So, I has some ‘splainin’ to do.
One of the reasons that I skipped an update on Snitsa-Grezit was that I responded to an impulse to start another game of Final Fantasy Tactics, which took out an entire weekend of mine. I picked up a handful of dos and don’ts from that experience (don’t worry):
1) When I was messing around with game settings, decided to disable the display of EXP/JP gained in battle, so the only way I could keep track of progress would be to obsessively check the status screens in battle (which was annoying and usually unhelpful) or just wait to see the results in the formation screen after the battle was finished. This put more of the gameplay emphasis on…anything else, really, which I found strangely relieving. Gaining levels and enough job points to advance was largely accidental and natural. If I ever seemed under-leveled at all, then I would play a few more battles and return without much concern for the specific base or job levels I had achieved in the meantime- my goalposts were more dynamic than ever before.
This combined with the fact that ‘level’ systems are largely unrealistic (professional promotions are usually done formally and any personal progress one makes is done incrementally and without much awareness), I am inclined to do away with the experience system altogether on the UI end. Stated differently, characters will gain experience and levels, but this will not make any news on the players’ screen. The majority of skills will be learned from NPCs or from books, etc., instead of levels (for the most part, anyway); Gaining levels will be a be semi-frequent occurrence and will result in minor adjustments to player statistics. If I can pull of what I just described, then players will have no incentive to grind in any particular area because they’ll have no concept of the level curve or how they could affect it by leveling up in a certain area. In other words, I can table my previous suggestion that all experience gained be normalized to prevent grinding. With this system in place, players could still grind; it just would be a race without much of a goalpost.
2) I have backed off of my original suggestion that either HP or AP would be completely reset after each battle, as the case in FFT; there are several relevant factors that make that make sense in FFT, but not in S-G. Instead, battlers will gain one AP per turn in battle, and also 1 AP per some number of steps. This would also allow for certain abilities to be used outside of battle, keeping in mind that their usage will cut down on potential for use in near future battles. I can imagine some amusing/frustrating/tactical battle scenarios, especially if a player is either incredibly low on AP or is suffering from a status ailment that prevents that increase per round. “How is this different from MP?” Because AP applies to skills that are not necessarily magical in nature & is expected to zero out at some point in battle, but come back on its own in ways that force a more tactical approach to its use.
3) When replaying FFT, I realized that there was still elements of that story that I had not comprehended in the previous playthroughs. I would rather my plot not be that complicated, but I also want to avoid stereotyped scripts. I realize that this is not an original concern on my part, but what struck me was that I will have to create a world that is necessarily complicated, that the player will never understand on any number of playthroughs. Graphically, you see this in some games, like where treasure chests are sitting behind the counter in a shop, treasure chests that you’ll never get to open. So, in terms of storyline, I am having to come to similar terms (e.g., as much as I’d love to write a two page story on the contents of the treasure chest, I’ll have to leave the player guessing if they’ll ever get to see what’s inside it because neither I nor the player have the time or the patience to get into it!).
Now, I have also been watching a friend of mine (Xavier “mv” Dang) play Alundra on youtube. Again a lot of dos and don’ts there. Admittedly, I had already planned to make S-G somewhat ‘vertical’, not as jump-oriented as Alundra is, but certainly less flat than most RPGs seem to be, especially the classic ones. I should point out that Alundra does a great job of creating a forest with vertical dynamics, which was a goal of mine in the first place. It was a great experience to see that in action, even if I didn’t quite agree with how the concept was abused.
In my previous entry on S-G, I mentioned the possibility of a screenshot. For the moment, I have been experimenting with various tiles that were borrowed from other games, so my maps (4 different forest maps at the moment) all look like a collage of original + blatantly copied and pasted tiles. Interesting, but not worth sharing. Having 4 maps generally done already is a good start, though. I got the majority of the work on those done last week during a brief bit of Internet outage. This has lead me to believe that I need a one day per week Internet sabbath, just to get things done. I am thinking that Tuesdays or Wednesdays would be best for that.
Filed under: Bloggish, Snitsa-Grezit by Aaron on Sunday, March 25, 2012 | Social tagging: Alundra > Final Fantasy Tactics > Snitsa-Grezit
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