Scipted battles in RPGs

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>After playing Fate I've been thinking about scripted battles in RPG, since Fate is essentially all scripted battles (seeing you have absolutely no control on the outcome of most battles in Fate besides the ability to die foolishly). Why is it RPGs have such horribly scripted battles? Even if you look beyond the normal limitations of a RPG, there's no reason why they have to be as bad as they're right now. Although I don't care too much about suspension of belief, there is just nothing believable about the way most climatic battles in RPG are carried out. To RPG makers, scripted battle seems to mean you have to know how to press a button at a certain time (ala FFX style battles), and that after boss X is defeated it has a stronger form (sometimes more than one).

There are two things that bothers me the most about RPG and any attempt to 'script' them. That is, a battle that at least tries to go beyond just going through the cycle of unload MP/special attacks and heal when your HP < boss's strongest attack until the boss's HP is 0. First is attrition. Final Fantasy is obviously the worst out of all RPGs with a literally unlimited supply of HP/MP which makes any battle that you don't die in one hit utterly trivial, but it's hardly alone. Even for item-light RPGs, it is usually trivial to get all your HP/MP/etc back regardless of how much damage you've taken. Suikoden is one of the few I can think of offhand where your special attacks stays down after using them up. Although the battles in Suikoden can hardly said to be scripted, there is a real sense of urgency when you realize that this is your last Kindness Rain heal and that's it. Without attrition, the hero's party is essentially always at full strength, and that makes it really hard to have interesting battles. It'd be utterly unthinkable to have battles in today's RPG that are anywhere similar to Fate, where half of them are decided by how well you can budget your mana versus the enemy Magi's mana. And Heavens forbid the bad guys attack you while you're hurting, like when you have to fight Ilya with no mana at all in Fate while she's fully rested.

Second, boss characters in RPG invariably gets stronger with each form. This doesn't really make any sense. If they can be so strong to begin with, why not just start out in the most powerful form? Surely the damage taken in weaker forms still carry over? The only game I can think of where the boss actually gets weaker over time is Final Fantasy X, as the final sequence of battles gets progressively easier (though it sure doesn't help you can't possibly lose them). This goes hand in hand with attrition, though. As the boss gets weaker, you should be getting weaker too from the damage you've sustained. I think in a RPG world the point should be for your heroes to lose HP/mana/whatever slower than the boss, as opposed to not losing any at all, which is the way current RPGs work.</div>

[Agent 57]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>

There are two things that bothers me the most about RPG and any attempt to 'script' them. That is, a battle that at least tries to go beyond just going through the cycle of unload MP/special attacks and heal when your HP < boss's strongest attack until the boss's HP is 0. First is attrition. Final Fantasy is obviously the worst out of all RPGs with a literally unlimited supply of HP/MP which makes any battle that you don't die in one hit utterly trivial, but it's hardly alone.

I think random encounters are mostly to blame for the lack of attrition in RPGs. In any game that features random encounters, the game designers have to make sure that your characters can make it all the way through the dungeon to get to and then beat the boss - and how the heck are they supposed to know how to do that when they have no clue how many battles the player is going to get into between the entrance and the boss?

The easiest way, of course, is to give the player the opportunity to have enough healing items to restore themselves to full strength after every battle. It doesn't make for terribly exciting gameplay, as you're lamenting in your post, but it does prevent the inevitable frustration that would come from introducing any other level of attrition in a random-encounter RPG. (The player could get around that by making running a viable strategy, but a) waiting for a battle to load up and then immediately running away over and over would get real boring real fast, and b) once again, the player has no idea how many battles he/she may be getting into during the course of the dungeon, so it would be nearly impossible to figure out when the right time to run is and when the right time to fight is.)

The real problem is not scripting itself per se, but the sort of half-assed scripting that these RPGs do. If, as a designer, you want to script your game, I'd think you'd be better served to go the whole nine yards and script the entire thing, like a Resident Evil game where there are a certain, limited, and predetermined number of enemies, healing items, weapons, etc. - and then give the player some sort of idea on what they're facing, so that they can make informed decisions about where and when to use their resources.

Even for item-light RPGs, it is usually trivial to get all your HP/MP/etc back regardless of how much damage you've taken. Suikoden is one of the few I can think of offhand where your special attacks stays down after using them up. Although the battles in Suikoden can hardly said to be scripted, there is a real sense of urgency when you realize that this is your last Kindness Rain heal and that's it. Without attrition, the hero's party is essentially always at full strength, and that makes it really hard to have interesting battles. It'd be utterly unthinkable to have battles in today's RPG that are anywhere similar to Fate, where half of them are decided by how well you can budget your mana versus the enemy Magi's mana. And Heavens forbid the bad guys attack you while you're hurting, like when you have to fight Ilya with no mana at all in Fate while she's fully rested.

Second, boss characters in RPG invariably gets stronger with each form. This doesn't really make any sense. If they can be so strong to begin with, why not just start out in the most powerful form?

You know, I'm surprised you asked that question. The "'defeated' bad guy changes forms and gets stronger" cliche is such a staple in anime (see Dragon Ball Z) and video games (see any Mega Man or Castlevania game ever made) I figured you would have gotten used to its ridiculousness by now.

This goes hand in hand with attrition, though. As the boss gets weaker, you should be getting weaker too from the damage you've sustained. I think in a RPG world the point should be for your heroes to lose HP/mana/whatever slower than the boss, as opposed to not losing any at all, which is the way current RPGs work.

Yes, but then where would the illusion of regular people just like the player ("Wow, look at that skinny dork of a hero! That could be me!") going up against these huge monsters be?

Boss characters are huge and evil and monstrous and have to be able to deal damage as such, and the players have to be able to survive those mega-attacks with tons of potions long enough to deal their own uber-offensives fueled by goodness (because god forbid a status attack EVER works on a boss). If you try to make RPG boss battles less of a "cycle of unload MP/special attacks and heal when your HP < boss's strongest attack until the boss's HP is 0," you start destroying the illusion of bosses being so much more big and powerful and scary than your characters and the illusion of the impossible odds of the adventure starts to lose its effect.

The problem here is that there is no skill whatsoever involved in an RPG battle. You have no real way to control whether your attacks hit or miss or whether the boss' attacks hit or miss, so instead of going the slightly more realistic route that action games go (final bosses deal sickening amounts of damage, but if you're good enough you can avoid their attacks - see Viewtiful Joe), the solution designers have come up with is to make sure that you can easily survive and recover from boss attacks - which has been evident since the days of Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy I, since your level not being high enough was the only thing that prevented you from progressing in those games.

Thinking back over the RPGs I've played over the years, there are only a couple of games I can think of off the top of my head that I can say defied these conventions: Secret of Mana and Knights of the Old Republic.

Then again, Secret of Mana was as much an action game as it was an RPG, but it also didn't allow your characters to have sickening amounts of healing items - 4 Candies, 4 Chocolates, and one Royal Jam at any one time. It's true that by the time it got to high level Heal Water was pretty much uber, but neither the girl or the Sprite had overwhelming amounts of MP, and you also could only carry 4 Faerie Walnuts at once. And on top of that, the bosses' attacks and even your attacks had a fair chance of missing at any one time.

KOTOR, while not exactly being item-light, implemented the whole sense of time into the proceedings - once spent your Force points take time to regenerate, it also takes time to sit there and use a whole bunch of heal packs to get yourself back up to full strength, and in either case a pack of enemies could run around the corner and start kicking your ass while you're still trying to heal up. I also never got the idea that the bosses were way way more powerful than I was (except the first time I finshed the game, as a Scoundrel/Sentinel, and using Force Push over and over to keep Malak away from me and then running like hell while my FP recovered was the only way I won). And even though it seemed that way, the game was still interesting and the battles were for the most part enjoyable.

Anyway, like I said, this was some interesting stuff. Just wanted to continue the discussion.

<i>-57</i></div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>They do not ever accrue attrition in their current form. All they do is make you waste time and level up. I can't think of the last time my party was anything less than full strength due to random encounters, and as you said, if random encounters are that hard, you can just run away. In many games it's also utterly trivial to avoid them (e.g. most of the recent Final Fantasies). It also destroys the suspension of belief. You are supposed to be the band of legendary heroes that will save the world but you spend 90% of your adventure time clearing out yard trash of the villian of the day. Playing hero in RPG is more like being a bulldozer demolishing whatever villian unfortunate enough to get in your way, as opposed to the other way around.

Of course boss getting powerful is perfectly normal in RPGs or even gaming in general, but that doesn't mean it's right. You are, after all, supposed to be the legendary hero, not the local fodder. Why can't some of the more legendary figures of your party put up a solid fight even against a being of unimaginable power? Of course, in RPG these days all your characters are basically clones of each other anyway, and at best you've some minimal differences in HP/magic abilities. FFX actually sort of tried to do this with the caster types (Yuna/Lulu) having very low defense/HP but extremely high evade, but in light of way too many hit all attack they just die instantly. You really should be allowed to avoid even the boss's super duper attack of doom, kind of like Viewtiful Joe you can only take 2 or 3 hits but you can avoid 80% or more of them.</div>

[Diggity]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Yeah, what you said about bosses basically being immune to every status effect. I think a better solution to this would be lower the overall chances that the status effect will hit any given enemy. Then give the boss somewhat of a resistance to this effect, like 50% or something. Then make it so doing something that will give the boss an effect will be more risky to pull off, only making it appealing to try only once or twice in a fight, so you don't try doing that same thing over and over again.

Also the limitation on items and abilities (extreme limits on abilities, like once a day stuff) would make the games a lot more fun I think. Like auto-life: if you could only cast it once a day (or once until you rest or save again) you wouldn't be cheese casting it all the time during every boss fight. Make healing spells get weaker every casting maybe or limit them a lot. You would also have to make the bosses more reasonable then, because if you implemented these limits, then current enemies and bosses would wipe you from the map.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>They are, however, the "gameplay" aspect of most RPGs. If you remove random battles, you'd have to make some changes elsewhere. I'm not sure where.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Otherwise the strategy to beat them, assuming you tune bosses to be difficult enough that the good old heal when low strategy doesn't work, would be to simply use status attack over and over until the time it does work, loading if necessary. For example on Grandia 2 the Paralyzing Eye attack works on anything, including bosses, so you can paralyze any part of a boss forever with a minimal MP cost (or maybe it was SP).

And really heroes have no business vulnerable to status effect either. You're heroes, not monster fodder. You'd think that the world's last hope would know how to deal with common status effect/magic. With the current way RPG games work status effects are so powerful there's no reason why any boss shouldn't use status effect over and over again.

The basic status effects should not even affect heroes without a good reason (for example, the generic unlikely boy turned hero figure could be vulnerable to those because you started out as a normal person). The more important ones maybe (like a real stone gaze or whatever) but they need to carry a corresponding amount of risk to use.

Bosses obviously can't be very much tougher than you given such restrictions, but there's no reason why they have to be that much stronger to begin with.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>What's wrong with getting rid of 20-30 hours of junk? Since when has games valued by how many hours of boredom it takes to beat it?</div>

[Eric]

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Because then nobody would buy them....I mean really...</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Just throw in some extra junk activated after you beat the game for 5 billion of hours of replay. Quantity is not quality.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I like your thinking; I find I don't have the patience for random battles anymore. At least, not as they are now. Maybe the key thing here is that they happen too frequently. Maybe do CT style battles (you see the enemy coming) but they happen very rarely - that is, something like once every ten minutes. That way a battle is more of a big deal.

Removing them entirely is an interesting idea, too, but I still think <i>something</i> else would need to change or be enhanced to fill the void.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I don't see why character's power can't stay relatively fixed. I guess it'll play more like a fighting game, i.e. go from place to place encountering major enemies instead of just fighting hordes of whatever for your next level up. I mean, it works fine for almost any other kind of genre.

I mean, how believable is it when you get Auron, the legendary guardian, who is every bit as weak as Tidus the newbie minus about 500 more HPs? Or KOS-MOS, the android designed to destroy a zillion Gnosis at once but starts out having trouble killing a normal human being?

Now if you say it's going to be boring if Auron one hit kills everything until you get to Zanarkand, maybe so, but then why not just cut out the fighting when you've the legendary Auron on your side to begin with? Why not make him only available at certain times (why is the legendary guardian clearing out fodder in the first place?)</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '><i> I mean, it works fine for almost any other kind of genre.</i>

Except that in most other genres, the gameplay element is skill based. You get better at an FPS the more you play it (although your weapons and equipment also improve). You get better at a fighting game as you play it. Menu based RPGs don't require any skill, really. So the only thing that can improve is the stats. If you want to remove that, you need to make battles skill based.

I personally, do want my characters to progress in some manner, but I don't want to have dozens of random battles. One of my main interests in RPGs is exploration. If we could somehow move the gameplay aspects of random battles to more exploration and discovery, I think I'd enjoy that. I am not, however, advocating more "find the key to open this door" and block puzzles. I am sick of solving block puzzles. In fact, I'm rather sick of "dungeons" too. The whole dungeon idea is rather played out.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Killing a Goblin 20 times for 500 XP is not a valid form of character advancement, at least not a meaningful one. I would not miss such advancement one bit.

Take something like the Chrono Cross engine and make it even more extreme, where most of the character progression is tied to some key battles.</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>Although a game like this just wouldnt fit the masses. People want to be able to customize, and some people, not me, actually enjoy running around owning random easy monsters while making their characters even more godly. I suppose side quests could still work, the player could still choose to hunt a local demon in his cave to receieve an item that would help him be stronger for the main story, the developer would just have to be careful in what items and how much exp they receive.

I dunno, it seems like we're talking about wanting a virtual book with good character, good villains, and only 20-30 hard battles. While i agree that a game like this would be great, you'll never see someone make one unless they are guranteed it will sell, which i'm not sure it would do.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>For every million seller RPG there's at least 10 other RPGs no one's ever heard of that didn't go anywhere. If anything such a game would actually cost less to develop because you can save a ton of money on enemy models and dungeon designs when you don't need a ton of space just to fill content. Xenogears has shown that a game that's set up like a 'virtual book' can still sell a decent amount.

It'd play more like a Street Fighter type game than a RPG, but fighting games do sell pretty well.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>For every million seller RPG there's at least 10 other RPGs no one's ever heard of that didn't go anywhere. If anything such a game would actually cost less to develop because you can save a ton of money on enemy models and dungeon designs when you don't need a ton of space just to fill content. Xenogears has shown that a game that's set up like a 'virtual book' can still sell a decent amount.

It'd play more like a Street Fighter type game than a RPG, but fighting games do sell pretty well.

Anyway, Tsukihime and Fate Stay Night are both visual novel styled *RPG*, and both seemed to have sold pretty well in Japan. So maybe there's still hope.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>If I understand your description of those games correctly, I don't think I'd like them. I want to be able to explore.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>What's the point of exploring when you get a random battle every 10-15 seconds after moving? I find in most RPG locations I'm more interested in getting out of the location in as few random battles as possible. Now if they get rid of random battles, I might be more inclined to wander around a bit more.

Skies of Arcadia is the only game I've actually explored despite the random battles, but the beauty of the Skies of Arcadia overworld is simply unmatched.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Hence my previous comments about how I've lost my patience for random battles. Even CT style battles are a lot less painful; you can see it coming, and you know that once you beat the enemies you see, you can roam around.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Plus skies had a ton of stuff to find on the overworld. I like FF8's system where you can just turn off random battles when you don't want to fight them</div>

[Blotus]

<div style='font: 10pt "arial narrow"; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>Don't you have to have the Encounter-None skill for that?</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Takes a trivial amount of effort to obtain that, you can get Diablos almost right away and then like 200 APs and you're set.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>It's still a gained ability, not a system.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>That's like saying you FFX doesn't have an auto run-away system built in because you can somehow miss the Flee abilty that's 3 spheres away from Tidus's starting position.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>It's been a while since I played FF8, but I think it's more likely for someone to miss Diablo and that eventual ability than Flee.</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>I'm replaying the game now and i missed Diablos, i think. Now i want to get home andm see if i have the magic lamp item thing, i'm not sure if i talked to Cid twice at the scene that you are supposed to or not...</div>

[Blotus]

<div style='font: 10pt "arial narrow"; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>Kupek made my point.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Then there are also a number of vehicles in the game that can be used: train, garden, airship, cars/trucks, and chocobos.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>But if you didn't, the only way you'll be able to get it is through the Pocketstation (there's a lot of good stuff you can get with this). In all honesty though, unless you know the game well, absolutely hate random battles, and want to give yourself a bit of a challenge, it is not really recommended that you go through the game using Encounter-None. The main reason for this is that in each random battle you receive AP and items, both are extremely important to the game:

1) AP is the method by which your GF's upgrade and learn skills which your characters can equip, it is received through battle like experience points.
2) Items gained in battle can be used to give GF's or characters certain skills (Blue magic for example). They can be refined into magic (which I normally do all along the game, since the magic gained from refining items is generally better than what can be drawn, and also much less tedious to receive). They can also be used to build newer and better weapons in combination with the weapons manuels that are received throughout the game.

These two things are fairly important factors in the progression of the game, and unless you know the game well and can calculate what you need to have at certain points of the game, and know exactly how to get it; then I would not recommend using Encounter-None.</div>