Castle Paradox

[msw188]

So I was looking at a website called gamefaqs, and reading some reviews for Chrono Trigger. I usually try to avoid 9 or 10 out of 10 reviews, and found what I thought was a very good review by a user called Mariner (who also wrote some great reviews of some other games and the SNES in general, if you are interested). He gave the game 7/10, and while I did not agree with all of his points, I feel that my own grade would be similar. But one of the main points he brought up, which I hadn't thought about (but now realize was a major problem for me enjoying the game) was:

(I hope I am allowed to do this)
"Take a look at your basic equipment list. Each successive one is more powerful than the next, with almost no room for depth. In FF6, one had to decide whether to use an Aegis shield for defense, Force shield for magic defense, or possibly no shield and use two swords instead, depending on your situation and preference. Such customizability and depth is virtually nonexistent in this game." -Mariner, Gamefaqs website

Now I'm not the hugest FFVI fan, but I've often said that one of the best things about it was how huge and varied it seemed in terms of both items and skills (especially from enemies). But here I want to focus on equipment. How do the rest of you feel? At what point is too many options bad? Just to get the thought-process going, I'll point out some of the variety that can be found in equipment.

1. AFFECTING VARIOUS STATS
Besides pure attack and defense, there are other statistics that can be affected (Mariner's magic defense example, speed affected by armor in Breath of Fire games, etc). In a lot of cases the effects on other stats is negligible, but it doesn't have to be this way.

2. ELEMENTS
Obvious. FFVI had this in spades. Somewhat troublesome for the OHR where we do not have the ability to change equipment or elemental bitsets within battle. In most games I've played, elemental equipment is at the high end of the list, but again it doesn't have to be this way. Imagine a game where ALL equipment is elemental...?

3. SPECIAL EFFECTS
This can potentially be the most interesting, I think. Weapons that can cast spells, a magic hat that recovers MP every few steps (Dragon Warrior games), armor that allows you to walk on 'hurt-tiles' without taking damage, etc. Once again, these things usually don't come in until late game, but why should it be like this?

Those are the "big three" that I can think of, but here are some other possibilities:

4. COST EFFECTIVENESS
Most players get annoyed by the high prices and slow gold collection of Dragon Warrior games, but I think they have a good idea. Imagine a game where money is scarce, and part of your equipment choice is dependant on your funds. A game with no monetary rewards from battles perhaps, or no random battles at all...

5. EQUIPABILITY
Not sure how this would work, probably needs to be used in conjunction with number 4. Can the value of a piece of equipment somehow be tied to how many people can actually use it? Or maybe, turning this around, could pieces of equipment behave differently depending on who is using them? Again, not sure about this one...

6. DURABILITY
How long should equipment last? In most games it lasts forever until you sell it or throw it away. But why not have weapons wear out? It forces you to decide what battles you want to save that ultimate sword for.

What other things can we think of?
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My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com

[djfenix]

I started to work on Endless Saga again a while back, and I've taken these things into concideration. I wanted equipment to play a larger role in battles, whereas most RPGs would simply thing about optimizing for defence in equipment and accessories would play the role in magic defence, but i wanted to do something different.

First thing I decided was that specific types of equipment would be benificial to specific stats. Swords would essentially be a balance type, daggers excel at speed and accuracy, axes in strength, rods in magic, etc. I also decided to take the monster bitsets a little further. I decided that certain weapons would work well against certain monster types (whips would be effective for "taming" beast type monsters, for example). But with those strengths also come a weakness. While axes may be strong, they'd take a toll on the users speed. And on the reverse, while daggers are fast and accurate, they would take a toll on strength. So when it comes to a choice in fighting a monster with high evasion, a dagger would be your best bet, even if it is a little weaker.

For the armour, I decided to take it even further. Again, there are specific types of armour to increase specific stats, and respectively lower stats, most of the equipment would also have elemental properties. And this isnt all random. Equipment made of wood is flammable, so it would make the user more suseptable to fire damage, while thick cloth-type equipment (ie. a winter jacket) would make you stronger to ice and wind (but again, is still flammable, depending on which you're wearing).

[Camdog]

[TwinHamster]

[Moogle1]

There's a whole element of weapons that developers tend to neglect -- I've done it too -- weapons have both stat bonuses and attacks. That means that a weapon's attack damage is not tied to the bonus it gives to your attack stat. You can make a weapon that boosts Fight damage but hurts special attack damage. You can make a weapon that deals pathetic Fight damage but boosts all your special attacks.

The standard is to use a default attack for most weapons, which is fine -- the vast majority of RPGs do this, commercial or otherwise -- but you can do a lot more to make weapons more interesting. It makes equipment decisions much more interesting when "weaker" weapons can be selectively more useful. This has been explored superficially in some respects: the Blood Sword is a recurring FF weapon that usually trades attack power for healing, and all of FFXII's ranged weapons have various ammunitions that provide extra effects. However, wouldn't it be interesting to expand this to most or all of your game's weapons? Here are some examples from an upcoming game I'm working on:

- The speedy thief character has a weapon with unusually strong attack power (for her, anyway), but with the catch that every hit increases the target's Attack.
- The gunman's Weapon slot is used for ammunition, which determines extra effects for his Fight command. His offhand slot holds a gun, which primarily determines his attack strength.
- What's the point of making weapons for your magician that makes his pathetic attack slightly less pathetic? Magicians' weapons should either increase magic damage or provide added effects for the Fight command. On the other hand, it might also be interesting to give your magician a weapon that kicks his attack power up to a decent level at the expense of all of his MP...

I strongly feel that there should be no "ultimate" weapon that is categorically better than every other. With only a little effort and creativity, you can make weapons that are useful -- if not optimal -- throughout most of the game.

[Mr B]

Ah yes; Civilization. I thought of it immediately after reading the first post.

One of the problems with stepping too far away from the "linear progression of capability" path is that too many ways of going about things can put the player in the difficult position of not having a viable strategy. For example, in the beginning part of Civilization: Call to Power there are enormous numbers of different strategies to pursue -- conversion, slavery, conquest, diplomacy, etc., etc.. Each method could be countered, but since each city could only build one thing at a time, and they took so long, I was often forced into a position of deciding how I wanted to lose. Not fun. (of course, C:CtP had enormous balance issues anyway)

Figuring out how to make something useful without being Ultima or Necessary, that's a trick. I know that I haven't mastered it by any means.

[Moogle1]

Well, it'll depend from game to game, but here's some thoughts:

- If MP is a limited resource in your game, you might include a weak weapon -- maybe one that even provides stat penalties -- that restores some MP with each hit. The equipped hero will have his usefulness reduced for the duration of that battle, but will find himself recharged for the next.
- If the rest of your weapons all have useful effects, why not include an "ultimate" weapon with high attack power but no other ability? Even though it's the "strongest" weapon, it might not be as useful.
- Otherwise, make the player sacrifice something to get that huge attack boost. Maybe it consumes HP with each hit. Maybe it reduces his other stats. Maybe it grows weaker after each battle. Maybe it breaks after ten battles.

I think that you can make a viable RPG that doesn't have a strict linear progression in terms of equipment. Final Fantasy X features a bizarre equipment system where weapons have no inherent effect on attack power and armor has no inherent effect on damage reduction. Similarly, your RPG might feature more of a "weblike progression of capability" wherein the various characters slowly gain equipment that allows them to assume various roles. Maybe at the beginning of the game, the main character can only beat flying enemies by using an expensive ability, but later he has a variety of methods to take them out depending on how he's equipped. If he's equipped for accuracy, he can use physical attacks, if he's equipped for magic power he can cast low-level spells, etc.

The concept still applies if your characters are more rigid in terms of role (FF4, for example). A fighter character can either be a damage-soaking tank or a damage-dealing powerhouse -- but make the player decide between the two! A mage/healer can either throw out damage/healing or buffs/debuffs -- make them each useful in their own right! If your magic user has some spells that rely on the Magic stat and some that don't, then an interesting tradeoff is Magic-boosting equipment versus MP-boosting equipment. Boosting your Magic stat will make damage-dealing spells more powerful, but boosting your max MP will let you cast those expensive, non-stat-reliant buffs more often. (Again, make them useful!) Clever players might initially equip the MP-boosters, then switch to the Magic-boosters when their MP falls below a certain point.

Best of all, giving the player these choices lets him feel like he has some control over the strategy instead of feeling like he needs to figure out how you planned for him to win this fight or pass this dungeon. It does make it more difficult for you as designer to allow multiple strategies to be viable while maintaining the game's difficulty, but that's why game design isn't mechanical.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[msw188]

Another concern that might be relevant to all of this is how much a hero can carry. I'm earnestly hoping that once we have custom menus in the OHR, we will be able to assign a separate item menu for each hero, like in the Dragon Warrior series. There it became part of your strategy to decide who would carry which items that had special effects (even if they weren't going to equip them). It might also be interesting to assign a 'weight' value to each item, where each hero can only carry so much 'weight' (equipped or unequipped). This way you can make lots of powerful equipment choices for the player, but not allow him to take them all and choose between them on a whim with every character.

Another question: what games have you played where you felt that the equipment selection was good, and why? I've already brought up my admiration for the variety of Final Fantasy VI equipment, even though most characters had a clearly most powerful weapon. Actually, weapons were not really that varied at all. The fact that each character had their own weapon types probably contributed to this as well; thus armor, which was usually equippable by many different people, demanded more choices from the player.
_________________
My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com

[Moogle1]

The nice thing about FF6's weapons setup is that there were weapon types: swords (Terra, Celes), lances (for Edgar, Mog), dirks (pretty much everyone, but especially Locke and Shadow), staves (Gogo, Strago), and oddball specialty weapons for Relm, Setzer, Cyan, and Sabin. Equipment was mostly shared, but not totally. If you lucked on a really great piece of equipment, you'd want to make sure to include someone who could equip it.

Unfortunately, where this breaks down in FF6's case is that your weapon didn't really matter. You can get through the whole game without using the Fight command and it's often a good idea to do so. The optimal strategy is usually to back-row your entire party and use special attacks.

On the other hand, Relics--oh man, Relics. The fact that you could equip two of them meant you could combo stuff like Genji Glove/Offering and Gem Box/Economizer. Even the less-broken Relics were worth thinking about. I never went anywhere without Sprint Shoes, I loved Running Shoes and Marvel Shoes, the Moogle Charm was great for the Fanatics' Tower, and so on.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Joe Man]

[msw188]

[Moogle1]

I'm going to have to disagree here and say that some degree of specialization is a good thing. If anyone can equip anything (or if there's no real difference in their equipment), there's no reason to take along the characters you don't like. This is why Yuffie and Red always got bench time for me. If you only have one good lance, you'll take along one lance-user, but not three. If you have lots of good swords but few other nice weapons, you'll load your party with sword-wielders.

Elements is a completely different topic altogether... I could've sworn there was a pretty comprehensive topic on the subject, but maybe it got trashed. Feel free to start up another one and I will give you my two cents and change.

And if you thought Sabin sucked, all I have to say is you obviously weren't playing the same FF6 I was. Blitz = win.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Uncommon]

Until you get the Fixed Dice (which i fetched as soon as i got the Moogle Charm) or the higher level spells, Sabin is totally your biggest damage dealer. I didn't use him so much the first time I played it, but playing around with some of the equipment exploits this most recent time I played (about two months ago), he's an extremely useful character. His only drawback is that Blitzes aren't targettable, so on battles where you need to be careful where you target he can be dangerous.

For an example of Sabin's usefulness, take the Coliseum battles. Most of them fall under really three types. The first needs enough damage done to it before it can kill you, best taken out by a Dragoon Edgar. The second is weak to Instant Death, best dealt with by Setzer with the Doom Darts or the Trump cards. Ah, but the third usually has an elemental weakness to exploit that normal damage alone won't quite conquer, which calls for Sabin and whatever glove will best suit the situation. Now, why would you need Sabin instead of just using elemental swords? Well, you get the elemental swords a lot earlier in the game than any of Sabin elemental gloves, and Shadow can't well Throw anything in the Coliseum, not to mention Sabin's high attack stat.

And, yes, one of the reasons FF6's equipment system was interesting was because not everything was specialized, as many of the characters who had specialized weapons tended to get more bench time (Setzer being the exception with me). About all of the very most powerful weapons and armor could be split between many characters, even without the Merit Award, and with the evade bug this made equipment strategy a bit more important. Going through Kefka's Tower I can't tell you how many times I emptied out a team's equipment to switch it over to another's, just to maximize my Magic%.
There are really so many ways you can break that game.

[msw188]

Hmm, I think you're right, some degree of specialization is probably a good thing. I guess that what I think is bad is when there is a specific set of equipment that only one person can use, and it is the only equipment that this person can use (like Sabin and Cyan).

Sucking was an overstatement. Blitzes are nice for the first third of the game or so, but they don't make up for the (horrible) fact that anyone can learn magic much better than these. Put in Sabin's relatively low base magic power and MP, as well as his dismal equipment selection (not so much his singular weapons, even if this does limit effective Genji use, I'm thinking more of armor and shields here), and you get a character I never use beyond World of Balance Zozo, except when you have to in the beginning of World of Ruin, and Kefka's Tower.

Plus, inputting blitzes is fun maybe the first five times. Not afterwards.
_________________
My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com

[Moogle1]

Okay, I get it, I know the disadvantages to Blitzes. However, Air Blast is the best wind-elemental attack in the game and can easily clear out a horde of monsters in the late game (try it in Narshe's caves, for example). Bum Rush is a top-tier attack that costs nothing to use. And Suplex is just funny

But back to the topic at hand: what it boils down to is that equipment is only interesting if the player has a significant choice. If your equipment follows a linear progression, it's not much of a choice. (The Golden Sword has 35 ATK and the Silver Sword only has 25 ATK. Which do you choose?) The difference need not be great, but it should be important. Here are some interesting pieces of equipment that depart somewhat from the linear progression scheme:

- A weapon with relatively high attack power for its point in the game, but which does Dark damage. (Everyone knows Dark damage is mostly useless.) Many enemies will absorb your attacks, but you'll do better damage versus the rest.
- Armor with a low defense rating, but that boosts your attack power considerably. You'll need to rez the character a lot, but he'll tear through enemies when he's alive.
- A weapon that damages MP instead of HP. Obviously a specialty weapon, but it could be invaluable against certain enemies.
- Two types of armor: one gives little defense, but increases max HP; the other doesn't increase HP but does provide defense. You can use a standard progression here and still make the choice interesting.
- Similarly, different weapon types: standard whatever swords; armor-piercing spears (use the Blunt attack type); quick, multi-hit daggers ideal for low-defense monsters (use the Sharp attack type); and weak, magic-boosting staves. Even if you allow anyone to equip anything, this will encourage the player to equip characters with the various weapon types to effectively combat various enemy types. It might be more interesting, though, to limit each character to two of these weapon types: then, party decisions become more interesting when the player has to pass through an area with, say, a lot of high-defense monsters.
- It's reasonable to have weapons be more character-specific if the weapons all have different special effects. Think of the weapon as more of an equipped ability than a piece of equipment: you don't want your characters to all have the same abilities, do you?

Most of this is off the top of my head, some of this is taken from other games, and some of this is what I'm planning for my game. The point is that you have a lot of options with your equipment, so give your player a lot of options as well.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design