Tips for a better RPG: Battles

[Rodpop]

Yes, I took the time to remake my classic Ultima Island tutorial, and I re-wrote a ton and added lots of new points. I know it's not quite as good as FINISHING A PROJECT DAMMIT, but it should hopefully be an entertaining and informing read.



In this article, I'll discuss one of the most important parts of any RPG game: battles. Think back to when you first played Final Fantasy 6 (or any other SNES RPG, really). Remember how many battles you fought? That's right, there were too many to count!

Striking a balance with your battles can make or break any RPG. While many innovations can be taken in this important area, here are a few general tips that can elevate a game's status from repetitive to fun.

1. Lower the encounter rate.

I've been around the community for a decent amount of time, and I won't be the first to tell you that random encounters have destroyed many games made with the Makers. Unless you seriously look into this aspect of your game, it could fall into a similar fate.

Unless you have a very small room or something to that effect, the default 25 steps for a room is far too little for any gamer. Making battles occur less often should be a given at this point, but the extent varies depending on the size and scope of your room.

If you are in a very linear style dungeon that doesn't stray far from the main path (I'd say about a 50 X 50 room), you might get away with setting the encounter rate to around 65 steps. For a more non-linear or larger room, try something more like 80 - 90 steps. If your dungeon has a lot of backtracking, you might want to take that into consideration too. Obviously the same rules don't apply to a room where the number of steps take is much larger than normal. World maps should have the rate changed to over 100. The focus of traveling on the map shouldn't really be fighting, right?

Having an encounter rate too low, as far as I know, has never been an issue in a RPG Maker game. On the other hand, you might be going overboard if the player can go through a whole room multiple times and not hit a single battle. Keep in mind, however, that your players probably will not know what exact routes to take, thus may take a few more steps than you do.

1.5. Touch Encounters

You might be saying to yourself "BUT I DON'T HAVE RANDOM ENCOUNTERS! I HAVE TOUCH ENCOUNTERS AND THEREFORE AM EXEMPT!" You're right to a certain extent. Touch encounters do give players the freedom to fight or retreat from battles on their own time, but that doesn't mean you can infest your forest with 50 black goblin sprites every map. Many RPG players are perfectionists, so they'll try to fight all of your battles that you throw at them. Think of it this way: How many battles do you want the player to fight in a given screen? Put in roughly that many touch encounter sprites.

Also, this is one of my pet peeves, so you don't have to listen to this one if you don't want to. Setting all your touch encounters to "move toward hero" is only interesting for so long, and it doesn't allow for the best situations. Enemies on the other side of the map usually get stuck on rocks and the like, so they all collect in one area. You didn't want the hero to not see a single monster and then see 8 gathered around a rock, did you?

2. Make battles quick!

Another thing that can kill a RPG Maker game (although a little more forgivable if the encounter rate is particularly low) is having battles that take forever. On average, a random encounter should not be a long and drawn out process; it should be quick exciting. If you think about it, your heroes would be absolutely exhausted by the boss if they had a blown out duel 20 times a dungeon.

How should you measure out how long battles go? I'd say if a monster doesn't die in two rounds of attacks (unless it is alone) then it takes too long. Unless you plan on putting your mages to work, in which case spells should do decent damage and should be encouraged to use (Example; don't make it so three castings and you're out of magic).

3. Make players think!

This goes for both random encounters and boss battles alike. Games that are mindless are boring, and you don't want a boring game by any means. Add in some elemental weaknesses and weapon types and what-not so battles aren't a matter of pressing enter. For example, say your mage knows a fire and ice spell, since you're fighting a ice monster, make it weak against fire!

Another thing to consider could also be a way of grouping monsters that are defeated easily with strategy. Perhaps group a weak healer with a strong fighter... it would be logical to defeat the healer before the fighter, right? Just little things like this make battles worlds different... and not just a mindless affair.

To enlarge the amount of possibilities for battle strategy, try to avoid giving your characters one or two skills. If your warriors have no skills and your mage basically one fire spell that keeps getting modified to cost more damage and use more MP as the game goes on, then what good is that? Let's say, for example, that your mage knows a Fire spell, a (good) Speed Up spell, and a Poison spell. Should the mage increase the speed of the party, or will the battle be over for the spell to really be useful? Should the mage risk using magic to see if the poison spell works on your foes? See the different types of strategy that has evolved? That's only with adding two spells for one character! Mix and match characters and spells for endless strategies.

4. Battles in puzzle rooms

If a room involves some sort of puzzle that require a lot of thinking, then please turn off the battles. Players can and will get frustrated if they are remembering that a block goes in spot A and fight a slime twice on the way there. If you really don't want to get rid of battles in such a room, try to compromise. Perhaps make it so, if the player stands on certain tiles that makes the puzzle easier, they will have to fight a battle as punishment. There! Now the player can choose where they want to concentrate.

5. Strike a balance!

No one likes a game that's too hard. This is mainly because "hard" games usually translates into "power level for an hour just to stand a chance against a boss." If players have to power level, they chances are you can kiss your audience good bye.

However, games that are too easy aren't that much fun either. Anyone who played Final Fantasy 1 on the Game Boy Advance knows what I'm talking about. Even if the game is awesome otherwise, bosses that can be beaten with three normal attacks really makes things lame. Even Hercules had trouble fighting some of his foes, and... he's Hercules!

In the world of balance, you don't want your game to be too easy or too hard; you want it to be juuuuust right. How do you do this?

Keep in mind that the game should begin on the easy side and end on the hard side. However, unless the player has 10 HP or something, don't start off the game with Orc monsters that deal 1 or no damage per turn. The same should certainly not apply to later dungeons. Make it so you actually have some noticeable damage done per battle, but not so much that you have to use all your magic and items to win. At the same time, avoid any SUPER AWESOME SPELLS that can wipe out weak characters per turn. Then that's too hard.

Remember that a hard battle can still be a fun battle if done right. If your game is too easy, don't look to increase enemy HP first, as that usually means prolonged battles. Try increasing Attack, Speed, or perhaps throw in an innovation of your own. Making games IS about creativity after all.

6. Rewards!

So you finished fighting a battle, and you get... 1 EXP and 2 gold, and you need 6000 EXP to level up. Don't you hate it when that happens?

Battles should reward the player with a noticeable amount of EXP and other goodies. If they don't, then after a while the player will start to spam the "run" command.

At the same time, no battle should give you enough gold to buy out the armory and EXP to gain 2 levels. That makes the game too easy, and we've already went over what happens to easy games. Once again, striking a balance is key. Also, it should become progressively, yet slightly harder to gain levels and what-not as time goes on. Don't think the player should keep gaining 5 levels per dungeon if that went on in the beginning. Besides, if you did that, you'd be at RPG Maker's level cap in no time!

One thing many games look over is item drops. It's way too awkward when slimes in the beginning drop potions and that's the only item ever seen from monsters for the rest of the game. Giving some unique items and weapons to monsters makes encounters that much more fun and exciting.



That's all with my advice for RPG battles. I'm not saying anything I say is absolute and must be followed, but I do suggest that you consider my points. It doesn't take a genius to make a great game, so even you can produce the next big thing.

[superrainbowsonic]

Good tutorial. I follow many of the points usually, but some points you give (especially in Touch-encounters) helped me as well.

[REDDAP]

Excellent tutorial, definitely a great read for the average newbie, although common knowledge for veterans. Also, I'd like to add a bit more. Don't just give your monsters a bunch of commands and have it all set to no precondition, priority 50. Alright, you can do this with earlier monsters that only have attack and one other skill, but as you progress through the game, you want to give your enemies more strategy. This can also fit in to your battle strategies. Say you make a monster use a more powerful skill when it's alone-you'd want to kill it first, right? For example, here's monster that I programmed into Chapter 5 of RPGM2KBRPG! that has it's own battle strategy, as well as you needing a strategy to fight it. Basically, it will use a medium powered attack on the whole party. After 5 turns, it will run out of MP and explode, dealing fairly large damage to the whole party. It has really high defense and HP and takes less damage from pretty much all forms of damage. However, it is possible to shut it down without it exploding. It is very, very weak to all status effects. Use Mattdark to your advantage by putting them to sleep, poisoning them, and killing off the other enemies before you concentrate on them. Or you can drain it's MP to make it explode early.

[Rodpop]

Damn, that's another good point that I missed. I'm almost tempted to stealth add.

[Zephyr Runeglyph]

It seems like you stayed up all night coming up with a fight that Mattdark would be useful in.

Screw him, Carrie's better. Mass sleep/confusion FTW.

[REDDAP]

Well, you can do that, but you may not have Carrie with you in the fight! HAHAHAHAHA!

[Knight of Eonia]

Read: He's forcing you to use Mattdark and three other guys.

[superrainbowsonic]

Oh dear god no.

[REDDAP]

Yes, Mattdark is in chapter 5...POSSIBLY FOR THE LAST TIME! MUA HA HA HA HA!

[superrainbowsonic]

*Throws a massive party*

[SC10]

Another point:

Actually, the amount of encounters isn't just effected by the Encounter Rate you put in. If there are more enemy groups, there will also be a higher rate of encounters. For example, Jay's Journey uses a rate of 25-30 most of the time, but because he doesn't have many monster groups for each area, it still works perfectly.

[Rodpop]

I never knew that, to be honest. I'd figure that more enemy groups would be good since it lowers the repetition, so you'd have to balance that out with making the encounter rate less frequent than normal.

Learn something new every day... thanks for that.

[REDDAP]

Wow...I did not know that. That's pretty crazy, and probably makes getting into an encounter rate every 1-2 steps when the rate is 25 make sense. *Bumps encounter rate in Darrelon Cave up a litte*

[Knight of Eonia]

I did. It's in the help file. >_>

I was looking at it for the only area in the Chain Game I used Random Encounters. Well, maybe I used two, but I can't remember off the top of my head. Still makes it a bit harder to balance out.

That's why I plan on Touch Encounters myself.

[superrainbowsonic]

Touch encounters? You mean like in Bob's Big Adventure?