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Making Stat effects matter Displaying 1-4 of 4 total.
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pietr
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Hey everbody. One idea I had for a game I'm working on is to make all status ailments on characters permanent, until healed. This means that you could be walking around with multiple HookRendered effects going on.
I just wanted to get some opinions on whether or not these effects are not *too* annoying, and if so, maybe suggestions for othr effects.
Poison - Classic effect ala Breath of Fire, screen appears to pulse using Mosaic function. Turned on if any party member is poisoned.
Darkness - The screen is tinted *way* down, and the chances of encounters are increased. Only if Party Leader is affected.
Confuse - I'm not too sure about this one. It's currently just motion blur, using RageCage's Blur Library, but I did think about replacing all NPCs with a generic chicken chr or something. :/ Only if Party Leader is affected.
Other ailments would only affect the menus and such (i.e Silence = can't use that character's spells, Paralyze = that character can't be selected as Party Leader).
Maybe these ailments could also have effects associated with them (silence = speech bubble with ellipses over char's head, paralyze = chr is greyscale with movement speed set to 0)? I dunno, I just really dislike the idea of ailments vanishing at the end of a fight.
Posted on 2009-08-07 01:41:38
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Kildorf
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Some of these (especially darkness) sound pretty annoying, but I would argue that this is the point for harmful status effects!
Some suggestions I have, offhand, if you really want to do this... some of these might not really be worth the trouble they would be though.
- For extra annoying old-school Confuse effect you could swap the directional buttons; left would make you walk right, etc.
- Slow seems like an obvious choice too; just slow the walking speed of the party down.
- Silence could also prevent you from talking to NPCs. This might be a hassle for you as the developer, and you'd still have to let them use shops so that they could buy the "cure silence" item.
- What about a "frog" spell or something, where the characters get turned into some sort of animal or monster? They could then frighten villagers or maybe even prompt attacks from guards or something. You might even lose control of the characters momentarily as the monster-instincts kick in and they decide they need to chase down and eat some hapless passerby. Again, there'd be lots of extra stuff for you to build (what if they kill the guards? etc.)
- In Final Fantasy 3 (original 3, not 6) there was a lot of mischief they got into with a "Mini" status effect; there was a whole dungeon that you had to do that you couldn't even enter if you weren't shrunk down with Mini. I thought that was kind of neat, and not a terrible idea to pilfer!
Anyway, one thing about status effects going away at the end of the battle is the question: How easy is it to get rid of the status effects?
If it's hard or expensive, then you have to consider that a player could be stuck this way for quite some time and it could seriously disrupt the game if it happened a lot.
If it's easy or cheap, why make the player have to open up their menu, select the item or spell, and use it, when you can just clear them automatically for them? I think this is sort of the idea that most modern RPGs use -- the player's just going to use one of their 50 antidotes anyway, why not just let them skip that step?
Anyway, that doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad idea, just keep it in mind. It is true that a lot of games feel like they included status effects as an afterthought and they have little bearing on what happens, so there's no real reason to bother trying to put them on the enemy OR to bother curing them (except really bad ones like petrify or death or whatever), so it's cool to see someone trying to make them a more important part of the game.
By the way, I like the prospect of game-mechanic discussions on the boards, so thanks for bringing this up! And also, welcome to Verge. Don't be shy, and when you've got something to show off let us all see it! :)
Posted on 2009-08-07 07:02:10 (last edited on 2009-08-07 07:51:11)
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Kryptonite803
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Well, there are a few things as I understand them about Mini and Frog and stuff, but this may be getting pretty nitpicky.
First, Mini is self-explanatory -- It makes characters small. Thus, all power and defenses go down significantly.
Then there is Transform -- turning the character into something useless like a chicken or sheep. You could accompany this condition with some extraordinarily high stat like stamina or speed just to make it interesting.
After there is Silence -- Again self-explanatory, but I like where Kildorf was headed with this.
Finally there is something like Frog -- I always thought of this as a high level spell of particular annoyance because it's like combining all the previous spells into one. Your character is small and helpless, transformed into a worthless creature, and often times silenced from doing anything because of being a frog.
That's my picky two cents about what some status effects are, but seeing as you are the one designing the game, you can make them whatever you want :)
In addition, I would like to see some other statuses like:
Curse -- Either puts a timer on a character. When the timer reaches 0, the character dies (or KO, however you want it to work). This can either go until the end of the battle, where by destroying the creature that cast it destroys the spell, OR the curse can be ongoing and you have to have an item or find someone to remove it.
Another spin on Curse I've seen is more like Jynx, where either an item is permanently stuck to a character or acts like silence on one action. I think this would be a more ideal candidate for a status that would last after battle and need something for it.
Stone -- Ok, one of my most hated statuses in RPGs, a creature casts it and your character instantly turns to stone. Often requires a special item to heal with. As for after a battle, I don't know how to want to work that. Maybe the party is now the equivalent of "Slow" because they have to lug this giant stone statue with them.
You may also want some status effects that help your party, like Haste.
Hope this helps a little bit and not confuse.
Posted on 2009-08-07 12:16:28
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pietr
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Thanks for the replies and ideas. As far as the point that stat ailments could force the player to constantly go in and out of menus, I would plan to make them rare occurences. This would be coupled with a *much* lower cap on how much of each item can be carried (say 20 or so).
Also, the idea about certain story elements being available through stat ailments was *exactly* where I planned to go with this. One part of the story would mean getting entry to a temple of blind guys, and to pass yourself off as blind you need to be inflicted with Darkness.
Quote:Originally posted by Kildorf
- For extra annoying old-school Confuse effect you could swap the directional buttons; left would make you walk right, etc.
You can do this? I thought that you could only reassign b1-b4. If this is possible, then that would be exactly the effect I'd use.
EDIT: Never mind, just did it. I have no idea why I thought you couldn't change the directions.
Posted on 2009-08-07 16:09:05 (last edited on 2009-08-07 20:13:41)
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