I'm learning Ruby and getting used to RGSS stuff and I was considering doing an ATB but I wanted to see how interested people would be in this and as for any improvements/suggestions people would have for this.

Note that battling is pretty much the main aspect of the game I'm working on.

It's an ATB but it's a rapid pace, like a serious ACTION time bar. I'd say 1 of your (for my game) 3 characters should be up and ready pretty much within a second of each other and you shouldn't have more than like 2 seconds of wait time. A thief wearing clothes might go twice before a knight with heavy armor goes. But the pacing would be heavy and fast. This is part of the question I have, would this sort of heavy pacing be good for a high battle based game which I hope to incorporate strategy into?

Then, the turn progression: How does the turn advance?

1) Choose a stance: Stances change your stats to be more defensive, offensive, evasive, etc. or to be less defensive, offensive evasive, accurate, etc. They are categorized and for certain especially powerful attacks, a stance in a certain category is needed to use the sill.

2) Action: Multiple choices, but I aim to have like 6-8 stances per character by the mid of the game, and maybe up to 10-12 stances by the end of the game per character.

2A) Attack: There is no basic "attack." You have an attack menu, each attack uses a certain amount of stamina, low and recoverable within 2-3 turns easily. There are attacks that do more damage in exchange for accuracy, or have a delay before use (like .6 seconds before charging forward at the opponent), attacks that have multiple attacks but deals the damage over time while your atb bar does not charge up. Timing of attacks, accuracy, damage, multiple attacks, piercing defense, etc. would all be things to consider as 1 attacks.

2B) Skills: Skills can use mana, stamina, or both. All 3 of which recover but skills take quite a bit more energy (the generic term for stamina and/or mana) but in exchange are far more powerful than attacks. They may deal a hell load of damage but that's not their greatest strength. Their greatest strength is that they have multiple effects: Burns, Poisons, Sleep, Confuse, Blind, Self Buffs, Self Debuffs, Opposing Debuffs, Slow, Freeze, Stun, etc. All these have to be considered before using a skill. Skills, similarly to attacks, may deal the damage over time, have a casting time, etc. So all these must be considered before use. This does mean that you have to know your skillset very well before going into battle.

I do intend on making sure that each of the status ailments has a use.

The potential problem with this is that my game has a class sytsem where you learn skills through equipping (think FFTA) so would this be going overboard? This requires a lot of forethought as well as basic strategy. You must know your skills the way this is set up. As well as your attacks.

2C) Defend: Recover extra stamina and mana, and defend. Seems basic but will probably be vital in boss fights, miniboss fights, and rare encounters.

2D) Items: I definitely hope to incorporate items into the game as well. Curing status ailments, healing, as well as buffing, damaging, inflicting ailments, etc.




So, yeah, it's a complex 2-step process which will rapidly evolve into (hopefully) an adrenaline pumped kind of strategy battle. Ignore the ambition for now and just consider this objectively: What's good, what's bad, is the pacing going to get in the way, would it be too difficult, etc.

my first reaction is that this can be a lot of fun to play through... if the player already knows what he's doing. The way you set it up, this game can be VERY exciting. (Heck, with a bit of tweaking, this could make a fun VS. game online) However, because you've set up your characters to have multiple stances, multiple moves, and have multiple menus to deal with, this can be a little overwhelming for the players. (You said 6-8 to start up, ending with 13-14 stances at the end, I imagine your skills and attacks might have a similar number) Basically, because of your ATB wanting to be so quick, you set up a situation where players get rewarded for practicing actions per minute. If done right, it can be almost like a DOTA lite, which can be awesome.

Here's what I think are key to making this successful:

Fast interface access: you need to make sure that you have a way of letting your players enter commands at lightning speed. The traditional menu in menu system is going to really slow things down, especially at later stages. I suggest you experiment a little bit with different menu systems to see which one is the most intuitive without sacrificing speed.

Fewer moves, but more effects: You don't need a metric ton of moves to make this good. In fact, this is a great case for reductive design. You want to make sure that each character (or character type) has their own "niche" and game play style. Maybe one guy is like a combo king, relying on super fast speed, and lots of quick jabbing attacks. Another might be the king of buffing, basically able to layer buff after buff after buff in quick succession. To do this successfully, you need to fully explore the design space here. i.e. having something that is basically a tiered fire1, fire2, fire3 is boring. Sure, you can differentiate between them by casting speed and damage, but then that's still a fairly simple mechanic by comparison. You can still "solve" for the optimal move. And sure, you can still DO a fire1, fire2, fire3 tier system (this is still an RPG, after all, you need to give room for growth), but just make sure you really explore the space. If you can have a system that has say, 12 moves providing 6 different tactics or 3 moves with 6 different tactics, you go with the latter. Obviously, don't reduce it to the point that it's boring. but leanness on your system is key here.

don't be afraid to give status effects to attacks: I know you said that you want your magic spells to be the king in terms of adding status effects. that's fine and dandy, but you shouldn't rule out the possibility of adding status effects to attacks too. Maybe there's an attack that can trip an enemy, thereby reducing their speed for a very short time. (like, maybe 1-2 ATB worth) Maybe a martial arts character can gain a pressure point attack that can stun an enemy. Don't be afraid of giving attacks special effects too. If you want the magic spells to still be on top for effects, give the better effects like paralysis and poisons to the spells. (or give them the effects that are more powerful)

movable menu: as in, let your player move spells and attacks into places that are more convenient for them. nothing would be more frustrating than having to scroll through three pages of moves just to get to your most powerful one when you're already on the clock. It doesn't need to be a full blown hot key ready customizable menu. But you need to give your players some degree of control in terms of where they can find things. This is really just about lowering the execution barrier to play your game. If your game has an execution barrier that's too high, it will turn off players.

guidedangit!: make sure that you don't just throw the player into the deep end of the pool with this. Beginning encounters should be fairly slow, and gives the player plenty of time to make decisions. This way, they can get used to the pace of the game. As you progress though, feel free to step up the speed. What I would do is start off with enemies being slow, and do low damage, progress to enemies that do low damage, but can move a lot, and then enemies that do high damage, low speed, and eventually move up to the crack-induced rapid assault.

elliot makes a lot of good points. I assume you're going to be using an ATB which fills even during menu selection. It's up to you if you want to turn that on or off, so that when the bar is full all other bars fill up or they all stand at a freeze. This will be important to the design of your game. You could have much more rapid bar filling on pause-ATBs, but should keep it reasonable if the only option is a non-freezing bar.

You should probably balance AP growth with another stat, so that speed isn't the only thing that determines AP growth. This will allow you better balance for your slower fighters. I'd suggest making your AP growth based on the average of all your stats exempting your speed stat.

It should definitely be emphasized that you do not want to overwhelm the player with spells. Keep the menus clutter-free. Keep it all intuitive. Give some customization on spell placement. You may want to cut-back some stances, or make some interesting way of doing it.
You could get away with a few things. Maybe mages can equip spell-books and they can change their current book in battle. Maybe give them a blank book where they can copy spells they've learned to.
The main point is to not make changing stances a hassle or chore. Don't make your characters have to change stances repeatedly.

As for the status effects, it's not a bad idea. Maybe make debuffs stack. You get a poison spell, cast it, it's one charge of poison. If cast again, its 2 charges. Depending on the type of poison, the 2 charges could mean it lasts two turns, or on the enemies turn the number of charges determines the damage it does. You could work with that and have a very strategic use for them in both weapons and spells.

First of all, I may have an option as to whether or not you want the ATB to move during menu selection. For the whole experience, players would play without it.


I was thinking of having hotkeys for menus (attack, skill 1, skill 2, defend, item) <Note this is intermixed with a class system so yeah it would take a lot. As in final fantasy Tactics style, choose a class, base skills on equipment, master skill, move on>

Elliot, thanks a lot, and you addressed many of the issues I was considering. Yeah, I intend for certain attacks to have a low level debuff but if you want the best of the best, you want skills. Skill could also have multiple effects, for sure. I don't want too many skills but I'd definitely have to work for an editable menu and no transitions so that we'd have some faster interface. Thanks for those quick fixes (to an extent) for my worries.

The problem is I don't wanna clutter moves with 80 effects nor diminish the choices a player has. Sure, a great game with 5 skills can be made, you used the example of DotA. On the other hand, I want a little more choices for my players as well.

Stances would probably start off simple: Offensive, Defensive, Beserker (high end offensive trading a lot of defensive), Evasive, Guardian, Caster, but move on into more complicated stances like 1 design was Assassin (increase speed and damage based on speed, along with increasing effects of poison. However if you don't evade, ouch)

On the other hand, broadness would have been key to the whole game. So, it's a moderation which is what beta testing is for I guess.

TItanHex: I intend on using equipment weight for the speed formula, it might be more important than the actual agility stat, seeing how things go. So if you have the uber axe of power +90 and the Plate armor of Greatness +90, you probably won't move very fast.




SO yeah, I saw this as a greatly potentially fun system as well but it'll be difficult to pull off. Thanks for your help guys, it's really appreciated. Don't expect my game for a while haha. I'm really busy but it's definitely in my priority list. Probably not soon though. I probably won't move out of RMVX even if a new 1 comes out too just to save time so, I do intend to make this work but not any time soon. lol Thanks for your time and effort guys, I hope I can pull it off

I agree, having just 5 skills each player might be a little sparse. Here's my alternate suggestion then, if you really want to do a ton different moves/skills: make the characters equip skills, so they can control the number that shows up on screen. i.e. instead of say, showing all 80 skills in one go, you let the player equip maybe up to 15 skills/moves on each character. That way, you can still provide the player with a million skills, but then in combat, you can still clean out the excessive ones.

of course, you really don't want to have TOO many divergent skills, as this can still be overwhelming for the players if they get too many too quickly. Another way to help this problem is to make sure that all skills are categorized in a way that the players won't feel like he has TOO many choices. i.e. you might have a total of 255 skills, but any given character might really only have use for about 30 at any given time. (which, by the way, is still a lot)

You can Hotkey spells, but set it up so that the player can set an actionbar of his primary skills, or the skills he uses alot. Then you can set it up so that he can hold ctrl and bring up his secondary actionbar.

An Actionbar can consist of 6 skills hit ctrl there is his other 6 actionbars.

The stances can determine what skills he can use. You won't be doing a a flying spinning dragon-kick from a horse stance.

Some stances should hold more threat. Taunting monsters away from them.


An please, Pleas, Please.... when you make this game don't set it up so that all you can do is keep hitting attack and kill all the enemies. Give people a reason to have to use their status effect abilities. When I play games like final fantasy VII. I killed all trash mobs without using magic... It was a waste of time, when I can usually kill them in 1 or 2 blows. It should be...

"OH MY GAWD HE IS TO FAST! Let me put him to sleep..."

"To many enemies to fight right now, I have to do a bit of crowd control to survive this one."

"Man, I got to cast shield on my Tank, he is getting his butt kicked."

"This monster's accuracy is incredible, he keeps critting me! Looks like I have to use speed, and blind him."

Not

"Oh my this guy has crazy accuracy, he keeps critting me, no matter, I will press attack and he dies, no use wasting mana on him."



As for the abilities, make sure they are all useful. Not like the "Death" ability in the Final Fantasy games (nobody uses it because the monster usually dies before the time limit.).

Make sure each ability is different...
If I have an ability called Perfect Stab and it does 20% damage to the enemy...
Then I have an ability called Throat Cut and it does 30% damage to enemy...

why would I want to us Perfect Stab again? It does nothing for me.
Instead I would do...

Perfect Stab - +30 to damage, +30 to critical strike.
Throat Cut - +40 to damage, bleeds 20 hp a second.
Shadow Stab - +20 to damage, +60 to evasion on next opponents attack

That is when that player can still utilize all abilities.


The whole tier system kinda irks me. I want to be able to utilize all abilities when I need them. Give people the option to put points into their fire spell or poison dagger spell.



Just my opinion though, no need to go spreading it around.