RM2K3 Damage Formula and Calculations etc.

[daoman89]

I'm assuming you're not a final fantasy, xenoblade, tales series fan? lol

I've always liked seeing my characters grow from single digit damage to thousands.  Really makes you feel like you've grown your characters.  As long as you don't go all nuts on high numbers, it can be pulled off.  But like I said before, the number ratio between two characters is a good way of comparing their strengths to one another. 

High numbers won't work in action RPGs because it would just look really sloppy.  Watching FFXIII (i know it's not an action rpg) i'd get lost with all the ridiculous numbers popping up every second.  Wtf is going on!?  Pokemon would fail with high numbers.  Fire emblem, FF crystal chronicles, paper mario, secret of mana, chrono series, etc.  Just wouldn't work out too well. 

As for high numbered HP, it depends on the fight.  As long as you're constantly forced to be on your toes, an endurance fight isn't so bad as those hack and spell til the boss dies after 30 min due to high health battles.  High health can work, imo, if the fight is still interesting if that makes sense.

[Prpl_Mage]

I just hate it when some gridning removes any obstacles because your damage went from 80 per hit to 260 per hit after 5 levels grinded or something. My main problem with high stats and such.

In paper mario you can barely increase the base damage which makes enemies rewarding to fight all game through.

[Meiscool]

Stats shouldn't be used to make characters feel unique anyways. It should be their special skills (Xenoblade is a prime example).

daoman is right though, any damage amount and any health amount can be used as long as it makes sense.

And I'm also a hater of the grinding thing. I find I do it myself unconsciously in games, which results in the rest of the game being less enjoyable due to its ease. FF13 kinda fixed this, as grinding didn't result in your characters getting any stronger beyond the cap, and battles were still hard (though often just battles of attrition).

[daoman89]

those extra bosses in ffxiii had millions of hp if i remember hearing correctly. i keep getting my *** kicked in ToS dawn of the new world. that hard mode seems to require some grinding. 

Yeah, you want a healthy balance with strength by level up and weapons. Weapons should be the cause of a damage leap, not so much 5 levels. Leveling up should focus on all attributes while equipment focuses on individual attributes.  When you level up, the fight should be slightly easier, not significantly easier. Some fights can require better strategy than stats. So instead of raising numbers, you'll have to defend and counter to get an advantage.

Also fights that force you to play with equipment sets is fun too. Ok, so i need to protect my healer from silence and this character needs to cripple defense while this one buffs up the teams defense. Bam! Go into it and see your strategy turn the tables. Higher defense stats can make defense cuts more significant. Or the monster can be resistant to physical attacks so you need to either break it, or go for a magical approach. Oh the fun of non-boring fights!

[Meiscool]

Having to debuff a target before doing your normal thing doesn't exactly make a "non-boring fight". Not attacking you or anything, just saying.

[daoman89]

you wouldn't just have that 'issue' in the fight. Just an example of an enemy defense blah blah. A lot of boss fights require u to break some defense in various types of games. But i see ur point.

A lot of games have skills that cause status effects and debuffs, but I rarely use them.  It's almost as if they're pointless.  So being forced to develop different strategies using those types of skills makes things more fun in my opinion.  Which was basically my point on the previous post.  Final Fantasy is well known for useless magic and skills.  Why use poison if I can just crush you with Comet or Meteor and high attack the entire game?

[Prpl_Mage]

Final Fantasy is well known for useless magic and skills.  Why use poison if I can just crush you with Comet or Meteor and high attack the entire game?

Oh you mean, for that one boss in FFXIII that had such a strong regen that the only way to counter it was using poison?

[daoman89]

Never played 13, so I don't mean that lol.  I meant more as in the FFs 1 through 9.  Rarely used those magics.  That boss sounds like a pain in the *** though.  If it has 100,000 HP, then it's really like it has 1,000,000.  You were probably frustrated.

[Prpl_Mage]

Actually it had 15,840,000hp, and recovered [(Max HP - Remaining HP) * 0.01] x 8 Hp with its regen. So how much is that? Some people might ask.

Well, let's say that you have managed to drop 5 of his 15,8m hp to 10,000,000 he will neatly enough recover 467200 each time it ticks.
And as you can see, the regen gets stronger the less hp the guy has left. When down on 1 million hp he will recover 1 million hp each time it ticks.
To make the battle more interesting, he will "change" when Hp thresholds are reached. So the moment you get him below 90% he changes form for the rest of the battle, even if he regen up his hp above that limit again. I think he did this 5 times. (90, 70, 50, 30 and 10%) Being given more attack and defence each time. Also, wait too long and he kills you by placing doom on your leader.
Besides that it can inflict itself with an invulnerability buff that clears all status problems, gives it bravery, faith, shell and protect, and renders it immune to all types of damage for some time, and also a skill that unbuffs your entire party.
Funtimes.

[daoman89]

Interesting, but it goes with the frustration > fun ratio. How long was the fight?

[Prpl_Mage]

How long was the fight?

Without poison - till you die of doom.

With poison - far too long.

[Meiscool]

I don't remember that fight being that difficult :/

Still, FF status effects were more for the enemy to use on you, not vice versa. Status effects in general are hard to balance... they are either useless or overpowered. Even then, in most turn based rpgs status effects are more meant to limit the player options and force secondary strategies, not be used as a strategy to overcome foes. Pokemon is a great example of this: Against gym leaders/etc, they will often poison/burn/sleep you. Where as you would be wasting a turn doing that to them over just going the 1/2hitKO route. There are a select few instances when inflicting status would be preferred over dealing raw damage.
More active battle rpgs are another story though, when pseudo-status effects like knock-up and knockdown can severely limit an enemy's ability to fight back.

Incorporating status effects into games can really change up the core mechanics of things if you aren't careful. Done well can make some great stuff.

[DragonBlaze]

I was recently playing .hack for the ps2, they did an awful job with status effects. At the start of nearly every battle, my characters get poisoned, paralyzed or put to sleep. I pretty much have to have 99 antidotes or whatever every time I go though a dungeon, and besides that, there's nothing I can do. In this case, status effects are just annoying.

On the note of damage. In most games I don't think it matters if you can do 9999 or 999 damage as long as the damage scales with life. I tend to prefer the 999 model because once you get up to the thousands range, the last two digits really don't matter.. IE, there really is no difference between 7411 and 7435, so I vote for the max 999 model so you have less insignificant digits.

The one exception I have is FF games. Simply because all the FF games I played when I was a kid allowed you to do up to 9999 damage. Then all of the sudden, if you worked hard and got the right skills, you could break that limit, and at the time it was SO cool.

[Prpl_Mage]

I like action rpgs like MMORPGS where status effects aren't a waste of time. You use them and get on hitting the enemy, reaping the benefit of the status problem in the meantime. Problem with ATB systems and turn based is just like Meis mentioned, either under or overpowered either that turn you waste is totally worth it, or you could just as well just click defend and achieve the same result.
The kind of skill I hate the most is single target stat boosts. Where the ammount increased barely make up for the mana or turn you just put into it.

Games like WoW on the other hand gave you skills that auto critted if an enemy was on fire and then removed the fire debuff. Also stuff like GW2 where the necromancer have a skill that deals more damage based on the ammount of debuffs a target have. Or to consume the debuffs on a target to heal. There are many options. But pure status problems, are like mentioned. Usually not worth it.

I'm not saying they are worthless, just that it's too difficult to balance most of the time.

[daoman89]

Monster Hunter has status effects done very well with the action.  Poison cripples you and the monster.  All status effects work both ways. 

I have a fight where the boss starts off by causing Slow on your team so you can't set up for magic defense and additionally its magical attacks might cause some status effects.  Then he'll mess up your strategy by increasing his magic and physical resistance.  One little slip and he'll destroy you.  He's the warm up fight before a more difficult one at the end of the place lol. 

I test them by if I get pissed off or feel like they're too long or boring, then I'll adjust them.