If a character is going to give up dealing damage for a turn in order to inflict an enemy or ally with a status condition (be it poison, sleep, a buff or debuff), then that status needs to have impact. What is a turn worth to your player? Here is a concept that’s worth thinking about for every skill (and item) that you design in your game: the value of a turn in battle.
If your status effects don’t lead to dealing more damage to the enemy, then the player is wasting a turn to inflict that status. There are lots of ways to build skills that inflict these effects, but it is important to keep in mind the point that I stated in the above section: the end goal of every battle in your game is to deal enough damage to defeat the enemy (barring the occasional gimmicky boss, of course). Most games will have the same basic effects: poison, sleep, paralysis, etc. What you’re doing wrong: clogging up your game with useless skills. This allows you to use your valuable skill slots for things that are a lot more interesting!Īnd please do not have skills that deal damage less than or equal to the amount of damage that would be dealt with a regular attack (obviously elemental-themed enemies or character gimmicks may be an exception here) I’ve played many RPG Maker games where spamming the “attack” command would deal more damage than using the skills. If you balance this properly, your character only needs a single core damage-dealing more per element (maybe one for single targets and one more for hitting all enemies). The way I see it, your character has a MAG (INT/MATK/whatever) stat for a reason: as the character gets stronger, so do his skills.
Rpg maker mv damage formula upgrade#
Personally, I might not even have a new skill to upgrade the original. Nobody wants to spend time scrolling past useless skills in menus. There’s a really easy solution: have the new skill overwrite the original one. The player really never has any incentive to use the first skill (other than potentially a lower MP cost-but that’s rarely relevant). It does a decent amount of damage, but as the player levels up, he gets a second fire skill that is essentially the same thing but does more damage.
Let’s take a look at an example: say that your character has a fireball skill. The problem comes when the designer relies on those skills and is unwilling to expand on them. That’s pretty standard, and I have no problem with that as a core. Each element (fire, water, etc) will typically have a number of skills that deal different amounts of damage-to one enemy or to multiple enemies. The easiest way to design damage-dealing skills is also, unfortunately, the one that most people use. Let’s face it: that’s pretty much the goal of every battle in your game: deal enough damage to defeat the enemy. Most of the skills in your game will deal damage. I’m going to cover a variety of fundamental skill types that show up in most games, and with each one I am going to try and illustrate a different example of some design flaws that I see all the time when it comes to skills in RPGs. That might be a good subject for another article. I’m also not going to cover MP (TP/SP/whatever-you-call-it) costs or balancing. I’m not going to talk about skill trees or any stuff like that-how your characters learn skills doesn’t interest me this article is about the skills themselves and what they do in battle. It’s very easy for a player to get bored with the skills in your game if you aren’t willing to break away from these staples and create some unique abilities for your characters. In most RPGs that I’ve seen, the skills tend to follow a pretty boring formula (typically a formula borrowed from Final Fantasy games): you’ve got skills that deal (or heal) different amounts of damage, to some enemies or all enemies, and you’ve got skills that inflict or cure status effects. There are lots of ways to handle skills in your RPG. When done right, skills can be a lot of fun (for the player and the developer!), but when done wrong they can make an otherwise-good battle system become boring fast. It’s been a while since I’ve written a straightforward article about RPG Design today I want to talk about something that is crucial in most RPGs.