AnglerStudios:Battle System
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Battle System Design Issues
I've had an idea about a fairly useful battle system idea type concept thingy...
If you played Final Fantasy 8, do you remember how enemies were scaled in strength according to your party's level? They would jump up a few levels if you were too high for them, and vice versa. Obviously there were limits, but this ensured that enemies always posed something resembling a challenge anyways (stopped you steamrolling through the same lowbie monsters every time like a zombie just grinding for XP...)
We could implement a similar idea... we could have say an instance of the enemy npc class for each monster, but have it contain like a level parameter, and how strong it is. We can then introduce paramaters for how much strength they gain per level, so their base strength at level 5 is say... 15... and it jumps up 2 points per level. A level 15 group encounters this monster so it scales itself up from level 5 to anywhere between level 12 - 18 (im using broad numbers here since we havent decided on damage scales and stuff yet. Can a level 15 beat a level 18??). So lets say it chooses level 12 (for example's sake). its scaled itself up from its base level by 7 so we add 7 X 2 (7 levels times 2 str per level for scaling) and get a more evenly matched fight. Obviously this would take a bit of fine tuning to ensure the monster didn't become too uber too quickly etc, but that's got to be done anyways.
This would also reduce tedium when your party obviously overpowers the enemies in the area.
Alternatively we could simply reduce encounter rate when your party's too strong for the monsters in the area (monsters too scared to attack... slightly WoW-like but yeah) but this could be fun. Anyways, thats just an idea. Any thoughts? Natoli 20:03, 5 June 2006 (PDT)
If we went with the first suggestion, the monsters would have to scale up in such a fashion that they would be stronger, but still weaker (relative to the level difference) so there would be an actual benefit in going up levels.
The second one sounds good, though - except it prevents players simply leveling up by slogging through heaps of low levels if they want to. Do we want to prevent that?
RichardS
Spose there's pros and cons to it. For the first idea, I suggest if we go with it that we could cap the amount that the enemy scales up in difficulty... say 5 levels or so only, so that eventually you'll still OMGWTFPWN them, but they'll still pose a challenge if say, someone gets lost in the forest and ends up in so many random battles that they level up too much. I agree that they'd have to scale to be weaker eventually as you said, but its not like the slime that is attacking you for revenge since you killed his family, friends and 99.9% of his entire race is going to still be as pathetically weak as the others... right?
The other idea... after a few levels in an area, chances are the player's going to start steamrolling through the monsters anyway. Maybe we could/should scale the amount of XP required to level up so that if they decide to continue training there (pure grinding for xp until they're so awesomely powerful that they can one-shot the final boss or something...) that it'll take forever to make any progress. More like dissuading someone from spending 12 hours of their life in one zone killing monsters to get to level 99 or something.
Obviously this needs more thought, but as far as Im concerned continually training on mobs that are too weak is kinda pointless anyway. Natoli 04:44, 7 June 2006 (PDT)
Maybe we could scale the XP gain to lower according to some scale the higher your level is, sort of like Diablo 2, where you'd only get full XP if you were within 5 lvls of the monsters you were killing, and then would get less and less for monsters too high or low.
RichardS
Lot of good discussion here.
My initial thought is: Why are we talking about dissuading people from playing our game? Crikey, if someone wants to grind for 12 hours in our game to one-shot the final boss, good for them! That's one way of playing we didn't necessarily foresee, but it's a valid possibility. I fear that RPGs, especially ones like these of such length are already over-prone to repetitive grinding and partial-completion, not to mention they are not as accessible as more arcade-style games. I have the feeling I'm going to have to try really hard when it's done to convince my friends to play it, rather than them wanting to play it. For some, they will only play because I insist, not because they love in-depth RPGs... so if they do play, why make them frustrated and force them to play a particular way?
I think it's quite possible to define a way of modifying the stats of a monster based on level. Perhaps we have an equation field that we can see that determines how to change the stats per level? Perhaps a base stats attributes, then another set of stats that has how much to add per level up to a cap? e.g. perhaps only HP changes as the level goes up, so the fights last longer...
Also, just sort of back to my first point, do we want battles to always be balanced and long? I know I personally like if I can find a nice low level area to blitz through, with a few quick battles that net me a few items and a handful of exp. Sure, that may not be the conventional playstyle, but hey, it's mine, and it's valid. You don't make games to tell people how to play them. You create something they can play however they darn well feel like. If you limit them too much, it sucks, and people stop playing your game.
I'm not totally against your arguments, though. I'm just bringing up a contrary POV. -G01d HaCkEr 05:58, 7 June 2006 (PDT)
