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What Do People Actually Want From Turn-Based (J)RPG Battles?

2 years ago1,548 words

I've spent another week working on this side project thing (which I still haven't decided on a title for), which has got me thinking a lot about what aspects of turn-based battles are actually fun and which are just going through the motions!

I've actually been feeling relatively okay mentally this week, gasp. Since I'd got some inertia going with this side project which it was easier to keep up than it was to switch to something else I probably should be doing instead (CBC port, Atonal Dreams), I worked on this... even though it's not as if anyone's begging me to get to the end with it and it might just turn into another Sindrel Song at best.

(Also, I really need to decide on a title! Frayth has been growing on me, but... still not sure. Belief Battles sounds too basic!)

Anyway! Here's another gameplay video, shorter than the one about a month ago, showing some changes to how skills are executed in battles:




Even though it's only a couple of minutes, my own attention wanders while trying to watch through that, though while actually playing the thing that's not the case. A shame how poorly just watching gameplay captures the experience of being the one actually pressing the buttons.

The main thing I wanted to show with this was the silly, attack-like way that skills or quips or whatever are executed. It's something I've been wanting to do in some project for years - I've written about it in this blog before, somewhere, though I can't find the old post - so it's satisfying to finally see it realised. I personally find it hilariously absurd - still makes me chuckle seeing someone 'Flirt' as if it's some kind of physically damaging assault or whatever - but no doubt mileage will vary.

Over the past couple of weeks, I designed some new character types, so I worked on implementing those this week. What I found was that some of the structural stuff I had for things like skills and levelling up were annoying to work with, so I revised them slightly.



Previously, characters started with maybe two or three skills, but could learn more via a grid of level up bonuses ('boons') unique to that character type (the player character's is shown there). There wasn't any particular number of skills each could learn - like how there's no consistency in the size of Pokemon movepools - and you could equip and unequip skills into slots. Boons could be locked with a minimum level, but I had to enter the numbers manually, so again they wouldn't be consistent across character types. The point was to make each character type unique, with the potential to take it in a direction that suited your play style.



...Which I found tedious to plan and unnecessarily complicated, honestly. So I revised it so that each character now has exactly six skills - which are still unlocked in the same way, you just can't equip or unequip them - and the boon grid requires you to finish one row before moving onto the next.

And I think this is enough. I want this project to be fairly quick and straightforward to make and to play, to make its mark without overstaying its welcome. The whole reason I'm making it is as a side project to get side ideas out there and practise promotion etc.

It's got me thinking though about what I - or anyone else - would actually want from these kinds of battles. The original main influences for my games were Final Fantasy and Pokemon, and the combat in (casual playthroughs of) those typically just involved me using either an Attack command over and over or switching to a Pokemon with a super effective move, which was extremely basic and straightforward, but... enjoyable for me anyway?

I know some people play Pokemon battles competitively where there's way more going on, and comparing to old games isn't the best because they've come a long way since then, but... what exactly do you want from these kinds of battles, if you like them at all?

Would you prefer something where you have to plan strategically and whittle down foes' HP with carefully-chosen skills to eke out a well-earned victory?

Or would you rather use the same couple of reliable actions to mow down hordes of enemies before they can even take a turn?

It's interesting how in these types of games, you have access to a bunch of different methods to tackle battles, but - for me at least - most of them go unused because they're often things like status effects, which average enemies go down too quickly to require and bosses are immune to.

I was also inspired by D&D-based games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights in the beginning, which have more elaborate classes and combat styles, but... I suppose I saw different classes more in terms of aesthetics than actual combat roles, or something? That is, I was sort of blind to or uninterested in concepts like 'DPS' or 'Tank', and it's only in recent years I've even realised they're a thing?

In MARDEK, for example, each of the characters has a different 'class', and to some degree the differences are functional (eg Elwyen's very different combat style), though mostly I just think I came up with damaging skills that were aesthetically flavoured to fit what I thought was the feel of a character's class with no regard for whether they worked as a coherent team of 'combat units'?

...Or something like that. I'm struggling to put into words. I suppose it's because the actual pure 'game' aspect of games has never been what's drawn me to them; I still don't even know how to play chess, and even if I were to learn I can't imagine I'd be good at it. I'm far more interested in the aesthetics and immersion, what with being an ~arty~ person with a dreary reality I'm inclined to seek escape from.

Were I to make MARDEK now, I might give more thought to skillsets and stat distributions, how they could work to support the team and everything (Deugan would explicitly be a tank, for example). I've been trying to do that with this game.

The first thought I had was that I should assign each character type a combat role like DPS or Tank, and design their skills around that. I did a bit of research about what the essential RPG classes are, and found a lot of disagreement and discussion... but settled on these three (I don't want to overcomplicate things):

Persuader - Tries to inflict 'damage'
Defender - Supports the team, heals, attracts attention to self
Manipulator - Works with status conditions

Typically there'd be a distinction made between healer and tank, but I didn't feel it made much sense with the mechanics of this game so they're roughly combined.

I don't know whether these classes would be made explicit in the game, or whether I'll just use them to guide my design of the characters' skills. That's all they determine anyway (currently, at least). Since each character has exactly six skills, those I'm considering to be 'Persuaders' might have three or four that are pure 'damage' and two status/cheer skills (the latter being skills that trigger while the character is 'in the crowd'), Defenders might have mostly healing/buff skills, and manipulators might have mostly debuffs. And since there are six character types per area, I've been trying to balance the distribution of roles (not exactly two of each per area, but I've at least been avoiding things like making all character types for an area Persuaders or whatever).

I suppose I'm only really mentioning all this because it might be the first time I've really given much thought to these aspects of game design, and that's odd? Or maybe I have thought about this in the past but I just can't remember; my memory is quite poor these days.



I've been playing a lot of Tears of the Kingdom again, and that game is all about giving you many ways to solve any given problem, which might be partly why I've been wondering about all this. The comparison between the limitations of that game and mine is quite a severe one!

But oh well. I also find it frustrating how some games try to do and be everything, honestly. As much as I love TotK, already I'm getting to the point where I'd rather be done with it - though I'm not even close - so I can move on with my life. There's just too much to do, and I don't have enough time.

So one of the big aims of this project will be to have something that doesn't ask for too much of your time to achieve 100% completion... though I suppose that's been the plan for ages so I've probably said that before!



Also, I've still not heard back regarding counselling. Ugh. Maybe I'll need to reach out to them - or someone else - again?