Castle Paradox

[Moogle1]

[Newbie_Power]

Yeah, never something strictly beat 'em up. Maybe take things that tried to define random battle strategy to the next level, such as elemental weaknesses actually being important and status effects being useful / more of a worry.

[Calehay]

Intriguing discussion. I guess I'm part of the minority that feels that random encounters aren't the devil. While it's not impossible to feel that groan, "Here's another stupid fight," I feel that sometimes that can be a good thing. For example, if you want to get that treasure chest that's out of your path, then you have to risk getting into a battle. Of course, the downside is when you get into that battle with that stupid thing that does a one hit kill in its first move and you can't stop it, then it gets annoying.

It's a hard design flaw in RPGs that's been in existence since the creation of RPGs, and it's hard to fix. Generally, for me, it seems that there are some hardcore gamers that just want to levelbust and get to level 99+ just for the coolness factor of it. I think it's almost something that is unique in RPGs. It's almost like practicing that 1 billion point trick in THPS2 (Which I almost did, but then I fell.)

But that ruins it for the less than casual player. This player usually just wants to get through the storyline. Usually, these are the people that have to levelbust a couple of levels just to get through, and are the ones who groan at that battle swirl/flash/color change all the time. Some games do court themselves to this kind of player, lowering the EC and upping the XP.

And then, some games have attempted to get rid of this imbalance. FFX implemented the Sphere Grid system, which, sadly, at least in my opinion, allowed the exact same thing to happen. Hardcore players would max out the board, and others would not get far enough to advance in the game.

I'm trying to think of others... FF9 took a new approach to learning spells, but the sheer fact that your stats needed to be updated kept the imbalance.

Legend of Legaia took a different approach. It tried to make battling fun so that you wouldn't tire of it so quickly. While I like its battle system, I'm know that didn't even come close to working.

TimeStream Saga 2nd Edition used stat caps (I believe) which catered to the latter type of RPGer but not the former.

It's a bit of an impasse that makes you wonder why we don't all just give up and make teh coolest aktion gam evr!11!! In all seriousness though, I will have to give kudos to anyone that can create balance the center of gravity of gamers.
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Calehay

[Newbie_Power]

If your party is leveled up to at least begin working on the current dungen, then an enemy that wipes out your party in one hit without any warning is bad RPG design. Such an enemy should do large damage to your characters, but allow for healing and have enough weaknesses to be exploited because you are trying to get a treasure chest, not complete the whole dungeon yet.

The Sphere Grid was never intended to prevent power levelers. It was to allow characters to grow a stat and skill basis rather than on a per-level basis.

And I don't think getting to level 99 is in style anymore. Low level games are more important to the hardcore gamer that wants a challenge. That's why I am willing to allow levels to be gained to complete the game, because that is easier than doing it at the lowest level possible.

Games shouldn't hand themselves to casual gamers anyway. I personally consider that something we home-brew developers should avoid if commercial developers aren't willing to do so.

[Calehay]

[Newbie_Power]

Oh? It is one person, so you should be able to use a Phoenix Down easily.

[Mr B]

Hmm...interesting.

What about that Moogle Charm in FFVI? I never actually got to that point, but I seem to recall reading about an accessory that eliminates random battles when worn.

What about somehow permitting the player to adjust the "threat" of battles? Choosing a higher risk results in more rewards, but also more death. Aggressive gamers could choose high-threat battles in order to leap ahead quickly, while cautious gamers could take it more, smaller steps.

Or perhaps, instead of having discrete random battles, have a threat meter that slowly increases as the player travels through dangerous areas. When the player fancies a battle, he presses the insta-battle-button. If the threat meter is low, an easy battle occurs. If the battle is high, a hard battle occurs. If the meter fills up, a really hard battle immediately occurs.

Heh, that still requires a lot of walking in order to get battles. Maybe combine the ideas, so that the player can fight any difficulty of battle he/she/it prefers, but accruing threat raises the minimum battle difficulty cut-off -- the longer one waits between battles, the more difficult the easiest battle becomes.

[REDROGUEXIII]

How about random battles that do not appear out of nowhere on the map but are represented by a character sprite that is randomly placed on a map and respawns on entrance and exit of the map. That way players can choose whether to fight or not, and maybe a simple attack script can be added onto the map so that people can enter into battles with first strikes and cut down trees to make obstacles and such?

Personally I dislike playing a game that is solely based on numbers and increasing levels just to beat the next boss, while (for me) mindless level-busting is somewhat addictive on MMORPGS, it's not really fun. The only concept that was rewarding was rare item drops and quests to collect random common items by defeating certain enemies.

[Joe Man]

Hmm I need to go back through paper mario TTYD to look at the actual advancement in numbers...
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"Everyone has 200,000 bad drawings in them, the sooner you get them out the better."
~Charles Martin Jones

Last edited by Joe Man on Fri Dec 13, 1957 1:21 am; edited 2,892 time in total

[msw188]

I've brought up the point before, but I'm glad to see someone else agreeing with me, so I'll re-emphasize:

Part of what made the old (DW) games fun was the fact that the overworld map was part of the challenge! Furthermore, this was not accomplished by making singular battles overly difficult (usually), but rather by making the large number of battles inevitably fought wear the heroes down.

It may sound rediculous, but I'll say it: Final Fantasy III (or VI) had a random encounter rate that was too low for its overworld map. Now, I would rather see the challenge added by having a larger map (further to go) rather than more battles crammed in a small area, and I wonder if this is the flip side of Moogle's original argument; I mean, sure, no one asks for a higher encounter rate, but there may be people who claim that certain areas are too small. I don't know if anyone does say that, though (besides me).

Chrono Trigger made things even worse. The overworld map there was POINTLESS from a gameplay perspective. And in all seriousness, I've often thought about replaying CT for the fun of the story, but when I think about the actual 'gameplay', I always end up dissuading myself.

Okay, now that I've (once again) shown myself to be pretty disagreeable about these kinds of things, and clearly having no taste for what is actually fun, let me comment on some of the alternate ideas expressed so far.

"Levelling up at bosses only" - this sounds interesting. In this set up, random battles would be extremely annoying and feel worthless, but having NPC enemies blocking doors, etc, could make the access to the room feel like a reward unto itself. In a similar sort of way, beating level x of Mario Bros does not give you a noticable reward, other than allowing you to progress to the next level (or explore more of the map - Mario 3). Why is this not reward enough?

"Affected healing" - I don't know about this. In any case, making healing easier in battle seems strange, from a logical standpoint. The only good method I can imagine for this is having Drain-type attacks be the heroes' main source of healing (which actually could be a really cool idea, now that I think of it). Having healing difficult in battle might sound a good idea at first, but what about boss battles?

"Fixed amount of enemies" - Not my style. This means that wrong turns and backtracking will never cost the player anything. Dungeon puzzles are only challenging in a fun way when they increase the risk of dying, not just of taking up time. At least, that is how I feel.
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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

[Calehay]

[Moogle1]

[msw188]

Ah yes, insanity is the name of the game in my world.

First though, I just wanted to voice some agreement with you on elemental effects - these are usually uninteresting. Part of the problem is that in a lot of games, single characters have access to different elements. This means that in any given battle, you have merely to choose the correct element, as opposed to a game where each character only has one or two elements, and you are forced to choose before knowing the battle for certain who you will use (possibly another argument for random battles, not sure how strong of an argument though). On the other hand, I am a big fan of status effects, and I wish we had more in the OHR. Yeah, I started using before poison and the rest, and I was very happy when they put that in. I had a thread a while back about status change suggestions, but I can't imagine them being a priority for the OHR right now.

Now as for CT, I agree that many of the boss battles were quite interesting, usually without feeling too gimmicky. But somehow the overall game does not sit well with me. In all honesty, I think it really has to do with the lack of random encounters rather than the battles themselves. I'm becoming convinced that one of the things I really enjoy in an RPG is the feeling of exploring a large, mostly unknown area. The enjoyment is (usually) increased for me when the area also feels 'dangerous'. None of the areas in CT feel dangerous any more, because I know (or at least have some vague memory about) where enemy encounters occur. Even on the first playthrough, I often knew that wrong turns were not much of an issue; that is to say, I could explore certain areas as far as I pleased without any danger, once I knew I had killed the enemies in a certain area. This makes areas feel a lot smaller and more trivial to me. On the other hand, in the areas where exploring entails 'leaving the screen' and 'respawning the enemies', it felt annoying to know that I would have to kill the exact same enemies in the exact same place again if I took the wrong turn. Somehow (and I can't explain why), this is a lot more irritating to me than taking a wrong turn and having to fight random battles on the way back.

Of course, not all of CT felt like this (Magus' castle had a great feel to it, I thought), and I don't want to leave the impression that I hated this game. I think it is a very good game, and many of the battles in it were quite enjoyable, especially bosses. The combo system was cool at first, but I think that it could be done better (combos became fairly useless towards the end of the game). Still, it made for interesting decisions especially early, and still on through the mid-game, I'd say. Poison did not seem well-implemented, but I thought confusion and blindness were. The positional element in the battles was an interesting idea, although again I think it could be better executed. But yeah, that's enough from me tonight.
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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

[Newbie_Power]

Sorry. I thought of it for random weaker enemies, not some of the better battles.

[Camdog]