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[droqen]

MAKE YOUR IDEAS
SIR RAPTOR DECREES IT.


Mine is below.


Introduction/Prelude

This is probably the best place to put this; I've been mulling over RPG Combat Systems that could be interesting and allow for a variety of tactics and such and this one might work!

I wanted to make a deep system that could be fun and involved all on its own, rewarding skill (but not necessarily speed) and allowing a variety of actions-- without delving into spatial considerations, those requiring a good deal of extra work and maybe extra enemy AI (maybe not; Disgaea and Phantom Brave don't seem like they use anything complicated so maybe I should give that a try someday). So, here we go.

---> By the way, it is turn-based. In case that wasn't clear, or... rather, in case it won't be clear... in the future. When you're done reading.

Basic Concept

In the beginning, there are X combatants on the battlefield, and they are all Free.

A 'Free' fighter (it's shorter to write than 'combatant' or 'character') can choose to Clash with an enemy fighter, or use a Long Range attack on an enemy fighter.
Long Range attacks are very simple. Clashes are more complicated.

Clash! What is it?

Any Clash is one fighter against one or many.
You may Join a Clash by attacking a fighter who is alone (in a 1v1 fight either side has the chance to Join).
You may Split a Clash by attacking a fighter with teammates -- the attacker and the attacked split off into their own new 1v1 Clash.

When a fighter makes an Attempted Clash you have a number of options, including:
1. Attempt to Dodge
2. Attempt to Block with another fighter (the blocking fighter is Clashed with instead)

While in a Clash you may:
1. Close Range Attack (with a variety of possible effects: stun, allowing easier escape or better change to hit next turn? knockback the enemy, out of the clash?)
2. Escape Clash

Okay that's all

Human shields! Getting into a Clash with a weaker character allows you to overpower them and use them as a human shield against attempted Clashes or Long Range Attacks.

Risky escapes to attack people you're better-suited for fighting?
Risky continued fights with a clashed person who your attacks are not as effective against?

Crazy tentacled enemies that are perfectly happy Clashing with multiple enemies at once?

Grapples to prevent escape?

Really tough characters built to absorb attacks in huge Clashes against them?
Really fast characters trained to dodge everything, all the time?

No really that's it!

I kind of want to hear what people think. I like hearing what people think.

This system will hopefully

• Not be incredibly difficult to program (I will be prototyping it soon)
• Allow the player to make a bunch of interesting and fun choices in battle
• Lots of fun; lots of interesting stuff
• EXCITING BATTLES?!

[Theotherguy]

That sounds horribly confusing, while not really being innovative. How exactly is this different from any other battle system? Is it that the combat is one-on-one oriented rather than party-versus-party? While I agree that this is more realistic and offers more chances for strategy, I would be concerned that it would drag out the battles to be even more intensely boring than other combat systems. You would have no other method of doing this other than to do one clash at a time, one turn at a time. Every time you would have a turn, all of the other characters who weren't in that clash will simply be waiting around. If it's all 1v1, then only two characters are doing anything at all at any given time, while the rest are all twiddling their thumbs. I can tell you right now that if I played a game with a combat system like this, I would stop in boredom after the first battle was over.

I am going to rant now about RPG combat systems with little connection to your post.

I still don't understand why these complex rule-based fighting systems still crop up today in modern games. They were a necessity in table top games and even early RPGs to simulate an actual fight while providing some room for strategy, but nowadays they're entirely unnecessary. All combat systems are inherently special cases of the true general combat system: reality. If you're in a real fight, if you want to fight someone you simply go over to them and fight them. If you want to run away, you simply go somewhere else. No buttons to press, no menus to fiddle with, no dice rolls -- but the strategy is still there! My point is, there is absolutely no reason to implement a combat system in ANY game when simulation works perfectly well. (unless, of course, you don't want to "reward speed" or what have you)

[droqen]

I should like to clarify: multiple such clashes can go on at any time.

And when it comes to 'reality' versus 'complex rule systems' (this system is tough to explain but I imagine, in practice, not too bad), the problem is reality is itself too complex. You say you just 'walk up to someone and fight', but what in the world does that mean? No dice rolls, sure, that's great to say but is there any way to do what you're talking about? Would you like me (or whoever else, whatever!) to implement a perfectly realistic physics system and the best control scheme ever? Where will these things come from?

Perhaps the perfect game would be a perfect reality simulation with added rules and such (edit :: and virtual reality interface and controls of course), but, uh:

Not feasible.
Especially to get the level of control you'd need.
Games are rules and there's no escape from that fact!
(Computer games, anyway)

~

Anyway, I need to clarify:

You can have as many clashes going on as you want, and even when not involved, you can use ranged attacks on those involved in a clash.

While in a clash, you take turns just as you would normally.

[Theotherguy]

You can have an adequate simulation for fighting without it being a "perfect simulation" or what have you. I would also arguing that programming a simulation is much much easier, easier to extend, and less prone to bugs than coding a giant state machine, but that it can be harder to balance.

[droqen]

Then why hasn't one been made yet?

Programming a simulation is in no way easier than programming an abstraction of what you're aiming to simulate, unless you're talking about a highly limited simulation-- which is an abstraction in its own way, anyway.

Can you please clarify what you're talking about when you say 'adequate simulation'? Just brief details would be fine.

[Sir Raptor]

Now let's make this into  a thread for everyone's combat system concepts.

Booster Cards: your team has a deck of cards in hammerspace, and every time you enter a battle, each person in your party is given a random card from the deck. Each card has a special ability; some make your characters regain HP, some give your attacks an element attribute, some boost the effectiveness of items, some may even unlock access to a whole new range of attacks. A card only gives its ability to the holder of the card. If you don't like the card one of your characters has, then on their turn, they can shuffle their card into the deck and draw a new one; this will take up a turn, although perhaps a special card-based class could do this as a free move. The deck has about 20 or so cards, and can be edited with new cards you can find in chests/buy at shops/win in contests/obtain as enemy item drops.

[droqen]

Cards should have a bunch of things on them! Like a whole new class on top of their current class

... except instead of a class it's a card.

[Theotherguy]

Sorry, I shouldn't be derailing things.

Then why hasn't one been made yet?

What on Earth are you talking about? Every action RPG ever made has had at least some level of rudimentary simulated combat. Even the original Legend of Zelda had this. The best example of a modern RPG which used simulation-based combat I can think of was Mount and Blade.

Programming a simulation is in no way easier than programming an abstraction of what you're aiming to simulate, unless you're talking about a highly limited simulation-- which is an abstraction in its own way, anyway.

I disagree entirely. You only need to make a few simple rules that influence every entity in the game, and the rest comes in for free, emerging from the rules. The difference between the higher level abstraction (now we're in COMBAT MODE, and COMBATANT X has used WEAPON Y to do K DAMAGE, but he missed,) and the lower level of abstraction (Entity X has a velocity towards entity Y. Now they are intersecting. Entity Y has a damage event.) Is that limitless situations can arise from the lower level rules (a subset of which are covered by the higher level abstractions) without any work from the programmer whatsoever.

If you use a high level abstraction to construct your combat system, you inherently limit the gameplay to what the programmer has explicitly defined. You create a massive state machine in which every state must be accounted for, and every path through the machine has to be planned out in advance. The number of possibilities is limited to what is combinatorially possible in this discrete state machine. If you use a lower level abstraction, you can rely on emergence to create these states for you. The burden of balance shifts from coding to design. The balance of each weapon and each character comes from their physical characteristics, not arbitrary rules put in place by the programmer.

This does not only apply to RPGs but to all manner of games in which combat is involved.

Can you please clarify what you're talking about when you say 'adequate simulation'? Just brief details would be fine.

Anything which allows the players to move about freely and use weapons on each other whenever they would like. This can include physics, but doesn't have to. The more fine-grain the detail, the better, but ultimately some level of higher level abstraction might be needed.

[droqen]

Okay so I think your point, Theotherguy, in a nutshell is "why don't you make a game of an entirely different genre?"

What you're doing is like telling someone who wants to make a platformer to make a top-down game with jumping,
or telling a person who wants to make Advance Wars to make Starcraft instead.

(Yes I know I'm making some stretches here)

They are all trying to "simulate" things that could be similar in the real world, but the function and the appeal are vastly different.

There are other things I could say but I don't think they really matter in the face of you saying what I feel like is along the lines of "I don't like this genre (or mini-genre, I guess) and you shouldn't use it".

Legend of Zelda, Mount and Blade

Both great games. What if I want to allow the player to control multiple characters?

[Theotherguy]

There are other things I could say but I don't think they really matter in the face of you saying what I feel like is along the lines of "I don't like this genre (or mini-genre, I guess) and you shouldn't use it".

That's exactly what I'm saying. Not to you, though. I was just ranting about why I didn't like the genre.

Both great games. What if I want to allow the player to control multiple characters?

Oh, that wasn't entirely clear. I thought you meant that it was going to be a multiplayer game.

[droqen]

Well, fair enough.
But the reason they still exist is because they are entirely different, and one's enjoyment of them is entirely separated from their enjoyment of 'simulations'.
People will continue to enjoy games that you don't like!

Also, yes. This would be singleplayer; isn't that what most RPGs are?
(and I mean games that people simply call 'RPG', not 'MMORPG' or 'action RPG' or 'with RPG elements' etc)

[RCIX]

I think a combat system that emphasizes vision and intel more could be cool. Like your characters can only see forward in a cone by default, and you must explicitly look around to find some enemies. Plus, you could have camouflage and enemy sensing abilities, and all sorts of other neat stuff.

[Doktor_Q]

Your idea kind of reminds me of this one idea I had a while back.

You get your party, the enemy's party, and a grid big enough for each character to have their own space. You can move your characters together to team them up, boosting stats, or separate them, to be in more places. Move a group onto an enemy group to start combat, yadda yadda. You can technically move to any space on the grid when you do move.

Now, the maybe-interesting part comes in with the "flee" and "chase" stats- once you've started combat, if you want to stop fighting them, you have to use your "flee" stat, and beat their "chase" stat. This allows for tank-type characters with high enough "chase" stats to keep a strong enemy from joining the battle against your other allies, and such.

[Bree]

I've always wanted a turn-based combat system that worked more like a Hollywood bar fight, where you could grab objects to beat into your opponent's face, or you could throw each other across the room. So many RPG encounters occur in a void, where the backdrop can easily be changed; I feel like it'd be more fun to have fights change based on location, even basic stuff like elemental alignments for different types of areas.

[zez]

Hey Theo; ever play the Disgaea games, or phantom brave by nippon ichi? Pretty rad combat, particularly phantom brave, although they both suffer from kind of negligible plots (Disgaea makes up for it by being a comedy,) and way tooo much grinding.

I always thought it would be cool to do rpg battles more like a fighting game or beatemup, with the player controlling a single character and trying to do combo's and special moves and such, and maybe pausing the game to issue commands to teammates, or better yet having a tag option like the VS games. Its kind of been done with the seiken densetsu games (beatemup) and the tales series (fighter) but in both cases they still suffered from simplification and being to much of an rpg, basically. Seiken Densetsu rewards you for attacking slowly (there is basically a final fantasy style atb, sense its made by square and they would have put that in tactics if there was a way to make it make sense,) and charging attacks, and only gives you one attack button, and didnt even let you jump till Legend of Mana, and the Tales games do some really silly auto lock run up to the enemy execute your attack auto run away from the enemy stuff, as well as forcing you too assign 4 special moves and ony use those, by hitting special + a direction.

Something where you could hit level 23 and learn double quarter circle + punch = shinkuu hadouken, and then just use it whenever you had enough mana, or your limit break bar was full or whatever, would be amazing. I mean, they had a samurai showdown rpg, but it was turnbased. WTF is that shit?

[William Broom]

Not really a fully fleshed out concept, but I'd like to see a grid-based RPG battle system based around feng shui. For example, different sections of the battlefield being designated in different ways, like a 'luck corner' where you have more luck, or a 'rage corner' where your attack is increased... it could also have stuff to do with qi movement, like good energy enters the battlefield at a certain point and depending on how you arrange your party, the energy might roll straight through, or be channelled in different directions. You could also have bad energy streams, and a tank character who channels bad energy toward the enemy at the expense of suffering reduced luck himself.

[Xion]

that sounds radtastic. I'd love to play that.

[jwaap]

I've always wanted to make a rpg combat system where you launch the characters at eachother. Aim the speed, angle, and launch. Some would be heavier, faster, deal more damage etc. After the turn they would all be staying in the place they ended up, making for super dynamic battles if combined with spells and everything.

[Bree]

Hey Zez: I remember some other RPGs that mixed combat systems with fighters, though in more unusual ways. For instance, Legend of Legaia has a basic menu-based combat system, but you select different areas to attack and can string together combos, effectively making it a turn-based fighter. There's also Hybrid Heaven, which was another take on the turn-based brawler. It'd be interesting to see someone try and reuse this system in the future.

[Craig Stern]

The "Clash" system basically sounds like the multi-party battles that you could do in FF6, except with more flexibility about who fights whom.