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BlackShipsFillt
09-09-2010, 02:37 AM
I've got a question, I'm posting it up here because we had a discussion about it at Tasty Poison and no consensus was found, so I'm looking for other opinions (This is for Pocket RPG).

Most RPG's, especially Diablo-likes have elemental damages that can be added to other normal damage that a weapon deals, or spells that deal purely elemental damage. It follows then that enemies will interact with these damages, by being resistant or susceptible to different elemental damages.

What I'm trying to work out is the effect of these resistances on gameplay. Here is my thought experiment:

Coming across a enemy that is susceptible to fire when you have a fire sword spell is pretty cool. It rewards the player's choice in that item. I think anyone may enjoy this, provided it doesn't make the game too easy.

Coming across a demon, who is resistant to your fire sword, is a different matter, it could play out in several ways depending on how the game is designed and the player's temperament :

a) The player knows about the demon beforehand and has a backup item. This scenario occurs if the player has thought ahead and understands the game enough to play it. It also comes as a result of more pack management and it also means that some of the better items or spells in the game are only conditionally good, or otherwise the items in the game rely on elemental damage less. This scenario also requires the player to stop fighting and muck around in his/her inventory which slows down the game. When the player has had the foresight to keep a backup the player is rewarded with success.

d) The player fights the demon and uses something on the level to win. I know Dragon Age has shrines in heavy elemental resistant areas that allow players to change their elemental damage to suit their enemies. This could result in some interesting puzzles... though these same puzzles could happen just as easily without the presence of resistances... eg. a totem keeps respawning enemies and the player must destroy it first. This rewards some on the spot problem solving on the player's part.

b) The player fights the demon, it a tougher battle, but the player beats it. This is acceptable to players, especially if they have forewarning about there being fire resistant enemies. It does up the difficulty, however it is not actually more fun than fighting a demon without the disadvantage.

c) The player cannot fight the demon and has to return to town to purchase an item. This really punishes the player's poor judgement. This doesn't feel too bad if there was forewarning about the presence of resistant enemies, however neither is it fun in itself.

Resistances are part of the RPG and are part of the flavour of some enemies. A fire elemental cannot take as much damage from a fireball, it would seem silly. Also strategising and choosing of equipment is part of an RPG, but resistances are just one part of this.

Personally I would much rather abuse knock-back or stun or area damage or criticals than try choose an item with elemental damage that suits the area, especially if the game is short and linear (which in this case it is) and therefore choosing a spell or item stops being a meaningful choice (because you have to choose the one that suits the next area)...

In a long RPG resistances can be dealt with well, for every item you equip you reject dozens of others and the player has control over the area that he/she goes to next... however in a short game where the player does not get to choose his or her opponents I feel that having too much resistances either encourage a feeling of powerlessness or creates prescriptive play. While players may enjoy finding the right weapon for the task the first time successive plays will have exactly the same puzzle (and identical puzzles are inherently not good for replayability).

One solution I guess is to have resistances, but then in each area only offer the items that are useful against the monsters of that level. That way the player only has to choose between meaningful choices and the monsters keep their flavour (and the players feel they are making the right choice, which is nice for them).

I know people like resistances in RPGs, and that in itself is a good reason to include them, however in a short linear game where replayability is key I feel that they are problematic and should be used sparingly.

edg3
09-09-2010, 07:04 AM
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b) The player fights the demon, it a tougher battle, but the player beats it. This is acceptable to players, especially if they have forewarning about there being fire resistant enemies. It does up the difficulty, however it is not actually more fun than fighting a demon without the disadvantage.

After a quick read, that seemed to me like the most friendly method, that gives the player ample time to get the backup item or decide on a backup strategy if you warn them early enough. As a quick example, in Pokemon fairly random placement of different pokemon occured, but they were typically lower level then your own pokemon, but the gyms were themed, some time to element, some time to characteristic (water, fire, lightning, fighting, flying, etc) and as the player you could choose to tough it out with items if you had the wrong element, or go and get the appropriate pokemon.


Personally I would much rather abuse knock-back or stun or area damage or criticals than try choose an item with elemental damage that suits the area
One way to go with this is to keep in the elements, but do them differently to the usual "fire beats grass, grass beats electricity" circle is to have several mini-effects as part of an element, so for example ice/water could be:
- Slow element (5% slow on attack, or 15% chance for a "slowed" enemy to miss)
- Mana regen element (10% extra mana regeneration, or increased mana pool)
- Shield element (15% protection from magic attack)
And then say fire could be:
- Damage element (15% chance to do 15 extra damage over 2 turns on a physical attack)
- Health regen element (10% extra health regen, or increased health pool)
- Shield element (15% protection from physical attack [flaming armour ftw])

I would love to see an RPG that makes proper use of element themed equipment and spells but that dont just focus on the element. I disliked how in Dungeon Siege 1 and 2 their idea of a great spell advancement system was Yet-Another-Lightning-That-Looks-Different. I would rather have a slightly more complex system to play around with, than 25 spells that essentially do the same thing because of their element, and that dont really force you to want to choose. I remember having maxed fire and lightning type damages, and did amazing damage with firebolt 3 and lightning bolt 3, but I was bored with the game because of being a mage as the elements felt like they werent there to help the game play. (there may have been elemental resistances/strengths, but like with the pokemon example I just toughed it out with what I had as it made the game more challenging).


Coming across a demon, who is resistant to your fire sword, is a different matter, it could play out in several ways depending on how the game is designed and the player's temperament :
If you're hell bent on having resistances and such, then make the game slightly more dynamic, if the player does 50% of his usual damage on the fire demon, make the fire demon drop 200% of what he usually would, or drop the health and mana pool of the demon by 25% (so he is still tougher but more reasonable), or even better, dont change anything stats wise, but rather make the demon know he has the upper hand and get "careless" using the wrong spell, forgetting to defend, and so on.

BlackShipsFillt
09-09-2010, 08:15 AM
Thanks Edge!

We're hoping to have a kind of interesting spell/weapon system. There won't be any skill tree, so all the skills and spells are affected by the items that the player picks up and by gemlike things that the player can socket to them. Allot of the effects will be things like Vampiric Aura, Improved Criticals, Split shot, Knockback, Freeze (Slowdown), Increase Attack Speed, Thorn Aura, Cause Panic, Poison, Splash Damage, Mana Regen, Chance-To-Make-Enemy-Really-Tasty. We're hoping it will allow for quite a large spectrum of different gear setups, but also be different with each play.

I think the problem I'm having here is that a lot of people say they enjoyed beating the resistances in RPG's and thats the reason why they'll also be fun in Pocket RPG, which is not an RPG but a short fast-paced and hopefully replayable leveling up game.

In proper RPG's the player only encounters serious elemental resistances after an hour or more of gameplay and they only ever runs into a resistance they are seriously disadvantaged against several times the entire 20 hour game.

In pocket RPG every 5-10 minutes the player may have to change their gear to better suit the environment. The game itself will only be 15 - 30 minutes long... So I'm worrying that once the player knows the pattern they'll stop enjoying countering enemy resistances and become tired of it, reducing replayability.

Of course not every enemy needs a resistance, but I worrying that we're erring on the too many resistances side.

I like your idea of adjusting the gameplay to the players tactics... it's definitely something worth looking into, it has to be implemented such that it maintains fairness.

dislekcia
09-09-2010, 02:27 PM
Hmm. My instincts are to go back to why resistances are in a hack and slash game in the first place, which you've sort of touched on, but not necessarily said out loud: Resistances are a way of adding meaningful player choice, usually more long-term choices. So if you take a look at Pocket RPG and map out the impacts of player choices, where are you currently lacking depth and/or juicyness? That's what I'd then tailor things to deal with.

For instance, you've said that it's a linear game. That means that you probably want the demon to be hard for players when they encounter it, regardless of what they're packing damage/resistance wise. If the plan was to have the game hit a difficulty spike "around" the demon, then if your player had high fire resist and good water damage, you'd have to counter the ease with which they could defeat the demon by adding monsters around the demon that were resistant to the demon's weaknesses and vice-versa.

I like the sound of your item system and socketing, why not use a feedback system within that: Different items and socketed gem thingies give your character different bonuses, but they also come with trade-offs. Having a high fire rate gem socketed means you take 2 extra damage every time you're hit - not a problem vs things that deal damage in big, slow chunks; but a big deal vs things that attack often for really tiny damage. Another high-fire-rate weapon might only decrease armor slightly, etc. A system like this allows you to design your enemy progression very solidly, but gives the player a lot of meaningful choice for their character.

You could always add in player resistances if you find that you don't have enough axes of choice - fire/water/electrical/poison/whatever have always been there to add more variables for the player to balance and, in an RPG-esque setting, probably make sense. That doesn't mean you have to apply them everywhere though - enemies could simply DEAL elemental damage at X range at Y speed with Z power and in N numbers. If you find that you're not getting enough enemy variation, add in some elemental resistances to them as well ;)

Freekybevis
09-09-2010, 11:15 PM
Too be honest, in H+S RPG's, I dnt pay much attention to the resistances what so ever. If I come across a monster that has resistance to my fire sword ( that Im probably proud of at the time ), I just buy more health potions than normal and hack and slash for longer. 99% of the time it just gets past off as a 'harder monster' and dont pay any attention to resistances.

BlackShipsFillt
10-09-2010, 06:23 AM
@ Freekybevis... yeah, I do the same, I'd rather be lazy and kill the monster the hard way than do work and sort out my inventory... Not every player plays like that apparently, I think the kind of people that play a lot of stealth games enjoy countering and outsmarting enemies (I'm a power freak though). I think the majority of our audience are more into more power and less thinking/work, which is part of why the resistances can't be too hectic...

In Diablo for example there were very rare monsters that actually would be impossible to beat without changing gear, I'm not certain that that is a good thing. I know Torchlight effectively did away with resistances, and I have a feeling Diablo 3 won't be too hectic either.

@Dislekcia That's a good point about meaningful choices. I had been referring to it in the sense that if there is one obviously correct answer then it isn't a choice at all. The other extreme is that all the choices are exactly the same, which is also what Edg3 pointed out about Dungeon Siege.

Currently, for the mage, the basic choices are as follows (off the top of my head, this may change):
a) Fire does the most splash damage and knockback and can set fire to enemies, particularly good for small clustered enemies
b) Magic Missile seeks and splits, to it is best for spread out enemies and works best with debuffs (because of multiple chances to stun or panic) and combines well with further splits (because unlike the other spells all the splits will hit)
c) Ice does good direct damage and slows and can do pass through, good for single enemies
d) Lightning is instant and cannot miss and can chain and or stun, it is good early on but doesn't do quite as much DOT later on, especially to larger targets who will resist the stun. Also there are no resistances to the lightning element but probably no weaknesses either.

Of course these spells can be augmented by other effects (and different spells within each element will behave differently) and so there are other tradeoffs to make but they do each present somewhat different tactical decisions even without resistances (so I think it isn't a meaningless choice).

I'm personally not in favour of tradeoff like: greater attack speed for less health. My understanding is that a lot of players don't make smart decisions when presented with choices like that, ie rather than do the math the player will choose the option that seems least detrimental, which is silly, but that is people. I'd rather offer more attack speed vs more stun which are both awesome options but result in different gameplay. But perhaps some tradeoffs will take place, I know Steve likes that kind of thing (and it does allow for very extreme builds, which I am in favour of).

Where my concern about resistances comes up is that each area is themed to resist a different element. Kind of like the way hell in Diablo could resist fire really well (though there was some randomness there). What I don't want is the area to make the choice of weapon for the player.

Eg. If the player is in the Dungeon, where there may be fire golems and other fire beasties, I don't want the player to say: "Okay Dungeon time, I would be foolish not to buy/equip an ice weapon/spell". Because that isn't a meaningful choice, that's just following the rules of the game. Even worse, a player picks up an awesome fire weapon in a Dungeon and says: "Well that's awesome, but there is no point in using it here".

Figuring it out how to beat resistances the first time might be rewarding, but because it happens every 5-10 minutes it simply forces the player to cycle gear or even denies the player gear. Once again, a certain amount of resistance is good for flavour and is necessary, but my concern is that even a fair amount of resistances will be detrimental to gameplay.

Also (to be clear) puzzles are really good for this sort of game, but I don't think beating resistances is a replayable puzzle.

dislekcia
10-09-2010, 01:28 PM
I think the problem is more that the resistances wouldn't be varied in a single setting, from the sounds of it. Giving every monster in an area (that the player has to get through, ie: Can't avoid them) the same resistance doesn't seem like a good idea.

Chippit
10-09-2010, 02:16 PM
I think the problem is more that the resistances wouldn't be varied in a single setting, from the sounds of it. Giving every monster in an area (that the player has to get through, ie: Can't avoid them) the same resistance doesn't seem like a good idea.

I'm with dis here. Even Diablo 2, famous for its 'immune to cold, immune to physical, immune to fire, etc.' uniques in Hell difficulty made sure that essential kills like end level bosses were never immune to anything. You could always just avoid everyone else, or restart if the random draw was particularly cruel to your current build. If a player has to progress through a certain area, it shouldn't be needlessly difficult or impossible for him to do so. It'd be an unfair punishment for what is an important but still somewhat arbitrary decision about elemental type.

BlackShipsFillt
10-09-2010, 04:21 PM
Yes Dislekcia, actually that explains it pretty well (I think I've been trying to say that just most of my ramblings have been only semi-coherent).

Even having a single fairly resistant group of enemies in an area that the player HAS to get past could become an unpleasant road block. There will be enough warning for the player, but that just restricts the player's freedom, because if the enemies are very resistant they HAVE to counter the resistances.

Also I aggree with Chippit. There definitely cannot be immune enemies. Not in this game, especially not for bosses.

I think what I'm realizing at this point is if the immunities were more random and reasonably mild the game would play better. If the player doesn't really know what he or she is going to come up against, and nothing they come up against will be unfairly difficult to beat, then they get to make meaningful choices and don't get screwed if their choice is wrong.

Thanks GameDevers!!

Fengol
14-09-2010, 10:36 PM
Elemental damage is just the simplest of buff and debuff systems. They're either added to base damage (15 damage + 5 fire damage) or change the type of base damage (15 damage becomes 15 fire damage) and like the pokemon example above creatures have damage reduction to specific types. In either case your damage is always applied to the enemy.

I also suggest your more "complex" attack systems. To take a leaf out of D&D4E:
Combat Advantage - +2 bonus to attack rolls
Dazed - You grant Combat Advantage. You can take either a move action, standard action or minor action. You can't make opportunity attacks. You can't flank an enemy.
Prone - Combat Advantage from melee attacks. +2 bonus to ranged attackes. -2 penalty to attack. you are lying on the ground
Stunned - You grant Combat Advantage. You can't take actions. You can't flank an enemy.
Dominated - You are dazed. Dominating creatures chooses your one action.

D&D 4E also makes great use of shifting enemies and players so that you get Combat Advantage or get out of it.

In short, effects that change the way the AI works or the player must play are better than calculating an amount. Effects like: slow, teleport and freeze are good; denying range attacks or granting bonuses to melee attacks (and vice versa) change where the player wants to be in relation to the enemy; and interrupts, immediates and reactions give the sense of a deeper AI and extra options for the player.

dislekcia
15-09-2010, 01:39 AM
In short, effects that change the way the AI works or the player must play are better than calculating an amount. Effects like: slow, teleport and freeze are good; denying range attacks or granting bonuses to melee attacks (and vice versa) change where the player wants to be in relation to the enemy; and interrupts, immediates and reactions give the sense of a deeper AI and extra options for the player.

This. So very, very much of this.

Well said, Fengol :)

BlackShipsFillt
16-09-2010, 01:52 PM
Yes!

Once again I agree, I'm on the side against resistances, or at least against overuse of resistances (although if there were a side completely against them for short casual linear action RPG games then I'd be on that side)and on the side for more interesting affects, because at best resistances are a rock-paper-scissors problem to solve, and at worst they make the game slower and less rewarding or even impossible to beat. I think they're mostly being put in there for flavour anyway.

Interrupts are a nice idea... I've got a bit of that going down in Kickyfighter and it works quite nicely (and makes the player feel more skillful without the game seeming easier).

I'm thinking about running the melee character a little bit like a Jedi, in that when not attacking the character can deflect a lot of attacks, but when the character is attacking he is vulnerable. This means the player can stay near the enemies relatively safely, but has to choose the right moment to attack. Combining this with items that interrupt or stun will allow the player to be very powerful even if the character can't tank a lot of damage.

Also chaining and combos I think are quite fun, because this is an action game as much as it is a RPG.

Fengol
16-09-2010, 01:57 PM
oooh, if you can work in combos that would be SO 733t! Don't forget to show the combo bonus and then you can combo interrupts!