Expanded Combat Systems

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Hello. To help attract more global attention for SGB, I think it is important for a more detailed and customizeable combat system. In general, Western RPGs have evolved from strategy games, and so WRPG fans tend to expect more strategic features in their RPG combat systems. This is why the Final Fantasy games way outsell the Dragon Warrior games here in America.

To help, I want to give you some specific suggestions from my favorite RPGs.

Charge Turn Battle System (CTB)
Example Games: Atelier Iris, ManaKhemia, Ar Tonelico, Final Fantasy X, Legend of Dragoon, Digimon World 3, Final Fantasy Tactics

There are many forms of this, the basic idea is that the combat is still turn based, but a character's speed determines how often they get a turn. In Final Fantasy Tactics, each character has a speed stat, and each tick, their CT (charge time) increases equal to their speed. (so after 4 ticks, a character with speed of 6 would have 24 CT) When a character reaches 100 CT, the count pauses and the character takes their turn. The more recent games like GUST's games and FFX would have a diagram showing which character is going to act next. GUST likes to visualize this system like a deck of cards, with characters getting placed back in the deck after they take an action.

The real fun of the CTB comes with actions that also use or modify charge time. In FFT, magic spells take time to charge up before they activate. In GUST's games, there are often spells that linger, and continue activating at set intervals. In these games you can also use abilities that increase or decrease a character's speed, or in Atelier Iris 2, you could "Break" characters to decrease their CT, and if they reached negative CT, they would get stunned and take more damage.

Active Time Battle System (ATB)
Example Games: Final Fantasy 4-9, Chrono Trigger, RPG Maker 2003

Like the CTB, but the combat system does not pause to take turns. Because of the Final Fantasy games, this was crazy popular in America for a while, to the point where some people wouldn't even play turn-based games anymore.

Grid Battle
Example Games: Final Fantasy Tactics, Dungeons and Dragons, Disgaea, Hoshigami, Exile/Avernum, Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, Shining Force, Super Robot Wars, Adventures To Go, Rhapsody (there are many more, but these ones are good to learn from)

The Grid Battle games or Strategy RPGs are arguably a completely different genre of game, but because the SGB engine already has a grid system for map movement, I feel like this could be a relatively simple way to add depth to SGB's features. Check out Exile/Avernum, Adventures To Go and Rhapsody which do a good job of integrating grid battles with normal RPG adventuring.

In this combat system, the battles take place on a grid map. Each character takes turns moving and acting, and must be within range of a target to attack it. There are lots of features and strategies that are opened up by this concept, attack range, area of effect, etc. Typically, each character can take one move action per turn and one attack action per turn, but some games change this by using AP, below.

4X games, like Civilization and Space Empires also typically use grid battles, if you need more inspiration.

Action Points (AP)
Example Games: Adventures to Go, Exile/Avernum, Hoshigami, Chrono Cross (there are definitely others out there that I'm not remembering)

In these types of games, each turn, a character gets a certain amount of AP, which can be used on different actions. Instead of taking a single action each turn, you keep taking actions until you run out of AP. For example, in Chrono Cross, a light attack costs 1 AP, a medium attack costs 2 AP, a heavy attack costs 3 AP, casting magic costs 7 AP and characters get 7 AP max. I think in Exile, moving costs 1 AP, attacking costs 3 AP, and characters get 6 AP per turn. In Hoshigami, you'd get 100 AP and the costs of different actions would be wildly different depending on what equipment and skills you are using.

In some games, you could go into negative AP, which might cause your character to be tired and lose defense, or need to wait longer for their next turn. In Hoshigami, you can take your next turn faster if you use less AP.

Action Input
Example Games: Legend of Dragoon, Paper Mario, Valkyrie Profile, Hoshigami (there are definitely others out there that I'm not remembering)

In these kinds of games, you must succeed at some sort of action input to land your attacks, usually pressing a button with precise timing.

Check out sumrndm.site, he makes a lot of Action Input plug-ins for RPG Maker MV.


Equipping Skills
Example Games: Final Fantasy 8, 9, Final Fantasy Tactics, Hoshigami (there are definitely others out there that I'm not remembering)

The idea is that you have special slots to equip passive skills to your character. Final Fantasy had a huge list of these that they would reuse for each game. In a lot of these games, you would get special skill points that you used specifically for unlocking new skills.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I forgot one:

Rogue-Like
Example Games: Rogue, NetHack, Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, Angband (and its many variants), Dungeon Mans, Mysterious Dungeon, Prospector, ADOM, Dwarf Fortress (Adventure Mode), Lost Labyrinth

Rogue was the first of its kind, and gave the world the grid-based exploration system that so many video games, including SGB, have continued to this day. In Rogue-like games, combat and exploration occur on the same map. Map actions are turn based, after the player moves or takes an action, each computer controlled character moves or takes an action. Different actions consume different amounts of time, or certain conditions might increase or decrease the amount of time an action takes. For example, walking through water takes more time than walking on land, carrying too many items can increase the time it takes to move, or equipping elven boots might decrease the time it takes to move. Like the Grid Battle combat system, this is arguably a completely different genre, but because of the inherent similarities, I think it could be relatively easy to add this to SGB.

Typically, Rogue-Likes have only one character controlled by the player, but Lost Labyrinth allows you to control multiple characters by switching back and forth (and Exile/Avernum mentioned previously uses a similar system), Prospector allows you to control your entire group all at once, and most Rogue-Likes allow you to have computer controlled allies, such as the pets in NetHack or playing as an Orc Priest, Summoner or Necromancer in Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup.

Rogue-Likes are also famous for having a lot of randomly generated content, which I would also love. Exile/Avernum, mentioned previously, is also almost a rogue-like except that it does not have random content. A lot of modern games call anything with randomized content a Rogue-Like, even if it does not have the iconic grid-based exploration and combat system, so be careful if you're looking for examples.

[Sam Spade]

well done!

[Keroberoz]

Up for this, ATB is really what I'm waiting for. They probably know about it. And already setting it up

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I'd like to think that, but RPG Maker has mostly ignored ATB for decades. I think it wasn't as monolithic in Japan as it was in the USA.

[SANA]

Hi, AcetheSuperVillain-san

Thank you for your detailed suggestion! I'll translate it and share it with our dev team! :-D

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Arigatou, SANA-san. Please tell everybody I wish you good luck in your efforts. Ganbare!