The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Music - Was trying to listen to "The Girl Who Stole a Star (Chrono Cross CD 3, track #6) and accidentally got "Orphanage of Flames" (track #5). Didn't help my headache, but it did remind me how I thought these two tracks would make a really great battle theme. Of course, I'm not talking about your generic enemy or even boss theme, but it'd be great to have battle themes tied into the personality/atmosphere of what's going on. Frankly, at the current state of RPG, all battle themes sound alike. Some suck, some don't, but they all have the same feel (well, the ones that really suck don't have any feel to them). Aeris's theme (Jenova LIFE) is the only one I can recall that doesn't sound remotely like anything else that's used for battle. "Those Imprisoned by Fate" (CC, versus Miguel) is a close second. Everything else is just... well... battle music, and I'm a little bit tired of them by now.

On random symbolisms - Do you know that Kid's blue eyes symbolize the ocean? When you look into her eyes in the CG cutscenes, you can see the primordial soup and whatnot. Notice she's always waiting by a beach. Notice how the game opening always begins at some kind of ocean scene? The last guardian is the Blue Guardian even though he goes out of order for the Melody of Time. Chrono Cross is written in an oceanic blue color. The scary thing is that I'm not making this up, go play the game you'll see all the random ocean symbols, especially the ones around Kid of the Fire attribute which makes absolutely zero sense. I don't know, maybe she's supposed to be the symbol for the Frozen Flame, since she's Fire and Water and the same time, though I'm more willing to bet Square just forgot what they wanted her to be at the end.

On healing spells - I'm of the opinion that we need to do away with healing spells. That's right, get rid of them completely. I've been wondering why the RPG combat system hasn't changed in about 15 however long console RPGs been around. It's really because of the ability to heal on demand. The only way you can make healing balanced is that if by casting healing you die or something, but that's not going to happen. Healing, in its current form, is a get out of jail for free card. There's never a bad time to cast a healing spell, and the MP used for healing is never wasted. For healing to have a strategic value, you'd have to situations where it is better to not heal but instead cast some other magic, and this just isn't something that's happening with RPGs right now.

On battle systems - All powerful moves should cost HP, and lower maximum HP for a fixed duration (if we can't get rid of Healing). All powerful spells should be treated the same way as well. There should be moves that you use that prevents you from being able to be healed. There should be moves the enemy can use that does the same thing too. It just doesn't make sense to have stacks of Elixirs or whatnot and just keeping on toss on your guys. "You still alive Joe? Here's an Elixir. All better now!" Bosses should be doable on a single bar of HP not because they're easy, but because it's supposed to be that way because you can't rely on being able to heal ad infinitum.

Magic regeneration - You should regenerate MP. Doesn't make sense all your mages are always meleeing stuff to conserve MP for the boss. You shouldn't be casting Ultima or whatever on the little guys, but casting no magic is pretty ridiculous. The only game I have my mages cast regularly are Grandia (because of the HP/MP restore before bosses) and Lunar (because magic casters do insignificant damage against most bosses anyway).

Magic/Melee balance - Almost every RPG has too much in favor for the melee. Magic should be powerful, for a price. Needless to say I'm for getting rid of MP restoring items as well.

On the general state of boss battles - Boss battles should be more like a fighting game then C++ code. Currently most boss battle goes something like:

while (boss != dead)
while (HP > boss's strongest attack)
use strongest attacks
cast Healing

Yeah, you can make the battles artificially diffcult, but that's all you've done. You just make people heal earlier by pumping up the boss's attack level. If they've more HP, you just drag out the fight longer. The battle system in RPG is currently stagant. Diffculty is basically nonexistent. You either have enough levels, or you don't. AI for enemy is for the most part nonexistent, otherwise the game would be too hard. The AI shouldn't have to act dumb to make the game fair. There should be enough drawbacks to using your strongest attacks every turn, for you and for the boss, that you wouldn't do it!</div>

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On healing spells - I'm of the opinion that we need to do away with healing spells. That's right, get rid of them completely. I've been wondering why the RPG combat system hasn't changed in about 15 however long console RPGs been around. It's really because of the ability to heal on demand. The only way you can make healing balanced is that if by casting healing you die or something, but that's not going to happen. Healing, in its current form, is a get out of jail for free card. There's never a bad time to cast a healing spell, and the MP used for healing is never wasted. For healing to have a strategic value, you'd have to situations where it is better to not heal but instead cast some other magic, and this just isn't something that's happening with RPGs right now.

My opinion on this is slightly different. While I agree with you that healing is way overbalanced, and some RPGs can just get freaking ridiculous, I'd go about it a different way. I'd do away with HP entirely. While representing someone's vitality as a number may have been okay in the 8- and 16-bit era, it's a little too simplistic for the kinds of graphics the gaming industry is churning out these days. I'd like to see something where the game engine takes into account what kind of enemy is attacking you, what kind of attack he was doing, where it hit your character, how hard it hit your character, and what kind of protection your character is wearing, and then deal out injuries appropriate to all those factors - which will then affect your character's performance/health appropriately (i.e. all their major stats would go down a certain percentage) for a certain amount of time, as most injuries do heal at some point. A healing item/spell might be able to heal one injury, but you'd have to pick what to heal, and it would still take time to fully heal back to perfect condition, unless you used like six potions or something for it.

<i>For example - I don't know if you've read my story at all, but I'll use characters/situations from there because that's what I've been using to come up with this idea - let's say that Wrinn and Gary, two Conerian knights, are walking through the woods together, and a wolf runs up from behind them and slams into Gary's back. They've just left Coneria, have had few battles with monsters, and are wearing nothing more than leather armor, so the wolf's claws easily go through Gary's tunic and slash his back. (The game engine, at this point, would record "Lacerations - upper back" and affect Gary's swordsmanship appropriately, while starting up a countdown before Gary's cuts heal. If Gary had been wearing stronger armor, the damage would have been much reduced, possibly just to bruises or something like that.) Wrinn kills the wolf, and then uses a Cure spell to remove the slashes - but the game still records Gary as having "Scars/soreness - upper back" and there's still a timer before he's back to 100% in all stats.</i>

Other attacks that result in more serious injuries would start up the reverse type of counter - one that counts down the time before a character dies if nothing is done, and increases the percentage points lost as it gets smaller and smaller.

<i>Example #2: Wrinn and company are walking through the Marsh Cave when a giant spider starts chomping on Wrinn's unprotected neck. Johann quickly kills the spider, but the damage is done - and the game records "Open wound - neck" and "Poisoned" and starts death counters for each, the neck wound being a much smaller amount of time. Gary runs over and pours a heal potion over Wrinn's wound, which stops the bleeding and turns the short death counter for his neck wound into a short healing counter (Wrinn's a tough guy, he'll get over it.) Then, Lyra casts Pure on Wrinn, which removes the other death counter, and starts another healing counter since Wrinn needs to regain his strength after being poisoned.</i>

On battle systems - All powerful moves should cost HP, and lower maximum HP for a fixed duration (if we can't get rid of Healing). All powerful spells should be treated the same way as well. There should be moves that you use that prevents you from being able to be healed. There should be moves the enemy can use that does the same thing too. It just doesn't make sense to have stacks of Elixirs or whatnot and just keeping on toss on your guys. "You still alive Joe? Here's an Elixir. All better now!" Bosses should be doable on a single bar of HP not because they're easy, but because it's supposed to be that way because you can't rely on being able to heal ad infinitum.

That's a very good point. I don't agree with the current "let's store 8 million different items and our weapons in the magical black hole I've got up my ass" system. Carrying items should cost your character percentage points. Think about it - would you be as agile and able to fight when you've got a pack of clanking potion bottles on your back as when you don't? I mean, give people the option of putting the pack down when they fight to get their points back for the battle, but then you run the risk of having your stuff get stolen/crushed/what have you. Or they could give their stuff to another character, but that would just transfer the stat loss to the other character.

As far as a penalty for battle moves, what I'd do is set up a "fatigue" system. Every time you swing your sword, do some crazy-ass move, run, dodge, or do just about anything out of the ordinary, you add some more time to your fatigue counter, which is a points-reducing injury just like everything else (and can be cured with heal potions to some extent.) The hardier characters won't be affected by it all that much, but it should still be there. Each item you carry should add a permanent points loss to your stats that doesn't go away until the item is used or put down.

I know it seems kind of harsh to be taking status points away willy-nilly like this, but really - in a big, long, arduous adventure, how often are you going to be operating at 100% efficiency?

Magic regeneration - You should regenerate MP. Doesn't make sense all your mages are always meleeing stuff to conserve MP for the boss. You shouldn't be casting Ultima or whatever on the little guys, but casting no magic is pretty ridiculous. The only game I have my mages cast regularly are Grandia (because of the HP/MP restore before bosses) and Lunar (because magic casters do insignificant damage against most bosses anyway).

Magic/Melee balance - Almost every RPG has too much in favor for the melee. Magic should be powerful, for a price. Needless to say I'm for getting rid of MP restoring items as well.

Magic fatigue. Each time you cast a spell, it brings down your magical stats some and adds to your physical fatigue (but since the character is a mage, they wouldn't be racking up that much physical fatigue to begin with, right?) Magic potions reduce both counters. And magic would work much better against bosses - which is the next topic.

On the general state of boss battles - Boss battles should be more like a fighting game then C++ code. Yeah, you can make the battles artificially diffcult, but that's all you've done. You just make people heal earlier by pumping up the boss's attack level. If they've more HP, you just drag out the fight longer. The battle system in RPG is currently stagant. Diffculty is basically nonexistent. You either have enough levels, or you don't. AI for enemy is for the most part nonexistent, otherwise the game would be too hard. The AI shouldn't have to act dumb to make the game fair. There should be enough drawbacks to using your strongest attacks every turn, for you and for the boss, that you wouldn't do it!

I agree, but I want to bring up something else. In most RPGs nowadays, if you win a boss battle, the game goes on. You heal up, yippy kai-ay, and go along with your business. You lose, that's it - game over, let's start over and do it again. So what does the boss have to lose? Absolutely nothing. I'd love to see a game where the boss actually has some survival instincts and does more than just wonk on you the whole time. And if a boss battle takes a while, what's the big deal? It's a boss battle - they're supposed to be big, momentous events! I say make 'em longer and more strategic, and don't have so many of 'em.

*sigh*...The inherent problem with all of this lies in the fact that I sincerely doubt that there are an appreciable amount of people out there who would be willing to play a challenging, high-maintenance game like this, since RPG players who weren't around in the days of harder games like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy II are probably used to the difficulty of today's RPGs and would balk at the idea. I simply think that if there are companies out there that are willing to make other types of games with engines so complicated that they take up to a quarter of the console's processing power (i.e. Polyphony Digital with Gran Turismo,) why can't we get an RPG that uses an engine more complicated than [Attack Rating]-[Defense Rating]*[Random Number] = [Damage]?</div>

<div style='font: bold 11pt Modern; text-align: left; '>i love the idea, too bad no one will ever pick it up.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Verdana, Tahoma, Modern; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>The final boss music to FF8 was different than most, it had a really eerie beginning. About a minute and a half into it, it went into standard boss music though.</div>

<div style='font: bold 11pt Modern; text-align: left; '>i can't help but complain about this, about a minute and a half into the FF9 boss he was dead.</div>

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My opinion on this is slightly different. While I agree with you that healing is way overbalanced, and some RPGs can just get freaking ridiculous, I'd go about it a different way. I'd do away with HP entirely. While representing someone's vitality as a number may have been okay in the 8- and 16-bit era, it's a little too simplistic for the kinds of graphics the gaming industry is churning out these days. I'd like to see something where the game engine takes into account what kind of enemy is attacking you, what kind of attack he was doing, where it hit your character, how hard it hit your character, and what kind of protection your character is wearing, and then deal out injuries appropriate to all those factors - which will then affect your character's performance/health appropriately (i.e. all their major stats would go down a certain percentage) for a certain amount of time, as most injuries do heal at some point. A healing item/spell might be able to heal one injury, but you'd have to pick what to heal, and it would still take time to fully heal back to perfect condition, unless you used like six potions or something for it.

The problem with doing away with HPs is that no matter what you put in place of it, it is still essentially the same as HP. Somewhere in the game it has to know something like "your right arm is about to fell off" means it can only take so much more damage, and that damage really has to be represented in a numeric form.

Though I agree with how wounds should affect performance, one of the problem you get is that it should apply to the bosses, so fights actually become easier the longer they go. This ties into healing again. Healing currently works as a way to 'reset' battle, if you will, but keeping your damage. If healing can no longer simply reset the battle back to your optimum condition, then it'd be okay for the bosses to weaken since you should, in theory, be weakened as much if not more than he has.

That's a very good point. I don't agree with the current "let's store 8 million different items and our weapons in the magical black hole I've got up my ass" system. Carrying items should cost your character percentage points. Think about it - would you be as agile and able to fight when you've got a pack of clanking potion bottles on your back as when you don't? I mean, give people the option of putting the pack down when they fight to get their points back for the battle, but then you run the risk of having your stuff get stolen/crushed/what have you. Or they could give their stuff to another character, but that would just transfer the stat loss to the other character.

From the generic look of things, it doesn't look like it's very heavy to carry Elixirs and whatnot potions around. You can always have your cleric or someone who's not going to be moving around carry the items.

The fundamental questions comes from why are there a gazillion elixirs and whatnot that instantly heals everyone to full in the first place? I think like healing spells, they should be limited in that they cannot function immediately.

Another problem with items is the inevitable hoarding. While you may plan the good guys to get an Elixir for every tough encounter, what's going to happen is that people will hoard the Elixirs until the end and have 15 of them against the last guy. I think if you make battles fewer and longer, people would be more inclined to use their godly items when they're supposed to as opposed to saving them for the last fight.

As far as a penalty for battle moves, what I'd do is set up a "fatigue" system. Every time you swing your sword, do some crazy-ass move, run, dodge, or do just about anything out of the ordinary, you add some more time to your fatigue counter, which is a points-reducing injury just like everything else (and can be cured with heal potions to some extent.) The hardier characters won't be affected by it all that much, but it should still be there. Each item you carry should add a permanent points loss to your stats that doesn't go away until the item is used or put down.

Fatigue, stats loss, etc... doesn't really matter what you call it, but there should be penalty for casting Ultima every turn.

I think consecutive fatigue or whatever you want to call it should amplify. The 2nd Ultima you cast immediately after the first should do more damage to you than the first one.

I know it seems kind of harsh to be taking status points away willy-nilly like this, but really - in a big, long, arduous adventure, how often are you going to be operating at 100% efficiency?

The problem is then you get the "everyone melee" problem if you do this. Presumably we'll still allow people to use healing spells/items without penalty after the battle is over (make sense), so you'll be seeing people meleeing their way to the boss and then heal up. In fact, that's what most RPG looks like right now anyway. 

Unless you take away the ability to heal when not battle, there's really no way to force a party to not be at 100% efficiency when they get through a dungeon or whatnot, because you can always melee your way through and then heal up before the end.

*sigh*...The inherent problem with all of this lies in the fact that I sincerely doubt that there are an appreciable amount of people out there who would be willing to play a challenging, high-maintenance game like this, since RPG players who weren't around in the days of harder games like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy II are probably used to the difficulty of today's RPGs and would balk at the idea. I simply think that if there are companies out there that are willing to make other types of games with engines so complicated that they take up to a quarter of the console's processing power (i.e. Polyphony Digital with Gran Turismo,) why can't we get an RPG that uses an engine more complicated than [Attack Rating]-[Defense Rating]*[Random Number] = [Damage]?

The RPG of the old aren't necessarily harder. In fact, they can't be harder because they run on the exact same system as we've been seeing for the last 15 or so years. If they're harder, it's only harder in the sense that you've to level up more to do better. You mentioned FF2... are you talking about 2J or 2US? FF2J didn't really have any sembalance of balance when you can level up by beating your own guys up. FF2US is a pretty generic RPG as far as system/diffculty is concerned.

I don't think it's inherently a challenge issue. It's just that no one wants to stray away from the tried-and-true 4 command system (Fight/Magic/Special/Item). A game that requires some thinking and battling against the AI isn't necessarily harder than, say, getting wiped out by a Shockwave Pulsar by Griever in FF8 because you didn't have the right junction on HP/Spirit and/or Shell up.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt Papyrus, Modern; text-align: left; padding: 0% 15% 0% 15%; '>And was followed up by such a crappy ending. Crappy, crappy ending.</div>

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The problem with doing away with HPs is that no matter what you put in place of it, it is still essentially the same as HP. Somewhere in the game it has to know something like "your right arm is about to fell off" means it can only take so much more damage, and that damage really has to be represented in a numeric form.

Well, you're always going to need some way to represent your health as some sort of quantified value - you can't get away from it. My point is that it doesn't have to necessarily be a numeric value like HP - it can have different levels of description. Sure, it's the same sort of concept, but I think the other way is a little more accurate. I mean, people can relate to having "broken bone-rib" that really hurts (which affects their performance) and will take X amount of time to heal, but how many people, during a fight, think to themselves "man, that punch in the chest just took away 400 of my HP"?

Though I agree with how wounds should affect performance, one of the problem you get is that it should apply to the bosses, so fights actually become easier the longer they go. This ties into healing again. Healing currently works as a way to 'reset' battle, if you will, but keeping your damage. If healing can no longer simply reset the battle back to your optimum condition, then it'd be okay for the bosses to weaken since you should, in theory, be weakened as much if not more than he has.

Oh, of course! In a perfect game world, every single enemy you fight would have the same sort of damage/fatigue/stats loss system apply to them. It doesn't make sense in the current system that a normal attack from an enemy with 5% of its total HP still does the same amount of damage as an enemy with 100% of its HP, and it should be easier to defeat monsters as they take more and more damage. It would be something like the Resident Evil damage system (where your character gets slower and easier to kill as damage goes up,) but more sophitisticated with regards to body parts hit AND it would apply to every person/creature in the entire game.

From the generic look of things, it doesn't look like it's very heavy to carry Elixirs and whatnot potions around. You can always have your cleric or someone who's not going to be moving around carry the items.

Yeah, but still...the amount of things you can carry around is ridiculous. I mean, 99 pieces of <i>paper</i> can be sort of heavy, and we're expected to believe that Skies of Arcadia characters can carry 99 each of Sacri, Sacres, Sacrum, and Sacrulen potions around?

The fundamental questions comes from why are there a gazillion elixirs and whatnot that instantly heals everyone to full in the first place? I think like healing spells, they should be limited in that they cannot function immediately.

Elixirs shouldn't even exist, or should be extremely, extremely rare. And healing spells that heal up all injuries of some person would have to give a whole freaking crapload of fatigue to the caster.

Another problem with items is the inevitable hoarding. While you may plan the good guys to get an Elixir for every tough encounter, what's going to happen is that people will hoard the Elixirs until the end and have 15 of them against the last guy. I think if you make battles fewer and longer, people would be more inclined to use their godly items when they're supposed to as opposed to saving them for the last fight.

Either that, or just have like one or two of every godly item. Or screw godly items. I mean, if somebody manages to make some sort of item that can heal up any injuries you have, wouldn't they keep it or sell it, instead of sticking it in some treasure chest in the depths of some dungeon?

I think consecutive fatigue or whatever you want to call it should amplify. The 2nd Ultima you cast immediately after the first should do more damage to you than the first one.

Sure. The fatigue system needs more refining, but the basic idea, I think, is much better than what's out there right now.

The problem is then you get the "everyone melee" problem if you do this. Presumably we'll still allow people to use healing spells/items without penalty after the battle is over (make sense), so you'll be seeing people meleeing their way to the boss and then heal up. In fact, that's what most RPG looks like right now anyway. 

What I would like to see to solve this problem is to take away the difference between battle and exploration. You could be walking around somewhere, and then all of a sudden, enemies will run up and attack you without any mode switching or any crap like that (sort of like Baldur's Gate.) No tactical pausing, either. Adventurers didn't get the chance to pause and think when they were fighting, so neither do players - and players had better make damned sure that they're in a safe place when they switch armor & weapons around, heal up, etc.

Unless you take away the ability to heal when not battle, there's really no way to force a party to not be at 100% efficiency when they get through a dungeon or whatnot, because you can always melee your way through and then heal up before the end.

Not if you ensure that while healing items are powerful, they're not THAT powerful. If you've been fighting for three hours straight, you're not going to be feeling that great, no matter how many potions you drink. If you don't give the players or the monsters god-like fighting and healing abilities, RPGs would start playing much differently.

The RPG of the old aren't necessarily harder. In fact, they can't be harder because they run on the exact same system as we've been seeing for the last 15 or so years. If they're harder, it's only harder in the sense that you've to level up more to do better. You mentioned FF2... are you talking about 2J or 2US? FF2J didn't really have any sembalance of balance when you can level up by beating your own guys up. FF2US is a pretty generic RPG as far as system/diffculty is concerned.

I suppose you're right. I just remember that Dragon Warrior was freaking hard, but the whole levels issue is true. And I meant FFIV, and I remember it being harder than the last few FFs - VI, VII, and VIII.

I don't think it's inherently a challenge issue. It's just that no one wants to stray away from the tried-and-true 4 command system (Fight/Magic/Special/Item). A game that requires some thinking and battling against the AI isn't necessarily harder than, say, getting wiped out by a Shockwave Pulsar by Griever in FF8 because you didn't have the right junction on HP/Spirit and/or Shell up.

Well, somebody should. I mean, there have been games that have messed around with the battle mechanics much more than the RPGs of old - Xenogears, Legend of Legaia - and I've liked the idea and how they played. What's wrong with messing with the game engine for once?</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>It did have hit points, but you could get damaged in areas and that would affect your performance for a while. And the more you attacked the harder it becomes to continue attacking. So the problem with this battle system is that, any type of penalty is related to time, and they pretty much went away since you could just sit around in an empty room until you're healed. And that'll detract from the pace of the game.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt bookman, Modern; text-align: left; '>So I really can't relate to the system in that game. However:

The 'waiting' problem can be solved pretty easily, and there are a couple ways to do it. The first is to make the countdown times really long. I mean, if you get hacked in the arm by a sword, that cut will take at least a week to heal fully - and even if time is scaled such that an hour equals a day, you're not going to have players trying to find places where monsters can't find you and then having them sit there for seven hours. Nobody is going to be crazy enough to do that. The second way is if the 'battle' system I described in my more recent post in this thread is implemented, and monsters can just run up to you and start attacking at any time. Unless you wedge yourself in somewhere real tight, waiting out the counter is not going to be a viable option - unless you run around towns for a while, which makes perfect sense. I mean, if you had a shitload of injuries after an adventure, wouldn't you wait around town to heal up before setting out again? Yet another way is to give your characters some urgency, by making something shitty happen in X gamehours if your characters don't make it through Y dungeon or something like that. That's one thing in RPGs that doesn't make any sense - if heroes are trying to stop bad guys before they do something evil, why are the bad guys always waiting around for the heroes to show up? A Colony Wars-ish system of story flow would be a cool idea - if you fail to do something before an urgency counter runs out, then something bad happens. Stuff like that.

Thank you for humoring even more crazy ramblings about this from me.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "Copperplate Gothic", Modern; text-align: left; '>I'm my own gaming adjudicator, thank you very much.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>in all kinds of PC games. For some reason it just doesn't work well. I don't know why, I guess it just detracts from some of the fun since people feel they're being limited. I guess that's the real problem when you make systems extremely detailed. Most people just don't want that much realism. I think most gamers that play RPGs like that sense of security of having a bajillion elixirs/tents/potions or whatever. They like hoarding all their most valuable stuff for that mythical 'last battle' where they'll use it. Of course, by that point the party is so strong that they don't need any type of healing. I think people would respond better if the enemies were harder, maybe forcing the player to use items frequently, then if the super-items were removed.

Also the battles would be a slippery slope type of thing. As soon as you start losing, it'd become harder to win, and eventually it would get to the point where it'd be impossible. So for example, there is the collectible card game based on Star Wars. I'm not a big fan of these games, but I used to play it when I was a wee lad. Anyways, the 'different' thing about this game was that your life was represented by how many cards you have left in the deck. Every time you take damage you'd lose cards. Sounds like a great idea, but once you start losing, it's all downhill. Every time you took damage, you'd lose some of your offense. Maybe that's what you'd want, but I'd like to think there's always hope to win.

Also when you make so battle and fighting is continuous, do you mean like Zelda? It sounds more like a action RPG system to me.

Yeah, you should try Vagrant Story. You can attack and be attacked at different body parts, and every creature runs on the same system you do. They have the same attributes and they all use Risk/"fatigue". And when the longer you string your combos the faster the risk stat goes up. So it'd start 2,4,6,8,10,14,22,38...until its maxed out at 100. It does go down pretty quick with time though.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>If you don't have anything meaningful to add, don't say anything.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>While it never makes any sense that despite XYZ going to destroy the world in 1 hour/day/week you always have time leisurely cruising around the world, you just can't have something like "Oops, the world ended while you went to town X to resupply. Try again." 

About the best you can do is make sure once they go into say the final dungeon then they stay there.

I kind of like how Arcana at the end when you climb the tower, your members start to get left behind to hold off the boss-class monsters for you while you go after the main guy yourself. Sure, you can still teleport out of that tower by yourself, but do you really want to climb it again with no help?</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Potions aren't supposed to be heavy to begin with, so weight is not a limiting factor. Availibility is the problem.

I agree with the slippery slope, but right now boss battles are more or less the same throughout and that's pretty boring as well.

Why shouldn't a bad decision make things from bad to worse? Of course, you'd have to be able to recover from that. That should apply to the bosses as well.</div>

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Well, you're always going to need some way to represent your health as some sort of quantified value - you can't get away from it. My point is that it doesn't have to necessarily be a numeric value like HP - it can have different levels of description. Sure, it's the same sort of concept, but I think the other way is a little more accurate. I mean, people can relate to having "broken bone-rib" that really hurts (which affects their performance) and will take X amount of time to heal, but how many people, during a fight, think to themselves "man, that punch in the chest just took away 400 of my HP"?

If you're actually getting the person getting hurt, you'd have a good idea how much more damage you can take, but you're not, so a numerical representation is needed. 

Oh, of course! In a perfect game world, every single enemy you fight would have the same sort of damage/fatigue/stats loss system apply to them. It doesn't make sense in the current system that a normal attack from an enemy with 5% of its total HP still does the same amount of damage as an enemy with 100% of its HP, and it should be easier to defeat monsters as they take more and more damage. It would be something like the Resident Evil damage system (where your character gets slower and easier to kill as damage goes up,) but more sophitisticated with regards to body parts hit AND it would apply to every person/creature in the entire game.

But then you tend to make encounters too easy, that is assuming you got any form of healing on your side.

Yeah, but still...the amount of things you can carry around is ridiculous. I mean, 99 pieces of paper can be sort of heavy, and we're expected to believe that Skies of Arcadia characters can carry 99 each of Sacri, Sacres, Sacrum, and Sacrulen potions around?

But why not 10 Sacrum and 10 Sacrulen crystals then? That's still more than enough to make any fight trivial. I carry 99 of them just so that I don't have to bother restocking, but you can definitely carry enough of them, in a role-playing sense, and still have it imbalanced.

I like the idea of having strong attacks that makes you unhealable for a certain period of time.

Elixirs shouldn't even exist, or should be extremely, extremely rare. And healing spells that heal up all injuries of some person would have to give a whole freaking crapload of fatigue to the caster.

You also have to consider how to balance this with offense... it wouldn't make sense to be get more fatigue from healing your party than summoning a meteor, for example.

In a fantasy point of view, healing isn't supposed to be that hard or draining... the problem is when you've people healing over and over and over again. One way this can be solved would just to make AI make sure they beat up the Healers while he's trying to get a spell off, but if this is done right, you might as well just make the Healer die after casting a healing spell then, and if it doesn't work, we haven't solved anything.

What I would like to see to solve this problem is to take away the difference between battle and exploration. You could be walking around somewhere, and then all of a sudden, enemies will run up and attack you without any mode switching or any crap like that (sort of like Baldur's Gate.) No tactical pausing, either. Adventurers didn't get the chance to pause and think when they were fighting, so neither do players - and players had better make damned sure that they're in a safe place when they switch armor & weapons around, heal up, etc.

That'd probably impose too much hassle. You also have engine limitations. In a fantasy speaking, unless whoever's in charge of scouting is totally stupid it shouldn't be too hard to make sure everything's safe and heal up. Heroes should not have to be on their toes fighting some generic minions of evil, otherwise it'd just be too much of a pain to get anywhere.

Not if you ensure that while healing items are powerful, they're not THAT powerful. If you've been fighting for three hours straight, you're not going to be feeling that great, no matter how many potions you drink. If you don't give the players or the monsters god-like fighting and healing abilities, RPGs would start playing much differently.

Then your party would just camp outside the door of the boss for half an hour and rest up. You haven't changed anything.

I suppose you're right. I just remember that Dragon Warrior was freaking hard, but the whole levels issue is true. And I meant FFIV, and I remember it being harder than the last few FFs - VI, VII, and VIII.

FF4 is mostly because you're typically at a less than a safe level to fight a boss. Zeromus under level 60 can be tough especially when he kills Rydia in one hit with Big Bang which causes you to lose your secondary healer. There really isn't any strategy or skill that can avoid that.

I've played the DW games a bit, it seems to me the enemies are generally a bit tougher than your run of the mill RPG. However, consider the system is essentially a four command system (fight/magic/other/item) the only source of difficulty can only be artificial. It's like playing Star Ocean 2 on Universe mode. Rena dies in one hit at the beginning of her scenario. Does it require more skill? If leveling up is a skill, yes, otherwise no.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>There were a few battles that required some thinking. They all made you use Wall though. The sisters, Asura, and Bahamut. There was also that whole Float thing in the Summoned monsters cave. That's what there needs to be more of.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Asura and Bahamut are just downright impossible if you didn't use Wall, either that or you've some ridiculously overpowered party.

Didn't recall having to use Wall on the sisters. You have to hit the middle one anyway and you can't controlled where walled spells go.

Float is more or less an environmental hazard.

In fact FF4 has more of an example of what not to do. Kill the wrong sister and watch her get remedied back to full health. Kill the Attacker and Defender on the CPU and get Orbwhatever for 9999 damage. These are things you can't possibly have avoided with any amount of skill.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "Copperplate Gothic", Modern; text-align: left; '>Heh heh. That was precisely the wrong thing to say, Don.

I mean, if you wanted the unintentionally garnered argumentativeness to cease. :)</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>They were the few battles that you just couldn't set up auto-fire, and leave. Sure, it woulda been better if there were more ways to beat those guys, but the more ways you add, the easier it becomes to kill with just "fight".

So part of the strategy in those orb guys in FF4 was that you attack one, learn you shouldn't kill it first, and attack the other. Nothing really wrong with that. They don't wipe out your whole party, so you just revive and try something else. You're right it's a gimmick, but it was an attempt to make the player think a little.</div>