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sockori · 3 years

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The Akatsuki But. Pokémon (1)

Not trainers, not preexisting Pokémon- but Pokémon themselves. I mean, Kishimoto’s original plan for them was to all be monsters- so why not reimagine them as pocket monsters?

(Notes: - Covers Pein, Konan, Zetsu, and Obito. - All have at least one ability made up by me (except Obito). - Uses it/its pronouns to reference canon Pokédex descriptions. - Stat totals were written down- but removed to save up post space. Replaced with general description. - I added Mega Evolutions to this for fun, but not the other generation gimmicks. - I don’t have any designs atm, so just uh... imagine they’re something cool. )

Pein

(The God Pokémon)

(The Sage Pokémon)

Type: Psychic

Abilities (1): Pressure (classic legendary ability)

“By putting pressure on the opposing Pokémon, it raises their PP usage.”

Hidden Ability: Almighty Push

“Raises base power of spread moves by 30%.”

Pokedex Entries (1,2):

After the strange disappearances of the Pokémon Nagato and Yahiko, this mysterious but godly presence took their place. Alongside the serene Konan, it guards the sacred lands of the Rain, acting as leader of a mysterious group of Pokémon.

This legendary Pokémon possesses the bewildering power of controlling attractive and repulsive forces in the natural world. These powerful Psychic abilities are destructive- able to wipe away entire cities with just one push.

Mega Evolution

Pein has no Mega Evolution. Instead, it takes on various different forms, like Deoxys can. These forms are the Six Paths of Pain, of course, all with various types according to the Path (all with the base type of Psychic). Pein’s base Deva Path form can only be changed outside of battle, and remains permanent within it.

I’ll be very brief with it. I tried not to repeat type combos but it was super tough.

Deva Path: Psychic; Sp. Atk + Speed Offense

Asura Path: Psychic/Steel; Physical Defensive Bulk (defensive, but slow)

Human Path: Psychic/Ghost; Special Defensive Bulk

Animal Path: Psychic/Normal; Atk + Speed Offense

Preta Path: Psychic/Dragon; Sp. Def + Def Wall

Naraka Path: Psychic/Dark; Atk + Sp. Atk Rounded

Konan

(the Angel Pokémon)

(the Origami Pokémon)

Type: Psychic/Flying (Really wanted to make her fairy type ngl. Pastel goth. But Psychic suits her powers.)

Abilities (1): Serene Grace

“Boosts the likelihood of additional effects occurring when attacking.“

Hidden Ability: Paper Veil

“Protects self and ally Pokémon from weather damage.” General Stats: Emphasis on Special Attack and Special Defense.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

This mysterious Pokémon dutifully protects the lands of Rain, vowing to guard the territory with its life. It brings beauty and prosperity to the region, as well as terrifying power- eliminating those who disturb it without mercy.

Konan is idolized in the lands of the Rain for its haunting grace and intelligence. It has an unusual power involving paper, able to bend it and shape it however it pleases. It uses this strange, versatile paper as a deadly weapon in battle.

Mega Evolution

Type: Psychic/Flying

Mega Ability: Gale Wings

“Gives priority to Flying-type moves.”

Stat Boosts: Speed is raised significantly. Special Defense and Special Attack receive additional but smaller boosts.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

The Pokémon harnesses its Psychic power to its full potential, causing it to materialize into paper, sprouting large, angelic wings out of its backside. It becomes partially indestructible, easily reassembling itself from paper after taking a serious attack.

The sheer Psychic power it harnessed mid-transformation causes it to hover off of the ground by will of flight. The large, angelic wings are a shield as well as a weapon, able to rain sharpened paper feathers down on the opponent in just one gust.

Zetsu

(The Split Pokémon)

(The Mutated Pokémon)

Type: Grass

(Could’ve added Psychic or Dark but. I like pure grass for him.)

Abilities (1): Regenerator

“Restores a little HP when withdrawn from battle.”

Hidden Ability: DNA Transfer

“Upon fainting, the Pokémon transfers its stat changes to the next Pokémon sent out.” (Guaranteed Baton Pass.)

General Stats: Highest in HP. Centered around Defense and Special Defense.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

An odd combination of two minds, this strangely mutated Pokémon was extracted from a large, mystical tree thousands of years ago, now aiding the mysterious Masked Pokémon with their deeds. It is said that the White side is friendly and chatty, whilst the Black side is stoic and quiet.

This split-personality Pokémon generally wishes to stay outside of battle, much preferring to aid its allies than join in on the combat. It can pass on its strange regenerative abilities to its team by attaching itself to them physically. Rumor has it that it can also drain others of their power too, devouring them whole.

Mega Evolution

Personally, I don’t see Zetsu having a Mega Evolution- mostly because of its main role as a support (Mega Evolutions are usually reserved for offensive power). Also, Zetsu is commonly seen attached to other fighters in the series, which really doesn’t make any sense in the context of a Mega? Maybe it has a variation where it's one of those Duel Pokemon forms- like Spectrier/Glastrier and Calyrex. I’ll leave that up to you.

Tobi / Obito

(The Masked Pokémon)

(The ????? Pokémon)

Type: Ghost/Normal

Abilities (1): Prankster

“Gives priority to a status move.“

Hidden Ability: ?????

General Stats: Large emphasis on Speed, slightly on Attack. Defenses are relatively low.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

A happy-go-lucky Pokémon that lives in the shadow of the Rain region. It takes its sweet time annoying the Explosive Deidara, following them around nonstop, much to the Pokémon’s dismay and anger.

A relatively cheerful face against the more solemn Pokémon of the group led by Pein. Its optimistic nature is certainly infectious, though there’s just something... A little bit off about it. Just a little bit.

Mega Evolution

(The Vengeful Pokémon)

Type: Ghost/Fighting

Mega Ability: Infiltrator “Passes through the opposing Pokémon's barrier, substitute, and the like and strikes.” (Obito was tough to create an ability for. If you have any fancy ideas, feel free to share.)

Stat Boost: Massive increase to Attack and Speed. Minor increases all around, Defenses going up just a bit higher than the others.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

The once happy-go-lucky mask is removed, revealing the secrets beneath: a torn, Vengeful Pokémon once thought to be gone, looking to bring the end of the world. A phantom of the past, it radiates a strong, ghostly energy that is vindictive, bitter- and sorrowful.

Unforgiving of the past, this reawakened Pokémon passes from dimension to dimension organizing its plan to end the world using its strange ability to manipulate time and space. It summons black holes, drawing in anything in its path- where everything ends up is widely unknown.

#naruto #naruto shippuden #akatsuki #naruto akatsuki #pein #konan #zetsu #obito #obito uchiha #crossover #dramatically drops this on the ground. oops spilled my self-indulgent project #watch as I expose myself as a competitive Pokémon player #this was a super fun project thats been in the works for a super long time. and there's loads more info attached to it #signature pokemon moves- stats- movesets #i left most of it out to save space though. but if you want to hear about it feel free to ask

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rat-game · 4 years

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“It’s just pressing ‘A’ a bunch of times”: How to make turn-based JRPG Combat engaging

Abstract

In recent years many games have modified the formula that constitutes the turn-based jrpg combat systems in an effort to make the experience more engaging for players. In this article I first provide an exhaustive definition of what makes a games combat “turn-based jrpg combat” through a set of necessary properties. Additional properties that are commonly found yet not necessary are mentioned. An argument for how combat systems like this may inherently run the risk of not being engaging for plays is brought forward and multiple methods game developers have tried to solve this in the past are analyzed and evaluated: adding complexity, adding mechanical challenge through QTEs, adding visual flair, adding a gimmick and adding depth. It’s concluded that the optimal approach is using all of those methods in moderation while trying to avoid the pitfalls they come with.

I feel like in recent years game developers have come to regard turn-based JRPG combat in it’s purest form as inherently flawed. Many feel like they need to innovate, otherwise modern audiences will get bored, won’t feel engaged and play a more action-oriented or real-time strategy game instead. I would like to challenge this perception, explain ways how modern devs have tried to solve this problem.

What is turn-based combat?

First I want to define what I mean by “turn-based JRPG combat” (”tb combat” henceforth for the sake of brevity). This is not an easy task as most people will resort to an ostensive definition, naming games like Final Fantasy 7 and 3 (aka. 6), most of the Dragon Quest games, Mother 2 and 3, Suikoden, Chrono Trigger, Xenoblade, Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario, Pokémon, etc.. I agree that all of these are indeed JRPGs with turn-based combat but they’re also diverse enough that finding the least common denominator for these is anything but trivial. I think it is useful to give a well-defined description of each part that makes up the combat of games like these so I can refer to them with a general term later on. A game can be devided into what’s called scenes. Note that these are unlike scenes like those in movies or books, instead a scene in game development is a reoccurring state for whom layout, input-handling and other in-universe as well as algorithmic rules are defined. In JRPG there are often at least 3 scenes: the overworld scene is where the players moves their character, interacts with NPCs, enters houses, etc. The menu scene is where inventory managing is done, often different parameters about the game are displayed and equipment may be sold or equipped. A combat scene, then, represents the act of fighting something or someone in an abstract way. In Final Fantasy while in a designated overworld area the game may trigger a battle, encounter or what I will call “combat”. The entire layout changes, moving the cursor now selects an attack or enemy or an item instead of moving a character, you can only control the characters indirectly by selecting attacks or other such action and part of the screen has a menu from which to select these actions.

Figure 1: Boss battle against Ultros, Final Fantasy 6 (1994, SNES)

It is necessary for each entity participating in combat to have the same set of “stats”. A stat of any type such as a number of string or anything, really, is a property that can be interacted with through game mechanics while inside the battle scene. An easy example is Health (”HP”), usually all enemies and allies will have a number representing their health, dealing damage to an entity lowers this number, healing raises it. If the number reaches 0 the entity dies. Other examples of stats may include Mana or Action Points (”AP”), Attack, Defense, Speed, the name of the entity, etc.. I will consider the property (boolean) of wether or not a entity is an enemy or ally as a stat as well [1]. It is vital that each entity has the same set of stats, though some games may obfuscate them (such as the player not knowing how much AP the enemy has left). While this seems functionally indistinguishable from the entity not actually having the stat, this is not the case. It becomes important when considering abilities: an ability is any action that interacts with stats of any entity (or none). Since all entities have the same set of stats theoretically any ability could be executed by any entity. In my opinion this is a vital part of tb combat and all of the games commonly considered tb JRPG combat share this property [2]. If the player sees an enemy using an ability it will seem fair, they know that there’s a chance that they may get a similar ability later in game and more importantly, they know every entity is playing by the same rules. Later on I will discuss why this is extremely important for an engaging experience. A turn is a unit of measurements of arbitrary length. Each combat scene has to have the possibility of having at least <number of different entities> many turns. During a turn exactly one of the entities may choose an action such as using an ability or item, defending themself, fleeing, etc.. It is not imperative that entities may only act (that is choose an action) during a turn though most games follow this rule. Often the order of turns (the order of who acts before whom) depends on one or more stats or another property of the world or how the battle was started. For example in Pokémon the pokemon with the highest speed stat acts first but there are also abilities that make entities ignore this rule and always act first or even reverse the order of turns. In final fantasy and chrono trigger one of the stats of the entities is slowly rising, if the precentage bar is full entity may choose to act (c.f. figure 1, grey bar on the lower right of the screen) . This makes the order, length and number of turns flexible and the time in-between turns arbitrarily long (usually enemies act as soon as they are ready but the player can theoretically not start a turn until the battle ends), yet the turns still behave like in other tb combat systems. To summarizes, the combat scene of a game is considered “turn-based JRPG combat”, iff

all of the entities (both enemies and allies) have the same set of stats

the battle is divided into turns during which

abilities serve as a way to represent abstract combat, choosing abilities is the main gameplay

To finish of this section I’d like to give kind of a quick-fire round of properties that are commonly found in tb combat but that I don’t consider strictly necessary:

One of the stats is a “status” one or multiple out of a fixed number of them. Being afflicted with a certain status may have effects on the entity or the battle as a whole. For example a poisoned entity may loose HP over time, being stunned makes it so they can’t act during your turn, etc.. Being dead or knocked out may also be considered a status, it’s effect is being unable to act until resurrected.

Allies and Enemies can die or be knocked out (usually when their HP reaches 0). A dead enemy is removed from the battle, cannot be further interacted with unless resurrected. If either all enemies or all allies die the battle ends in a win- or fail-state respectively.

There is a visual representation of each entity such as sprites, names along with numbers or something similar (c.f. Figure 1). Resolving an ability has a visual representation, usually either an animation or sometimes just the changing of displayed numbers as damage is dealt.

Some of the abilities are instead considered “items”. These usually act as a one-time-use abilities, each entity may have a shared or individual inventory that contains multiple of these items. If one is used in combat it may vanish from the inventory, so for example if you have 3 bombs, using one in combat it will deal damage much like a regular ability would but instead of costing AP one will vanish from the inventory so only 2 are left. I refer to items acting this way as “usable items” (or “usables”)

Interaction with the game may be a lot more complex than just selecting something from a menu. This includes QTEs to block or attack, button combinations instead of selecting attacks, etc.. I will discuss these in a future section.

Winning the battle will reward the player party with experience or gold both of which may unlock new abilities or something similar outside of battle.

The set of entities may change over the course of the battle. This includes switching out team members, creating new ones (”spawning) with abilities or more entities joining for story reasons or something similar.

The combat scene itself may have certain properties. Examples include weather effects like rain, sandstorms or hail that apply a (de)buff or damage periodically. There may even be examples where the property breaks some of the rules of combat, for example an enemy attacking immediately after being struck outside of their turn. I will refer to these as “hazards”

An entities stats are dependent on their equipment, equipment are usually items that may be associated with a character by equipping them from the inventory outside of combat. For example equipping a metal helmet may grant the wearer more defense while equipping a magic ring will increase their magic power. Equipment systems can be very important to a game but if they can’t be engaged with during battle they are not technically part of it. An example of them being able to be interacted with are Pokémons held items.

Abilities may interact with each other. For example one ability may freeze an entity and another ability shatters them. In chrono trigger the players party members can team up for a single stronger attack that is dependent on who the participants are.

This list is not exhaustive, while the core axioms of the definition may not be diverged from, other aspects of the battle systems are hugely varied.

Realizing the Problem

Now that we have the technical stuff out of the way, let’s talk game design. There are two inherent complication to tb combat and they’re on the opposite side of a spectrum. For the sake of argument lets assume the difficulty is fixed at a certain level, no matter what mechanics exist or how they’re implemented. If tb combat is either too simple (that is the game requires little effort in understanding and applying the combats mechanics during strategizing) or too complex (that is understand and applying is too hard) it will result in the player having a bad experience. Why is that? Tb combat by nature is not mechanically challenging (at least in it’s basic form). Furthermore tb combat inherently contains a lot of actions that will be repeated over and over such as a entity loosing health, the player scrolling through a list, selecting which character to target, etc.. Tb combat has to rely on the mental aspect of it to be sufficiently challenging, even though a player may repeat a small set of actions hundreds of times if they have to think hard which action to pick when and strategize to solve the potentially extremely complex problems it will make for an engaging experience. It’s like doing homework for a subject that is really interesting to you, it’s fun to think about what to write, the act of writing itself is not. Similarly it’s fun to think about what actions to pick when and how to equip your characters and predicting what the enemy may do, selecting the options from a menu is not. If a tb combat system is too simple the player will spend most of the time not thinking about trying to come up with a solution, they will be stuck mindlessly doing the “writing things down” (pressing A) part. Because of the mathematical nature of interactions it’s also very easy to make a tb combat system too complex, if there’s hundreds of variables and interactions all going on at the same time the player won’t be able to solve or even understand the problem. If they can’t they again can only mindlessly press A. This is also why the fact that all entities have the same set of stats is so important, if the player is able to assume that they can strategize around all the entities playing by the same rules. They will know what the enemies abilities do and how they will affect other entities. If this symmetrical nature of combat is not present, the player will have trouble strategizing as suddenly everything can happen. This again leads to the player not being mentally challenged, all that’s left is pressing A.

How to Fix it

Naturally one will ask: How do we fix that? In my observation there are multiple approaches that are not mutually exclusive. I will explain which of these game devs took, why, and wether or not it can be successful:

i) Adding Complexity

Figure 2: Third party program for predicting damage dealt by one attack during a pokemon battle in Pokémon Sun & Moon (3DS, 2019)

This may be the most popular approach and can be observed in many well-reviewed successful games: If a simple battle system doesn’t engage the players, just add more. More mechanics, more abilities, more enemies, more items, more everything. A good example for this is the pokemon games. The game started out with about 150 pokémon, 4 stats, 15 types, no held items and 165 abilities (“moves”). Now, almost 15 years later we’re at 800 moves, 800+ pokemon, 18 types and countless new mechanics such as new hidden stats, held items, z-moves, mega-evolutions, etc.. I am not faulting pokémon for taking this route, one could argue it fits well with the collection aspect of that game but relating to pokémons combat specifically I think this more-is-better approach is anything but optimal. Side-Effects of using this approach are:

Redundancy: There are only so many good ideas to go around, once you go past that amount mechanics will be redundant. Pokemon may fullfill the same role, a move may have an objectively better version making it completely superfluous.

Readability: More things means more for the player to learn. This isn’t only related to tutorials, to truly be strategic and play at their best, players will have to learn bascially every move, every pokémon, every mechanic. Players who don’t won’t be able to strategize and as discussed above, this will decrease engagement.

Development Effort: This is not technically relevant to the player but more things means more chances for bugs to appear and obviously more work both as a programm, designers an artist.

Balancing: More moving parts means more interaction which makes balancing even harder. The recent pokémon generation cut almost half of all available pokemon citing the above mention growing workload and balance issues. All of the most well-balanced games from chess to star craft have one thing in common: they have as few pieces as possible.

All in all I think increasing the complexity when you think your battle system isn’t engaging past a certain point is rarely a good idea. Games that have a story-reason or collection aspect may still profit from this approach. I also want to make clear that adding complexity inherently is value-neutral. In my opinion every game needs a minimum of complexity to not be overly simple but I see many games taking the route of adding just more complexity past a certain point triggering the side-effects.

(Other games that used this complexity approach are: Suikoden and it’s 99 party members, dragon quest and it’s many monsters and equipment, earthbound with all it’s weird status effects and hidden enemy weaknesses. Note how most of these games are still amazing games but in my opinion their tb combat system would’ve been a lot better if they turned down the complexity a little) ii) Adding Mechanical Challenge

Figure 3: Action Command in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (2003, GBA)

If the game isn’t engaging enough it’s not mentality challenged so the only thing left is pressing A which isn’t fun, why not make pressing A fun then? Many RPGs have gone about this by introducing timing or quick-time-event (”qte”) based mechanics tied to many game actions. Often during the attack animation a player will be tasked to hit a qte, if they fail the damage the attack may be redudde. Similarly there may be an additional input needed to defend, to flee, do certain attacks or sometimes even navigate the menu. Adding mechanical challenge will shift a tb combat system from something very abstract to something closer to resembling an action game. Games like the Mario RPG Series or Undertale have done this too great effect to the point where their battle systems only superficially resemble tb combat. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it exemplifies my main issue with this: making the player allocate mental resources towards mechanical challenge will have to necessarily take away from the strategizing part. Again this isn’t bad or good, it simply changes the game, people who like action games will like this version of tb combat better, people who like strategizing will like it worse. Either way it’s a fact that games who went this route were highly successful and loved by many, sometimes even opening the target-audience so that some people who dislike most tb combat games will still play one that’s action-focused. I personally think the adding qtes is a valuable tool but going too far in that direction may take away from the original appeal of tb combat. Interestingly there is another option here, making the original way of interacting with the game more engaging while not adding any additional qtes or inputs: time limits. Limiting a players time in some way will make navigating menus more stressful and thus challenging. Time limit don’t necessarily have to be a ticking clock, a soft time limit such as Final Fantasies “active time battle” introduces the time limit in a way that doesn’t feel stressful yet rewards quick actions navigating the menus. [4] iii) Adding Flair

Figure 4: Animation for using a simple AoE slash attack in Octopath Traveler (Switch, 2019)

This option includes a wide selection of methods. While complexity focuses on the purely mental aspect and qtes focus on the purely mechanical aspect, adding flair will focus on the audio-visual one. The vast majority of time spend in tb combat will be watching menus and animations of the enemies moving, dying, attacks playing out, winning, etc.. Flair is not limited to visuals however, similarly adding music or even narrative elements will make the “watching things play out” part of tb combat a lot more enjoyable. Once again there is a trade-off here, if combat is too flashy the game may run the risk of reducing readability and making things hard to parse. Another common negative side-effect of this is that actions take too long to resolve because a lengthy animation has to play out. As flashy and stimulating as it may be watching the animation for the first time, if it takes 10s to finish and you will have to watch it hundreds of times it’s a good idea to give the player the option to turn off animations or give them a way to speed them up during battle. As with most games (including non tb-combat), adding flair is usually a good idea. A game that looks amazing and has a great soundtrack will usually be a better game for it. However it’s important to not go overboard as to not mar the interactivity and pacing of combat.

iv) Adding a Gimmick

Figure 5: Dialogue and social interaction with enemies during combat in Undertale (PC and others, 2015) The very first thing I want to say in this paragraph is that the word “gimmick” is used as a value-neutral term here (language barrier at work). With that out of the way, in the past few years more and more developers choose the approach of adding a mechanic that is not related to the set of base mechanics for tb combat outlined above, adding a gimmick. In Undertale (c.f. Figure 5), this is social interaction with enemies: Instead of attacking the player has the option of befriending or even romancing enemies. Damage values are replaced by the enemy responding with dialogue or a certain animation. Interacting with enemies this way will have effects on the overworld gameplay. This gimmick is mostly unique to undertale, yet there are countless different games with different gimmick. Possibilities are endless which is why most games will try to find their own gimmick, a thing only that game has. Being value-neutral this may add or detract from a game in general but the effect on the tb combat system is more palpable: Going outside tb combat framework has the risk of detracting from it, much like adding mechanical challenge in ii), adding a gimmick will necessarily decrease the complexity and depth of combat both mentally and mechanically. In summary adding a gimmick can be a great way to freshen up your otherwise stale combat system but in my opinion if a game dev is striving to make a great JRPG they have to be mindful of adding things that muddle that goal. Not striving for that goal while still wanting tb combat in your game can still results in an amazing and fun experience however. v) Adding Depth

The difference between complexity and depth is subtle yet crucial. Complexity is adding an entity, ability, stat or any other property an entity can have that was not originally part of the combat. Think adding a character, adding a new attack, adding a new component. Depth however is adding another interaction between already existing entities, abilities, etc. Adding depth will make combat more complex yet may not necessarily increase it’s complexity (depth and complexity can overlap and effect each other) as described in i). Examples of adding depth include:

making the AI scripts decision process more involved, for example each enemy entity may react to each others state (ideally dynamically, that is not following a fixed script) protecting their powerful yet vulnerable mage or trying to keep everyones health above a certain threshold

making the AI remember things the player did such as analyzing which move the player likes to use often and then preparing for that move in the future

making it so passive effects are not encapsulated but may increase/decrease/interact with each other. For example a ring may increase strength but gain an additional amount of damage when the players defense is boosted. Equipping another ring that boosts defense at the cost of strength will give the additional effect of the first ring. If the player now has an ability that lets say increases each buff to damage by 50%, the player will have to think about which combination of items to use and if the interaction is beneficial. There is no easy solution

making abilities interact, for example one ability may increase the next abilities damage and another ability may bounce from enemy to enemy 10 times but only do very little damage. If the order of execution is based on the parties speed values for example, the player will have to manipulate the speed such that the damage boost happens before the bouncing effect so damage buff will increase 10 fold.

status effects reacting to each other, for example trying to burn an already frozen enemy will thaw them, cooling a burning enemy will cure the burn

You may notice a trend in these examples, a lot of them are rules in the form of “if x and y, then z” where x and y are already existing mechanics or properties. Because both x and y already exist, adding depth will bypass a lot of the pitfalls of adding complexity while still gaining most of the benefits. It will make combat a lot more complicated but also interesting as suddenly strategizing isn’t just picking the clearly optimal option, it’s thinking through all of the interactions trying to find out which combination (and order) of actions will do the most damage. The more moving parts interact with each other the more dynamic the battle will feel while still being initially easy to understand because keeping the number of entities, abilities, stats, etc. low like this will cut down on time spend learning what everything is and instead make for more time experimenting, learning through interaction and emergent situations. I’m very much in favor of adding depth but it’s not always positive. Adding too much depth will inherently increase complexity and thus cause the same problems mentioned above. Furthermore adding depth will make the combat system harder to balance: if the game dev designs the system in a way where most of the interactions are emergent and not hardcoded they will have to do more testing and thinking things through to keep stuff from spiraling out of control (though to be honest it can be very satisfying to figure out a game-breaking combination if it’s complicated enough but the point still stands). In summary trying to reach an appropriate level of depth for your combat system is always a good idea in my opinion. Be aware that going too far may make things too complicated or unpredictable though.

Conclusion

I hope I made clear that I’m in favor of all of the methods mentioned above as long as each one is used appropriately and sparingly. Sometimes it’s okay to shift the game as a whole away from combat into more action- or narrative-oriented but if the developer decides that their game should have tb combat, any of the techniques mentioned above can be a valuable tool.

Addendum: Closing words

I want to end this piece with a little personal anecdote, as you can imagine I played a lot of games with tb combat, most notably I spend most of my teens on pokémon tournaments and playing old gems like earthbound that weren’t available to me as a child. I’m going to be honest, I didn’t like most of these games. When I played LISA: The Painful, I had a hate-love relationship with it. I thought the combat was pointless and shallow, the environment art was terrible and the story was overly edgy and not subtle enough. It took me 6 attempts to finish the masterpiece that is Mother 3 and even then I gave up 70% in and watched a let’s play instead because I didn’t want to grind and the music-related combo system just didn’t work for me. I played FF6 when I was in college and I was bored to death, every time there was a random battle from walking through blank space I groaned internally, doing the battles just felt like “deal damage, then heal, then deal damage, then heal” over and over for the entirety of the game. Honestly there really wasn’t ever a game with tb combat that I though flawless or at least as good as possible. Of course because I was a pretentious amateur I figured “I’ll just make my own game and make it better than all of them”. The more I tried to actually do that the more I realized that these weren’t flaws at all. There isn’t an optimal way to do things. While I still think it’s true that all of these games didn’t live up to my tastes, that has no barring on their quality or how successful they are in realizing their vision. What I’m trying to say is: You shouldn’t try to design tb combat in a way that is the best, you should try to design it so you, the designer, will like it best. Choose from any of the design methods mentioned above but be aware that there isn’t a concrete answer, there isn’t one specific point after which the bad side-effects of certain methods kick in. Just do a game you would love, if you do that I can promise you there’s a good chance that someone else will too.

Footnotes

[1] “is an enemy” is considered a stat since the game may allow for the property to be interacted with, such as when an enemy charms an ally and makes them fight for the enemy team or when an enemy dies and is thus pacified. [2] I realize that this assertion isn’t falsifiable since if an tb combat system doesn’t share that property, it isn’t a tb combat system by definition. Apart from that I still believe that this property is crucial and most games I can think of share it. For the remainder of this piece it is asserted that tb combat has to be symmetrical.

[3] note: I will use pokémon as example to illustrate my points, if you are not familiar with the pokemon battle system consider skimming through this article though I don’t think it’s necessary to understand the combat system fully

[4] An additional way to introduce a soft limit that I honestly have not seen or used anywhere yet is limiting the amounts of menu inputs a player can do in some way. In rat_game specifically there will be one boss that instead of attacking when it’s their turn will attack every 5 menu inputs. This means a player is not necessarily limited by time but rather has to navigate the menus as efficiently as possible, otherwise they risk being attacked more than necessary.

#game design #gamedev #undertale #mario #superstar saga #battle #pokemon #chrono trigger #mario rpg #octopath traveler #mother3 #earthbound #suikoden #final fantasy #FF6 #FF7

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pokemaniacal · 7 years

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Oricorio

I do not have a good record with anything capable of earning the title of “gimmick” Pokémon – Pokémon whose schtick is some unique move, ability or game mechanic that was so clever Game Freak felt they could stop there, and didn’t need to have the Pokémon be any good or the design make any sense. Today we decide whether Oricorio, the dancing honeycreeper Pokémon, fits that description. Four interchangeable and mostly cosmetic forms, a weird signature move, a weirder ability… the phrase “walks like a duck, quacks like a duck” comes to mind, but let’s take a closer look.

Oricorio’s English name references the orioles, a family (or rather, two unrelated families, one native to the Old World and one to the New) of brightly-coloured insectivorous songbirds. Her names in other languages are more generic references to birds and dance, and her actual design probably draws, if anything, not on the orioles but on Hawaiian honeycreepers – another family of brightly coloured songbirds, most of them in various shades of yellow and red. Like “Darwin’s finches” in the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador, Hawaiian honeycreepers are famous for having rapidly adapted from a single basic form to fill a wide variety of different ecological niches. Some have short, thick beaks that can crush seeds, some have long, thin beaks for spearing insects, and others have curving beaks for sipping nectar from flowers, hence the name “honeycreeper.” The technical name for the phenomenon is “adaptive radiation,” and it’s particularly common on remote islands, like the Hawaiian archipelago, where there may be a large number of unoccupied ecological niches for a species to diversify into. Oricorio, accordingly, has four forms, which individuals can switch between by feeding on the sweet nectar of special flowers that are unique to each of the four main islands of Alola. The different colours of the flowers correspond to the meanings of each of the islands’ names in Hawaiian: yellow flowers on Melemele, pink on Akala, red on Ula’ula, and purple on Poni. Wild Oricorio can be found wherever the flowers grow, and mimic their colours, but also gain different costume-like features that evoke a distinctive style of dance from the real world, characteristic of particular regions, with personality traits to match.

Each form has a different type: Electric/Flying for yellow, Psychic/Flying for pink, Fire/Flying for red, Ghost/Flying for purple. The yellow, Electric-type, Melemele Oricorio is energetic and cheerful, with puffs of feathers like a cheerleader’s pom-poms on the end of her wings – a North American style of dance, associated with giving energy to others. The pink, Psychic-type, Akala Oricorio is laid-back and relaxed, with a long skirt and crown of pale feathers that bring to mind a Hawaiian pā’ū skirt and lei, the paraphernalia of hula dance, which is linked in modern pop culture with tropical relaxation. The red, Fire-type, Ula’ula Oricorio is proud and passionate, with frills of feathers like a flamenco dancer’s long dress, and white curlicue feathers that evoke hooped earrings, evoking the intense traditional dances of southern Spain that are now a shorthand for burning, desperate love. Finally, the purple, Ghost-type, Poni Oricorio is calm and quiet, with fans of feathers at the ends of her wings like the sensu fans used by geisha in old-fashioned Japanese dances that still evoke tradition and ceremony. We’re also told that the purple sensu Oricorio’s style of dance famously reminds immigrants from Kanto of the traditional dances of their homeland, just to push home that these styles are meant to have geographical and cultural resonance, as well as emotional connotations. Their different styles of dance are said to have corresponding effects on onlookers; the pom-pom style dance giving energy to friends, the pā’ū style dance lulling and slowing enemies, the baile style dance “causing its enemies to combust in both body and mind” (ouch), and the sensu style dance “sending the minds and hearts of its enemies to another world” (ouch?). Those four distinct personalities and the magical effects associated with the dances link Oricorio’s core theme of dance with the characteristic traits of her four possible elements – Fire-types are passionate, Psychic-types are sedate, and so on. This is quite important, since Oricorio otherwise has relatively few connections to those elements (as we’ll see later).

The point of all these different styles is probably to emphasise that Alola is multicultural, like the real Hawai’i, where American, Japanese and Polynesian (and to a lesser extent Iberian) culture are all important parts of the regional identity. We should probably imagine that, for the people of the Pokémon world, all those styles of dance and their paraphernalia are based on Oricorio’s dances and plumage (in the same way as, for instance, the Roman alphabet actually comes from the Unown). There is something a little bit odd going on here, though. Hawai’i’s multiculturalism is essentially a legacy of colonialism, of American, Iberian and East Asian interference in, and immigration to, the islands. The real-world dance styles that Oricorio is based on – with the exception of the Polynesian pā’ū style – are relatively modern imports to Hawai’i. But Oricorio is not native to Kanto, Unova, or Kalos (the closest region we have to Iberia so far); to our knowledge, she is found only in Alola, and her different forms have specific niches that relate closely to the floral ecology of the four major islands. It seems reasonable to think that the four forms all originated right here, in the Alolan archipelago, and that the resulting dance styles were also adapted by humans in Alola. Should we turn it all on its head and imagine that in the Pokémon world Alola was not colonised, like Hawai’i, but a coloniser – an ancient maritime power whose kings had a ship in every port and a finger in every pie? Did Alolan sensu dancers introduce the forms they learned from Oricorio to Kanto and Johto centuries ago? Does the stamp of Oricorio’s intercontinental influence represent the last remaining trace of an ocean-spanning empire that left different shards of its cultural heritage all over the Pokémon world?

…or is this just the kind of subtle nonsense that happens when you create a particularly anthropomorphic Pokémon without thinking through what it would imply about human culture in the Pokémon world?

Such a question, dear readers, this meagre blog is hardly adequate to answer.

We are, however, reasonably equipped to answer the less speculative question of whether Oricorio is actually any good. Oricorio seems at first to be a pretty rubbishy fast and frail special attacker. And… well, in singles, she kind of is. She’s got good, but not excellent, speed and special attack, average defences, and a movepool that makes me sad. To elaborate – with one exception, the only special attacks she learns are Flying attacks and Hidden Power, and of the Flying attacks, Air Slash is below average in power and Hurricane is below average in accuracy (barring appropriate weather support). Heck, she doesn’t even have any attacks of her own secondary types on her move list – except for her signature move, Revelation Dance. This is a respectably powerful special attack with no secondary effects, but one interesting property: its type changes to match the type of Oricorio’s dance style, Electric, Psychic, Fire or Ghost. In principle it’s a cool little trick that links Oricorio’s in-game tactics to the central features of her design. In practice, it means that, although Oricorio technically has Electric, Psychic, Fire and Ghost attacks, she can’t have them at the same time, which is what she would actually like, because there’s no way to change her style mid-battle. In some ways, Oricorio would be better off without Revelation Dance, since it would force Game Freak to give her actual attacks from each of her possible types.

The support options are a bit more inspiring. Oricorio has Baton Pass, respectable speed, and a few useful set-up moves, including Agility, Calm Mind and Swords Dance, and she probably wouldn’t be terrible at passing buffs, although her defences leave something to be desired. With Calm Mind, Baton Pass, Revelation Dance and either Agility or a Flying attack, she can help out a more competent team member without being totally helpless herself, although there are probably better Pokémon out there for the job. She can use her speed to Taunt other support Pokémon, and she can heal herself with Roost. U-Turn lets her dart out of danger, although it’s largely superfluous on a Baton Pass set, and probably not much good on a more straightforwardly aggressive set either, since Oricorio pretty much needs a turn or two of Calm Mind setup before she can do a worthwhile amount of damage. There’s not much else to give her more variety. Even Swords Dance can’t really enable a proper physical attacker set, since Oricorio’s base score is not impressive and her movepool basically extends to Acrobatics and Steel Wing. But don’t worry – the best is still to come.

Oricorio’s most interesting feature is the unique Dancer ability, which immediately copies any “dance” moves used by another Pokémon (Oricorio still gets her regular turn). In singles, this is situational at best; mostly it makes Oricorio an interesting switch-in to some Dragon Dance or Quiver Dance sweepers, since they won’t be able to outrun her. In doubles, on the other hand, this ability allows Oricorio to really shine and do all kinds of ridiculous stuff. You see, Oricorio will also copy her partner’s dances, letting her piggyback off their setup moves, particularly Quiver Dance. Strictly speaking you could also try this trick with Swords Dance, but again, Oricorio’s poor attack stat and physical movepool advise against it. Special mention here goes to Volcarona, who can buff Oricorio with Quiver Dance and give her free attacks with Fiery Dance, or to a pair of Oricorio (if you’re allowed two Pokémon of the same species on a team, which you often aren’t) who will copy each others’ Revelation Dances. Lilligant is also an interesting option here – with her Own Tempo ability, she’s immune to confusion, so you can get Oricorio to disrupt your opponents with Teeter Dance without harming Lilligant, and Oricorio will copy both Quiver Dance and Petal Dance off her. Practically the only downside is that you have to actually use Lilligant. Some credit should also go to Pheremosa and Ribombee, who, along with Volcarona, learn Quiver Dance and are faster than Oricorio, ensuring that she gets a special attack boost before her own first attack. In any case, if you can set Oricorio up to get a free Quiver Dance, she rather suddenly becomes an extremely threatening special attacker with quite solid special defence. Her movepool is still weak, with just Air Slash or Hurricane, Revelation Dance and an appropriate Hidden Power (Ice for a pom-pom Oricorio, Grass for a baile Oricorio, or Fighting for a pā’ū or sensu Oricorio). However, she’ll now have the power to bludgeon enemies into submission even through resistances, and with the right partner she may also be able to cheat out a bunch of extra Fiery Dances or Petal Dances. In any turn-based game, the power to just get extra turns for free, even in such a limited way as this, can be tremendously game-breaking, to the point that I actually sort of understand how limited Oricorio is in other ways. She’s rubbish in singles, and I don’t think there can be any changing that, but a good dance partner in doubles can let her steal the whole show, and with better defences and a good movepool she might become downright unstoppable. Take her for a spin and see if you can make her work – just remember that Cresselia’s Lunar Dance kills her instantly.

I can’t help but like Oricorio. The fact that something so unassuming in a standard battle format can become so incredibly dangerous in a multiple battle, and in such an unexpected but delightfully thematic way, is appealing. I do wish Oricorio were less garbage in singles, and I really wish there were more to distinguish her different forms, but I’m happy to allow that, from a game design perspective, the nature of what her Dancer ability does is so dangerous that it makes a lot of sense to just give her a basic kit to begin with, then tack on a larger movepool in subsequent generations if she doesn’t appear to be breaking anything. The design, too, is very Alolan, emphasising the multicultural heritage of modern Hawai’i while tying in with an important real evolutionary phenomenon – even if it does leave me with some odd questions about what, exactly, Oricorio’s relationship with the history of Alolan dance is supposed to be. So, gimmicky? Oh, indisputably – but, miraculously, a decent job anyway.

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