What Makes a Good Basic Attack in A RPG
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ค. 2024
- Basic attacks are the most common and most used option in most turn based RPGs, therefore they must be useful and effective or else they fall into obscurity. In this video we explore what makes a good basic attack.
- เกม
You're where I'm aiming to be! I'm glad the algorithm brought me here!
Looking forward to seeing more of the journey! and with that, i'm subscribed.
If you want to incentivize players to use basic attack more, you could consider adding more direct incentives. For example, you could make an ability or status condition make an enemy weak to basic attacks until the end of the turn, or you could add a passive effect to a character/equipment/spell where your next basic attack deals extra damage after casting a spell. Maybe a character's basic attacks reduce an enemy's magic resist, or raise your stats. In this way, you can combine basic attacks and abilities as useful tools that give the player decisions to consider instead of segregating basic attacks from abilities as the boring weak thing you do while you wait to cast another spell.
You're absolutely right. I can definitely look at adjusting some of the units kits to incentivize using their attack more. A simple yet effective approach!
In my game I sued the defend command to give mp. Your video is interesting and your game seems really fun
I think it's because yours is more of a roguelike where every action must be meticulously planned. You don't waste turns in these types of games, a basic attack has no place as you don't spend time ploughing through weak enemies like a normal JRPG. I think a good applicable example to your game are the Trails games, a basic attack happens immediately, but magic skills require a casting period. Can you afford to wait a few turns to cast your magic? What enemies are ahead of you in the turn queue? Is there an enemy coming up you'd rather take out immediately? The basic attack even pushes enemies (as you fight on a grid), you maybe you wanna use a basic attack to push an enemy in range of another party members attack, or move them closer to another enemy to get them both with an AoE attack. It makes the basic attack completely viable, even when every turn matters. Whereas in most JRPGs, it's a move you use when you can afford to, and save your MP/SP resources for later, however roguelikes tend to push you to use up your resources and not save them because enemies don't tend to be pushovers, they're designed to end your run. This is probs why people avoid basic attacks in your play testing.
For your game, the basic attack needs to have an extra function to make it just as viable as spells, not just increase damage or no cost. Add horizontal complexity to your game, not vertical.
You can further increase functionality with the weakness system (e.g. split basic attacks into sword/hammer/gun/whip/etc, ala Persona/Shin Megami Tensei, flying enemies weak to gun/arrow, rock enemies weak to hammer, etc), hit a weakness and that character regains 2 MP, and only regains 1 MP otherwise.
But good luck dude, this looks like a fantastic project. As a fellow dev I applaud you for your work, especially when you're doing this all alone.
I appreciate the time you took to provide all this feedback thank you! I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I also agree heavily with horizontal complexity. The problem has been understands what that really means for this specific project with these specific mechanics. I'm playing with different weakness idea to see how that feels. The damage increase definitely helped quite a bit though since now you can actually use it as an option. I'll keep experimenting and playtesting different ideas. Thanks again!!
@@EdomGames1 No problem dude! Another thing I'd like to mention is that people approach every battle in roguelikes more like they would approach a boss battle in other games, as every fight is high stakes. So it's worth investigating player behavior towards boss battles and how they use the battle system mechanics in boss battles in the games you're researching, rather than regular fights. If the games you're investigating have a boss rush mode, that would be much more akin to a roguelike than anything.
Great video, I’ve started watching your channel following your progress for a bit now! One perspective I would add perhaps is to question about the kind of combat you want the main loop to be in your game. In my opinion, I don’t see that much wrong with having a lackluster basic attack if you really want the player to mostly use spells and experience flashy and interesting animations on screen. In the case of the combat, I don’t see a problem with a lesser use of basic attacks as the party increases in power scale and the enemies become more difficult. I also see the existence of BA = equivalent to the defend mechanic in a lot of games if you are using it directly to take into account the player’s mana economy. A character’s basic attack damage can be related to their attack or physical stat maybe, and for a case of a healer character, their attack might be so weak that a defend is a better option, if they don’t want to be healing the entire battle. I don’t have a conclusion here I just thought I would provide some of my thoughts 😅
Your input is very much appreciated! I think for my game what ends up happening is if the basic attack serves no mechanical purpose in combat then it feels like your turn is wasted. So it's been a struggle trying to find the right balance. I even toyed with the idea of removing the basic attack all together similar to a game like darkest dungeon. There's 100 ways to design basic attacks it just comes down to what you want your game to feel like and lock it in lol
Thank you Edom for explaining this in more detail! I appreciate that you walked through your research and observations of other games, to truly think of the system as a whole instead of isolating the idea of Basic Attacks. This info also really helps me out ass I'm finally getting closer and closer to the day I spend time balancing stats and the combat system.
I'm glad it could help! The endless balancing and tuning loops can be brutal but the best thing to do is let other people play it!
I think it's as simple as "there has to be a reason for using it" which you pretty much covered throughout the video. BA to save mp, BA because it is an alternative requirement, not a lesser version of a different one, to elemental magic in break systems, BA because it goes off a turn faster than skills, etc.
Still, slapping any mechanic on top of BAs and praying for the best is bound to be troublesome. If all BAs do for example is give you the resource to cast skills then you'll have player mindlessly doing one BA one turn, one skill the next ad nauseam. Reminds me of D3/D4 generator/spender system that I hate so much lol.
SO GOOD!
Also, did you say "money" cow?
I noticed that too lol
Yes lol, because it prints big money
@@EdomGames1 I think they may have been referring to the fact that it's typically "cash cow" lol
@@vincentsalcido9605Lmao you're right didn't even catch that. That line was freestyled during recording didn't even catch it
No idea if it helps, but I've also thought about how to make regular ATTACKs feel better to use in RPGs; in my experience, I've played two that made actually VITAL to gameplay, by adding more properties to them, other than flat damage.
Battle Chasers: Nightwar (and maybe Ruined King, haven't played it yet) uses an 'Overcharge' mechanic, a form of temporary MP generated by certains 'Actions' (instant-use no cost abilities, such as guarding, taunting, going into stealth, but also more traditional attacks)
Every character has a maximum MP threshold and a max. Overcharge threshold. Overcharge fills in for missing MP.
In that game, Skills (which use MP and take casting time) are very useful, but costly, so building up Overcharge was an absolute necessity.
The idea was to allow players to use their skills without having to exhaust their MP during a dungeon crawl, and it let them delve into that strategy-making goodness I love so much.
Even still, it didn't prevent you from using MP if you really needed it!
The one flaw I could find it was that you kinda had to start every single fight the same way, getting Overcharge with basic Actions, so you wouldn't waste MP.
The other example was Sea of if Stars, where you just flatly regen MP by landing your Attacks.
It was reliable enough, but on top of that, it would also generate 'Live Mana', up to 3 times.
Live Mana can be consumed to Boost your next Skill or add 1 magic charge to your next attack, which linked into that game's magic damage types system.
My problems with it is that because of the 'lock' system in that game, where enemies casts could be broken by hitting them with the right damage types (most of which were exclusive to Skills or Live Mana usage), you'd end up playing stingy with your MP, just in case you'd need it to prevent an enemy spell.
Honestly, there's more I could delve into, but that's the gist of what's relevant for this topic.
With the MP system in place in your game, I don't think this is very useful, but I thought I'd share it anyway!
I really appreciate the time to explain these games mechanics. I've played the Sea of Stars demo mostly but I know what you're talking about. I also appreciate the insight on what you didn't like as it helps understand some negative perspectives. I'll definitely study those games more!
@@EdomGames1 You welcome!
I forgot to add that, because Sea of Stars makes you stingy, you end up 'defaulting' to attacks more than consciously doing them for a purpose, but at least there's Live Mana to generate...unless you already hit the cap on that
I think if it allowed you to generate temporary max MP, it'd be an even better incentive to engage with the Skills, which are fun!
Dope.
Good vid
Being able to hit more than once.
Algorithm go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr