Anyone who knows me knows I'm nefarious for long ass speeches, but I'll keep it brief this time. ;p This is just a survey to help better design my battle system / game. Thanks for the help. =) In all answers, PLEASE be honest also.

1) In games like Lunar, Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, etc. Do you ever talk to 'all' the NPCs in a town, or do you talk to just the important ones?

2) In a battle system-driven RPG, do you prefer games whose battles constantly get more difficult as you advance, such that returning to the place you began still poses a challenge (FF Tactics being the big example, Everquest and online RPGs sorta, emphasizing that even newbie monsters gain some degree of difficulty), or a system where if you hit 3 or 5+ levels higher then the monsters you fight, they become feeble and die in 1 spell / 1 round of attacks?

3) In expansion to question 2, do you enjoy boss battles being 'epic' no matter the level you are? (Lunar: SSS, the remake of the Sega CD version being about the best example), or do you enjoy that, if you prepare well enough (scour all treasure chests, level up a few levels to 'prepare for the fight'), the bosses can be mediocre at best to reflect your power?

4) In game combat, I sort of have a Lunar meets and has baby offspring with FF Tactics who hooks up with Chrono Cross / Trigger battle engine (Lunar-style engine with movement options and many attribute-equips). Certain spells, and attacks require a given amount of Stamina (determined by an attribute, max 99), Mov / Movement (determined by attributes, max 99). Now what question I meant to ask is, I had toyed around with many ideas of letting a char's stamina determine the amount of attacks (thus 99 stam, at a cost of a certain number per attack), or go with the Lunar method, and my old-school idea of, a set # of attacks that increases with level for a given character. This questions more for any ideas on handling basic attacks (not spells, not special skills, just regular "attack" key).

5) This is a question of taste. In a game, do you prefer monsters to be seen like in Lunar: SSS / Lunar: Eternal Blue complete (That is to say, they're visible, but random icons of a given mob configuration that when you bump into switches to a battle screen), Chrono Trigger/Cross in which monsters are triggered to appear by given landscape situations, and some random encounters, or lastly, monsters that only appear once, like what 'real world' monsters would be. You fight through a given terrain and beat them, technically you've 'vanquished the enemies', like Chrono Trigger's 'triggered' fights but a 1-time situation, revisiting the place might have random fights, but nothing like before.

Well, that about does it for now, probably will ask more in the future, but most all other features of Lucid Soul are adamant. Thanks for every answer I get, and GL on everyone's projects.

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Ahoy-hoy!

1)Generally, I talk to all the people in a town, the first time through. Even retalk to them if they have multiple activation's worth of text, like in Lunar SSSC. Or if they have multiple events' worth of text, like you come back from defeating the black knight and they all say something different. But I have to admit, in Lunar, I eventually stopped talking to most people after the first time I visited a town because there were so *many* and with *multiple* activations of text, and *multiple* event's worth of multiple activations of text, and I had to hunt some of them down to talk to them and.... So basically the answer is yeah.

2) I consider both to be perfectly valid variants. However, I'd also have to advise advancing bosses, if you advance normal enemies. I loved Tactics, but FF8 kind of soured me on the concept of advancing monsters.
Personally, I also like the idea of growing in power to the point where you can squash your old enemies like bugs, but it does admittedly make random encounters in such areas boring. It sort of gives meaning to a level-up. Alternatively, you could *ignore* the whole level concept entirely, and make all monsters roughly the same difficulty, but with different capabilities to work around. The ones in the later game would have better powers, just as the characters would have picked up new items and skills. But stats would have remained roughly the same! (Of course, you'd have to create *some* functionality to allow characters to power up in battle, or all of that 'max score of 99' stuff will be wasted. Presumably there'd be skills to raise stats in battle, for instance, which when repeated or comboed could result in very high stats for a few turns... The enemies would certainly have similar strategies.)

3) A little of both. I like it when bosses require strategy to beat, but careful preparation should count towards strategy. A normal end-of-dungeon boss should be beatable by level-up alone, but only if said level-up is beyond just wandering around the current dungeon for a few minutes fighting things. If I spend 15 hours leveling up or doing similar activities, I'd darn well better be able to defeat El Robo Giganto, the boss of the Mech Tower, or what have you. (Witness Dragon Warrior 7, which I spent a few days learning a bunch of class skills in as soon as I got to Dharma Temple, while doing my best to minimize experience growth. (mostly by using Knock Down to kick my enemies out of the fight...) The next few bosses were *really* easy, because I'd spent the time to learn decent attacks and party-healing skills such as HealSong and Hustle... But if I'd spent a day or two less, they'd still have been challenging.) *However,* this does not apply to *special* bosses, such as bosses who are important to the plot, who are indicated by the story to be of legendary status, or who are completely optional. If Siegfried the Dark is the Black Knight of Dunston, and he has defeated all the top knights in the kingdom including the father of the main character, he should not be defeated merely by having one character devoted to healing while the rest attack, even if you're 20 levels higher than you ought to be when you meet him. It should certainly help you out if you've already got a strategy to beat him, but levels should not allow you to ignore the strategy altogether.

It's a long rambling paragraph, and I'm sleepy. Please excuse me if none of that makes any sense. :)

4) I kind of like that idea, since a Stamina Boost spell could conceivably give your characters extra attacks early. I imagine you mean "extra attacks" in an FF1 or FF4 kind of way. Personally, I like sticking it on a stat like that. While it could be argued that training should have something to do with the number of attacks you can do, and thus a fighter should naturally have more attacks than even a mage with 80 stamina, but I would argue that the training allows the warrior to wield a big sword that way instead of the proverbial "dry-rotted stick." Maybe warriors would get one or two *extra* extra attacks at higher levels to reflect such training, but stats should still influence the outcome.

5) If I understand you, the question is a choice between Lunar's "Icon determines general type, but you only find out on the battle screen", CT's "What you see is what you get, and don't bother with the battle screen" or FF Mystic Quest's "Sorry, but you've killed everything. Can't level up any more!" Except that rereading your post, I guess there would be some wandering monsters to fill the place up after you'd gone. Just not as heavily.

I'd say that CT has a more manageable system than Lunar for Verge work. If you move to a new battle screen, you'll have to keep track of which monsters you defeated so far in the current dungeon, so that you can keep from respawning them when you return to the main map. (Neither Silencer's Realms game nor my own P.H.A.G.E. Rhapsody have that anti-respawn property, and you get to suffer when you return to the main map from a battle next to a respawn point, and immediately fight again ad infinitum. Maybe I should simply write some three-second invulnerability code...)
Which do I prefer? I must admit, I only got to play CT on the PS remake, so I didn't know what I'd been missing until then. I'd based PHAGE off of Lunar's monster-touch battles, but if I were redesigning it today I'd probably try a CT engine out. I understand Gurv had one written up a while back, with little propeller-monsters as the test enemies. (I have the demo somewhere...)

-GMW-

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*NT*

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well...

1. yeah, I talk to everybody. Period.

2. Once I spend my precious time leveling up to kill that monster, it better darned well die.

3. Epic boss battles are good. Sometimes I get this urge to raise my stats up to super-saiyajin levels, but I'm usually too lazy to do that, especially in FF, so it helps in the boss adjusts to my stats. Though Lunar forced me to level up. Those dungeons are hard! Plus, adjusting bosses' stats keeps the game interesting.

4. Number of attacks and free movement are good.

5. Go onscreen monsters! Go predefined events!

You know, that battle system idea sounded so much like mine that's it's not funny...heck, I'll just innovate some more...

The Lunar series (and Grandia) kick FF. Waiting for PS2 Lunar3.

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It is not wrong to not understand, for we are all ignorant, but neither is understanding pointless.

Ok, I think I understand your last two questions better now that you posted a clarifiction.

Your idea about stamina is similar to what I've seen in some other games, though they used different names. I think I would prefer it to the fixed # of attacks per round based on level/profession scheme.

I think I got the gist of your last question the first time, but just to clarify my answer: I like your last idea best, where you would have triggered battles, but they are permanently removed from the game once the player fights them (keeping the triggered battles present no matter how many times the player fights it seems annoying to me). Then, have random battles to supplement triggered ones, particularly in areas where the player has already completed all the triggered battles.

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