generalized stats that we should probably have. Whether they are derived or what not is another matter all together.
I do, off-hand though, think all stats and derived stats should be transparent. Players should be able to roughly determine what is going on by looking at things. *nods*
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We might want to have Magic Evasion and Magic Accuracy in there too.
Abbreviations obviously subject to change.
HP
MP (name subject to change)
ATK
DEF
MGC
MDF
ACC
EVA
MAC
MEV
SPD
If we want to make them derived stats, we'd need a pool of base stats:
STR
VIT
INT
WIS (Name definitely subject to change. I actually don't like this stat much myself.)
AGI
DEX
LUC
STR, VIT, INT, and AGI seem pretty standard, with WIS, DEX, and LUC being more optional. One issue we have here is that we have a prime number (11) of derived stats, so even if we tried, we couldn't equally space them without having 11 base stats. (By which I mean: each base stat affects the same amount of derived stats AND each derived stat depends on the same amount of base stats. It is possible to have one or the other, but not both.) Of course, equally spacing them isn't all that important, just a note.
Anyway, possible distribution.
STR: Affects ATK. Possibly DEF and HP.
VIT: Affects DEF and HP. Possibly MDF.
INT: Affects MGC, MP, and MAC. Possibly MDF and MEV.
WIS: Affects MDF, MP, and MEV. Possibly MAC.
AGI: Affects SPD and EVA. Possibly ACC and MEV.
LUC: Affects EVA and MEV. Possibly ACC and MAC.
Definitely some room for change here. Also, stats do not need to affect the derived stats the same. I.e. a point of VIT might raise DEF by 2, but a point of STR might only raise DEF by 1. Could be used to balance the fact that some base stats affect more derived stats and some derived stats depend on less base stats.
There's also the option of having the base stats being character innate while the other stats are affected only by equipment, and then having them interact in some independent manner. E.g. ATK and DEF only come from equipment while STR and VIT are base (possibly modified by equipment as well), and the damage formula uses all four (WA4 is an example here, I think FF12 did it too).
Definitely agree with all stats needing to be transparent.
Also, do we want characters to have innate elemental resistances? People who specialize in fire magic might be more resistant to it, etc. Something to think about.
Anyway, basically an idea dump here.
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Personally prefer one set of stats instead of having derived stats - although many examples of games I am thinking of currently usuablly end up having some form of derived stats. And if we want things to be transparent, one set of stats might not work very well unless they are FE like structured.
There's also the option of having the base stats being character innate while the other stats are affected only by equipment, and then having them interact in some independent manner. E.g. ATK and DEF only come from equipment while STR and VIT are base (possibly modified by equipment as well), and the damage formula uses all four (WA4 is an example here, I think FF12 did it too).
I prefer this method. If I am understanding correctly, then at the very least, it will lead to some more interesting equipment options. Innate resistances are cool, although this also means we need to design some sort of elemental tree (probably the big 8: Fire/Earth/Water/Wind/Ice/Lightning/Dark/Light).
Something else for food for thought that I tossed in chat the other day (and somewhat discussed):
Do people want to include some form of an AP system? Basically each character has a AP total and they can spend the AP to perform various actions in a turn. Moving/Acting/Counterattacking (assuming you get the choice to counter) takes AP. AP then recharges at the end of the round. A couple things we noted:
Good - Emphasizes a bit more on strategic elements such as movement and range, adds another dimension to trying to balance characters (for example: a good damage dealer might be restricted on AP, so he can fundamentally do less/counter less/move less)
Bad - Might ostrachize characters that have Low AP bases (basically they always end up doing less, hence become worse PCs unless they are somehow set up to be superior in other ways)
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Hmm... musings on how I see the random encounters.
Unless someone has any breakthrough ideas, I'm guessing the majority of enemies will fall into one of 3 categories: Antagonistic humans, Wildlife, Magically-Distorted Monsters.
Universally-usable 'medicine'-type items can exist, but they are very rare drops, and players should only use them in emergencies (we should balance the game around them not existing, and likewise, they should rarely exist and be a nice reward for a player should they get one). No storebought elixirs or what-have-you. And I imagine on humans would be carrying medicine. Drinking Hydra Humour straight from a Hydra doesn't sound like a smart idea, so I'm applying this logic to all wildlife randoms.
Now, Wildlife and Magically-distorted Monsters can drop other useful, though not universal 'items'. Perhaps for any Alchemist-type characters (REALLY LEANING TOWARDS THIS WITH EIRWEN) that use these items -as- their resources, and aren't using MP/Cooldown/Limits. Similarly, the Magic-Distorts might drop magically-infused items that only itemcasters (low-level Tactile mages) can utilize. These might be infinite-use, but have low effects. (Or perhaps multiple-use, but with a Break counter, a la FE weapons.)
I'm personally leaning towards Randoms being the main method for getting 'EXP', and that EXP is only for increasing stats. I personally like the CC method of "Each fight is a small stat boost" rather than the "Get a bunch of EXP, SUDDENLY A LEVEL! YOU'RE AWESOME!" method that normal games use. Since 'Randoms' are limited (at least until the last chapter?), there's not a lot of room/need for power-levelling and every fight you decide to do matters.
All characters on the active party roster have an equal chance of gaining stats, regardless of being in the in-battle party or not. To be clear, I'm not recommending that PCs we haven't met yet or PCs that have left and gone halfway around the world are getting EXP for another party's battles. I'm just talking about people in 'reserve' sharing EXP with the in-battle party.
I'm still pushing for each character to gain skills differently. I imagine we could have a few characters gain -some- skills through levelling, just to help ensure some balance, but for the most part, I'd like to see some different methods here.
For an example, using Eirwen since I brought her up already... I'm thinking use the Alchemist method. Crib it directly from the Gust games. It's interesting and it works. Since she's specifically a cook, you could make all of her skills Food-based. Perhaps she has to gather various ingrediants from wildlife, including things like Magical Pork to make Magical Potroast, which increases the ATK of all allies in range. Similarly, Enchanting Icecream Dream might be a sleep spell. But she has to gather Ice, Milk, and Magic Rock Salt to learn/make it (and it consumes a Magic Rock Salt every time she casts the skill).
Pulling from Shadow Hearts, I'm all about having a few sidequest mini-bosses a la Blanca's Duels, a Form-powerup system like Yuri's fusions, a few 'collect the key items' quests like Gepetto/Karin/Lucia (though each of those is implemented differently... Gepetto can switch his key items around for different effects, Karin just learns new skills on a list, and Lucia has to mix and match key items for different effects).
Pulling from SaGa, some characters can learn skills at random based on what equipment they are currently using. Pulling from several different series (Tales, FF9, etc), some characters can learn abilities after using a certain item for a length of time. Pulling from DQ8, perhaps certain characters have different skill trees all their own, and they can mix and match them by using different weapons. Pulling from Grandia, some characters can learn/upgrade abilities by using them multiple times. Still Grandia, though slightly altered, perhaps by raising affinities (with EXP/creative weapon equipping/items/buffs), a PC can learn an ability by getting a stat to break a certain threshhold, even temporarily (Epiphany learning, if you will).
Pulling from FF, we can have Blue Mage-style learning. Pulling from FE/Suikoden, we can have a PC who doesn't actually -learn- skills, but has unique abilities/stats depending on what weapon/accessory/'Rune' they equip, but they can't equip everything at once. Pulling from BoF3, maybe one character is a total lecture-learner, and they learn skills by spending time away from the party for short periods of time with various mentors across the Islands. Pulling from Suiko4, perhaps some characters can learn combo moves from being in battle with certain PCs for extended periods of time (or perhaps one PC learns -all- his moves by copying others and being in battle with them for extended periods of time).
If there's anyone who thinks we can't find over 20 methods of skill-learning/implementation, then I'm more than happy to continue listing options, but I'm guessing there might be a few more original ideas floating around our collective gameplay-loving minds.
I'd like some input on what type of learning style you guys think suits our current PC Roster.
Noemi - Some starting spells, some plot-given, a few EXP-given. Primarily skill-tree-based learning. As she uses different spell elements, she gains more related spells. I see her as a dagger-wielding type, but she could know how to use a few simple weapon-types (maybe just 2?) and each could have some related techniques. Since she's the main, I'd like to see her have a combination of Cooldown and Limit-break moves. Leaning mostly Cooldown types, with only one or two Limits that are built up by dealing damage (rather than taking it, so she's not a good damage sponge). The Limits are possibly learned through Epiphany-style stat-threshhold breaking. High speed/movement.
Mirek - Former guardian, so his skills are mostly physical-based. A lot of starting skills, mostly Limit-style, based on amount of damage taken (each skill builds up a separate bar for him, so he can save up for a large burst of successive power skills). A few passive skills learned through sidequest-type stuff (I'm thinking since he's pretty reactive to the Disquiet, that he learns passive skills just by going to certain locations... or perhaps by going to a certain locale and spending enough time there to solve a puzzle or something and he naturally picks up a new ability, without even really realizing it himself). Average movement/high speed.
Isolde - Seeing her more and more as some kind of Tactile mage. She focuses her power through touching an opponent (and then perhaps that casts an explosion spell from point-blank range?). Learns Blue-Mage style. She'll get attacked by an enemy mage or magic-distort random/boss and pick up the skill, though the range would end up being point-blank when she uses it. Not a ranged fighter with magic. If she needs some kind of range, she's using spear/halberd abilities. Weapon abilities for her would be few and cooldown-style, while her magic is just normal MP (I guess you could do Suiko-style charge levels, but I'm leaning against it since she already has range issues as a drawback). Charge times should match the enemy's. Thinking she can learn around 10-15 abilities through Blue Magic. She starts with some 'Earth' magic. High movement/average speed.
Erastus - Aural mage. Thinking he's big on AoE stuff. Lots of smash. Erastus is amazing, he's normally not limited by resources (lots of MP), but his Sound-based magic takes a lot of time to cast for big damage. His support-stuff can work like FFX2 Songstress skills - as long as he's chanting, the effect is in place, but he can't do anything else. Later on, there may be some skills where this isn't true and he CAN in fact be double-chanting two effects... maybe after he learns a passive ability to do so... DoubleSpeak, or what-have-you... he IS awesome after all. Since he's a skilled Vision mage too, he might be able to do both. Thinking he learns skills through using different Tomes/Tools. Low movement/speed.
On Elements...
I think there should be -some- kind of Elemental system in place. I know others have had ideas about this. I'm just gonna list the stuff we normally see in RPGs and we can decide what we'd like to use.
Unified list of Elements
Basic:
Physical
Magical
Healing (SMT Dia, PS Res, FF Cure)
Fire (SMT Agi, PS Foi, DQ Frizz/Sizz, Grandia Burn, GS Mars Djinn)
Water (SMT Aques)
Wind (SMT Garu, DQ Whoosh, Grandia Howl)
Earth (SMT Tera, GS Venus Djinn)
Thunder (SMT Zio, PS Tsu, DQ/Grandia Zap)
Ice (SMT Bufu, DQ/Grandia Crackle)
Light
Dark
Non-Elemental
Rare:
Almighty (SMT)
Poison
Gravity (FF, PS Gra)
Time/Space (SaGa)
Status
Instant Death
Expel (Suiko Eject)
Drain (Vacuum in SO2)
Void (SO2, similar to Non-Elemental)
Grass
Steel
Psychic
Flying (PKMN, Lufia2, FE, FFs Float)
Ground
Insect
Star (SO2, S5)
Sun (S5)
Moon (S5, SoM, SD3)
Force (DDS Wind/Zan, PS4 Wind)
Sound (S5)
Slash (SMT, ToP)
Pierce (SMT, ToP Stab, DDS Bullet)
Strike (SMT)
Hunt (SMT)
Jump (SMRPG)
Realm, Mind, Rune, Arcane, Life, Mystic, Evil (SaGa conglomeration)
Combinations:
Water/Ice (common, Blue in CC, Wat in PS, Mercury Djinn in GS)
Water/Healing (common, Heal in Grandia, Wish/Ply in GS)
Water/Light (Ocean in ToL)
Wind/Thunder (common, Jupiter Djinn in GS)
Fire/Wind/Thunder (Anima in FE)
Fire/Earth (Explosion in Grandia, ~Red in CC)
Fire/Thunder (Red in Brig)
Earth/Water (Forest in Grandia)
Earth/Thunder (Yellow in CC)
Wind/Grass (Green in CC)
Light/Instant Death (Hama in SMT)
Dark/Instant Death (Mudo in SMT)
I'm mostly chiming in on resources because I think the other stats Andy listed are pretty obviously going to have a place in our game.
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That list of elements looks absolutely SMT/SaGa-tastic. I hope that's just a tentalive list you're going to draw a final pool from, because that looks like it'd be a headache to make actual sense out of.
Personally prefer one set of stats instead of having derived stats - although many examples of games I am thinking of currently usuablly end up having some form of derived stats. And if we want things to be transparent, one set of stats might not work very well unless they are FE like structured.
Derived stats at its core usually tend to be the directly battle-relevant stats - that is, to say, your run-of-the-mill Attack, Defense, Magical Attack, Magical Defense stats, derived from your core stats of perhaps, for example, STR(ength)/CON(stitution)/SPI(rit)/M(i)ND. The best way to utilize strictly a single set of stats would be, as you've already stated, to go for an FE-esque approach, which I doubt would not mesh extremely well with the initial vision in mind. However, this could go either way.
There's also the option of having the base stats being character innate while the other stats are affected only by equipment, and then having them interact in some independent manner. E.g. ATK and DEF only come from equipment while STR and VIT are base (possibly modified by equipment as well), and the damage formula uses all four (WA4 is an example here, I think FF12 did it too).
I prefer this method. If I am understanding correctly, then at the very least, it will lead to some more interesting equipment options. Innate resistances are cool, although this also means we need to design some sort of elemental tree (probably the big 8: Fire/Earth/Water/Wind/Ice/Lightning/Dark/Light).
This doesn't seem too bad of an idea, actually. Itemization of equipment actually becomes a lot more widespread and you've got more room for interesting things to pop up, and it provides more flexibility for a viable, balanced damage formula.
Something else for food for thought that I tossed in chat the other day (and somewhat discussed):
Do people want to include some form of an AP system? Basically each character has a AP total and they can spend the AP to perform various actions in a turn. Moving/Acting/Counterattacking (assuming you get the choice to counter) takes AP. AP then recharges at the end of the round. A couple things we noted:
Good - Emphasizes a bit more on strategic elements such as movement and range, adds another dimension to trying to balance characters (for example: a good damage dealer might be restricted on AP, so he can fundamentally do less/counter less/move less)
Bad - Might ostrachize characters that have Low AP bases (basically they always end up doing less, hence become worse PCs unless they are somehow set up to be superior in other ways)
Ehhhh. I'm a little bit iffy on providing an AP system. While it does introduce another strategic dynamic, it also needs to, at the very least, be able to be tweaked in-game in some manner or form - so that characters with described "low AP bases" can be tweaked to be able to do more in battle and already decent AP-based characters can be strengthened - with limits, of course. Naturally, this also introduces a balance issue. An AP system could work, key word being could, but a lot of work would need to be done to make sure it's seamless and doesn't leave room for unfairly gimped characters.
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I'd prefer one set of stats as well, personally. Makes things easier to work with from a player's PoV, rather than wondering which stats do what and why there are several different stats for damage. Besides, we've already had suggestions for having equips increasing the base stats, so why not just use the base stats in the damage formula and have -all- equipment increase them? The variety of choices on equipment is still there, since there's a good range of stats that can be increased, as well as having elemental/status options.
On the elements, the key factor isn't how many/what elements are there, but how they interact. Will elements be directly opposed, or will certain enemies just be specifically resistant/weak to certain elements? I'd like to see some interaction between elements for basic enemies, with bosses possibly breaking the formula slightly? For example, take FFX. Water enemies will be weak to Thunder 99% of the time, but Sin isn't (as far as I know, anyway).
If this is used, then there needs to be some pairs/sets of elements, possibly with a few outliers such as NE/Almighty. Idly, I'd say something like... Fire > Ice > Wind > Earth > Electric > Water > Fire. Then, have Dark > Holy > Dark, and possibly some physical elements, a la Persona.
Lastly, I'm very strongly against an AP system. The focus for this game seems to be on variety and strategies, and AP systems tend to move too slowly and turn every battle into stalling to build up AP. I'm happy to see Djinn's idea of item resources for attacks, some characters with MP/SP/TP, etc, but AP, as it's been described, is the one thing I am very much against.
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On the elements, the key factor isn't how many/what elements are there, but how they interact. Will elements be directly opposed, or will certain enemies just be specifically resistant/weak to certain elements? I'd like to see some interaction between elements for basic enemies, with bosses possibly breaking the formula slightly? For example, take FFX. Water enemies will be weak to Thunder 99% of the time, but Sin isn't (as far as I know, anyway).
If this is used, then there needs to be some pairs/sets of elements, possibly with a few outliers such as NE/Almighty. Idly, I'd say something like... Fire > Ice > Wind > Earth > Electric > Water > Fire. Then, have Dark > Holy > Dark, and possibly some physical elements, a la Persona.
Even if you had a form of interaction that meshed well with the current system, having a shitload of elements tends to complicate things a lot, because it becomes more of a clusterfucky relationship web of elements rather than a systematic interaction of the different forms and elements that exist in the game. Given how grand Djinn's list is, I'd rather it get trimmed down a little first or it be just a giant pile of ideas with which we grab things form.
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Isolde - Seeing her more and more as some kind of Tactile mage. She focuses her power through touching an opponent (and then perhaps that casts an explosion spell from point-blank range?). Learns Blue-Mage style. She'll get attacked by an enemy mage or magic-distort random/boss and pick up the skill, though the range would end up being point-blank when she uses it. Not a ranged fighter with magic. If she needs some kind of range, she's using spear/halberd abilities. Weapon abilities for her would be few and cooldown-style, while her magic is just normal MP (I guess you could do Suiko-style charge levels, but I'm leaning against it since she already has range issues as a drawback). Charge times should match the enemy's. Thinking she can learn around 10-15 abilities through Blue Magic. She starts with some 'Earth' magic. High movement/average speed.
Actually, it'd fit her more if she unlocked certain spells just by plot; We've discussed that a lot of her spells she already knows; just doesn't use for the sake of keeping her cover.
As for elements: I'd see things divided up into two types here. First is 'schools'--what can be learned by who, and how, essentially. SaGa subdivisions of magic and whatnot, in a sense, I guess you could say there. Second would be the damage types that said attacks would do--this is actually what's resisted, etc. More to come when I don't have to get ready for school.
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Trance, think that was the idea for Djinn's list. I've cut out my personal choices from that, but think that'll still need a fair bit of discussion.
Nama: Think the schools are the lists that've been written up in the other topics. I assume those are the 'schools' or 'classes,' and now we need to work on the elements, which are the damage types. That's just how I see the terminology more than anything, though.
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Anyway, proposed stats/elements, I guess.
Stats:
HP: Health, of course.
<Resource type, varies>: Resource pool, varies on character, perhaps.
OFF: Offense. Dictates attack power of physical techniques and some composite skills.
DEF: Defense. Defense versus physical attack types, used to resist physical-source ailments(like poison).
WIL: Willpower. Dictates attack power of spells and some composite skills, used to resist mental ailments.
EDF: Energy Defense. Defense versus energy attacks, used to resist spiritual ailments
SPD: Speed. Linear as decided in Thread 1.
ACC: Accuracy. Determines base hit rate with attacks--physical or magical.
EVA: Evasion. Determines base evasion rate against attacks--physical or magical. IS NOT BUGGED.
MOV: Movement. How many hexes a character can move in one turn/action.
(possible: We've never determined yet how/if criticals will factor. If it's based on a character-specific rate, then have it as a stat--especially if things other than basic physicals can crit. Otherwise, let it be a weapon or skill-specific stat. If it's decided that there is no criticals, then dump this altogether)
CRT: Critical. Possibly make this a weapon/skill stat. Determines base critical rate.
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Not seeing AP working here easily, anyway. While it could have some use, it seems like it might overcomplicate things, especially if the AP spread is too wide. AP building, however, can be averted with just getting a set amount of AP each turn and not allowing for storing like so many games do.
...hm. I'll have to think about it. It's got some viable options.
[EDIT] If we're incorporating chargetimes, AP is a no-go. You simple can't do AP with charging, since that means you'd have long periods of "Charge->Recover->Charge->Recover" for the few cases of multiple attacks. Slows things down, and we already have Grandia-style charging and a hex grid. If we were to drop charging, we could easily do AP, but since charging was settled upon...AP's just plain out.
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As for elements: I'm having trouble seeing certain elements somehow mysteriously doing damage of their type on some random basis (Earth, Air, and Water are the big three offenders here.) As such, at least for elements I can think of, there's subtypes of damage...
Fire: Heat.
Ice: Cold, Impact, Slashing, Piercing
Lightning: It's...well, its own category.
Earth: Impact, occasionally Slashing, Piercing, or Poison
Air: Impact, Slashing, Piercing, Asphyxiation
Water: Impact, Slashing, Piercing, Asphyxiation, occasionally Poison
Light: Heat(if beam type), or 'holy' (if spiritual type)
Darkness: It's its own if we're talking spiritual type, though it's also frequently associated with cold and/or Poison.
If we have Light(spiritual) and Darkness, though, I'd say we should leave the idea of good and evil out of it. Possibly reflavor them as 'life' and 'death'...hm. No, the former wouldn't quite work. Death as an Anti-Life element seems to work decently, though the setting flavor might not allow for it. Sidenote: Fuck undead.
So if we consolidate it into elements as actual damage type, we're more likely to get something of the following:
Slashing (Physical)
Piercing (Physical)
Impact (Physical)
Heat (Energy)
Cold (Energy)
Electric (Energy)
Asphyxiation (Physical, attacking base DEF only)
Poison (Physical, attacking base DEF only)
'Life'/'Holy' (Energy?)
'Death' (Energy?)
Yes, the sources change, but the end type of damage is the same. Crushing is crushing, no matter whether it's a sonic boom, a huge-ass rock, an equally huge-ass block of ice, a column of water, or Urggzob. Healing doesn't matter on the 'element', on that note. It's goddamned healing, it heals you.
Of course, this takes away some of the traditionality of elements, but it also works to its own degree.
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Status: This...I'd like to wait a bit until we formalize resource systems. There's a massive amount that can be done with this, especially on the setup we have, but I'd want a bit of time to think on this.
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Basic actions available: This hasn't come up yet, but I presume it would be important to some degree. So far, presumably, we'd have:
Move
Attack
Special
Item (albeit rare, that)
Now, defending, we could take the WA4 example; select your own hex while moving. Or we could have it a separate command, allowing one to move->defend. But then again...unless there was an attack that was obviously predictable and clearly omfghuge, nobody would bother with it for the most part.
The other issue...do we want one or more types of basic attack? By this, I mean since we seem to have agreed on the 'charging' part, would it be desirable to have multiple types of basic physical--one for damage and one for interrupting? Or would interrupts be best left up to certain skills? On that note, would movement be instant, or would it take its own degree of time?
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Equips: Something we haven't really talked much about aside from some early ideas of who'd have what in Thread 2. Are we using the "one PC->one weapon type" rule, or are we allowing for PCs to have access to multiple weapon categories? On that note, would there be overlap in that sense? (More than one PC drawing from the same weapon class)--though in the latter case, that'd be a guaranteed.
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I'm liking Nama's proposed list of stats, with the only difference I'd suggest is splitting PAcc/Eva and MAcc/Eva - some mages are going to be amazing at, say, distorting the Flow to alter a weapon's path, while not being so good at dodging magic, and vice versa. (Besides, this makes for more character variety, stat-wise.)
(Also, as I'm seeing that list... I'd like to see EDF renamed, but WIL/EDF are basically MAG/MDef, but with different status resistances as well?)
I'd like a more standard list of elements, honestly. I hate going into a new game having to learn what works how when everything is completely new. And unless every different element is explained in-depth, I think that's what this would be like.
Item should be a unique command, IMO. I'd say something like:
Move
Attack
<Magic/Skill> <-- Depends on magical/physical.
<Other Skills?> <-- Depends on class. For example, Eirwen could have Item/Alchemy here.
Defend
<Change Party Member?> <-- Did we reach a decision on this one? Think it was a yes.
Flee
On the note of Equips, that should probably be a poll, ideally. Buut, I'd say unique equips are best if we're aiming for character individuality. Plus, gives us a chance to be creative with weapons!
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Stats:
HP: Health, of course.
<Resource type, varies>: Resource pool, varies on character, perhaps.
OFF: Offense. Dictates attack power of physical techniques and some composite skills.
DEF: Defense. Defense versus physical attack types, used to resist physical-source ailments(like poison).
WIL: Willpower. Dictates attack power of spells and some composite skills, used to resist mental ailments.
EDF: Energy Defense. Defense versus energy attacks, used to resist spiritual ailments
SPD: Speed. Linear as decided in Thread 1.
ACC: Accuracy. Determines base hit rate with attacks--physical or magical.
EVA: Evasion. Determines base evasion rate against attacks--physical or magical. IS NOT BUGGED.
MOV: Movement. How many hexes a character can move in one turn/action.
(possible: We've never determined yet how/if criticals will factor. If it's based on a character-specific rate, then have it as a stat--especially if things other than basic physicals can crit. Otherwise, let it be a weapon or skill-specific stat. If it's decided that there is no criticals, then dump this altogether)
CRT: Critical. Possibly make this a weapon/skill stat. Determines base critical rate.
I like what they do, but just call them what they are. ATK, DEF, ACC, EVA, MATK, MDEF, MACC, MEVA, SPD, MOV, CRT. Simple. We want things transparent, after all.
As for elements: I'm having trouble seeing certain elements somehow mysteriously doing damage of their type on some random basis (Earth, Air, and Water are the big three offenders here.) As such, at least for elements I can think of, there's subtypes of damage...
I understand where you're coming from, but...
So if we consolidate it into elements as actual damage type, we're more likely to get something of the following:
Slashing (Physical)
Piercing (Physical)
Impact (Physical)
Heat (Energy)
Cold (Energy)
Electric (Energy)
Asphyxiation (Physical, attacking base DEF only)
Poison (Physical, attacking base DEF only)
'Life'/'Holy' (Energy?)
'Death' (Energy?)
...This? This is the SaGa Frontier element list. If we want transparent, let's not go with the system that makes no sense.
The other issue...do we want one or more types of basic attack? By this, I mean since we seem to have agreed on the 'charging' part, would it be desirable to have multiple types of basic physical--one for damage and one for interrupting? Or would interrupts be best left up to certain skills? On that note, would movement be instant, or would it take its own degree of time?
...Good question. I'd really like Movement to be instantaneous since if it's not... dear god the slowdown. I think allowing certain weapon types and certain skills to have a 'interrupt'-type attack option open up alongside their basic physical is a good idea. Using this type of attack would obviously have to give some kind of speed boost so that it would have a chance to interrupt a currently-charging enemy's skill.
Equips: Something we haven't really talked much about aside from some early ideas of who'd have what in Thread 2. Are we using the "one PC->one weapon type" rule, or are we allowing for PCs to have access to multiple weapon categories? On that note, would there be overlap in that sense? (More than one PC drawing from the same weapon class)--though in the latter case, that'd be a guaranteed.
I'd lean towards the ToV-style here. Mostly unique weapon-types (and probably half the PCs use only one weapon-type, though some can use 2 or more I suppose), but there are some weapon-types that multiple characters can use, though sometimes equipping the same weapon with a different PC would produce a different statboost or support ability or whatever. We could have one character who is some kind of weaponmaster and can technically equip anything, but the boosts this PC gets are unique to him/her.
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Just read the last post, but here's my quick thought on weapons.
A game I loved with how it handled weapons was FF6. Have a bunch of classes, and have those classes get shared in interesting ways. This way, the nifty weapons you get can actually go on different people, but everyone still feels like they have a mostly unique weapon pool.
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</has read little of the above>
I just want to toss my thoughts out here, and mix them in, rather than be speaking on others.
I've always been a fan of having loads of different stats. I like having different systems to govern different types of abilities (magical vs. skills), and many different stats. My own thoughts on a stat list:
HP/LP/VP/WhateverP (life force)
MP/SP/AP/WhateverP (magic and magical abilities)
TP/SP/Whatever P (techniques, skills, etc.)
STR (base for physical power)
CON (base for physical non-taking damage power)
WIL (base for magical stuff)
RES (base for non-magical effects taking stuff)
SPD (speed, turn order)
AGI (evasion, dodge)
ACC (base character accuracy)
MOV (movement on a field, like in Grandia)
LUK (for all the cool stuff)
I've always liked weapons providing their own critical and hit rates, modulated by character bases (AGI, LUC, ACC, etc.). I like derived stats, since you can also have some interplay with some of those stats being mixed effects (for instance, STR*x = base ATK added to weapon ATK, and some techs are based on STR, or add STR bonuses to ATK, etc.). Of course, straight ATK/DEF/MAG/SDF/ACT/EVA/HIT/MOV/LUK work too.
I do like splitting physical elements up in to pierce/slash/strike.
Elements...
Fire
Water
Ice
Earth
Wind
Lightning
Light
Dark
Additional elements would be something like combination stuff...
Fire/Lightning = Nuclear
For example. Nothing specific on that end, but I like combination skills, so a bit more variety would be cool.
Each character should generally have a weapon type they use, but multiple weapons are fine too - definitely each person should have something unique about them. Armours should be general.
As for a mathematical system...I like subtraction, but I'm relatively alone in that regard, I think >_>
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Tally: I like Will better than Wisdom. Wisdom is a derivitive of Intelligence. Will stands for Willpower or mental/emotional endurance and is a match to Vitality (Physical endurance)
Just want to throw out the question of whether there is a realistic difference between (Battle) Speed and AP; that is, is it possible to have someone with low AP but high Speed = has quick reactions vs. High AP but Low Speed being a behemoth that needs to plan their actions in advance.
Dijin: I'd rather do a bit of a FF2 system wherein direct actions lead to corresponding stat boosts.
Actually, if we keep the base-derived gap, we could have each action (including inaction stuffs) increase each base stat a certain number of points. (Reserve Units would increase each base by 1 Stat Point per turn, (Total gain of 7 Stat Points for doing "nothing" to reflect general training.) Straight Physicals increase Strength and Dexterity, Straight Magic increases Intelligence and Willpower, Movement increases Agility (1 Stat point per move?), Various skills increase any of the 7 Stats as seems logical.
Stat increases would follow a formula using existing stat values to increase values the next point. Each person would have a different formula for each base stat, though you should count the number of battles (in the current dungeon) in the active party needed to increase a given stat one point on one hand. (And that's for all but the WORST stats per person; as an example a Fisticuffs Brawler would only need to fight 2 battles to increase Strength 1 point and 2-3 batles to increase Vitality. Willpower and Intelligence, however, would need 5-7 battles. Reverse this for a Pure Mage.
Derived Stats would be derived from base stats in the same way for all characters. The difference in the growth rates would already be covered by the Base Stats themselves.
I've got 7 Base Stats (as previously proposed) and 14 Derived Stats. Each of the 14 are combinations of either 3 Base stats equally or 2 Base Stats with a Primary and a Secondary. In this way, each stat has 6 roles, though some are duplicate roles.
Strength
Vitality/Constitution
Intelligence
Willpower
Dexterity (I treat as physical, its magical equal is covered partly by Int.)
Agility (I treat as physical, its magical equal is covered partly by Int.)
Luck
The first column has the Derived Stat, the other 3 the foundation Base Stats
HPnts Vit Vit Wil
PhPts Vit Str Int
MaPts Wil Wil Int
PhOff Str Str Dex
PhDef Vit Vit Str
MaOff Int Int Wil
MaDef Wil Wil Vit
PhAcc Str Dex Luck
PhEva Agi Agi Luck
MaAcc Int Dex Luck
MaEva Agi Int Luck
Speed Agi Dex Luck
Move_ Agi Agi Str
Critical Dex Dex Luck
Hit Points. Lose these and die. Usually physical in nature but in a setting dependent on magic, the will to live needs an acknowledgement.
Resources/Recharge for Physical Skills: Strength and Vitality provide the resivors, Intelligence provides the ability to use these skills efficiently
Resources/Recharge for Magic Skills: Willpower provides you with the Will to use spells a lot. Intelligence again provides efficiency.
Physical Offense: How hard you swing your physical weapon. Dexterity is reflexive of technique.
Physical Defense: Mainly Vitality, though raw Strength also plays a role.
Magical Offense: Mainly Inteligence. Willpoer provides that extra push.
Magical Defense: Mainly Willpower to resist. Vitality also plays a role once it breaks through into the body, such as damage spells. (Though White Blood Cells can also help against Status spells...)
Physical Accuracy: Dexterity to position the weapon, Strength to place it, and Luck for... Luck.
Physical Evade: Pratically all Agility, with a little Luck on the side.
Magic Accuracy: Inteligence and Dexterity intermingle for targeting ability. Luck helps out somewhat.
Magical Evade: Intelligence lets you see the spell. Agility gets you some distance. Luck is obvious.
(Turn) Speed: Dexterity for Positioning, Agility for Reaction, and Luck for... Luck.
Movement: How far a person moves in a turn. Agility plus a little bit of Strength for velocity.
Critical Rate: Mainly governed by a player's outright skill, reflected in Dexterity. Luck also plays a role.
So, Vitality and Willpower affect 4 Stats and double up on 2 of those 4: Type Defense and a Resource Stat.
Agility also affects 4 and doubles 2: Physical Evade (It shares with Intelligence for the Magical Equivalent) and Movement Rate; which can be interpreted as a Resourse Stat...
Luck is present in 6 stats and doubles in none.
The rest affect 5 stats with 1 doubling: Strength has Physical Attack, Intelligence Magic Attack, and Dexterity for hitting that sweet spot with any attack.
Derived Stats would be bolstered by Equipment. Some minor equipment (i.e. Accessories) could modify Base Stats instead, though whether by addition or Multiplication is left for debate.
I might get to Senses vs. Elements in a later post. Emphesis on might, schoolwork's starting up again.
Namagomi: What about Undead as being a byproduct of either Disquiet or extreme Quiet? I can see Death as being a Quieting type of spell...
OK: A subtraction system causes things to go "plink". Good for determining when you're supposed to be somewhere else, but could get real ugly real quick if the Party's on the wrong end. But what can we do...
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Donald: Beside the point. Undead are frankly boring as all hell, and nobody really enjoys dealing with them.
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Mostly an idea/opinion dump. List not in any particular order.
First: Agreeing with Djinn on stats. Let's not use weird names just to be different. Use normal names.
Second: Elements. Let's use normal elements. Using weird names like "Energy" is just confusing and... well, hard to design moves for. Normal elements are good. I do like splitting up physical into three elements though. Not a fan of "combination" elements, but I see no reason why some attacks can't have multiple elements. Also, see no issues with Light and Dark elements. Light does not mean good and Dark does not mean evil. Life and Death are probably worse for it.
Third: Equipment. I think weapons and armors should be usable by multiple characters in general (there can be weapon types that are the exception, though). However, we can have unique weapons and armor on top of that (just note it in the description so people KNOW). If we're going to have a lot of PCs and only able to use a small subset of them, then we need to allow most equips to be used on most people, otherwise players are going to get a lot of weapons and armor that they'll never use.
Specifically, I'd say something like A uses axes and spears, B uses spears and swords, C uses swords and staves, D uses axes, swords, and bows. Suikoden Tierkreis and Eternal Poison did this and it worked pretty well.
Fourth: On derived stats. The benefit to doing this is you can have say accessories that boost STR by 5%. For someone who has a high STR stat and a lower attack power weapon type, this is good, while it's not very useful on someone with low base STR and high attack power weapons. Stuff like that. You get more things to play with. On the other hand, there is the added complexity.
Fifth: For defense, subtraction based also gives us more things to mess with. I mentioned this example in chat, but I'll reiterate it here. Say we have two skills A and B, probably on the same person. Skill A's damage formula is (ATK*4-DEF). Skill B's damage formula is (ATK-DEF)*8. Against a high DEF enemy, say DEF=ATK, Skill B does no damage, while skill A does ATK*3 damage. On a lower DEF enemy, say DEF=ATK/4, skill A does ATK*3.75 damage while skill B does ATK*6 damage. Which skill you want to use depends on the defense of the target, making more skills useful overall. The downside to subtraction defense is that it is much harder to balance, whereas division defense you know someone with twice the defense will take half the damage, straight up.
If we split stats, we can do something like (ATK-DEF)*STR/VIT (with appropriate mults for skills) for damage, giving both subtraction and division. It's more complex (though not really all that complex if you make it transparent), but it allows for different styles of tanking (someone could have good DEF armors and low VIT, so they'd take lots of damage from things with high ATK but little damage from things with low ATK, which may end up tinking.
I am leaning towards subtraction being there in some form, at least.
Sixth: AP. Agreeing with Yoshi on the fact that Charge times => no AP. It CAN be doable, just is a mess and we should probably avoid it unless someone has a compelling reason and idea how to implement it. Assuming we use it, the easiest way to make fights end up not focusing on building AP for a long time is to just cap how much you can store fairly low. Like 2x your normal AP at most. Then you only wait one turn to max out, which isn't that long. You could just say 1x but then it's easy to waste AP (such as if you can't reach an enemy). I do like charge times (IF THEY'RE BALANCED CORRECTLY WHICH IS AN ISSUE IN LOTS OF GAMES), so I guess I'm voting for no AP until someone can convince me otherwise.
Seventh: Movement should be instant, yes. It works in Grandia 3 because it's an open field and you don't have perfect control over your movement. If we're using a grid, then we should just make it instant.
Eighth: Critical stat is good. As long as it is shown.
NINJA EDIT: Movement should not be affected by base stats and should be constant. If we were using a gridless system and could use a more continuous MOV stat, it would work better, but when we're dealing with a number between 1 and 4, it should just be constant.
Normal levelling is probably best. Anything that depends on actions means people who are faster get more stats, people who are in reserve get no stats, etc. Making stat boosts it based solely on battles fought has the issue of needing to scale to the enemies. It can work I guess, but it's kind of a hassle.
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First: Agreeing with Djinn on stats. Let's not use weird names just to be different. Use normal names.
Well there is precedent in using Will instead of Wisdom. FF4 if I'm not mistaken.
Second: Elements. Let's use normal elements. Using weird names like "Energy" is just confusing and... well, hard to design moves for. Normal elements are good. I do like splitting up physical into three elements though. Not a fan of "combination" elements, but I see no reason why some attacks can't have multiple elements. Also, see no issues with Light and Dark elements. Light does not mean good and Dark does not mean evil. Life and Death are probably worse for it.
Well, if we have anything to say about the 5 Sensory Schools, Now is the time. I always thought that the 4 native "senses" (with smell/taste combined) would be our base "elements" for impact with "standard" elements being a secondary factor.
Perhaps "Sonic"/"Sight"/"Touch"/"Smell" could be the magical counterparts to physical's "Piercing"/"Slashing"/"Blunt"/etc. This leaves room for the Standard Elements as a secondary multiplier Each skill would have only one "Primary Type" (Sense or Weapon Type) with any number of secondary elements (including the standard RPG elements, though I'm sad that I'm only seeing the Standard 8. What happened to "Nature," i.e. Growth vs just plain rocks and fissures?)
NINJA EDIT: Movement should not be affected by base stats and should be constant. If we were using a gridless system and could use a more continuous MOV stat, it would work better, but when we're dealing with a number between 1 and 4, it should just be constant.
Ok, I concede that Movement should not be affected by Base Stats. However, I disagree on it being a Constant. There should be armor effects and/or skills that allow it to deviate by +/-1 from its starting point. I see only Body Armor and Accessories impacting Move directly and while Skills would not stack with each other, (in fact, a "Sludgefoot" effect would nullify a "Lightfoot" effect and vice versa,) they would stack with Equipment effects (which, themselves are limited to a total deviation of +/-1 from normal). However, a Min of +1 and a Max of +5 need to be Hard-Coded.
Also, we could start considering Hex effects. (Unless that's later on.) For example, there could be some Bog Hexes that would cost 2 Movepoints and reduce the PEvade of anyone standing on them by 20%. Tall Grass would increase PEvade by 20%. Trees and Columns could be straight barriers to movement and line of sight. Bushes would be movement barriers only, LoS would still go through.
Here is a modified Skill Base Table. Note that I've separated the Physical-based Critical from the Magic-Based Critical to create my 14th Stat.
HPnts Vit Vit Wil
PhRes Vit Str Agi
MaRes Wil Wil Int
PhOff Str Str Dex
PhDef Vit Vit Str
MaOff Int Int Wil
MaDef Wil Wil Vit
PhAcc Str Dex Luc
PhEva Agi Agi Luc
MaAcc Int Dex Luc
MaEva Agi Int Luc
Speed Agi Agi Dex
PCrit_ Str Dex Luc
MCrit_ Int Dex Luc
Agility's Double-Up has been moved to Speed which transfers its Luck element into the Critical Split. The Dex double from Crit is also Split. Strength and Intelligence back up their respective Criticals and Agility (that is a sense of Flexibility, though Dexterity could have served as well) replaces Intelligence in the Physical Skill Recharge Pool.
Looking at this, I'm thinking that there may be grounds to combine Agility with Dexterity and Split Knowledge from Intelligence, using the former as the Magic Power base and the latter as Mental Quickness/Agility.
Normal levelling is probably best. Anything that depends on actions means people who are faster get more stats, people who are in reserve get no stats, etc. Making stat boosts it based solely on battles fought has the issue of needing to scale to the enemies. It can work I guess, but it's kind of a hassle.
What I had envisioned was the Reserves gaining 1 Stat Point in each Stat per Round of Battle, (total 7,) with Actions taken by the Active Party gaining from 7 to 10 Stat Points Total, though distributed based on the action taken. (Maybe start at 5-6 depending on how early in the game we exceed the Party Size Cap.) That still leaves the issue of Active Party Members with higher Speed getting more Stat Experience than Lower Speed actives. Probably another reason for a reconfig in Stats...
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On stats: I'm okay with derived stats as Tal sees them. I like things that give a PC more flexibility and allows us to have more fun with skill formulas. Although, I recommend that the active stats all be displayed from 0-100. This also allows for nice things like EVA/ACC percentages being transparent.
Still opposed to any creative naming here.
On equips: Hopefully we can come up with slightly more creative weapon types than just axes, spears, and bows?
On elements: Still a flavor thing. It doesn't matter what we -call- the elements, it's just a method of damage-typing. We could have literal flavor-typed damages, and it would still be a question of 'Does Noemi resist Parfait-type attacks?' or 'Oh no, this boss just nulled my best Pancake Limit Break!'
I think the tried and true 'Big Eight' works best, but we could add a special elemental typing for Quieting spells or something.
On Critical stat: Yes. It's far nicer knowing up-front what your percentage chance of critical is instead of hoping that this specific move has a high critical rate. (Although, we can have those kinds of moves, just make sure to label how much they increase a PC's base critical %).
On Movement: Agreed that Movement should be instant, however, it can be figured into the charge time of a move as it goes from 'input' to 'activated' a la the Grandia system. The movement actually takes place instantly, but moving further should increase the chargetime of an ability slightly. This means that there's a greater chance that something will use a faster move and interrupt you (especially the enemy you just moved next to, since now it's not getting a movement penalty! ...However, I doubt most enemies have Interrupt abilities, so this probably works in the player's favor more often than not).
On Levelling: Well, I'm still in favor of CC-style here, since it's a fun system that's under-utilized, but I guess we could go with vanilla levelling too. Want to see more thoughts on this.
FF2 Levelling is horrible, and I do not support this in any way. It's bad enough that we're probably going to have skill powering up in this method (in a limited capacity, I was thinking more along the lines of "use a skill 10 times, it goes up a level, caps at 10 or 20"), but stat-powering in this method is yikes. You get the FF2 beat-yourself-in-the-head syndrome which not even Grandia thought was a good idea.
On AP: Not a fan, won't cry if we decide to implement it, but I doubt it'll be an easy system to talk about/balance for in the IAQ writeup.
EDIT before posting!
Strength
Vitality/Constitution
Intelligence
Willpower
Dexterity (I treat as physical, its magical equal is covered partly by Int.)
Agility (I treat as physical, its magical equal is covered partly by Int.)
Luck
The first column has the Derived Stat, the other 3 the foundation Base Stats
HPnts Vit Vit Wil
PhRes Vit Str Agi
MaRes Wil Wil Int
PhOff Str Str Dex
PhDef Vit Vit Str
MaOff Int Int Wil
MaDef Wil Wil Vit
PhAcc Str Dex Luc
PhEva Agi Agi Luc
MaAcc Int Dex Luc
MaEva Agi Int Luc
Speed Agi Agi Dex
PCrit_ Str Dex Luc
MCrit_ Int Dex Luc
This is... not bad. But a little more complex than I was hoping for. There's nothing wrong with the names, at least.
I think I'd still prefer a more straight base translation. That way we can have a piece of equipment that modifies Agi, but doesn't suddenly make half the PC's active stats double!
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Haven't been reading super closely, but like the idea of PCs having visible critical rates. More specifically... I'd advocate each PC having a specific base critical rate, based on fighting style. Also means you know in advance how much of an effect, say, a new skill, a crit-boosting weapon, or support skills would have on the PC. I'd suggest having the base rate as a % chance, and making boosts a flat bonus rather than a percentage enhancement. Basically, you could make a non-crit character have a chance at it, or making a crit oriented character an unstoppable machine, that sort of thing.
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Tal is the man and I second much of what he has said. Expanding on some of it too, this is also an unfocussed post.
Simple, straightforward elements (attacks can have multiple elements). Try not to let the game have too many. 8 magical ones + the 3 types of physical damage at most (plus status stuff if you want to see that as elemental).
Equipment: Definitely for the FF6 model where equips generally overlap (a few uniques, but they're not the norm) but every character's weapon pool is unique. This has been described well by a few people.
Also, weapon types should vary from each other in the following ways:
-Multiplier (perhaps accomplished via multiple swings/hits)
-Raw power to overpower defence
-Reach (spears with 2 range, bows with 4, etc.)
-Counter rate
-Critical rate
-Damage type (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing)
-Hit rate
-Ability to overcome certain types of enemy defences (ranged weapons hit fliers, hammers ignore armour, etc.)
Possibly more. Basically, an axe and club should not just be separated by a simple power stat the way they are in Dragon Quest.
Agreed with crit being shown.
Scanning. Enemy information. Super important. I don't really care how it's implemented (it could be as simple as information that's permanently available like WA5, or available via the more usual Scan spell, or have different characters specialise in analysing different enemies) but the option is something that I find very valuable to strategy. I'd make the scan a very informative one: it should show stats as well as elemental/status info. Optimally I'd also like it to show descriptions of enemy moves, at least that are already used. I may be getting greedy though. <.<
Also in favour of some manner of damage projections, at least via scanned enemies. No opinion on whether to use the traditional SRPG raw number, or the less intrusive WA4-5 method of showing the projection against enemy HP. Since I'm in favour of transparent mechanics (read: the damage formulas should be in the database/library), this is nothing more than saving the player the trouble of working out available information himself or herself.
(I'm well aware that many players won't care about these things, but they're easy to implement in a way that doesn't slow down or interfere with the game for them.)
Dijin: I'd rather do a bit of a FF2 system wherein direct actions lead to corresponding stat boosts.
Aw hell naw. Seriously, there's a reason FF2 is considered by most to suck. Strongly opposed to in-battle stuff determining out-of-battle results, it encourages inane in-battle grinding. Beat up your party members to raise their HP! No.
Shouldn't we have magical stats that deal with how the magic system works? Like, we were discussing how characters may respond differently to dissonance-related healing... should this have a stat?
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First: Agreeing with Djinn on stats. Let's not use weird names just to be different. Use normal names.
Well there is precedent in using Will instead of Wisdom. FF4 if I'm not mistaken.
Wasn't directed at your suggestion there.
Well, if we have anything to say about the 5 Sensory Schools, Now is the time. I always thought that the 4 native "senses" (with smell/taste combined) would be our base "elements" for impact with "standard" elements being a secondary factor.
Perhaps "Sonic"/"Sight"/"Touch"/"Smell" could be the magical counterparts to physical's "Piercing"/"Slashing"/"Blunt"/etc. This leaves room for the Standard Elements as a secondary multiplier Each skill would have only one "Primary Type" (Sense or Weapon Type) with any number of secondary elements (including the standard RPG elements, though I'm sad that I'm only seeing the Standard 8. What happened to "Nature," i.e. Growth vs just plain rocks and fissures?)
While... I don't think this is a horrid idea, I think it's A) too complex and B) forces all of a school's spells to be the same "element", and I don't really see a good reason to do this.
NINJA EDIT: Movement should not be affected by base stats and should be constant. If we were using a gridless system and could use a more continuous MOV stat, it would work better, but when we're dealing with a number between 1 and 4, it should just be constant.
Ok, I concede that Movement should not be affected by Base Stats. However, I disagree on it being a Constant. There should be armor effects and/or skills that allow it to deviate by +/-1 from its starting point. I see only Body Armor and Accessories impacting Move directly and while Skills would not stack with each other, (in fact, a "Sludgefoot" effect would nullify a "Lightfoot" effect and vice versa,) they would stack with Equipment effects (which, themselves are limited to a total deviation of +/-1 from normal). However, a Min of +1 and a Max of +5 need to be Hard-Coded.
Yeah, I can see them being affected by equips or some such. Just not by stats.
Also, we could start considering Hex effects. (Unless that's later on.) For example, there could be some Bog Hexes that would cost 2 Movepoints and reduce the PEvade of anyone standing on them by 20%. Tall Grass would increase PEvade by 20%. Trees and Columns could be straight barriers to movement and line of sight. Bushes would be movement barriers only, LoS would still go through.
Too many hex effects makes this resemble WA4/5 too much. However, this is more akin to SRPG terrain, which might be different enough? Not sure if it should be present in randoms or not (though if we use visible randoms, it might work).
Normal levelling is probably best. Anything that depends on actions means people who are faster get more stats, people who are in reserve get no stats, etc. Making stat boosts it based solely on battles fought has the issue of needing to scale to the enemies. It can work I guess, but it's kind of a hassle.
What I had envisioned was the Reserves gaining 1 Stat Point in each Stat per Round of Battle, (total 7,) with Actions taken by the Active Party gaining from 7 to 10 Stat Points Total, though distributed based on the action taken. (Maybe start at 5-6 depending on how early in the game we exceed the Party Size Cap.) That still leaves the issue of Active Party Members with higher Speed getting more Stat Experience than Lower Speed actives. Probably another reason for a reconfig in Stats...
This is... really weird. Active battle members will get stats in what they excel in most, of course, and not get much in stats that require them to take actions they cannot take. However, throw them into reserves and bam, different stat distribution? That's really not sitting right with me at all.
On stats: I'm okay with derived stats as Tal sees them. I like things that give a PC more flexibility and allows us to have more fun with skill formulas. Although, I recommend that the active stats all be displayed from 0-100. This also allows for nice things like EVA/ACC percentages being transparent.
You can make EVA/ACC transparent without forcing a 0-100 restriction. In fact, ACC capping out at 100 is probably not even a good idea.
Not that I really object to that low of a range, just saying it's not necessary. Personally, I'm a fan of no "hard" cap on stats, though there is obviously a range we'd shoot for stats to fall in normally.
On equips: Hopefully we can come up with slightly more creative weapon types than just axes, spears, and bows?
Heck yes. We need more people hitting things with violins and stuff.
On elements: Still a flavor thing. It doesn't matter what we -call- the elements, it's just a method of damage-typing. We could have literal flavor-typed damages, and it would still be a question of 'Does Noemi resist Parfait-type attacks?' or 'Oh no, this boss just nulled my best Pancake Limit Break!'
Yes, but... why don't normal element names work? They fit just fine in the flavor and the only reason to use obscure names is to... use obscure names. That's the point.
Though, Pancake element is delicious...
I think the tried and true 'Big Eight' works best, but we could add a special elemental typing for Quieting spells or something.
Maybe. Not quite convinced it's needed, but maybe.
On Movement: Agreed that Movement should be instant, however, it can be figured into the charge time of a move as it goes from 'input' to 'activated' a la the Grandia system. The movement actually takes place instantly, but moving further should increase the chargetime of an ability slightly. This means that there's a greater chance that something will use a faster move and interrupt you (especially the enemy you just moved next to, since now it's not getting a movement penalty! ...However, I doubt most enemies have Interrupt abilities, so this probably works in the player's favor more often than not).
Part of me wants to agree and part of me wants to disagree.
Movement affect charge time... well, it doesn't make any sense if the character actually moved instantly. It's just unbelievable.
On the other hand, allows for some neat mechanics. Not sure it's worth it though.
Also, enemies should have interrupt abilities and use them.
On Levelling: Well, I'm still in favor of CC-style here, since it's a fun system that's under-utilized, but I guess we could go with vanilla levelling too. Want to see more thoughts on this.
Wasn't it random? And arbitrarily capped? Not a fan of either of those.
I think I'd still prefer a more straight base translation. That way we can have a piece of equipment that modifies Agi, but doesn't suddenly make half the PC's active stats double!
Make base stats only part of the equation of derived stats, then modify by equipment. Problem solved (if we do it right).
Haven't been reading super closely, but like the idea of PCs having visible critical rates. More specifically... I'd advocate each PC having a specific base critical rate, based on fighting style. Also means you know in advance how much of an effect, say, a new skill, a crit-boosting weapon, or support skills would have on the PC. I'd suggest having the base rate as a % chance, and making boosts a flat bonus rather than a percentage enhancement. Basically, you could make a non-crit character have a chance at it, or making a crit oriented character an unstoppable machine, that sort of thing.
Agreed. I'll use Atelier Iris 2 as an example here. There, the base critical rate was 20%. There were three skills, Critical (S), Critical (M), and Critical (L). They increased critical rate by 10%, 20%, and 30% respectively. Multiplicatively. So your awesome Critical (L) weapon... crits 26% of the time instead of 20%. YEY!
Yeah, that's not a good way to do things.
Also, weapon types should vary from each other in the following ways:
-Multiplier (perhaps accomplished via multiple swings/hits)
-Raw power to overpower defence
-Reach (spears with 2 range, bows with 4, etc.)
-Counter rate
-Critical rate
-Damage type (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing)
-Hit rate
-Ability to overcome certain types of enemy defences (ranged weapons hit fliers, hammers ignore armour, etc.)
Possibly more. Basically, an axe and club should not just be separated by a simple power stat the way they are in Dragon Quest.
Liking it. Though I was thinking specific skills would affect much of these things (mults, critical rate, hit rate, piercing defenses, maybe damage type in some cases). Would they stack with each other (obviously not damage type) or would skills just use their own modifiers? I'm in favor of stacking, since it makes your weapon type matter more. A bit more complex but likely worth it.
Scanning. Enemy information. Super important. I don't really care how it's implemented (it could be as simple as information that's permanently available like WA5, or available via the more usual Scan spell, or have different characters specialise in analysing different enemies) but the option is something that I find very valuable to strategy. I'd make the scan a very informative one: it should show stats as well as elemental/status info. Optimally I'd also like it to show descriptions of enemy moves, at least that are already used. I may be getting greedy though. <.<
Definitely agreed. WA5 style rules. There's also the option of sequentially making the data available. For example, hit an enemy with a physical attack, you now know its physical defense. Enemy uses a physical move on you, you now know its physical attack stat and the stats of that move.
Just an idea anyway.
Also in favour of some manner of damage projections, at least via scanned enemies. No opinion on whether to use the traditional SRPG raw number, or the less intrusive WA4-5 method of showing the projection against enemy HP. Since I'm in favour of transparent mechanics (read: the damage formulas should be in the database/library), this is nothing more than saving the player the trouble of working out available information himself or herself.
Also agreed. Status rates should be transparent too (possibly with an "immune" flag if they immune it, though that should be in the analysis info anyway). Generally find raw numbers better, though I don't know how it'd work in a game that's not really an SRPG.
Shouldn't we have magical stats that deal with how the magic system works? Like, we were discussing how characters may respond differently to dissonance-related healing... should this have a stat?
Uh... hmm. Maybe these could be some separate "constant" stats (or semi-constant if you want to make them modifiable by equipment or skills, but that doesn't make much sense in this case).
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Equipment: Definitely for the FF6 model where equips generally overlap (a few uniques, but they're not the norm) but every character's weapon pool is unique. This has been described well by a few people.
Also, weapon types should vary from each other in the following ways:
-Multiplier (perhaps accomplished via multiple swings/hits)
-Raw power to overpower defence
-Reach (spears with 2 range, bows with 4, etc.)
-Counter rate
-Critical rate
-Damage type (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing)
-Hit rate
-Ability to overcome certain types of enemy defences (ranged weapons hit fliers, hammers ignore armour, etc.)
Possibly more. Basically, an axe and club should not just be separated by a simple power stat the way they are in Dragon Quest.
This is viable. We can possibly toss in charge/recovery rate as well for certain weapons. Furthermore, there's a large number of weapon 'classes' that can be seen as useful here. The ones I can think of right now are as follows, though some categories clearly overlap.
Thrusting blades (Daggers, fencing swords. Light and quick, poor power in general, though some may be unusual exceptions)
Curved swords (Cutlass, scimitar, falchion, shamshir come to mind here. Bad penetration, possibly quick with decent damage.)
'Standard' swords (Shortsword, broadsword, longsword as 1H, as well as any non-curved 2H sword. Come off as generally 'balanced')
Axes (Throwing, hand axes, 2H axes, halberds. High damage output, probably...average armor penetration)
Bludgeoning (Clubs, maces, hammers, lucerne hammers, flails. Good for heavy armor, flails might avoid parrying abilities to boot.)
Spears (Javelins, shortspears, longspears, pikes. Something tells me that they have some degree of armor penetration. Might also be good on defense)
Polearms(Glaives, pikes, halberds, lucerne hammers, war scythes...kind of a weird category, but they basically all have reach. Likely to be slower in general. Advantage against mounted targets?)
Thrown(Throwing knives, throwing axes, javelins, boomerangs/slashers. Bolas are stupid and should not be included.)
Projectile(Sling, Bows(longbow, shortbow), crossbow(Light, Heavy, repeating))
...okay. With such categories and potential overlap of weapon types, I can easily see there being no real need for any sort of unorthodox weapon use. I'll think of how they can vary at some later point in time.
Scanning. Enemy information. Super important. I don't really care how it's implemented (it could be as simple as information that's permanently available like WA5, or available via the more usual Scan spell, or have different characters specialise in analysing different enemies) but the option is something that I find very valuable to strategy. I'd make the scan a very informative one: it should show stats as well as elemental/status info. Optimally I'd also like it to show descriptions of enemy moves, at least that are already used. I may be getting greedy though. <.<
Also in favour of some manner of damage projections, at least via scanned enemies. No opinion on whether to use the traditional SRPG raw number, or the less intrusive WA4-5 method of showing the projection against enemy HP. Since I'm in favour of transparent mechanics (read: the damage formulas should be in the database/library), this is nothing more than saving the player the trouble of working out available information himself or herself.
Scanning: Hm. It's viable to have that. Depending on how you see it and how much you want enemy charging to reveal the attack (simply that it's charging, or up to the name and primary target?). No thoughts either way on the issue, honestly. I am in favor of an in-game compendium if that's possible, though.
I'm fine with a WA4-5 style 'bar estimate' method. Less intrusive, and probably fits more for this anyway; it's not a SRPG, despite having some elements thereof.
Shouldn't we have magical stats that deal with how the magic system works? Like, we were discussing how characters may respond differently to dissonance-related healing... should this have a stat?
Eh. Not sure myself. Leaning no on that stat.
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Well, if we aren't going to have the 5 Schools be elements in and of themselves, then perhaps we can have FE-Style Modifiers based on the Proficiency of those Schools. Kind of like Shadowrun's Skill Concentration builds. In this case, a Mage that has been dealing with primarily Touch spells but also has some knowledge of Taste/Smell would get, say, a A-B for Touch, a C for Taste, and a D/F for the other senses. Non D/F ratings invoke modifiers that help with Attack, Accuracy (these two aren't needed so much as they are specialties and the attacks should primarily be of the learned schools), Defense, and Evade (which can come in handy when facing off with a mage of another school. We could have similar for fighting styles, i.e. Barehanded/Melee Weapon/Ranged.
I'm also wanting to have similar modifiers for Dissonance, Quieting, and Resonance, but unlike the Schools & Weapons Skills, I feel that these should interact as sort of a triangle function. i.e. a Mage that has devoted himself to the Dissonance method entirely will have great skill with (and defense against) Dissonance-based magic, but would have practically no defense against Quieting or Resonance. This goes back to the meta-theme of balance.
As for experience... I guess we're going to head to straight levels. However, I would like to keep open a method of extra stat progression via using skills. This could go with the FE-style multipliers I mentioned above and translate into extra stats ala Pokemon's EVs, while not impacting levels at all. Hence, "Leaked (Kill) Experience" would be equal... but then we need to get into Death in Battle. If we agree that a character that dies doesn't get experience, then we'll have to have Boss "Kill" Exp be around the same as a normal enemy party, lest we have a character fall behind because he died at the "wrong time".
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Well, if we aren't going to have the 5 Schools be elements in and of themselves, then perhaps we can have FE-Style Modifiers based on the Proficiency of those Schools. Kind of like Shadowrun's Skill Concentration builds. In this case, a Mage that has been dealing with primarily Touch spells but also has some knowledge of Taste/Smell would get, say, a A-B for Touch, a C for Taste, and a D/F for the other senses. Non D/F ratings invoke modifiers that help with Attack, Accuracy (these two aren't needed so much as they are specialties and the attacks should primarily be of the learned schools), Defense, and Evade (which can come in handy when facing off with a mage of another school. We could have similar for fighting styles, i.e. Barehanded/Melee Weapon/Ranged.
I'm also wanting to have similar modifiers for Dissonance, Quieting, and Resonance, but unlike the Schools & Weapons Skills, I feel that these should interact as sort of a triangle function. i.e. a Mage that has devoted himself to the Dissonance method entirely will have great skill with (and defense against) Dissonance-based magic, but would have practically no defense against Quieting or Resonance. This goes back to the meta-theme of balance.
Eternal Poison did this for elements as well (and more akin to what you're thinking than FE, since it actually doesn't affect anything besides what you can equip in FE, until you get to S, I believe), except it didn't affect accuracy or evade because those stats didn't exist. It actually worked pretty well.
As for experience... I guess we're going to head to straight levels. However, I would like to keep open a method of extra stat progression via using skills. This could go with the FE-style multipliers I mentioned above and translate into extra stats ala Pokemon's EVs, while not impacting levels at all. Hence, "Leaked (Kill) Experience" would be equal... but then we need to get into Death in Battle. If we agree that a character that dies doesn't get experience, then we'll have to have Boss "Kill" Exp be around the same as a normal enemy party, lest we have a character fall behind because he died at the "wrong time".
Death should still give EXP. Frankly I find death not giving EXP to be completely ridiculous. A character lives throughout the whole battle, but if he's not alive for the one turn the boss dies on, he suddenly gets no EXP for the fight? That's just stupid. He experienced like 95% of the fight.
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I'd just like to toss in a hearty fuck no to denying anything for a person being dead at the end of battle. And a very general, and very strong and emphatic no to basing anything on using someone in battle. It's not necessary, and it's just annoying.
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On AP: Outright against for a number of reasons that have mostly been covered in topic, so whatevs.
On stats: I think I liked Tal’s or Don’s or some hybrid list best? I’m still trying to sort things out but, speaking as a WoW player, I think derived stats are a bit more interesting as they provide more elements for give and take between individual items, which, if we’re having overlap, is a good thing! You can give that PC a weapon with a ton of raw attack, but you lose out on the riders of having the one with a lesser amount of Agi instead! Oh noes.
On elements: I’m all for consolidating when possible. Setting wise, I am going to say I’m only for Light/Dark elements if they are portrayed in the literal sense of Light and Dark. I am fairly against any sort of Holy/Unholy. I do support having fairly standardized/transparent elements so as not to scare people off. The only strange element that should exist is Quieting, and it’d pretty much be close to the game’s version of Almighty/Death. Don’t mind a physical split. Idle thought cribbed from WoW suggests combining the oddball elements (water, air, earth, etc) that exist in kind of a weird space into “Nature” damage or something similar. Not fond of combo elements. Just make attacks multi-elemental and invent a rule for how resistance/weakness to one or more types is handled.
On movement: Instant, please. We’re aiming more for positional strategy than other janky move tricks, so let us not make it more obnoxious than need be.
One Equipment: Slot wise, I would encourage something along the Shadow Hearts/Suikoden/etc line of Weapon Slot, Armor Slot, 1-3 Misc Slot. On generalized overlap, I really have no opinion. I would like each PC to at least have one, unique, Ultimate piece of equipment. I’d prefer at least one in each slot, but I’m willing to compromise down to just one, period to better accommodate our large-ish cast. This way you still keep equip options AND the character has a specifically tuned piece of gear with their name on it.
On math: From the sound of it, subtraction sounds like it potentially works the best for a lot of reasons (cute math tricks, tricky fights/situations, etc). But I’m shit at math, so I leave this to the smart people.
On leveling vs stat growths: Sacred cow defense kicking in. Leaning towards just simple, straightforward leveling. We’ve already got a desire for crazy go-nuts skill learning variety. Let’s not muck up just gaining your stat boosts. >_> Also against any sort of randomization as its either meaningless or would cause problems for a very finely tuned hard mode.
On undead: Disquieted abominations are the closest we’re getting if it were purely my choice. We can have some semblance to undead beasties, but I’m not suggesting we group them out as their own thing.
On charge times: So, are we planning on interrupting attacks being possible?
On movement: Constant please. Very minor change due to very specific equipment at worst.
On crits: Visible, please.
On weapons: I’m okay with categories varying notably.
On “Hex Effects/Terrain”: Should be saved for plot/boss fights and be very rare otherwise.
Scanning: Yus.
On breaking up the five sensory tricks/three magic types: Against on basis of flavor. This should already be represented via the way the character’s specials, as well as the way we align their stats. Also against any sort of weapon triangle effect, since it very much does NOT work like that in plot style. Also setting aside that it can’t, really, given the nature of Resonance.
On Dead Exp: Please. Please. Please.
On Out of Battle Exp: See notes about the Hard mode. I either support full sharing or Suiko style exp where they will catch up nearly instantly.
On resources: I think we should generally think a little bit about using Excal’s three system idea as a base concept and work from there, seeing how much variety we can score via passive abilities that modify how the resource works… then worry about branching out into completely new systems if we find this too restricting. Just a decent baseline.
On making someone arrange what looks like the popular ideas at the moment so we could see what it looks like: Please?
Whee. I think that catches me up?
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One Equipment: Slot wise, I would encourage something along the Shadow Hearts/Suikoden/etc line of Weapon Slot, Armor Slot, 1-3 Misc Slot. On generalized overlap, I really have no opinion. I would like each PC to at least have one, unique, Ultimate piece of equipment. I’d prefer at least one in each slot, but I’m willing to compromise down to just one, period to better accommodate our large-ish cast. This way you still keep equip options AND the character has a specifically tuned piece of gear with their name on it.
All for this. weapon, armor, and accessories are generally enough, and if we have more slots (3) for accessories, that does give a fair amount of twinking options. Do agree that characters should get a unique ultimate weapon, armor, and accessory (even if we have 3 slots, we only need one unique here). Some of these could be from sidequests, while some could just be in a treasure chest or storebought somewhere. Do not think all of them should be from sidequests UNLESS we just package all of a person's uniques together in the same sidequest (actually that's not a bad idea, and we can throw in an ultimate skill in there if we wanted). 50 sidequests is probably too much.
On undead: Disquieted abominations are the closest we’re getting if it were purely my choice. We can have some semblance to undead beasties, but I’m not suggesting we group them out as their own thing.
Growlanser: Heritage of War had something similar in the screapers, which weren't actually undead, but still a "special" type of monster.
On charge times: So, are we planning on interrupting attacks being possible?
I think so? Not sure if EVERY skill needs a charge time (probably not), though.
On resources: I think we should generally think a little bit about using Excal’s three system idea as a base concept and work from there, seeing how much variety we can score via passive abilities that modify how the resource works… then worry about branching out into completely new systems if we find this too restricting. Just a decent baseline.
I agree. We can start there, and if we have other neat ideas or need to branch out to keep variety, we can later. But these three systems do give us a good deal to work with, so let's do what we can there first.
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On stats: I think I liked Tal’s or Don’s or some hybrid list best? I’m still trying to sort things out but, speaking as a WoW player, I think derived stats are a bit more interesting as they provide more elements for give and take between individual items, which, if we’re having overlap, is a good thing! You can give that PC a weapon with a ton of raw attack, but you lose out on the riders of having the one with a lesser amount of Agi instead! Oh noes.
I'm all for derived stats. Pulling from Eternal Poison, I think it would be pretty easy to fit a lot of stats on screen, and in addition to something like Tal's list, we'd need to include a PC's individual Elemental resists.
Also, I'm strongly in favor of each character having a Dissonance/Resonance/Quieting affinity that would work as a multiplier for each type of skill. This would make each skill in the game necessarily have one of these typings. Also, the typings don't effect damage flavor this way.
On elements: I’m all for consolidating when possible. Setting wise, I am going to say I’m only for Light/Dark elements if they are portrayed in the literal sense of Light and Dark. I am fairly against any sort of Holy/Unholy. I do support having fairly standardized/transparent elements so as not to scare people off. The only strange element that should exist is Quieting, and it’d pretty much be close to the game’s version of Almighty/Death. Don’t mind a physical split. Idle thought cribbed from WoW suggests combining the oddball elements (water, air, earth, etc) that exist in kind of a weird space into “Nature” damage or something similar. Not fond of combo elements. Just make attacks multi-elemental and invent a rule for how resistance/weakness to one or more types is handled.
Well, if we make Quieting its own element, then we wouldn't need to give PCs an affinity for it and it should probably work outside the normal rules, akin to Almighty. I'm in favor of this personally.
Splitting Physical into the 3 big types (Slashing, Piercing, Bludgeoning) seems good.
Note that I'm not big on the 5 Senses being elements. I was imagining them more as being how we break up the resources and individual learning styles of each PC.
On movement: Instant, please. We’re aiming more for positional strategy than other janky move tricks, so let us not make it more obnoxious than need be.
Not a huge fan of making this IAQ about positional strategy, I'd prefer if the focus was on speed and skill selection. Especially since that's easier to convey in IAQ form.
One Equipment: Slot wise, I would encourage something along the Shadow Hearts/Suikoden/etc line of Weapon Slot, Armor Slot, 1-3 Misc Slot. On generalized overlap, I really have no opinion. I would like each PC to at least have one, unique, Ultimate piece of equipment. I’d prefer at least one in each slot, but I’m willing to compromise down to just one, period to better accommodate our large-ish cast. This way you still keep equip options AND the character has a specifically tuned piece of gear with their name on it.
I'm very much in favor of 1 Weapon, 1 Armor, 3 Accessories. I'm in favor of characters sharing weapon types a la Eternal Poison. However, I would be very happy to see at least a few unique weapon types (Seriously, how many of PCs can fight with Violins? Just the one). And I feel very strongly that each PC should have at least one unique weapon/armor each, and possibly several mid-game uniques that aren't necessarily hard-to-get or overly special, but just unique to give our cast a little more diversity. How PCs interact with equipment (maybe the same piece gives different stats to different PCs in some cases?) is an easy-to-implement and fun way to diversify how the PCs play.
On leveling vs stat growths: Sacred cow defense kicking in. Leaning towards just simple, straightforward leveling. We’ve already got a desire for crazy go-nuts skill learning variety. Let’s not muck up just gaining your stat boosts. >_> Also against any sort of randomization as its either meaningless or would cause problems for a very finely tuned hard mode.
Tal mentioned that the problem with the CC-style levelling was the Arbitrary Caps and Random Growth. I suggest not having that. Instead, I'm suggesting a linear levelling progression very much like what we're used to, but making it a bit more natural. Instead of Fight-Fight-Fight-Fight-zOMGI'mStrongerLevelUp!; I propose that we decrease the gains to a mere one or two points (and for only one or two stats) and simply make the gains more frequent. Such that every fight gives you -some- reward. This is much more realistic, but still gives a linear progression to the same point. Also it means that each random you decide to fight can actually make a decent impact on your characters.
If you want to look at it skeptically, I'm suggesting a 'level up' after every battle, but each 'level up' is like +2 or 3 to a single stat that maxes at 999 or something. I was thinking of it more as an organic linear stat increasing, but the end result is the same.
On undead: Disquieted abominations are the closest we’re getting if it were purely my choice. We can have some semblance to undead beasties, but I’m not suggesting we group them out as their own thing.
On charge times: So, are we planning on interrupting attacks being possible?
On movement: Constant please. Very minor change due to very specific equipment at worst.
On crits: Visible, please.
On weapons: I’m okay with categories varying notably.
On “Hex Effects/Terrain”: Should be saved for plot/boss fights and be very rare otherwise.
Scanning: Yus.
On breaking up the five sensory tricks/three magic types: Against on basis of flavor. This should already be represented via the way the character’s specials, as well as the way we align their stats. Also against any sort of weapon triangle effect, since it very much does NOT work like that in plot style. Also setting aside that it can’t, really, given the nature of Resonance.
On Dead Exp: Please. Please. Please.
On Out of Battle Exp: See notes about the Hard mode. I either support full sharing or Suiko style exp where they will catch up nearly instantly.
Big section of 'Yes, I think so, too.'
On resources: I think we should generally think a little bit about using Excal’s three system idea as a base concept and work from there, seeing how much variety we can score via passive abilities that modify how the resource works… then worry about branching out into completely new systems if we find this too restricting. Just a decent baseline.
I agree about it being a decent baseline. It's what I based my thoughts on the 5 Senses system on. It's also what I based by mock-up PC builds on in this very topic. It's notable that I already proposed at least one alternate resource method for Eirwen in that she has to gather and store her resources from enemies as 'ingredients' items that basically only she uses. I'm perfectly fine with each PC having some combination of each type of resource method, though I would be heavily in favor of each PC having a 'favored' type of skill. Like... Mirek has a lot of 'Focus' skills, but might have one or two that run off of MP too (or run off of HP in his case?).
On making someone arrange what looks like the popular ideas at the moment so we could see what it looks like: Please?
Uh... isn't that what you just did?
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New Post because it's a big discussion point and I didn't want it lost in the middle of the above post.
On math: From the sound of it, subtraction sounds like it potentially works the best for a lot of reasons (cute math tricks, tricky fights/situations, etc). But I’m shit at math, so I leave this to the smart people.
I'd like to see a simple formula with just a bunch of room for Multipliers, personally. Maybe something like... Attack = Damage (and therefore the Magic Formula is M.Attack = Damage).
From there, you can have multipliers like (making up stuff)
Attack * (Attacker's Atk - Defender's Defense) * FireSwordBlast's innate power mult (10x?) * Elemental mult (1.25x) * Cancelled Defender's Action bonus mult (1.05x) * ShadowClone's added damage mult (2x) * Attacker's 'Pancake Eater' passive boost mult (1.5x, increases by .01 for every 50 points of Vitality!) * Defender's 'Added Syrup' damage reduction mult (0.25x) = Effective Damage.
Perhaps there's a better way to balance the subtractive defense though? Since I have Attack being counted twice?
At any rate, I think a basic formula of Obvious Transparent Stat * Bunch of Mults = Damage is an easy system to follow. You could just have each skill in the game have a Base Power. And then Base Power * (Attack - Def) * Bunch of Mults = Damage. For basic physicals, you could give each weapon this Base Power number, or just use Attack.
Thoughts?
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Hm. Idea I've had here for a basic formula would be something along these lines for a 'standard' weapon skill:
((ATK+Skill base power)*(ATK/target DEF)-(Target DEF+Target ARM))*mults
ATK and Target DEF are total (including equipment), ARM is the target's "Armor" stat--in essence, a second form of defense derived only from your equipment--and maybe buffs. Zero and negative skill bases would be viable; in fact, I'd see a basic physical as having base power 0
Alternatively, could have DEF multiplied by ARM rather than adding the two.
Also, having the idea of hit rate equalling (ACC+Skill mod-(EVA+50))% Critical stat is likely to be a flat rate, possibly with mods on weapons and skills...possibly being a rate out of all the hits, rather than attack attempts.
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Damage formulas: The one Nama posted is quadratic for attack, and... confusing for Def. Don't like it for Def, basically. Also, it's pretty essential, I think, that skill multipliers/additions can be either before or after defence.
I'm for PC base defence varying little; defence always struck me as something that should come mostly from armour since, well, slicing someone with a sword has about the same effect whether you slice someone athletic or not. MDef on the other hand can vary plenty since that has to do with attunement and mastery over flow or whatever. (Suikoden handles this a few ways we might want to copy, with S3 having no base Def stat for humans and S5 having one that barely varies.)
On ultimate unique equips: Voice of dissent, here. I think there's potential for them to suck. Basically, are we going to have a really interesting equipment system where different PCs compete for different things, and many equip options that are viable... only to erode it at the end by handing everyone a clear "ultimate" which they should obviously use and isn't competed for? That sounds really lame. Making the player think about equipment choices = good.
I'm not opposed to some unique cool stuff, -especially- if it makes sense plotwise... but please try to keep options open. This probably means (a) some of the sexy ultimate stuff is shared, a la FF6, and/or (b) the ultimate unique stuff may be only situationally better than some other widely available stuff (see final XF PC's unique weapon which is weaker on raw stats than generic swords but has a cool extra effect).
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Perhaps there's a better way to balance the subtractive defense though? Since I have Attack being counted twice?
Thoughts?
This is mainly the issue with using subtractive defense. The simplicity of it all may lead to some balancing issues, and you also have to take into consideration the scale of the values you're incorporating. A high scale of values being used would require the formula to be balanced and adaptable to high values so that the output is not completely broken and such. But then, at least, we have a general idea on how our damage is going to be calculated. Adjustments can always be made after we've consolidated the other pertinent information regarding the number crunching.
Re:
((ATK+skill.base.power)*(ATK/targ.def)-(targ.def+target.arm))*(multipliers.here)
It seemed fairly normal enough until I boggled at how defense was incorporated into the formula. It seems rather arbitrary that you'd lump division by targ.def with the quadratic aspect of damage when you already have subtractive defense in there. I don't really get it. Or I'm just completely stupid and dense as lead. I'd like some clarification on this
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It's meant to try and incorporate both divisive and subtractive defense at once. However, I can see how that can prove to be a bit of an issue. An alternate means would be ripping a page from Touhou Odyssey's book; each skill has its own formula that incorporates relevant stats differently, though notably always subtractive; stats would need to be given a careful look, to say the least. Most attacks use just four stats;ATK, DEF, MAG, MND. ATK/DEF/MAG being obvious, and MND being your MDEF stat, and most follow the pattern of A*(B*(ATK or MAG)-(DEF or MND)*C), where A, B, and C are constants of a given sort, C often being fractional in nature. The multipliers given are indicative of the defense penetration of the attack. (Interestingly, basic attack formula in there is (ATK*1.5)-(DEF/2).)
Other common forms of attack in that game are those that ignore defense (A*(ATK or MND), A being constant) and those that are composite in nature ( A*(B*(ATK*C+MAG*D)-(DEF*E+MND*F)*G) is the easiest way to summarize it --actually, that's probably the basic equation that is worked from to derive every non-Master Spark attack in the game. They get very complicated-looking, but all the multiplication and division is by constant and the rest is subtractive. Surprisingly variable before the other parts of it(ranging from typical added-on status/statdowns, to varying recovery times, to screwing with enemies and sometimes allies' turn order.))
But that mess of equations and hype aside...it's very easy to use a subtractive equation, but it's notable that it usually leads to damage values hitting extremes. Either defensive stats stop mattering (Every Disgaea ever made once you're far enough into postgame. Dis3 even sooner) or your offense becomes completely pointless. Keeping things in the middle with subtractive defense is...tricky, to say the least.
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Okay, I'm on-board with this latest Nama formula.
I'm assuming that ATK+MAG and DEF+MND wouldn't normally be added together in every attack. Since most attacks are going to be typed Physical OR Magical. But apart from that, I'm okay with a simple formula like that. This -does- mean that ATK isn't going to translate as straight damage most of the time, but I'm okay with that.
So...
(ATK * SkillPower * Elemental mults * Buff mults) - (DEF * Elem Res mults * Buff mults) = Damage (*Special mults)
(MAG * SpellPower * Dissonant Resonant affinity mult *Elem * Buff mults) - (MND * Elem * Buff mults) = Damage (*Special mults)
Or something like that. It -does- make ITD attacks amazing though.
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Probably out of order, just cherry picking things out and then replying in whatever order I think of replies.
On stat levelling: Djinn: One fight against enemies in area 1 is different from one fight in the final dungeon. If you're getting stat boosts every battle period, you can grind really really easily in area 1 at the end of the game, and we don't want to make it THAT easy to just grind to 999 stats. Please take this into account somehow.
Also that is harder to balance bosses around.
On damage formulas: Using a derivative of the Labyrinth of Touhou formula Nama posted would be fine. It allows for different levels of defense penetration and still makes defense a good stat overall. It's actually similar mechanically to an idea I was mulling around with before I even played the game (I had weapons interacting with it more, but LoT doesn't have weapons anyway).
Djinn: It doesn't necessarily make ITD that awesome. In LoT, Rumia has an ITD attack and it's not even her best attack for raw damage (actually it kinda sucks, IIRC). All you have to do is make the mults lower to balance the ITD part. And yes, not every attack has both ATK/MAG and DEF/MND in the formula. Just certain skills (LoT calls them "composite"). I'm a fan of having some attacks that are both physical and magical as well, but we don't have to do it that way. We can just make them have one hit of physical damage and one hit of magical damage (or more hits on either side). Ar tonelico does something similar with Jack's basic physical attack (part of it's physical, and it has attached fire damage that depends only on the target's fire resistance and doesn't care about defense at all).
If we want to do something that includes both subtraction and division, we could do something like (ATK-DEF)*ATK/DEF (or the previous (ATK-DEF)*STR/VIT idea I posted awhile back... I think). The latter only works if we want to keep STR/ATK separate etc., though, which doesn't seem to be the case. Of course, with the first we can still have pre-DEF and post-DEF mults, and I believe we should if we adopt it.
For the record, I believe the first is the formula FF3DS uses. If you expand it out, you get ATK^2/DEF-ATK, which looks much weirder, but makes it obvious that ATK is quadratic (and while DEF only looks divisive here, it's applied before the -ATK, which is where the subtractive part comes in).
In the end, it would be something like (ATK*k-DEF)*m*ATK/DEF, k and m are the two mults, though we could have mults for the two DEF factors (bufs?) as well.
But that's just an idea. Like I said before, a derivative of the Labyrinth of Touhou formula works fine as well.
On ultimate equips: Actually... we could have the "ultimate" equips not completely outclass the other equips. Since they're per character, they could somehow enhance the character's innate abilities/strengths, but at the cost of lower raw attack power or other stat bonuses. "Ultimate" just kind of implies "last" to me, not necessarily "best" in practice. For example, we could have an armor with (+100 DEF, +100 MDEF, +4 VIT), and a character's ultimate could be (+60 DEF, +150 MDEF, +5 AGI, halves fire), and we'll assume the character is a fire mage with good speed and magic defense. Better suited to the character, but you definitely want to use that former armor if the character is dying to physical attackers a lot (which might be the case if he or she has low physical defense!).
So yeah, basically just expanded on what NEB said I guess.
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Probably out of order, just cherry picking things out and then replying in whatever order I think of replies.
On stat levelling: Djinn: One fight against enemies in area 1 is different from one fight in the final dungeon. If you're getting stat boosts every battle period, you can grind really really easily in area 1 at the end of the game, and we don't want to make it THAT easy to just grind to 999 stats. Please take this into account somehow.
Also that is harder to balance bosses around.
I was under the assumption that our visible randoms were limited. No grinding at all. At least not until near the end? The primary method of getting stronger in the early game is to do the quests that give your PCs more skills. That was my impression of the first round consensus anyway.
On damage formulas:
If we want to do something that includes both subtraction and division, we could do something like (ATK-DEF)*ATK/DEF (or the previous (ATK-DEF)*STR/VIT idea I posted awhile back... I think). The latter only works if we want to keep STR/ATK separate etc., though, which doesn't seem to be the case. Of course, with the first we can still have pre-DEF and post-DEF mults, and I believe we should if we adopt it.
If we want to use subtractive -and- divisional DEF... then I'm in favor of the composite formula with both DEF and VIT. Makes it more interesting.
However, I'm far more strongly in favor of a more transparent formula and then we simply list lots of obvious mults/effects on individual skills and equips.
On ultimate equips: Actually... we could have the "ultimate" equips not completely outclass the other equips. Since they're per character, they could somehow enhance the character's innate abilities/strengths, but at the cost of lower raw attack power or other stat bonuses. "Ultimate" just kind of implies "last" to me, not necessarily "best" in practice. For example, we could have an armor with (+100 DEF, +100 MDEF, +4 VIT), and a character's ultimate could be (+60 DEF, +150 MDEF, +5 AGI, halves fire), and we'll assume the character is a fire mage with good speed and magic defense. Better suited to the character, but you definitely want to use that former armor if the character is dying to physical attackers a lot (which might be the case if he or she has low physical defense!).
So yeah, basically just expanded on what NEB said I guess.
I'm all for this. I was thinking the 'ultimate' equips would be more about passive effects than stats. It would also be cool to have a few unique equips throughout the mid-game too, to encourage the use of different PCs. Like a 'mild regen to whole party' unique accessory for a ressonance user or something.
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I was under the assumption that our visible randoms were limited. No grinding at all. At least not until near the end? The primary method of getting stronger in the early game is to do the quests that give your PCs more skills. That was my impression of the first round consensus anyway.
I don't think that our "randoms" should be limited. They should respawn if you leave the dungeon or something. If people want to grind, just let them, but the visible randoms have the effect of making it easier to figure out what an "average" player would end up power wise (also people just hate on random encounters in general).
Making the randoms limited does stop grinding, but if we design our bosses to be difficult, there are going to be players out there who just can't deal with it (trust me, there are people who find easy bosses difficult), and have no way to deal with it since they can't grind. It's an option that should be there, just not emphasized.
However, I'm far more strongly in favor of a more transparent formula and then we simply list lots of obvious mults/effects on individual skills and equips.
The formula is "transparent" as long as you tell the player what it is. If we include damage projections, they don't even need to memorize it unless they want to. And it's not even that complex of a formula. Pretty intuitive once you know it, actually.
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In this case, when I say 'transparent', I mean... you look at a PC's 'ATK' stat, and you have a pretty good idea of how much damage you will do.
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Well, I'm fine with allowing grinding. But if you're worried about earlygame enemies = endgame enemies, then you just program in diminishing returns on the earlygame randoms as player's stats go up. I mean, we can still use an EXP system, I'm just proposing more frequent, but less potent growth.
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Well, I'm fine with allowing grinding. But if you're worried about earlygame enemies = endgame enemies, then you just program in diminishing returns on the earlygame randoms as player's stats go up. I mean, we can still use an EXP system, I'm just proposing more frequent, but less potent growth.
Yes, we can. But that issue has been ignored every single time this kind of thing has come up.
And if we do that somehow, then we wouldn't be getting stats "every battle". So we'd need to have visible progress shown somewhere.
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Noemi - Some starting spells, some plot-given, a few EXP-given. Primarily skill-tree-based learning. As she uses different spell elements, she gains more related spells. I see her as a dagger-wielding type, but she could know how to use a few simple weapon-types (maybe just 2?) and each could have some related techniques. Since she's the main, I'd like to see her have a combination of Cooldown and Limit-break moves. Leaning mostly Cooldown types, with only one or two Limits that are built up by dealing damage (rather than taking it, so she's not a good damage sponge). The Limits are possibly learned through Epiphany-style stat-threshhold breaking. High speed/movement.
Hm. I disagree on a few points. While I get the feeling she'd have a normal means of learning spells (Leveling!), I get the feeling that Noemi would be a MP-based mage, who is generally fast. Possibly evasive as well. Not sure what she'd have for a weapon, but she'd have a few buffs amidst the spells she has, no doubt.
Mirek - Former guardian, so his skills are mostly physical-based. A lot of starting skills, mostly Limit-style, based on amount of damage taken (each skill builds up a separate bar for him, so he can save up for a large burst of successive power skills). A few passive skills learned through sidequest-type stuff (I'm thinking since he's pretty reactive to the Disquiet, that he learns passive skills just by going to certain locations... or perhaps by going to a certain locale and spending enough time there to solve a puzzle or something and he naturally picks up a new ability, without even really realizing it himself). Average movement/high speed.
Mirek...yeah. Full physical. Not sure on learning methods, but I get the feeling that going with the proposed 'iaijutsu'-ish deal that Andy seemed to have in mind for Mirek, the guy's techs are going to be of the cooldown variety, with very short startup, and long recovery. In essence, his moves have their delay back-loaded, with maybe one or two normal attacks. Not sure on learning methods. High speed/average movement works well here. Might get Quieting(Dispel/ID) later.
Isolde - Seeing her more and more as some kind of Tactile mage. She focuses her power through touching an opponent (and then perhaps that casts an explosion spell from point-blank range?). Learns Blue-Mage style. She'll get attacked by an enemy mage or magic-distort random/boss and pick up the skill, though the range would end up being point-blank when she uses it. Not a ranged fighter with magic. If she needs some kind of range, she's using spear/halberd abilities. Weapon abilities for her would be few and cooldown-style, while her magic is just normal MP (I guess you could do Suiko-style charge levels, but I'm leaning against it since she already has range issues as a drawback). Charge times should match the enemy's. Thinking she can learn around 10-15 abilities through Blue Magic. She starts with some 'Earth' magic. High movement/average speed.
Hm. Not quite seeing a few things here. Visualizing her as more of a type who channels her magic through her weapon, as opposed to just by touch, for one. Burns HP in addition to costs regarding her magic, and I'm seeing her primary element as something else. Lightning, Water, or Darkness, if any element. Dunno why. Feels like that fits. Possibly having some minor AoE (Melee HT, Evil Blossom-style RT, short LT) in addition to her melee ST spells. Her magic, as an aside, would likely be gained through plot--as she'd be less likely to learn new stuff, and just start using old stuff again. As for weapon techs...probably a few starting, and nothing more. Cooldown-type, of course.
Lastly, how I see her tactile magic coming out...less Blue Mage, more Counter Magic (though I'm seeing her with functionally horrible mEVA on the side).
Erastus - Aural mage. Thinking he's big on AoE stuff. Lots of smash. Erastus is amazing, he's normally not limited by resources (lots of MP), but his Sound-based magic takes a lot of time to cast for big damage. His support-stuff can work like FFX2 Songstress skills - as long as he's chanting, the effect is in place, but he can't do anything else. Later on, there may be some skills where this isn't true and he CAN in fact be double-chanting two effects... maybe after he learns a passive ability to do so... DoubleSpeak, or what-have-you... he IS awesome after all. Since he's a skilled Vision mage too, he might be able to do both. Thinking he learns skills through using different Tomes/Tools. Low movement/speed.
...yeah. He comes off as slow, frail, super-blasty mage with huge AoEs on his damage and debuffs(Don't forget, he has Resonance despair), but slow charge/recovery times. Not much more that I can say on the matter. Thinking Andy'd be better at detailing how/if he learns anything.
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On breaking up the five sensory tricks/three magic types: Against on basis of flavor. This should already be represented via the way the character’s specials, as well as the way we align their stats.
I'll need to see how that would work before I render judgement. This is as good of a place as any to propose a new list of base stats:
Strength: Physical Power
Vitality: Physical Resilience
Agility: Maneuverability
Knowledge: Magical Power
Willpower: Magical Resilience
Intelligence: Awareness
Luck: Just plain Luck
These base stats would figure into the derivations in some manner. The table I have below is tentative and mailable, so long as each stat has an equal influence (read:number of slots) overall.
HPnts Vit Vit Wil
PhRes Vit Str Int
MaRes Wil Wil Kno
PhOff Str Str Agi
PhDef Vit Vit Str
MaOff Kno Kno Wil
MaDef Wil Wil Vit
PhAcc Str Agi Luc
PhEva Agi Agi Luc
MaAcc Kno Int Luc
MaEva Agi Int Luc
Speed Agi Int Int
PCrit_ Str Int Luc
MCrit_ Kno Kno Luc
Also against any sort of weapon triangle effect, since it very much does NOT work like that in plot style. Also setting aside that it can’t, really, given the nature of Resonance.
Ok, major misconception on this point just because I mentioned Fire Emblem.
Regarding the five schools, If Taly says Eternal Poison is a better analogue, I'll take his word for it.
Still think that practitioner of a particular school should be better able to defend against the types of spells they practice than the types of spells they don't. This could also extend into the 3 Magic types in lieu of my triangle proposal reiterated below.
As fat as the Dissonance-Quieting-Resonance "triangle" is concerned, it's not an FE Triangle. What it is is a power triangle wherein too much focus on one school leaves you defenseless against both of the other two. It's all in the balance.
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Strength: Physical Power
Vitality: Physical Resilience
Agility: Maneuverability
Knowledge: Magical Power
Willpower: Magical Resilience
Intelligence: Awareness
Luck: Just plain Luck
Intelligence is Awareness? Not only does that not make much sense, but it's horribly unintuitive.
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Noemi - Some starting spells, some plot-given, a few EXP-given. Primarily skill-tree-based learning. As she uses different spell elements, she gains more related spells. I see her as a dagger-wielding type, but she could know how to use a few simple weapon-types (maybe just 2?) and each could have some related techniques. Since she's the main, I'd like to see her have a combination of Cooldown and Limit-break moves. Leaning mostly Cooldown types, with only one or two Limits that are built up by dealing damage (rather than taking it, so she's not a good damage sponge). The Limits are possibly learned through Epiphany-style stat-threshhold breaking. High speed/movement.
Hm. I disagree on a few points. While I get the feeling she'd have a normal means of learning spells (Leveling!), I get the feeling that Noemi would be a MP-based mage, who is generally fast. Possibly evasive as well. Not sure what she'd have for a weapon, but she'd have a few buffs amidst the spells she has, no doubt.
Mirek - Former guardian, so his skills are mostly physical-based. A lot of starting skills, mostly Limit-style, based on amount of damage taken (each skill builds up a separate bar for him, so he can save up for a large burst of successive power skills). A few passive skills learned through sidequest-type stuff (I'm thinking since he's pretty reactive to the Disquiet, that he learns passive skills just by going to certain locations... or perhaps by going to a certain locale and spending enough time there to solve a puzzle or something and he naturally picks up a new ability, without even really realizing it himself). Average movement/high speed.
Mirek...yeah. Full physical. Not sure on learning methods, but I get the feeling that going with the proposed 'iaijutsu'-ish deal that Andy seemed to have in mind for Mirek, the guy's techs are going to be of the cooldown variety, with very short startup, and long recovery. In essence, his moves have their delay back-loaded, with maybe one or two normal attacks. Not sure on learning methods. High speed/average movement works well here. Might get Quieting(Dispel/ID) later.
Isolde - Seeing her more and more as some kind of Tactile mage. She focuses her power through touching an opponent (and then perhaps that casts an explosion spell from point-blank range?). Learns Blue-Mage style. She'll get attacked by an enemy mage or magic-distort random/boss and pick up the skill, though the range would end up being point-blank when she uses it. Not a ranged fighter with magic. If she needs some kind of range, she's using spear/halberd abilities. Weapon abilities for her would be few and cooldown-style, while her magic is just normal MP (I guess you could do Suiko-style charge levels, but I'm leaning against it since she already has range issues as a drawback). Charge times should match the enemy's. Thinking she can learn around 10-15 abilities through Blue Magic. She starts with some 'Earth' magic. High movement/average speed.
Hm. Not quite seeing a few things here. Visualizing her as more of a type who channels her magic through her weapon, as opposed to just by touch, for one. Burns HP in addition to costs regarding her magic, and I'm seeing her primary element as something else. Lightning, Water, or Darkness, if any element. Dunno why. Feels like that fits. Possibly having some minor AoE (Melee HT, Evil Blossom-style RT, short LT) in addition to her melee ST spells. Her magic, as an aside, would likely be gained through plot--as she'd be less likely to learn new stuff, and just start using old stuff again. As for weapon techs...probably a few starting, and nothing more. Cooldown-type, of course.
Lastly, how I see her tactile magic coming out...less Blue Mage, more Counter Magic (though I'm seeing her with functionally horrible mEVA on the side).
Erastus - Aural mage. Thinking he's big on AoE stuff. Lots of smash. Erastus is amazing, he's normally not limited by resources (lots of MP), but his Sound-based magic takes a lot of time to cast for big damage. His support-stuff can work like FFX2 Songstress skills - as long as he's chanting, the effect is in place, but he can't do anything else. Later on, there may be some skills where this isn't true and he CAN in fact be double-chanting two effects... maybe after he learns a passive ability to do so... DoubleSpeak, or what-have-you... he IS awesome after all. Since he's a skilled Vision mage too, he might be able to do both. Thinking he learns skills through using different Tomes/Tools. Low movement/speed.
...yeah. He comes off as slow, frail, super-blasty mage with huge AoEs on his damage and debuffs(Don't forget, he has Resonance despair), but slow charge/recovery times. Not much more that I can say on the matter. Thinking Andy'd be better at detailing how/if he learns anything.
Nice to finally get some feedback there!
I can see where you're coming from on Noemi (the only assessment of yours I disagree with). However, I strongly feel that she should be a little more interesting than just 'Level up/Fast MP mage'. I mean, we can give her the coolest skillset ever, but that won't make this setup any less boring. At least give her some variety in which resources her skills work on. She's a progidy, she should be able to use a few different tricks.
Honestly, if Andy hadn't pigeonholed her into Vision magic from the get-go, I'd have imagined Noemi as the Blue Mage type learner with the intuitive control of magic and a few plot-learned special skills. We want our Main to stand out as interesting and worth using, though not necessarily overpowered.
Note that if you see Mirek as a cooldown-type fighter, then I'd like to see Isolde as the Limit Break fighter. They just strike me as good PCs to have opposite styles in this sense.
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Okay, mechanics idea. This governs entirely physical damage, I won't be talking about magic here except tangentially. I'm going to have math in here, but also describe how the formulas will affect things qualitatively and why I am putting things forward they way I am. Also I am going to wall of text here. The important stuff is in bold.
I mentioned already that weapons should specialise in overcoming defence and/or having a high multiplier (via swings). Here's how I see it working:
First of all, we create a stat called Agility. (it can have another name, or could even overlap with another stat; the concept is what matters) Agility represents two things: your ability to swing multiple times, and your ability to avoid being swung at multiple times. Basically how fast you are in close combat (rather than how fast you get turns). In theory this can be split up into offensive agility and defensive agility but I consider that unnecessary because we can (and will!) modify offensive agility with weapons.
When you attack an enemy, your agility is compared to theirs. If your agility is less than the enemy's you swing once. If it's greater than or equal, twice. From there on, you can additional swings if you beat the enemy's agility badly:
3 swings if your Agl > 125% of target Agl
4 swings if your Agl > 150% of target Agl
5 swings if your Agl > 175% of target Agl
And so on, possibly until some cap to prevent 100 swings if your agile fighter faces an earlygame slime or something.
Now, to prevent 1 swing (i.e. the only attack a low Agl fighter is going to get, most likely) from being too weak, all the swings except the first do half damage compared to the first. It makes sense, those added blows you land don't hit with the same force as the opener.
Weapons of course modify attacking agility. They work as multipliers, which exaggerates the existing Agl differences of PCs. Because of this, low Agl PCs will usually do better with low-swing weapons, while high Agl PCs will usually do better with high-swing weapons, which makes sense - the slow, lumbering tank is going to get better money out of a warhammer while the speed demon will get more out of knives, and so on.
To illustrate this, here's an example of how this will work. You have three PCs, with Agl stats as follows: Noemi with 29 Agl, Mirek with 21 Agl, and Isolde with 15 Agl (example may not reflect the real stats of these PCs, obviously). And you have three weapon choices:
-A warhammer that does 180 damage with one swing, and an Agl multiplier of 70%
-A sword that does 150 damage with one swing, and an Agl multiplier of 100%
-A dagger that does 100 damage with one swing, and an Agl multiplier of 140%
We're facing off against a goomba with 20 Agility. Using the mechanics as I've set forward...
Isolde's options:
-Warhammer for 15x0.7 = 10 Agl, swings once for 180
-Sword for 15x1 = 15 Agl, swings once for 150
-Dagger for 15x1.4 = 21 Agl, which beats the Goomba's and swings twice for 100 + 50 = 150
Warhammer is the best option.
Mirek's options:
-Warhammer for 21x0.7 = 14 Agl, swings once for 180
-Sword for 21x1 = 21 Agl, swings twice for 150 + 75 = 225
-Dagger for 21x1.4 = 29, swings three times (beats Goomba Agl x 1.25) for 100 + 50 + 50 = 200
Sword is the best option.
Noemi's options:
-Warhammer for 29x0.7 = 20, swings twice for 180 + 90 = 270
-Sword for 29x1, swings three times for 150 + 75 + 75 = 300
-Dagger for 29x1.4 = 40 Agl, swings six times (beats Goomba Agl x 2) for 100 + 50 + 50 + 50 + 50 + 50 = 350
Dagger is the best option.
Hopefully this illustrates the system at work. Of course, to avoid Noemi destroying Isolde for damage, we give the PCs different strength stats, which will multiply damage dealt. If Isolde has double the Strength multiplier of Noemi she'll do more damage, for instance. More on that later.
Noowww, if this were all to the system, then each PC would just choose the obvious weapon after doing the math above and we'd be done. This would be lame. The point of the weapons isn't just who uses them well (especially since each PC will only have limited options, though hopefully more than one!), but it's how well each weapon, and hence each fighting style, works against different enemies.
-High power weapons do well against high Def. Knicking a heavilly armoured enemy repeatedly with a dagger probably won't do much, but the hammer won't be slowed down as much.
-Weapons which only swing once aren't bothered by enemies with high Agl. Oh no, my hammer goes from swinging once to swinging once. Meanwhile, the 6 swings Noemi got against a goomba? That's dropping to 3 if she faces a SUPER GOOMBA with 30 Agl, which takes out just under half her damage.
-Okay, both of the above favour the heavy weapons. Does this mean the heavy weapons are always better against stronger enemies? No. Think about it: would you want to hit a dodgy enemy with a hammer? Probably not. Now, a knife fighter? She might have a better shot. So, generally speaking, high power, low-swing weapons will tend to have lower accuracy. Accuracy won't matter much against an unevasive target, but it sure will against the evasive. I don't have an accuracy formula for this but FFX is an extreme example of this at work.
-The exception to the above rule will be ranged weapons, which will likely tend to be high-power, low-swing, but high-accuracy. That crossbow is only hitting once, ever (Agl multiplier of 0!) but hits things fine.
So, back to illustrations, since I love them. Consider the following enemy types, and observe which weapons might work best.
-An average soldier, like the goomba above. Averagish on all ways defensive. Each character wants the type of weapon which fits her stats best. We already discussed this situation.
-A heavilly armoured, slow-moving tank in plate mail. Bad evade, bad Agl, awesome Def. Daggers are practically tinking (even if they hit 8 times), while the hammer? Sure, it's taking a damage reduction from the armour Def, but not nearly as much as one... and it may even swing twice, unlike normal, which means it isn't taking a damage cut at all most likely. Characters will want to switch to high-power weapons to do well here.
-A balanced defensive fighter, like your stereotypical paladin with chain mail and a shield. The shield gives him solid evade (hoses hammers), and he has solid Def (hoses daggers). If neither stat is extreme, the sword may sneak up the middle and be the best. Or we're falling back on magic here.
-A combat mage armed with a buckler, with poor Def, good evade, and mediocre Agl. Dagger wins, should be obvious by now why. Go go light, accurate weapons.
-A lightly-armoured, lightning quick whirling dervish. Lots of Agl, lots of evade, bad Def. What weapon works well here? Not the hammer, good luck hitting. Not the knife... it'll hit, but with that Agl, probably not more than once or twice, which destroys its damage. Solution? Indiana Jones had the right idea. Just shoot the bastard. High accuracy, isn't losing any swings, leading to nice, reliable damage. He can't dodge or dance out of the way of that.
So, wrapping this up, damage formula time. Now, I already mentioned Strength is going to be a multiplier. I haven't yet justified why, so here goes: in order to not have a completely overpowered attaker, Strength and Agility will generally need to not both be too high on the same PC... in fact, for attackers of equal competence, the two need to be in opposition. Thus, since high Agl characters like knives, and high Agl characters tend to have lower Strength, it follows that knife users tend to have lower Strength. However, if we ADD the weapon power of knives to said Strength, then it's going to be pretty bad at overcoming defence compared to the same knife in the hands of someone with high Strength, which will lead to the high Strength character being better with knives against higher Def enemies. This is bad. To avoid this situation which I find wholly unintuitive, we make Strength a multiplier. Strength doesn't help you break defence, it just helps you do more damage. Even someone muscular isn't going to be damaging a giant armoured crab much with a slim knife. Now, if it were a masterwork, resonance-forged knife, then maybe... but that's represented via higher weapon power, again emphasising that weapon power overcomes defence. Thus!
Damage formula = Strength * (Weapon Power*A - Defence*B) * (Number of Swings + 1) / 2 * C
We can call Strength something else if we like, same with Agility. A, B, and C are arbitrary constants to make the formula work. They ALSO may represent buffs, skills, and other effects. Stuff like elemental defence probably goes where C is in the formula, A might be something like a proficiency bonus with a certain weapon, etc.
Passive skills can have a number of effects, here. Some examples off the top of my head:
-Quick shot: Allows a character a second hit with a bow.
-Defensive mobility: Provides a 25% bonus to Agility when attempting to avoid enemy attacks
-Freak strength: 25% bonus to weapon power (allowing the character to better overcome Def because he hits just that hard... maybe he can take down a giant enemy crab with a knife)
-Stunning blow: The shock of your attack multiplies the target's Def by 25%, making its armour nearly useless
Active skills, on the other hand? May increase the multiplier of your damage (C) or they may help you overcome Def better (A). They may or may not change your number of swings (down to 1, or a boost, or anything in between). Depends on the skill. We really have a lot of flexibility for different attack skills with this system... and that's without bringing magic and half-magic attacks into things!
You get the picture. Anyway, this is what I'm proposing.
Finally, criticals. This is somewhat unrelated, so it gets to be a footnote, but I thought of it as well. Criticals should overwhelm (ignore?) defence against human targets since their armour has weak points, but possibly not creatures lack weaknesses (golems, possibly, maybe some rare monsters). Suikoden 3 basically did this, but it is a good idea and we should rip it off. Either way they should probably have a damage boost to final damage of 1.5 or something (boosted by some skills).
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My, you -do- present your ideas well.
I like your proposal for Agility/Multiple swings. I'd like to see this kept no matter how we implement our damage formula.
My only concern is that you've tied everything to Weapon Power in your formula and now that means we're looking at very different values for basic physical attacks versus skills.
I like the flexibility of your formula, but I'd prefer to be able to look at one stat 'ATK' and have a rough idea of basic damage. Weapon Power being directly in opposition to Defense really inflates the importance of weapons (Your mileage may vary on whether that's good thing or not, though). But the problem I have with that is that it really separates weapon power from strength. Weapon's don't boost STR, they -are- strength. It's not a horrible way to look at it, but it does imply that a character without a weapon does negative/zero damage. Bothers me a bit.
For crits... I'm fine with something as simple as... if CRT=25(%), then the character deals 2x damage every 4 turns.
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Djinn: The problem with not separating them is that it means that high-swing weapons WILL be better in the hands of people with high Strength, which... seems like the opposite of what we want (big barbarian is better with a knife, skinny rogue is better with an axe? Really?). I don't really see how to correct this without separating the two. Moreover I don't really see the downside of separating the two. Sharp or powerful weapons break armour better, while strength (we can call it ATK if you'd rather) represents your ability to use said weapon to cause damage, by inflicting blows in more precise places. Now that I think about it Strength really isn't a good name for the stat.
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Damage formula = Strength * (Weapon Power*A - Defence*B) * (Number of Swings + 1) / 2 * C
This is actually a modified version of what Final Fantasy 12 did, I believe, just with multiple swings being based on a stat (and the formula being a lot simpler).
Anyway, not bothering to quote the whole post, but I definitely do like the idea. Do think skills should modify both A and C on a regular basis to allow for different levels of defense pentration. I do kind of think there should be an opposite stat to Strength (Vitality?) that works as a divisor on this thing. The character's body's innate resistance to damage if you want flavor behind it. I dunno, just feels weird to have two offense stats and only one defense stat.
If you want another name for this "Agility", we could use Dexterity. Makes some sense and isn't confused with an actual speed stat.
Finally, criticals. This is somewhat unrelated, so it gets to be a footnote, but I thought of it as well. Criticals should overwhelm (ignore?) defence against human targets since their armour has weak points, but possibly not creatures lack weaknesses (golems, possibly, maybe some rare monsters). Suikoden 3 basically did this, but it is a good idea and we should rip it off. Either way they should probably have a damage boost to final damage of 1.5 or something (boosted by some skills).
I dunno, I'd kind of kneejerk monsters having weakpoints too, and am mostly against changing the behavior of crits depending on type of target. I also don't think crits should IGNORE defense (I've always found that kind of annoying). How about multiply defense by 0.5 or something on a crit (along with the final 1.5 mult)? Constant subject to argument, of course.
For crits... I'm fine with something as simple as... if CRT=25(%), then the character deals 2x damage every 4 turns.
fffffffffffffffff
25% means the character has 25% chance of criticalling. Not that they critical every 4 turns.
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For crits... I'm fine with something as simple as... if CRT=25(%), then the character deals 2x damage every 4 turns.
fffffffffffffffff
25% means the character has 25% chance of criticalling. Not that they critical every 4 turns.
Yes... I'm aware of that. Sorry for writing it like that, I didn't mean to cause confusion. The point of that line was the Damage x2 (after all of the other calculations) part. Add an 'about' in front of the '4 turns' and then we have no problems, right?
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Tal: Yeah, I'm fine with that. As I was writing that post I realised there was rather little I felt would have no weaknesses. You basically have... some golem type things. Slimes? Basically mostly fantasy monsters we may or may not even have! They're rare enough we can just call such enemies immune to crits if we really feel like it.
I dig the idea of Def x0.5, Final damage x1.5 for crits. Though I'm not really picky here. I do think they should partially ignore defence, since the point of a critical hit is that it hits a weak point on the target's armour. Plate mail isn't so useful if somebody gets you in your eye.
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Yes... I'm aware of that. Sorry for writing it like that, I didn't mean to cause confusion. The point of that line was the Damage x2 (after all of the other calculations) part. Add an 'about' in front of the '4 turns' and then we have no problems, right?
Maybe. At least I know you're not interpreting it wrong with that. (I've actually seen people on like GFAQs who believe that 25% => every four turns period.)
Though just 2x damage is pretty boring and... adding defense piercing makes more sense with "critical hit", which is generally striking a weakpoint.
Tal: Yeah, I'm fine with that. As I was writing that post I realised there was rather little I felt would have no weaknesses. You basically have... some golem type things. Slimes? Basically mostly fantasy monsters we may or may not even have! They're rare enough we can just call such enemies immune to crits if we really feel like it.
Well, for something like slimes? I probably wouldn't see them having much "defense" anyway, though they could have a solid "vitality" stat (they're squishy, physical damage isn't really going to stick on them, but they aren't going to outright tink stuff either). Magic should probably hit them normally though!
Golems, yeah, we could just give them crit immunity or something.
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Golems, yeah, we could just give them crit immunity or something.
That and they'd be highly resistant to certain shit you throw at them in the first place, given their nature. Anyway, we can be flexible about individual monster types/species. It's not a huge issue.
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I do kind of think there should be an opposite stat to Strength (Vitality?) that works as a divisor on this thing.
Well, hmm. As I said already I do think personal defence stats are unnecessary, and I rather dislike having more stats than the mechanics require (*punts Luck stats in many games*). That said, I'm willing to bet I'll be overruled on this one. If so, that's fine, just change "Strength" to "Strength divided by target Vitality" and you'd have it factored in. This even makes sense; tough people aren't going to be so tough that knives tink off of them (that's what armour is for) but it may mean they can withstand a cut from said knife better.
Mechanically I will note that everything that a Vit stat can accomplish besides natural differences in PC toughness (which I'm not certain I buy or find necessary) can be accomplished either via skill multipliers to defence or final damage (e.g. a monk with an impossibly tough body may have a skill that grants her a base armour) or via the slashing/piercing/bludgeoning elemental resist options (e.g. we can still make slimes who reduce physical damage without tinking it).
If we do have PC Vit stats then I strongly suggest they vary rather little overall (barring true freaks of nature); pure unmodified division defence is very potent if large variation is present, especially in a system that already has subtraction.
On derived stats, since I haven't really weighed in on them: generally opposed. Seems like needless stat clutter. You can draw a few things from core stats, sure (e.g. I could totally see Dexterity also functioning as the base of evade before shields, parrying weapons, and passive skills modify it) but I really dislike the idea of having a whole set of core stats which serve no other purpose but to define a second layer of stats or determine their growth. Stats should serve a direct, understandable purpose. "Strength increases the damage I do with physicals", "Dexterity increases how many swings I make and decreases the number of swings enemies make against me", "Speed increases how often I get turns" are examples of what I think core stats should do.
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We're looking at a lot of different stats either way. By your system, we already have a STR and ATK value, only the attack value is now directly coming from the weapon (do we list that on the main menu? Do you have to go to the Equip menu every time to see Weapon ATK?).
Not to mention that Defense and Evade each have a Magical counterpoint (we could simplify this, but it doesn't make sense in Flavor - some characters are better at dodging magic and some are better at tanking it, and it's not related to how well they deal with swordswings).
Add in any kind of innate elemental resists or natural affinity for types of magic use or which type of physical damage they're more skilled at... and yeah, we've got a lot of stats. And they should all be easy to find on a menu. However, in a simplified menu (like a level-up screen)... it makes sense to only show the relevent stats that can be increased, so having derived stats in that case would be a good thing. It's just a question of presentation, I'd think. I'm fine with dropping them for an IAQ, unless we actually have a method of using them in a skill formula or something (which, who knows what kind of skills we're going for... maybe Dissonance buffs would directly effect DEF/ATK, while Resonance buffs would boost a body's innate VIT/STR?)
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Yeah, status screen should definitely show both personal stats and key equipment stats. Most games do this anyway (even 20-year old ass-backwards games like FF4 (http://linkenfuego.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/final-fantasy-4-status-screen.png?w=400&h=358)). If we can't fit everything on a status screen, chances are we have too many stats.
(That said, if we're going to do something like list proficiencies for different weapon types and magic types, which I have no opinion on, then that could always go to a different screen.)
When a character levels up I'd only show stats that can change on level up, i.e. not equipment stuff, but yes personal stats. Again, seems pretty standard.
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Regarding my 2nd Stat list, It's kind of easier to come up with another logical name for the base of Magic Power rather than the base of Magical Awareness. Perhaps just Awareness instead of Intelligence.
Anyway, Elfboy:
After pounding it over in my head, the logic behind your method makes sense. The key problem is that you currently don't have a way for the strike to miss.
I'm thinking that early FF games had each "hit" be tested. Do agree that thee should be a difference between quick light hits and hard slow ones. Just not seeing a way to combine these two concepts (of having stat-based number of possible hits and stat-based hit chance)
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After pounding it over in my head, the logic behind your method makes sense. The key problem is that you currently don't have a way for the strike to miss.
Yes he does. It's called evasion.
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Yeah, each individual swing makes a hit check according to whatever accuracy formula we end up using. I guess we could tie the whole string to a single hit check but that makes less sense to me.
Anyway, more on stats. Still focussing on the physical half of mechanics for now. We're looking at the following core stats:
-Strength/Attack/whatever
-Dexterity
-Speed
-Vitality (assuming NEBs are overruled and we do want personal defence via stat)
-HP
-MP
Without touching magic yet, there's still hit and evade. I'm going to assume we want some characters to be more naturally accurate, and some to be more naturally evasive. My question to you all is should these be core stats? Meaning that they would have a totally different growth pattern than the above stats? Or should they be derived from existing stats in some way? (Dex and/or speed presumably, though there's a case for Strength factoring into attack accuracy... maybe.)
Actually, group Crit in there too. Although that I am probably in support of us not having PCs be different in besides individual weapons (which can obviously modify crit) and a few personal skills (Improved Crit Rate, or whatever).
Remember that whatever method we use for personal hit/evade, they will end up modified significantly by equipment. Let's say we end up making Hit and Evade based off Dex and/or speed... we can still have someone who is bad in the core stats but good in evade by giving them weapons (+hit or +evade), shields (+evade), or passive skills (any + we want!).
I don't really have a strong opinion at this point. Advantage of making Hit/evade derived: avoid clutter of core stats we need to keep track of growths for. Advantage of making them core: Easier to differentiate cast without relying on equipment and skills to create a stat build which the derivation formulas don't allow.
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Yeah, I'm strongly in favor of having more core stats to increase how much we can vary PCs' uniqueness. Especially if we're going the route of having mostly non-unique weapons/armor. .
Even CRT could make for an interesting build difference. Just basing it off of FE - we could have a PC with a super-high CRT rate, but a low Accuracy rate. So this PCs' physicals aren't hitting often, but when they do, it kills things dead. Supplement with some kind of weak ITE magic skills and you have a fairly flexible PC build right there.
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Well, the particular Crit example could easily be accomplished by giving this PC some unique or near-unique "killer" weaponry and/or giving them a passive skill that boosts Crit, since she sounds like an exceptional case.
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I'm fine with that if we're going to start going the unique weapons route.
But honestly, since we're looking at having multiple ways for characters to learn their skills and develop their traits, I'd rather that there be more core stats to develop differently rather than every character relying on unique weapons to get their individual stat builds.
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I thought we generally agreed that unique weapons would be the exception, and not the rule.
Regardless, whatever your opinion on Hit/Evade (which I can see going either way), I really don't think Crit needs to be a core stat (meaning one needs to have its own coded stat growth). I'm not sure I can think of a game that does that. Either derive it from some other stat and modify that with weapons/skills (like FE does) or make it some fixed base value and modify that only with weapons/skills (like most RPGs do... Pokemon for an easy example).
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I thought we generally agreed that unique weapons would be the exception, and not the rule.
We did. And I like it this way, but that means that we should have more core stats to develop PCs differently since their equips are less selective.
I'm okay with CRT being a fixed stat, but I would like it to be different for each PC, and adjustable with equips/passive skills.
Regardless, whatever your opinion on Hit/Evade (which I can see going either way), I really don't think Crit needs to be a core stat (meaning one needs to have its own coded stat growth). I'm not sure I can think of a game that does that. Either derive it from some other stat and modify that with weapons/skills (like FE does) or make it some fixed base value and modify that only with weapons/skills (like most RPGs do... Pokemon for an easy example).
So... yeah, I guess we're mostly on the same page. >.>;;
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NEB: I'm fine with Vitality not varying a whole lot, though I was thinking there could be a PC who had little in the way of armor (maybe none?) but would have a high Vitality stat. I mean, you could do this with skills or physical resistance (and I'd be fine if we did the latter, since that's basically what it does), but I think the Vitality stat would be more intuitive? Though if we split the physical element, resistances would give us more to work with mechanically (and we could do the same with magic damage... though what about "non-elemental" magic if we have it?).
On Accuracy/Evade/Crit: I'm fine with these being constant and modified by equipment. That or we could have Accuracy and Evade be partially derived from stats (Dexterity/Speed?) and then modified by equipment again. Crit I'm more inclined to just do the former, though I guess the latter would work as well.
Just throwing this initial opinion out now since my food is done, might mull over it and change my mind/add to it later.
EDIT: Thinking on it, using just resistance means it's likely to be constant throughout the game, and I kneejerk against doing that. Will have to think about it more, but yeah, still leaning towards using a stat there.
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Accuracy/Evade/Crit: Ho hrm. I'd say... make them unique constants for each PC, modified by equipment/buffs (and maybe the other base stats if you want to give them growth of some sort). That'd be my guess. Honestly, I'm not overly concerned about clutter since we don't, at the moment, have that many stats it looks like (I dunno, somebody lay it out for me) and they are all pretty transparant, and we seem to be avoiding using derived stats anyway, so consistency to some degree.
On a "defense" stat: I reversed my stance here. My coffee break just ended abruptly so uh... passive skill for any notably tanky/untanky PC should do it.
On the the swing mechanic: I like the idea of it, and it provides more interesting options for us. For example, big, slow weapons could break better while fast, multi-hit weapons have better chances to proc effects. Etc. I'll really need to see it in practice, but NEB's layout really made it look interesting/awesome.
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On the the swing mechanic: I like the idea of it, and it provides more interesting options for us. For example, big, slow weapons could break better while fast, multi-hit weapons have better chances to proc effects. Etc. I'll really need to see it in practice, but NEB's layout really made it look interesting/awesome.
What you seem to be suggesting here is that things like status effects and "randocast" effects on weapons be checked every hit. I think this is a good idea myself. Would give faster weapons more use against higher defense enemies still (though the damage loss would be notable so there's still a downside as well). Though I'd suggest making the effect rate on faster weapons a bit lower in general to compensate.
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Was thinking about how to do magic damage. Haven't come up with a great way to do it, but going to post my failure ideas and "decent" ideas here and maybe it'll spark some idea in someone.
First naive approach was to follow the same formula as the physical damage, but without swings. Thus:
(1) Damage = Intelligence / Spirit * (Power - Magic_Defense*B) * C
B basically constant, C also depends on the spell involved.
The problem with this idea is unless we make Magic_Defense nearly constant, earlygame spells are going to just tink at endgame, and that's bad. We want spells to be at least remotely usable (lower SP cost than stronger spells) at endgame.
Next:
(2) Damage = Intelligence / Spirit * (Power*Intelligence*A - Magic_Defense*B) * C
B/C same as above, A constant to make Power easier numbers to work with (likely well below 1). Formula looks fine on a glance, but Intelligence is too important, I find. Doesn't have the problem the first one had though.
So instead:
(3) Damage = Intelligence / Spirit * [(Power+Intelligence*A) - Magic_Defense*B] * C
B/C same as above, A is a constant that depends on how we design Intelligence values compared to Power values. For example, if we have Power values ranging in the hundreds, and decide on a 0-100 range for Intelligence, A could even be just 1. If Intelligence ranges from 0-1000, A would be much lower, maybe 0.1. Also depends on how much we want Intelligence to matter.
I like this one best of the three. It doesn't emphasize Intelligence as much as the second, and doesn't have the problem of the first. Kind of a middle ground.
Now, for another idea, I'm going to expand on this.
Like with the physical formula, we can create a magical analog to Dexterity, for now let's call it Willpower. Instead of doing it as swings as before, we'll make this more continuous.
(4) Damage = Intelligence / Spirit * [(Power+Intelligence*A) - Magic_Defense*B] * C * (2*A.Willpower / D.Willpower - 1)
Okay, that last factor looks weird, but I have a reason for it. If you look at the physical formula, 1.25x Dexterity => 1.5x damage, 1.5x Dexterity => 2x damage, 1.75x Dexterity => 2.5x damage. If you plug in these ratios into that last factor, you get the exact same damage increases, creating a very close analog. In addition, we can impose a minimum on that factor and just set it to 1 if A.Willpower < D.Willpower, which also happens in the physical formula. If we don't, then magic damage tinks if A.Willpower <= D.Willpower / 2, which is probably a bad thing.
While this does make the magic formula very similar to the physical formula, it does have the issue of adding that extra Willpower stat that... may be a little extraneous. If we do put a min cap on it, then it does serve an actual purpose, though.
Also there's:
(5) Damage = Intelligence / Spirit * Power - Spirit / Intelligence * Magic_Defense
Makes all stats important, but is pretty nonstandard. I'm really not expecting this to get any backing.
Anyways, those were the ideas I came up with, both good and bad. A bit wall of texty, but I tried to separate paragraphs enough to make it flow better. If nothing else, hopefully this'll give someone else a new better idea or an idea on how to modify one of these to work better.
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I like (3). While quadratic Intelligence makes it a potent stat, it's acceptable if we keep the multiplier on it lowish and ensure that spell power goes up more slowly than weapon power. Note that (1) would also work if we had spells upgrade (either in a XS1-like fashion or MK2-like fashion depending on the character... other options may also exist), but yeah, if you want Fire Blast to be useful both at the 30% mark of the game and the 90%, then (3) becomes necessary. This depends on how people see spell progression.
I'm a little iffy on Willpower. Mechanically it is fine, being an adjusted copy of the physical. The problem is that Willpower and Int are both doing practically the same thing offensively, they both add a multiplier to your attack. The reason we get away with this with Strength/Dex is because (a) the flavour and (b) the fact that Dex works differently with different weapons. Neither seems to transfer over to the magical side.
Andy: Stats we're looking at so far appear to be: [all of these subject to renaming]
Strength: Increases damage caused with physical blows
Dexterity: Allows the character's physical attacks to strike multiple times, and prevents foes from striking multiple times against the character
Speed: Increases the frequency at which a character gets turns
Vitality: Decreases physical damage taken (optional stat, could be replaced entirely with phys. elemental resist)
Intelligence: Increases damage caused with magic
Spirit: Decreases magical damage taken
Willpower: Proposed stat that would be the magical analog of Dexterity
Accuracy: Increased chance to land physical blows.
Evasion: Increased chance to avoid enemy attacks. By the way, we still need an accuracy formula.
Move: Number of spaces the character can move in a turn.
Critical: Innate difference in crit rate between characters. I am opposed to this and think it is clutter which could easily be handled entirely at the weapon/skill level.
[Magic Acc/Eva: Not really discussed to this point, but may end up existing too.]
HP: Hippopressor points.
MP: To power those short-term moves. I am in favour of this regenerating for most characters, though everyone can play differently. Not every character may use this.
Hmm. Assuming only two of MAcc, MEva, Crit, and Willpower survive we're at 13 personal stats (values that need to be defined entirely in terms of the PC). That's a lot. More than almost any other RPG uses, and more than I'd like. This makes me want to make all four of those stats not personal. Crit I've already gone over, Willpower does feel a bit extraneous... MAcc and MEva just don't need to be personal to me, same as crit? Granted, I see magic being pretty reliable for accuracy except against specially-designed anti-magic shields, accessories, and maybe some skills... basically handling it the way, say, FFT does.
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Accuracy formula, as I think I submitted before is as such:
Hit rate = ((ACC+move/weapon base)-(EVA+50))%. The constant could be changed to something else if you see that as desirable.
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I like (3). While quadratic Intelligence makes it a potent stat, it's acceptable if we keep the multiplier on it lowish and ensure that spell power goes up more slowly than weapon power. Note that (1) would also work if we had spells upgrade (either in a XS1-like fashion or MK2-like fashion depending on the character... other options may also exist), but yeah, if you want Fire Blast to be useful both at the 30% mark of the game and the 90%, then (3) becomes necessary. This depends on how people see spell progression.
Hm, didn't think about spell power upgrading, but I don't think that's right for our game. And yeah, Intelligence is quadratic, but I was thinking of making Intelligence*A relatively small in comparison to Power.
I'm a little iffy on Willpower. Mechanically it is fine, being an adjusted copy of the physical. The problem is that Willpower and Int are both doing practically the same thing offensively, they both add a multiplier to your attack. The reason we get away with this with Strength/Dex is because (a) the flavour and (b) the fact that Dex works differently with different weapons. Neither seems to transfer over to the magical side.
Right, I wasn't really expecting it to work out, it was mostly just the only way I could think of to make a decent analog. Threw it out there hoping someone would get an idea on how to modify it into something that works better.
Andy: Stats we're looking at so far appear to be: [all of these subject to renaming]
Strength: Increases damage caused with physical blows
Dexterity: Allows the character's physical attacks to strike multiple times, and prevents foes from striking multiple times against the character
Speed: Increases the frequency at which a character gets turns
Vitality: Decreases physical damage taken (optional stat, could be replaced entirely with phys. elemental resist)
Intelligence: Increases damage caused with magic
Spirit: Decreases magical damage taken
Willpower: Proposed stat that would be the magical analog of Dexterity
Accuracy: Increased chance to land physical blows.
Evasion: Increased chance to avoid enemy attacks. By the way, we still need an accuracy formula.
Move: Number of spaces the character can move in a turn.
Critical: Innate difference in crit rate between characters. I am opposed to this and think it is clutter which could easily be handled entirely at the weapon/skill level.
[Magic Acc/Eva: Not really discussed to this point, but may end up existing too.]
HP: Hippopressor points.
MP: To power those short-term moves. I am in favour of this regenerating for most characters, though everyone can play differently. Not every character may use this.
Hmm. Assuming only two of MAcc, MEva, Crit, and Willpower survive we're at 13 personal stats (values that need to be defined entirely in terms of the PC). That's a lot. More than almost any other RPG uses, and more than I'd like. This makes me want to make all four of those stats not personal. Crit I've already gone over, Willpower does feel a bit extraneous... MAcc and MEva just don't need to be personal to me, same as crit? Granted, I see magic being pretty reliable for accuracy except against specially-designed anti-magic shields, accessories, and maybe some skills... basically handling it the way, say, FFT does.
Looking at the list:
HP, MP, Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Intelligence, Spirit, Speed (, Willpower) - Core stats. These increase on levelup.
Accuracy, Evasion, Magic Accuracy, Magic Evasion, Critical, Move - Constant stats. Don't increase on level up. Modified by equipment (rarely in the case of Move).
Attack, Defense, Magic Defense - Depend solely on equipment.
If we organize the stat screen by grouping these things together, it would look much less cluttered. Honestly I don't think it'll be a problem?
Hmm, actually, thinking on it, I think we should shift Critical to only depend on equipment (and skill). In addition, magic spells should have crit rates as well (I've always been annoyed by magic not being able to crit).
Accuracy formula, as I think I submitted before is as such:
Hit rate = ((ACC+move/weapon base)-(EVA+50))%. The constant could be changed to something else if you see that as desirable.
Constant is completely pointless. Just decrease everything's accuracy by 50 and you have the same thing.
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Agree with having different Accuracy, Evade, and Crit rates for Magic vs Physical.
The real place where Willpower takes effect is on Status Spells. Higher Willpower = More Chances of landing the Status. Up to you guys to see whether it's something to have. We can always modify Offensive Spell power to compensate.
When we were deriving useful stats from a core base, I had a separate column for MP and non-Magic Ability points (call them PP for now). I'm still in favor of such a split, especially if we have people who can use both magic and physical skills. At the very least, it would allow for different recharge rates for the two types of attacks in the case of Resonance Magic and some physicals.
I'm not keen on Accuracy, Evasion, Critical, or their Magical Equivalents not being allowed to increase on Level up. Increases in these rates throughout the game should reflect (to some degree) the growth of the character. Now, how much should they grow? Probably 1 point every 2-4 levels based on the person's "build".
Heck, I'm thinking that the Critical rates should be derived Stats based on Accuracy and both Dexterities, and possibly opponent's Evade (along with the Magical Equivalents) The logic here is that Critical hits are depicted as hitting an enemy's weak spot. Accuracy is tracking down the enemy, Dexterity is the swiftness of the strike. To me it follows that a keen eye would spot a chink in armor and a swift hand would guide the blade towards it. Opponent's Dexterity+Evade would represent getting out of the way; Dexterity is involved here because if the opponent has to take the hit, at least shield the weak spot.
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Huzzah. We are back in action. Gonna leave this up for a few more days, then open a topic for starting PC design.
EDIT: Maybe less then a few days, since we seem to have some generalized agreement, or, at least, no major disagreement on the equations. However, I would like a confirmed stat list before we start doing PCs, so...
Any issues with Tal's list (as presented:
Looking at the list:
HP, MP, Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Intelligence, Spirit, Speed- Core stats. These increase on levelup.
Accuracy, Evasion, Magic Accuracy, Magic Evasion, Critical, Move - Constant stats. Don't increase on level up. Modified by equipment (rarely in the case of Move).
Attack, Defense, Magic Defense - Depend solely on equipment.
If we organize the stat screen by grouping these things together, it would look much less cluttered. Honestly I don't think it'll be a problem?
Hmm, actually, thinking on it, I think we should shift Critical to only depend on equipment (and skill). In addition, magic spells should have crit rates as well (I've always been annoyed by magic not being able to crit).
I think it works. If I don't see any major disagreement, I'll open up the new round, since we have workable, major equations and such. So if there are any major disagreements, get them in there.