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[JasonPickering]

right now 100%
this is basically it now
http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1282148934

but im thinking about getting rid of the AI. and doing player vs player. one player is hero one is the dungeon guy, who chooses his 4 champions.

[SirNiko]

Interesting. I see what you're doing.

You could set it up that the zombie makes stances that hint at what he will do - he might dig around in the grass for plant, walk to a fountain for water, rub some twigs for fire. Which he does is totally random. Now the first combat is a puzzle where the player needs to identify the actions of the enemy as being hints.

I'm not sure where you intend for the game to go from here. You could make it a linear series of combats, where the player slowly builds upon a set of rules, like thieves that pick the opposite element of the one they are revealing, or demons that pretend to be invoking fire when their choice is reflected by the color of their eyes. A demon thief would obey both rules at the same time, so the challenge is for the player to remember both rules and apply them at once.

Expand upon that concept by adding new elements as the game progresses, like the "Lizard Spock" variation of RPS. Maybe the player fights two foes at once, and now he needs to identify both elements and pick one that beats or ties both.

That's just one way this could work. Do you have any particular goals or desires for this game?

[GameRoom]

Make multiple rounds in a short amount of time. You might subconsciously make a pattern and the ai has to recognize it and vise versa.

[Wren]

Looks like your system is flushing itself out!
I think it's true you should look for a way to have a resource sink or a way to limit healing.  Limiting the number of uses might be somewhat inflexible, though.

I like systems where you can accumulate resources, and are playing a game of chicken with the opponent to optimize your resources while countering their strengths. 

For instance, with your elemental system, you could make each element gain power (or deplete power) each time you use it.

i.e. each time you use fire your fire power increases by 1, so you will do 1 more point of damage if you win with it.   If you lose with it, your stored power is extinguished.   This way, you can see what abilities your enemy is charging up and work to counter his strategy.  It gives you some information to work with as a player and a variety of strategies to pick from. 

Writing the AI would be challenging but probably be fun to play against even if it didn't act optimally.

[JasonPickering]

so right now each character has the following

HP = 3-8
attack = 1-2
heal = 2-8
and they can heal from 1 - 4 times

each successful counter though gives you +1 heal.

[gimymblert]

Some more articles for Multiplayer balancing.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions.html
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-2-viable-options.html
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-3-fairness.html
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-4-intuition.html

[Muz]

IMO, RPS isn't really a good system to play against the AI. Ask any professional RPS player, it's mostly either psychological (how people 'normally' act) or statistical (whether they're playing the same things evenly or whether they bias towards one type). Computers only do statistical, and not that well since there's already another psychological aspect to it.

[gimymblert]

IMO, RPS isn't really a good system to play against the AI. Ask any professional RPS player, it's mostly either psychological (how people 'normally' act) or statistical (whether they're playing the same things evenly or whether they bias towards one type). Computers only do statistical, and not that well since there's already another psychological aspect to it.

You are right AI should be design around pattern of player psychology to create an experience.

Give each AI a credible pattern that match their fiction and suddenly they became interesting puzzle for the player.

[JasonPickering]

I agree with the idea that AI will never be a good RPS opponent. I think building it as more of a puzzle game would work, but not what i'm looking for at the moment. I figure if its best with 2 people make it with two people.

[shig]

Professional Rock Paper Scissors players

 

[Montoli]

Is this a single-player RPG or some kind of versus system?  Because while most of Sirlin's comments are great for balancing multiplayer competitive games, if you are making a single player game, where the player fights many computers opponents, you are going to need to add some serious asymmetry.

At it's core, Rock Paper Scissors (at least when played against a computer, or person you can't analyze) is basically about picking a random card, from a deck of three cards labled "win", "lose", "draw".  Which is not terribly fun, when you don't have the sub-games of thinking you can try to "outthink" them by analyzing their patterns, body language, whatever.

In my opinion, it's not going to be fun unless the player feels they have a large degree of control over the outcome.  Adding limited resources (hp, limited numbers of times you can counter, etc) works well to spice it up, but ultimately, they need to feel like they can influence their own fate.  (I mean - if you play rock paper scissors against random CPU AIs, and say "ah hah, but you have limited resources, you can only play each response once per fight!" is still lame, since it's still basically random.)  You have a seemingly interesting choice ("what should I choose?") but not enough information to make an informed decision, so your choice is not actually meaningful.  (You would do just as well picking randomly yourself, or always picking the same thing, as you would with any other strategy)

Games like final fantasy handle this by giving you more information, giving different enemies different patterns for you to learn over the course of play.  So while you might be confused the first time you meet them, you quickly learn things like "Goblins usually attack.  Evil Wizards usually cast spells, but sometimes defend.  Weebles almost always run away after the second turn." etc.  (Games like final fantasy also mix things up by giving you a TEAM of people each making a choice each turn, vs. a group of enemies doing the same.  So you get a higher chance of at least some success, even if you guess wrong on some of your character actions.)

Heck, even street fighters usually use a variation on the same model:  They usually have their own RPS-like cycles [Countering beats cunches, punches beat throws, throws beat counters, etc] but they also give you patterns to learn based on the characters, like "that dude has really good throws, so he'll probably throw more.  That chick punches a lot.  I call her punch-chick." etc.  (That, and since fighting games can be thought of as a huge number of RPS matches in rapid succession, you have more time to learn what your opponent's patterns are.)

[JasonPickering]

right now my basic design is two players

Player 1 - selects one of 3 heroes and adventures forward doing 4-5 battles. between each battle they can purchase upgrades to change their stats.

Player 2 - selects the different monsters for the 4-5 battles and controls the monster in each one.

player 2 must choose all monsters before the battle begins and player 1 doesn't know what they are. Player 2 must decide on the monsters without knowing what upgrades the Hero will take or even which hero it will be.