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[supershigi]

Hi everyone... I decided to start this topic because I've been thinking a lot lately about how to make my game's battles more exciting.  I'm developing an rpg called Melolune which has a mix of melodic dungeon puzzles and typical turn based RPG battles.  I'm about 80-90% finished with the linear gameplay, so a lot of what I'm currently doing is tweaking the database to make things feel more balanced.  I'm also looking for simple ways to make the battles more exciting without changing the system.  We've been doing a lot of brainstorming on this topic and came up with things like these:

• Having an enemy that takes a while to kill but doesn't do much damage mixed in with enemies who die fairly easily but do a ton of damage
• Having a healer mixed in who needs to be dealt with early, otherwise he'll continuously heal the entire party
• Enemies who have particular strengths or weaknesses against certain types of spells (ie - fire enemies are weak against water, water enemies are weak against electricity, etc.)

So yeah, I'd really appreciate if anyone else has any ideas or suggestions for making turn-based RPG battles more interesting or exciting... I feel like I should do more brainstorming before fixing the next set of battles.

[Davioware]

If it's possible/feasible with your toolset, maybe you can implement a system like in paper mario; where the player has certain opportunities to do more damage or defend from attacks. I found those things really added to the battle experience. Even during the enemy's turn it felt as if you still had a fighting chance, never letting the player have nothing to do. Aside from that, maybe have an enemy who becomes immune to damage for a certain period of time? Perhaps when they're weak they go into defend mode and must be taken out with items or a special type of attack . Like, maybe a plant type enemy who becomes covered in leaves when they're low hp and must be taken out with fire-based attacks at the point? Stuff like that perhaps. 

[pgil]

I liked the rhythm-based attacks in Mother 3. It made me feel like I was more involved in the action (unlike most turn-based battles where you just feel like you're rolling dice). I think some small action elements and rewarding the player for observation-- and reducing some of the randomness--can help make battles more exciting.

[Parthon]

Hmm, this is an interesting topic. I've just thought about the combats in RPGs that I've liked and those I haven't, and the list of what to do ant not to do becomes quite concise, at least for the rpgs I like.

1) Short but sweet. - The best ones I've played had short battles. The time to play through a combat was short: transition to the combat, quick moves, short animations. Even if it lasted a high amount of turns, it went quickly because the parts where I was waiting or just watching were reduced. More recent Final Fantasy games made it longer, specifically transitions and animations, and I got bored of the combat very fast. The combat should be responsive too, attacks should land decisively, results should be readily apparent. The sweet part is really about the player feeling victorious in combat, and successful in their plans.

2) Strategy. - The more mini-strategy that can be implimented the better. In Skies of Arcadia, I liked the combat because you had to set all your party's moves at once, so I'd have to plan your order of attacks so they weren't wasted. The swift rogue would backstab the strongest, the mage would then blast everything and the figher would mop up what was left. If I misplanned and an enemy died that was targetted, then any follow up attacks would be cancelled. It really made thinking ahead important. Grandia 2 was another good one for me because it used line or cone based attacks. I'd have to adapt my strategy to hit as many as I could with one attack. It did use a positional based combat arena though, which may or may not work.

Player based strategy is often hard to pull off just right. In a purely side vs side, 'act as soon as your turn is ready' battle system there's not much flexibility. It's really about encouraging the player to use options for various reasons. It could be something like having enemies attack in predictable ways, so the player can have characters at the front defend and those at the back attack. It could be telling the player what the enemy is about to do so the player can react to it. It could be having a delay on the action before it activates, so planning ahead is required.

3) Interesting units of a limited variety. - In an RPG every new enemy that is faced is a potential for a new strategy but it's annoying when facing red grunt #43 when he's just a slightly more HP version of green grunt #873. If the red grunt does fire damage, blocks occassionally and takes extra damage from water, then 'whoa!', that's a new enemy. Too many units that are similar are boring, but combining interesting and unique units in combat helps furthur strategy. The healer is a good example, as are elemental-specific enemies, but there's more ideas that could be implemented. (ps. some of these ideas have already been used in games.)

A bodyguard unit: protects another unit from direct physical attack, but can't block aoe magic. Combined with the healer makes him hard, as you can't hit the healer without killing him, but if you hit him, the healer will heal him. Area Magic he can't block though.

A two faced unit that when hit with an attack gains immunity to it until hit again: magic vs physical. That way he needs to be hit with alternating attacks to kill him.

An enemy that copies the attacks used against him straight away. Direct hits are less painful to the party compared to him responding with a Max-Fire-3-All.

An enemy who takes diminishing damage, so lots of small attacks are better than lots of big ones.

An enemy that has innate defense that must be overcome so small damage causes less that it should, but large damage causes more that it should.

An enemy that takes extra damage after it attacks, so timing is important.

4) Epic Boss Fights. - These should be awesome, but not break the first three rules. In fact they compound the first three rules even more so. Short but massive animations. Lots of strategy required by the player. Easily indentified weak points, but unique actions.

Eg: A massive robot boss with three heads, one blue, one red, one yellow. The body is immune while the heads are visible. The heads need to be hit according to colour, ice for blue, fire for red, lightning for yellow. When the heads are all hit, they hide and the body goes crazy, the player characters all need to defend. After a round of that, the body is vulnerable and takes extra damage from all attacks. After 2 more rounds, the body gets shielded again as the heads reveal themselves.

[Inanimate]

I've always liked enemies with patterns; they might have a super powerful attack, but every few turns they are susceptible!, or an enemy that is constantly defending, except the turn after it attacks!, etc.

The best way to liven up an RPG, as pointed out earlier, is to infuse blood from another genre in it. But I don't think you can do that (You're using RPG Maker, if I remember correctly). Parthon covered the 'unique enemies' idea, and I'd to assert two points about it: one, that if you can face an enemy by pressing 'attack / spell' every turn, that's not a fun enemy. Make sure that the player has to actually observe them, and that'll be more exciting. The reason RPGs aren't usually fun is because enemies are REPETITIVE. Maybe not their designs, but DEFINITELY the way you fight them. You just go through the motions. So, DON'T LET THE PLAYER DO THAT! Make them actually NEED to think. Two, and this is the most important, is that if you have a bunch of unique enemies, design and art-wise, but not as many areas in the game to compensate, that's FAR better than having the same basic enemies show up all the time, but more area. Make short and sweet dungeons that have unique and interesting enemies; try to make as many enemies as you can, as well! More enemies is always better. Third, PALETTE SWAPPING IS BAD. It just doesn't make it fun, since the thrill of seeing new enemies is gone. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point.

I hope your RPG is a blast to play! Glad to see someone actively seeking out ways to liven their RPG up, after so many bland, repetitive RPGs!

[Moth]

Since she's using RPG Maker, I'm just gonna assume she's asking about how to give the player different sorts of experiences out of combat (on an enemy-by-enemy basis) within generic JRPG limitations, rather than what she could augment to the battle system on the global scale.

For normal encounters, I think you're on the right track. Subtle differences like that are good for most of your basic opponents, but make sure you throw a wrench in there a few times for each dungeon/area's enemy population and make them do something weird. Such as an enemy with a ton of defense that can only be hurt by magic, enemies that self destruct, et cetera.

Try to think how you could imaginatively integrate the aesthetic or thematic properties of each individual enemy, beyond just "fire elemental enemies fought halfway through the game cast Fire 2", as battle mechanics. Maybe a volatile lava monster explodes and damages the whole party if you hit it instead of run from the fight, or flying enemies that can only be hit by ranged attacks or magic.

Make sure you mind the individuality of bosses too! One time I made a boss that was designed specifically for when the player had two characters; every other turn the enemy would use an instant death attack, so if you didn't continually revive the fallen party member you would die on the next turn. After about 4 castings, it would stop for a few turns to "wind up" (it was a monster clock) and that gave you a chance to do piles of damage. The viability of something like this does depend on how easy revive items or spells come to the player, though.

In Super Mario RPG, you are challenged in an interesting way during the Valentina fight when Dodo carries away your middle-seated party member to fight solo; you could put Geno or Bowser in the center if you want to try to take him down quick, or you could put Peach or Mallow there and play it safe with healing and support or status effect spells. Of course, support and status effect spells didn't play too big of a role in SMRPG, but that's not to say they can't in your game!

Splitting up the party or prohibiting certain characters, like that Valentina fight, can make bosses really interesting. Of course not every battle has to have gimmicks to it, some vanilla old challenge now and then is always fun.

[Inanimate]

DON'T MAKE THE EVERYTHING IMMUNE TO STATUS EFFECTS

Either don't put status effects in your game, or make them susceptible to it. Seriously, this is one of my BIGGEST peeves about RPGs. I'm PLEADING with you to make status effects useful; they are fun, but NEVER allowed, which is the worst idea. Immunities can make sense, yes. But if the status effect is overpowered and you don't want a boss killer, don't just make him immune! Fix the status effect!

[Moth]

I'm PLEADING with you to make status effects useful; they are fun, but NEVER allowed,

You should play Persona 4! Status effects are super important in the Shin Megami Tensei games.

[alspal]

DON'T MAKE THE EVERYTHING IMMUNE TO STATUS EFFECTS

Either don't put status effects in your game, or make them susceptible to it. Seriously, this is one of my BIGGEST peeves about RPGs. I'm PLEADING with you to make status effects useful; they are fun, but NEVER allowed, which is the worst idea. Immunities can make sense, yes. But if the status effect is overpowered and you don't want a boss killer, don't just make him immune! Fix the status effect!

Indeed. I notice this especially in Final Fantasy games, you can get so many spells but you only ever really need to use a couple of them.

Really, I think the battles are the meaty part of the JRPG, everything else is filler (and hopefully interesting filler) so to speak.

[Inanimate]

I'm PLEADING with you to make status effects useful; they are fun, but NEVER allowed,

You should play Persona 4! Status effects are super important in the Shin Megami Tensei games.

Is Persona 3 any good? I've heard that it is, but it seems... slow. The Portable version has intrigued me.

[Moth]

Persona 3 and 4 are both great. They're very long, but also really good games (and also very difficult). I can't vouch for how good the P3 remake for the PSP is yet, because I don't know very much about it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i haven't gotten to any battles in your game yet, but the one thing i'd recommend, as a general rule, is not to use random battles, instead plan out each battle carefully, with a progressive difficulty as you go through a dungeon, and having no two battles against the same exact configuration of enemies, the way lunar and chrono trigger did. excitement requires not repeating the same battle you've already fought for the tenth time.

another bit of advice would be to make every battle challenging, as if it were a small boss battle. make it possible for a reasonable person to die on normal battles. that's part of why persona 3's and 4's battles are so good, they're challenging enough that dying on normal enemies is fairly common, the normal enemies keep you on your toes. whereas in, say, final fantasy 7, there's no real way you're ever going to die in a normal battle, even if you're terrible at rpgs. excitement requires danger.

[Inanimate]

Persona 3 and 4 are both great. They're very long, but also really good games (and also very difficult). I can't vouch for how good the P3 remake for the PSP is yet, because I don't know very much about it.

eek I'm scared of super difficulty because I'm frankly a wimp.

[Seth]

No healing.

[TeeGee]

One technical/cosmetic trick that makes battles feel more dynamic and exciting regardless of strategy specifics:

Allow for little simultaneity of actions, even in a turn-based system (which I assume you're having). Think Final Fantasy VI - you could make your character attack while the another was still performing his spell animation or prolonged attack sequence. Even in Final Fantasy X - which had traditional turns instead of ATB - you could order to attack the enemy while your other fighter was still coming back from melee attack. It adds lot of dynamism and makes delays between player inputs smaller.
If characters are just taking turns at walking forward, swinging their sword and getting back, it's never going to feel really "exciting".

Other thing to never underestimate are the visuals and dynamics of what happens of the screen. If the fighter quickly dashes forward, then smashes the enemy with his weapon, causing screen shake and flashy particles to appear, it's always going to look better than the above-mentioned taking turns at swinging sword in air.

Strategic-wise, I think the others already pointed the most important elements. I would like to second enemy patterns. Foe, that takes one turn to lift his gigantic hammer and then strikes with double force on the second turn, is more interesting than the same guy who just attacks each turn with normal power. Both strategically and visually. Anything that makes the player have to focus on the battlefield and adapt his/her strategy to what happens is good. You don't want your players to just mash the attack button in a state of half-coma .

[X3N]

OP:
The rhythm attacking and defending (pressing just before you're hit) in Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario and Mother 3 I thought was a great touch, I still consider those far more engaging than any FF game.

Tactics style games tend to be interesting because of the environment: Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics etc. This might not fit into your project scope? But worth checking out.

I find different states of characters and enemies interesting. Like filling up a beserker rage mode, then activating it. Now they can't choose who they attack but they deal much more damage.
You can do a lot with custom-defined states beyond posioned / paralyzed / muted. Have you played Guild Wars? Much of the tactics in that game revolves around landing a certain type of attack so that you, or your teammates, can follow up with "combo" magics.

Example: Cosmic-blast Shaman spell only works if the enemy has a purple-hex active. Thieves, Archers and Assassins all have purple-hex moves, but an individual enemy may have a resistance to a particular attack: a dark magic curse may give a purple-hex status to an enemy, but the same enemy could have armor that is resistant to arrows, rendering the Archer's Cursed Shot unavailable. Then another enemy could be vulnerable to arrows, but not magic, etc.

AI in the fights would be cool. I liked in the first FF game that the order you placed your party determined the % monsters would attack them. It'd be nice to see a game where the enemies attempted to concentrate their firepower, or figure out which character provides the most support and target them first, etc.

Item use is another thing you can do. In the Earthbound / Mother series, one character usually has ok-attacks, but very powerful items, limited by use atomically (instead of pp/mp). The items were usually incredibly powerful (rockets that damaged all enemies) or useful (chance of stunning all enemies).

Other posters:
So Persona 3 / 4 really good eh? Have had a few people recommend it now.

Edit:
A lot of games have enemies that can summon help, but have lots of HP, giving rise to tactics like "stun the summoner, kill the weaker ones then kill the summoner".

[Inanimate]

That's another good one; little bars you fill up to unleash Super[Mode]s! I always like that. Especially if you can customize the Super[Mode]!

[jwk5]

Play Kongai, it is a solid example of how to do RPG battles right. Each step in a turn is layered for strategy and every action feels important. It's a little obnoxious how Kongregate doesn't give you a decent set of characters and items to work with right off the bat but it is still quite enjoyable just using a Random/ALL deck until you earn enough 'cards' of your own. You can play against their AI in the practice mode which should really give you an idea of how it flows (for inspiration for your project) but playing multiplayer is a lot of fun (which has an almost rock-paper-scissors deviousness that has you trying to out-think your opponent at every turn).

[Chromanoid]

maybe a pokemon element would be a good idea ->
the player can use a special "weapon" that deals no damage but gives the chance to defeat the monster instantly. maybe one can decide to sing a melody to calm the enemy and as a result the enemy looses its fighting intention and turns to a peaceful creature with hearts/music notes flying over its head (this should only work with non boss creatures). the probability to becalm the monster is higher when it has low health. if you fail the monster gains health/aggro/whatever. becalming a monster gives the player harmony points, love of nature points or something like that ^^.


(did not find a pic of the bard class so this friendship potion card has to illustrate this idea)
and also this :D:


btw. i did not read all posts, i hope it is not a repost...

[gimymblert]

However she's maker her game with RPGMK, i don't know if she would go with the burden of CBS (custom battle system)...

We can do a lot with the regular battle system. If we plot goal and dynamics for combat to keep them fresh.

I usually use a 5 dimensional heuristics to match gameplay and scenario.

For each combat/area i set before jumping into mechanics:

The degree of spectacular (fancy things that is shown or that happen)
The target tempo
The feeling of danger (how much harm i will get)
The feeling of difficulty (how much faster i will solve it)
The feeling of complexity (how much effort i need)

Any feeling dimension is also set with two variable: real and imply.
Real is the actual value of the pattern we would use.
Imply is what the setting actually suggest to the player.

For exemple a level set in a volcano with lava and fire all around, with fireball that fly just one tiles higher than some character jump distance, boulder that fall just right after the main character or just right in front while he run at full speed are example of IMPLY Danger without any realities behind, just smoke and mirror. And even with the same attribute that one winged chimeric angel would still provide a different experience that a lonely slime.

By combining that you can quicly create interesting situations and feelings, interdependently of the nature of the battle system.