I want to know if there's a reason. I mean, most of the strategy I know in RPG involve status effects. Especially all the best ones. In my game status conditions are really effective against mooks and still great against bosses. Though some work better on certain enemies and some not as good, there's hardly any time an enemy is immune to a status effect. Once or twice? Around there.

But why does it seem as though this aspect of the game always seem so neglected when it has so much strategic potential? They're not practical against mooks and just about entirely useless against bosses. So is there a reason everyone else does it like this?

Er, well, I'm certainly not neglecting mine, even though battles aren't exactly a high priority in my projects. I guess it's because battles are commonly thought of as a "Get in, get out" predicament and players just want to keep progressing on with the game instead of having strategy battles, so the creators of the game probably have the same mindset. But I agree, I prefer strategy above pressing A over and over by a large sum.

They place another facet on balancing, and they're also more work to manage. For this reason they're often swept under the rug by novice designers and especially by one man projects. It is unfortunate, as they offer greater dynamics to battles. I feel they should be used, sometimes with greater emphasis than an elemental system. Hopefully this has given you some insight into why you don't see them often in RM games.

I feel like if you play a well made game, there is more thought involved, whether the player realizes it or not.
In a badly made game, there is less thought involved in playing.

Example:
Pokemon (lots of strategic elements, though in a simple manner)
Vs.
An RM user's first game (no status effects, elements, or anything)

That's not necessarily true. The holy grail of game design is immersion and usually, in indie games, immersion is extremely hard to create and extremely easy to break. For example, as soon as a goal that is slightly too frustrating comes up (such as a strategic implementation of status effects becoming complicated) a player will ultimately focus on something less frustrating for a brief period of time (like an in real world lamp) and the immersion is broken. Granted, this doesn't always happen; it does however, happen frequently enough that a lot of designers, who are looking to appeal to the general public, will remove harder aspects of games to please the larger target audience of more casual gamers. Core gamers (with brains) are left out in the cold (with badly designed or easy games).

Of course, you'll say, "Then design a better game that isn't a frustrating" or, "ADD A HELP FEATURE", but the former is quite often hard to achieve (even for professional designers) and the latter is just an immersion shattering tactic.

In response to squirrelmg, thinking less in a game is actual good by design standards as it reduces the change of immersion shattering frustrations and thinking more is bad (usually).

Anyway, this doesn't reflect what I think personally, just a little bit of design theory. Feel free to contradict me or insult my rambling as game design is largely a personal debacle and my theory may be completely different to yours. There is no design theory set in stone for games.

Point well made, Ninjuit.

To take your point in a more tangible direction, many games will divide the casual gamer from the hardcore one yet let them play the same game. We see deeper strategies a little later in the game and especially on the less beaten path of RPGs. This allows a casual gamer to thoughtlessly plow through their enemies up until the end, however hardcore gamers will take the sidequests and the harder challenges to thus immerse themselves as well.

Too easy, and the hardcore games will break immersion, too hard and the casual gamer will break immersion. What you want to do then is create filler and difficult paths that branch from the main, yet are not required by it. However you will have to give them some goal and have a reward system in mind.
(Believe it or not reward is a high factor of video game design. Infact, it may rival the holy grail of immersion.)

Ok so difficulty could break people's immersion. Especially once you rematch a boss for the 18th time. But shouldn't the eureka feeling of figuring out the boss's trick be enough to revive that immersion? It seemed to be the case for me. Or maybe I'm just a freak(hence my name) who actually enjoys being clever unlike normal people .

Honestly, it really depends on the type of game. When you create a horror RPG, what point is there of status effects? You're limited on that aspect.

Now immersion can go as deep as, for example, a boss fight that the boss can be beat by using the predetermined, that will always win with this fight tactic...but at the same time, to make the boss defeatable in different uncommon tactics is another. If you allow your player to choose classes, typical human will make a Healer, Fighter, Ranger, and Mage line up, it's the typical RPG class scenario. However, if players are able to use all Mages, all rangers, or heaven forbid, all healers, then they should be able to, the player should make the game as difficult as they anticipate it to be. If I PLAN on making an all healer group, I would plan to use only damaging Items as most of my spells are protection, resistance, and healing. So there is NO damage spells, but it shouldn't prevent me from defeating a boss.

Coming up with tactics that if a player was to beat the game like this would make reply value and rematches have that eureka feeling. It's hard enough fighting the boss normally, but if you really give the player a run for their money and they want to take it, then give them it.

Status effects in this scenario would definitely help, you can have 2 main healers, one damage over time item user, and one blast damage item user. Your boss will fall easily enough and that's how it should be.

So in some cases the use of status effects become useless. Everyone wants to have thier own unique game, and so most of the developers tend to avoid it to create a different style of strategy.

It depends really. Some people can be clever, but may not have your mindset. I found this tends to happen a lot with older adventure games. In fact, something may be obvious in hindsight, or you'll pick it up if you're really genre savvy, but otherwise you can totally get someone smart stuck because they didn't think like you did.

Boss gimmicks and all are fine, and while I don't want to derail the topic too much, there should be some freedom as well. Perhaps the trick can make the boss far easier, but not the ONLY way to do so. Otherwise, you didn't really win because you were clever and thought of some really interesting/new way to beat it, you just figured out the only real way to win the battle.

Status conditions I believed are just RPG conventions nowadays. People tend to blindly add spells/attacks/systems without knowing why it's there, if it will actually add a tactical advantage for the player, if it can be overpowered (This happened in one game, Sleep was really powerful and bosses fell to sleep and they had to wait to be naturally woken up because they didn't get out even if hit), why it's even there in the first place and all.

Honestly, battles in RPGs tend not to be too long. It's mostly boss battles that are. Why would you use a status effect in a battle you can win easily or quicker with attacks or your strongest damage spell? Status effects also tend to be unreliable. 80-100% chance to attack, 100% chance for a spell, or 40-60% chance for a status effect? I WONDER WHAT I SHOULD PICK????? (poll option: what should ocean pick/????) Amusingly enough, Final Fantasy X had one of the better applications of it. There were skills that did a regular Attack + Status effect, and it tended to always work against certain enemy types if I remember correctly. Flying enemies? Use Dark + Attack on them. Boss has too high defense? Armor break it. (That's a debuff though and buffs/debuffs can range from super powered to useless depending on who's making the game). Even if the status effect didn't go through, you didn't waste a turn.

I did something simple for a project of mine (not yet released). If you use an elemental spell, it tends to have a status effect built into it. A small chance for the enemy to also be hit with something. For example: Any fire spell can have a 10-30% chance of causing Burning to an enemy. If the enemy is weak against it, it's more likely to stick. I made an enemy and a boss version of each status effect. The enemy version is very strong and will usually disable them very nicely (Like a very strong poison effect or a longer stun effect), while the boss one is weaker so that it will still work, just not as powerfully.

It's all about just putting though into it and see how it can support other characters strategies and give the players options, while not making the game TOO easy (game breaking like Vanish/Doom) or being useless/limited.

are we talking about status effects in actual commercial games or RM games? If we're talking about commercial games, I don't think that assessment is correct.

In the RM community? It's probably because status elements are too easy to mess up. With more permutation of states, there are more possibilities of creating a game breaking bug. And often, to make sure that a game actually plays properly, it's easier to go with reductive design. The problem is too many novice game designers start off with too simple a system and never bother to expand beyond it, so the combat comes across as shallow and somewhat boring.

I've actually been considering a more deep 'status effect' system for the project I do after my warm-up project.
The concept would easily be summed up by comparing it to the way DPS spells work on World of Warcraft. Different effects that deal damage, elements or have effects like reducing/increasing stats or causing temporary invulnerability.
Effects could then be combined for 'buffing'.

how is this deeper than any run of the mill western MMO status system?

Considering i've not played western RPGs other than Warcraft and Oblivion, I can't really say much - However in Oblivion, it seemed that unless you were extremely high level and crafted a multi-status effect spell, the first thing you tried to cast would typically wear off before you got through to the third or fourth. It also only has one character in your party really as most other times any cohorts with you will just hit things with melee weapons and get in your way.

but that's more of a function of your level, rather than the existence of combo status effects. I'm just saying, the convention of status effect stacking is not something new, and should not be something game designers shy away from.

A lot of posts here so I only skimmed, sorry if this has already been said.
anyways
I don't think it's that they're being neglected, it's more the fact that no one really does anything new with them.
Poison is always the same damage over time, burn is always the same as poison, you always have Pokemon's paralyze type move, etc etc.
Perhaps poison also slows the player? Or the pain distracts them making them more likely to miss?
Just small things that make these status effects individual.

I think status changes are weak by tradition. They started-out weak and useless in the beginning, and no game really ever broke that mold. It's weird, because status change effects theoretically should be totally amazing in long boss battles, and yet they aren't. That can only indicate one thing: the effect, duration, and chance of taking effect were designed to be way too low. Every ability your characters have access to should be almost equally good; the optimal play shouldn't be so cut-and-dry that it's obvious to a 6-year-old.

Like I said, I think it really depends upon what games are you using as the baseline for comparison.

In romancing sa-ga 2, for example, I can't recall a single status spell that is useless. If you can research it, there's a good use for it. the best spells to research in that game are intrinsically the status buffs or debuffs if you know HOW to use them. In fact, in that game, the later stages of the game become damn near impossible if you don't grab a couple nice status spells to go for the road.

This is why I just don't agree that status spells start out weak as tradition.